My diet seems to influence my mind and body a lot more strongly than is normal. (Food intolerances that mess with my emotions or focus, apparent hypoglycemia that goes away when I take vitamin B, that sort of thing. I know a lot of people have something like this, but I’ve got so many that diet is the default first suspect whenever anything goes wrong.) I’m not sure whether this makes me a potentially useful test subject for things like nootropics because the effects might get inflated and easier to notice, or just an outlier whose results won’t work on anyone else. I also wonder if this means there might be foods that have good effects on me for no apparent reason, in which case I might experiment to find them.
Could someone who knows more about biology than I do offer some insight?
I have noticed that maintaining a decent diet makes a massive difference to my mental state, but I have no reason to think this is unusual. You may not be either.
In short, consider generalizing from one example more.
I’ve suspected that food might have more affect on people in general than general opinion says it does. But I act really differently on my diet vs. when eating what most Americans eat (I haven’t tried eating normally since childhood because the effects are too unpleasant, but I’ve made enough mistakes in a row to come close on one occasion—see my comment to James_Miller), and most other people act more like me on a good diet than me on a bad diet.
I’ve considered generalizing from one example when it comes to people who do act similar to me with a bad diet. I tend to keep quiet about it because it comes off as really insensitive to tell someone that their depression might be caused by the candy they eat, when I don’t have any evidence for that besides generalizing from my own experience.
Good hypothesis. I still don’t think I’m completely normal, because when I eat a typical American diet I can’t function in society, which most people seem to be able to do. (Mainly thinking of a family trip where I ate out a lot and wasn’t as careful as usual, and after a couple days I was breaking down crying about once a day, at things that would normally just annoy me.) But then, I could see the more subtle symptoms being things that people assume are chronic problems they can’t change. Alternately, my normal is near some kind of borderline for a mental problem and that’s why my diet can push it over so easily.
I’ve also wondered how much of mental illness could be caused by this sort of thing. I was told that as a child, a doctor thought I had ADHD and was about to have me tested, and then my mom forgot to buy bananas at the store one week and my behavior suddenly improve. It seems likely that other children with the same problems I have exist, and most of their parents weren’t already alert to diet influences.
Thanks for the app link. I don’t have iphone, but I bet I can find something similar for android.
I guess what I should do first is hit up a library database and find out if anyone has already researched this. (I’ve made a few efforts to look it up before, but mostly just google searches—though I did find that mental symptoms for corn and milk allergies aren’t unheard of.) If nutritionists don’t think food works this way, but also haven’t studied this specifically and found it false, I’m not sure if I should try to do my own experiment or not.
I guess what I should do first is hit up a library database and find out if anyone has already researched this.
Don’t think it’ll help you much—you need to find out how you work, not what happens to some sample of some population of people none of whom are you.
In your place I’d start keeping a detailed mood/mental state diary AND a detailed food diary. After a few months you should be able to get a decent idea of what kinds of food do what to you.
You might also want to talk to gwern—he does “how X affects me” mini-studies and has good methodology.
Sorry, I didn’t make the intent clear. I do want to do more experiments on myself, and I need to work on figuring out a non-annoying way to collect data so I can do that. But I’m also really curious how common this sort of thing is in other people. So the library research is for testing your alternate hypothesis, and my hypothesis that some people are strongly influenced by food but mistake it for a chronic problem.
But I’m also really curious how common this sort of thing is in other people.
Browse forums for non-mainstream diets, e.g. paleo or vegan. You’ll find LOTS of stories by people who found out that a change in their diet massively affects their health and/or mental state.
The thing is, though, on paleo forums the stories will be “So I stopped eating carbs and the mental fog just lifted and now I have energy...” and on vegan forums the stories will be “So I stopped eating animal products and the mental fog just lifted and now I have energy...” :-D It’s all very individual, you still will need to figure out how you react to stuff.
Ah, thanks :) I figured that different diets are good for different people, since that’s what seemed to happen for people I know. But I wanted to find out how common and how extreme that sort of thing is, since if people are getting results like “I can handle going to school now”, then people should be more aware of it than they are.
I’m pretty sure I already know the most important reactions for me—I’ve gotten to the point that there’s not anything really really wrong anymore. I didn’t expect the rest to just be in a book somewhere, since what I’ve already found out by experimenting doesn’t match up to any known pattern other than “diet does stuff”.
