Posts made by insufferable

@Creuset said in Metabolism: sloth to a dopaminergic child:

@insufferable said in Metabolism: sloth to a dopaminergic child:

I agree that internet distraction is bad but I've done long days on my LCD working with text only (almost all black and white) with very little distracting internet browsing, and still felt super drained at the end. But on my E-Ink device, I can even watch videos and click around, and still feel very good at the end of the day.

Have you ever tried used an app like f.lux to reduce the blue light emitted by your screen? Would be interested to know if you would feel the same as when using your E-ink screen.

That would be a good experiment. I've never tried leaving flux on all day. I used to have it set on max in the evenings and it certainly works very well for allowing sleepiness to occur at the appropriate time. I'll try a full day on LCD but with maxxed flux the whole time and report back.

what are you doing during those awake hours? Computer?

Have you thought about the light? If you spend all day outside in the daylight, and then in the evening you light only with a candle and use zero screens - i cant imagine that wouldn't work eventually.

@pittybitty said in Metabolism: sloth to a dopaminergic child:

@insufferable The blue light thing is really not that complicated. Darkness induces stress, both red and blue light are protective against this stress. Red light causes Triptophan be converted to Melatonin, blue light does the opposite. Melatonin controls the "phase" of your day/night cycle, the further along the night you are the higher your melatonin. It's not that blue light is "bad", it's just that red light is the only way to have the protective effects of light while still maintaining a natural melatonin progression and thus day/night cycle.

Regarding e-ink I think what you are mostly noticing (aside from maybe better sleep) is the psychological, rather than metabolical effects of color. Internet constantly demands your attention, in part through the use of color and movement, if more of those elements get eliminated you will be less distracted by it.

That's interesting about blue vs red light effects, thanks.

I want to stay firmly in the holistic with the screen thing though. Looking into a lit up computer screen is just a totally different thing than looking at physical ink on paper or looking at the sky or trees or whatever. For example, you could switch your screen's LED backlight with a red light panel and stare into your bright red screen all day, and I think you would feel almost as bad as the normal screen makes you feel.

I agree that internet distraction is bad but I've done long days on my LCD working with text only (almost all black and white) with very little distracting internet browsing, and still felt super drained at the end. But on my E-Ink device, I can even watch videos and click around, and still feel very good at the end of the day.

So I feel something like this:

dopamine depletion levels:
level 10 - aimless clicking around on an LCD
level 8 - reading a book offline on an LCD
level 1 - aimless clicking around on E-Ink
level 0 - reading a book on E-Ink

I looked into making a new sunscreen product and found (as far as I can tell) the FDA forces sunscreens to be one of the current harmful chemical ones, or one of the two approved physical blockers - zinc or titanium. Literally no other options are allowed in the US if it's marketed as a sunscreen, so there's no point searching as a consumer.

Here is the list if you're interested: https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/omuf/OTCMonograph_M020-SunscreenDrugProductsforOTCHumanUse09242021.pdf

There's a few studies on using plant ingredients like quercetin as sunscreen. Quercetin sounds like it might really work - with the downside of being bright yellow. I don't know if that yellow would be invisible once it absorbed? I'll have to try it.

From what I've read, the "just use olive oil it has natural SPF!" stuff is a meme. It's like SPF 2 in reality.

The obvious answer is to just cover up with clothes once you've had enough sun during tanning hours (11am-5pm DST), but I do wish there was a safe, sheer sunscreen.

@zaaku Good points. I like the idea that computer use is super energy intensive and if you don't nutritionally support yourself, you'll do poorly. That makes sense to me. From my e-ink experience, I do believe it's the LCD screen that's burning through your brain energy like that. I don't feel tired at all after a full day on E-Ink. I definitely felt tired and frazzled after a full day on my LCD.

It reminds me of how people with concussions sometimes become unable to use LCD screens due to instantly getting migraines from them. Implies that a non-concussed person's brain is constantly doing Something when looking at a screen, and when that unknown Something isn't being done due to a damaged brain, you instantly get a migraine. Whatever that thing is, it's going to take energy.

Maybe it's like looking at a paper through intentionally cross-eyed lenses so your eyes are always working to resolve the image - wouldn't you get a headache after 20 minutes of that? And someone with damage to the eye controlling region of the brain might be unable to resolve the image and might get a headache in seconds.

I think the pesticide Atrazine specifically is probably a huge offender. The Midwest (full of huge cornfields) went from the highest testosterone in the US in 1990 to the lowest, currently. Atrazine is known to be a super potent endocrine disruptor, and it's used widely on cornfields. (and others?)

