What I've Learned
October 9th, 2023
- Diet is king. There are three organs important to the human body: the brain, the heart, and the digestive tract.
- All chemicals are made from what you eat. Serotonin, dopamine, cortisol, testosterone, estrogen, etc.
- What you eat is extremely important. So, so, so important. It impacts physical health, personality, and mental health.
- The gut microbiome is full of bacteria. This bacteria affects the chemicals produced from the food you eat.
- This means every single person is unique in what diets affect them. Some people may respond better to a vegan diet, whereas others a carnivore diet. It is extremely individual-based. This historically has made diet extremely difficult to experiment, measure, and test.
- Posture is king.
I had the blessing of having realized I have ADHD. I had the additional blessing of having learned dairy affects my ADHD. I was observing my cousin, who had ADHD. He was banned from having dairy since it made the symptoms worse.
I experimented on myself and eliminated dairy. It helped. Immensely. In fact, so much so, that all my anxieties in life had dissapated.
I experienced life as everyone else does. Sure, there are stresses here and there. But it was nothing compared before.
No longer did I feel any different than others. I felt I could talk to others without my throat tightening, or my traps self-destructing themselves via contraction.
A recipe for health
Two things: diet and posture.
Why posture? Well, in all technicality its the modern equivalent of exercise. It dictates digestion, blood flow, and muscle imbalances.
- I've tested this before: rib flaring can cause an inability to inhale and exhale effectively. C02 buildup in the body has many adverse effects you can google. Lack of 02... well that's self explanatory. You can try it for yourself; flare your ribs and try to breathe. It's harder.
- If you slouch, you will affect your digestion process. You are crushing the organs and changing the physical shape of your tract. It's indubitably going to affect how much nutrition you can gain. Also: exercise affects digestion speed. Too fast or too slow can most definitely affect the outcome of nutrition and the gut microbiome.
- Muscle imbalances are self-explanatory. You can ask any physical therapist what a bad posture can do to your body. It will literally shred your body apart until you are suffering from valgus knee, pinched nerves, and plantar fasciatis until you die. (And hip pain! Back pain! Jeez. You wonder why some old people are always sitting?) I've always noticed that even sports athletes suffer a bit of this as they age (perhaps due to overuse). But ex-military often do not when they age. Why? Posture.
- The nervous tract can also get severely hampered if you have bad posture. See all sorts of nerve pains and pinched nerves. See: vagus nerve.
- And of course... blood flow is affected by posture. I'm certain that's self-explanatory as well. (View the body as a system of pipes. Change the width of each pipe... well. That makes sense, right?)
A realization
Another realization I had was that thinking is just a form of schizophrenia.
If you really think about it, if nobody else can hear your voice except for you, and the idea is that you are "hearing" your own thoughts, isn't that just (a healthy) schizophrenia?
I theorize perhaps a long time ago, not everyone had such strong voices in their head. In fact, only about 60% of us do! And that number probably has increased with the advent of education being everywhere, and the literacy rates being so high.
I had the experience of walking around without a thought in my head. Yes! It is actually possible.
I realized that "I" and "me" are not the mind. I am not the voice in my head. I am not the mind of it. I am the body. The only thing that is true of the body is that which is expressed and observed on the outside.
Sure, I can have my "own thoughts," but the truth of it is... the real thoughts are the ones I say. The ones in my head are of an over-active imagination. Nothing inside my mind is me.
I am certain it is a modern condition to confuse the mind's voice, the schizophrenia, with the identity of the self. This is entirely false. There is no basis to do so, besides the fact that the ego is stacked upon and built on the achievements of that voice from a young age.
The voice is a plague. It is a falsity. Sure, it helps in doing my work and tasks. Sure, it helps me do the intellectual activities I need to complete to survive. But it does not make me happy. It is not me. It is not my life. It is simply, "the voice."
We are the body
Humans are the body. We are the digestive tract. We simply developed these appendages to put things into our holes. To defend our digestive tube. To gain resources for our digestive tube. We evolved for the digestive tract. For the body. For the core. For the torso.
We, well, we are tubes. Or more beautifully and philosophically put: we are the body.
All comes down to it
tl;dr stop drinking milk, eat lots of fiber, exercise, never use the back of your chair, and never slouch and drink water! Oh, and remember to exhale all the way. well, technically the only thing you need to do is exercise constantly and eat a lot. I mean, our ancestors never had these problems...