I think atrazine is responsible for a 250 ng/dl testosterone drop.

What about glyphosate? I'm not sure but I bet it's less impactful.

What are the main routes of atrazine exposure? Living next to a cornfield, having a water source that goes through atrazine country, or eating non-organic corn products? I believe the first two are probably worse than the last. During the time of year that they spray it, in corn farming parts of the midwest. Atrazine enters water and spikes to levels well above the max.

My understanding is that the primary route of MICROPLASTICS exposure is household dust from synthetic fabrics in your house getting dustified over time.

So the main reason there's microplastics in your blood is

• your polyester carpets,
• your polyester fabric couch,
• and your polyester fabric pants getting abraded in the washer.

So I imagine the quickest impact you can make on microplastic exposure is to remove dust frequently, and to get a 100% cotton couch cover. Biggest impact would be to replace the polyester carpet. Then replace polyester clothes with cotton, etc.

But much less impactful would be a heavy focus on microplastic content of food from the grocery store. That's because this isn't the main route of microplastic exposure.

I'd like to determine this sort of thing for all the endocrine disruptors! For example, which is more important: pesticide in food, pesticide in water, or airborne environmental pesticide entering your household dust?

I've always wanted to quantify this, like

pre-1900's guys had 900 ng/dl testosterone
today they have 450 ng/dl

so we have a decline of 450 ng/dl to account for:
-200 ng/dl from prenatal damage from maternal pharma use
-150 from sleeping too little
-75 from pesticide dust in the air
-25 from pesticide in the food
-0.1 from not consuming enough vitamin 521

Obviously something bad is going on these days with a decline in thyroid function, hormone function, mental health, metabolism - but I want to be more specific so we know what to focus on first.

Will switching your polyester shorts for the twitter shorts (100% cotton!) be the most important thing for restoring perfect HUNTER GATHERER health? Will EMF mitigation fix everything, or should you have first put that focus into something else that helps more?

I imagine the biggest impacts are:

• pharma (especially prenatal)
• personal care products (especially prenatal)
• deep fried sneed oils (im not convinced unheated pufa is bad. Fake peater alert)
• emulsifiers
• TV, computers, smartphones - both psychologically and also because of the artificial light emitted

While Red 40 food coloring, plastic water bottles, and escaping all wifi are probably lower priority.

It's a question of what would you recommend to a tired person down in the vicious cycle of bad health? Remove the SSRI or remove all the food in the pantry cause it has food coloring in it? Surely you start with the SSRI. The food coloring comes later.

What do you think?

Good stuff!

@insufferable

Provocative Statement: I think the healthier my mind, the worse i would be at computer programming.

@zaaku I don't want to limit it to blue light (which has always felt like a meme to me) I don't know exactly what part of the computer screen light is so bad. But it's a new, unnatural, and prolonged stimulus, taken as a whole.

I don't know george hotz but the stereotypical computer guy doesn't seem right at all to me. Yeah there's insane energy towards the programming but what about stuff off the computer? In many cases they struggle don't they? What does it mean if you can think out code logic super well but can't think of the right word in conversation?

I have a Dasung Paperlike. It pretty much looks like old time black and white newspapers I guess. 99% of the time I feel no desire to turn on my LCD monitor.

@Gaston Awesome, thank you! That's the first place I've seen any mention of an epiT increase.

~12% testosterone decrease, ~80% epitestosterone increase.

I know nothing about 7-keto-DHEA. Do you have any idea why it would do that?

Yes, although it was a return to the way i was originally before developing the sloth state.

I don't think diet had much to do with it. It was psychology and computer use.

Constant computer use changed me from dopaminergic to a bit of a shut-in. Fixing that got me back to 80% status. Since then I've been at 80% for a while.

But recently I switched my LCD screen with an E-Ink screen, and that's got me back to 100% (the way I was as a kid)

The light from computer screens kills your dopamine neurons, or something like that. E-Ink emits no light. (Kindles are E-Ink) I've posted about it a lot because it's had a really big impact for me.

Thanks for those papers! 57% of those who are already bald by age 45 have metabolic syndrome compared to 14% of non-bald 43 year olds. That's an impressive result.

@Gaston said in Epitestosterone, premature balding, and "male PCOS":

Supposedly you can increase epitestosterone by topically applying 7-keto-DHEA. I doubt applying it to the scalp would do anything, but if I can get the 7-keto-DHEA to dissolve, I'll put some on my scalp and on my navel/stomach and see what happens.

Interesting! Where did you find that out? I couldn't find anything about it.

Grounding 100% of the time
vs
just grounding for a millisecond a few times a day (just touch the earth for a moment)

Would these have pretty similar results? Like 90% as good as full time grounding?

I didn't get a huge impact from grounding, but I'm already pretty active outside and end up touching something that's grounded pretty often.

@insufferable That study theorizes that epitestosterone converting to epiDHT is what prevents hair loss. EpiDHT takes the seat of DHT in the hair follicle, thus preventing DHT from getting in and doing its thing.

There are two more studies in this series, which don't have quite as nice and clear results. I'll post them soon.

This is the study that measured testosterone, epitestosterone, and DHT in the hair follicles of balding guys.

https://www.jidonline.org/article/S0022-202X(15)41116-9/fulltext

Here's the result:

What stands out most to me is plain old testosterone. Bald men have a lot more testosterone in their hair follicles. But as you know, they don't have any more testosterone in their blood than non-balders, and don't display the good "results" of testosterone in the body any more than non-balders. Anecdotally, I think they display a lot less! And at least in premature balders ("Male PCOS"), the studies confirm this.

It makes me think of calcium and vitamin K2. Calcium is good in the bones and bad when it inappropriately gets into soft tissue. Vitamin K2 somehow keeps calcium in the bone and out of soft tissue.

Some unknown factor puts testosterone where it should be and keeps it out of where it shouldn't be - the hair follicle. (and perhaps other places?)

When that unknown factor is not functioning well, testosterone is less present where it should be and more present where it shouldn't be.

Another question is what function do hormones have in hair follicles? What would testosterone be doing in your hair? What good does it think it's doing up there haha? Seems to me that it shouldn't be there at all. So WHY does it show up there?

Also I'd like to know how and why DHT has the function of miniaturizing hair in the first place. How does it do that? (I don't agree with the alternative claim that DHT doesn't cause hair loss. It absolutely does. DHT directly miniaturizes hair follicles right away in lab tests. However I do agree with the claim that DHT is good for you and that "high DHT men" often have plenty of hair. Because it's the varying levels in the different tissues that matter.) So how and why does DHT miniaturize hair? What purpose is it fulfilling, or attempting to fulfill but going off course instead?

@risingfire said in Epitestosterone, premature balding, and "male PCOS":

@insufferable have you ever tried spironolactone? It's used for women with PCOS. It's much easier to acquire compared to epiT

I'm not familiar with it, what does it do?

Good post thank you!

One thing though - my Dasung Paperlike monitor (a black and white one) is somehow fast enough to watch videos without any problem. I think it may just be Dasung that can do that. And people do say videos will wear out e-ink devices faster.

@saturnuscv said in Epitestosterone, premature balding, and "male PCOS":

I remember on RPF there was a thread where a guy got lab work after being on 6-Ketoprogesterone for a few weeks and his T:EpiT ratio shot up to 9:1

I receded a bunch when I experimented with 6keto, despite it being anti-cortisol so this theory does make a lot of sense IMO.

Anyone have a source for pine pollen with a positive EpiT:T ratio?

Very interesting, thank you!

Found the thread I think: https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/test-results-before-after-using-6-keto-p4.29137

@Hearthfire said in Epitestosterone, premature balding, and "male PCOS":

@saturnuscv

Found this article which linked a study.

https://musclemonsters.com/blogs/blog/natures-newfound-anabolic-steroid-pine-pollen

"According to a pine pollen study conducted by The U.S. National Library of Medicine, one variety of Pine pollen known as Pinus Sylvestris contains 80ng/g of testosterone, 110ng/g of epitestosterone, and 590 ng/g of androstenedione…"

The study linked:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/5549221/

That's a good ratio, no? You want more epitestosterone than testosterone?

Looks like there's some supplements with Pinus sylvestris on Amazon/Google if you search "Pine pollen Pinus sylvestris".

You're telling me I can make muscle gains AND hair gains from one natural supplement? I am definitely gonna try this.

I was thinking about pine pollen for epitestosterone. It would be interesting to apply it topically to a bald scalp. I'm not sure what would happen from taking it orally.

My concern with pine pollen for epiT is the high androstenedione content. This is the precursor to both testosterone and epitestosterone. If I remember correctly I saw some study on urine levels that sounded like exogenous androstenedione would raise testosterone more than epitestosterone.