My diet seems to influence my mind and body a lot more strongly than is normal. (Food intolerances that mess with my emotions or focus, apparent hypoglycemia that goes away when I take vitamin B, that sort of thing. I know a lot of people have something like this, but I’ve got so many that diet is the default first suspect whenever anything goes wrong.) I’m not sure whether this makes me a potentially useful test subject for things like nootropics because the effects might get inflated and easier to notice, or just an outlier whose results won’t work on anyone else. I also wonder if this means there might be foods that have good effects on me for no apparent reason, in which case I might experiment to find them.
Could someone who knows more about biology than I do offer some insight?
I have noticed that maintaining a decent diet makes a massive difference to my mental state, but I have no reason to think this is unusual. You may not be either.
In short, consider generalizing from one example more.
I’ve suspected that food might have more affect on people in general than general opinion says it does. But I act really differently on my diet vs. when eating what most Americans eat (I haven’t tried eating normally since childhood because the effects are too unpleasant, but I’ve made enough mistakes in a row to come close on one occasion—see my comment to James_Miller), and most other people act more like me on a good diet than me on a bad diet.
I’ve considered generalizing from one example when it comes to people who do act similar to me with a bad diet. I tend to keep quiet about it because it comes off as really insensitive to tell someone that their depression might be caused by the candy they eat, when I don’t have any evidence for that besides generalizing from my own experience.
Alternative hypothesis: Diet has a huge influence on mind and body but most people lack the mindfulness to notice.
The Food Sense App might help you. http://www.bulletproofexec.com/find-your-kryptonite-with-the-free-bulletproof-food-sense-iphone-app/
Good hypothesis. I still don’t think I’m completely normal, because when I eat a typical American diet I can’t function in society, which most people seem to be able to do. (Mainly thinking of a family trip where I ate out a lot and wasn’t as careful as usual, and after a couple days I was breaking down crying about once a day, at things that would normally just annoy me.) But then, I could see the more subtle symptoms being things that people assume are chronic problems they can’t change. Alternately, my normal is near some kind of borderline for a mental problem and that’s why my diet can push it over so easily.
I’ve also wondered how much of mental illness could be caused by this sort of thing. I was told that as a child, a doctor thought I had ADHD and was about to have me tested, and then my mom forgot to buy bananas at the store one week and my behavior suddenly improve. It seems likely that other children with the same problems I have exist, and most of their parents weren’t already alert to diet influences.
Thanks for the app link. I don’t have iphone, but I bet I can find something similar for android.
I guess what I should do first is hit up a library database and find out if anyone has already researched this. (I’ve made a few efforts to look it up before, but mostly just google searches—though I did find that mental symptoms for corn and milk allergies aren’t unheard of.) If nutritionists don’t think food works this way, but also haven’t studied this specifically and found it false, I’m not sure if I should try to do my own experiment or not.
Don’t think it’ll help you much—you need to find out how you work, not what happens to some sample of some population of people none of whom are you.
In your place I’d start keeping a detailed mood/mental state diary AND a detailed food diary. After a few months you should be able to get a decent idea of what kinds of food do what to you.
You might also want to talk to gwern—he does “how X affects me” mini-studies and has good methodology.
Sorry, I didn’t make the intent clear. I do want to do more experiments on myself, and I need to work on figuring out a non-annoying way to collect data so I can do that. But I’m also really curious how common this sort of thing is in other people. So the library research is for testing your alternate hypothesis, and my hypothesis that some people are strongly influenced by food but mistake it for a chronic problem.
Browse forums for non-mainstream diets, e.g. paleo or vegan. You’ll find LOTS of stories by people who found out that a change in their diet massively affects their health and/or mental state.
The thing is, though, on paleo forums the stories will be “So I stopped eating carbs and the mental fog just lifted and now I have energy...” and on vegan forums the stories will be “So I stopped eating animal products and the mental fog just lifted and now I have energy...” :-D It’s all very individual, you still will need to figure out how you react to stuff.
Ah, thanks :) I figured that different diets are good for different people, since that’s what seemed to happen for people I know. But I wanted to find out how common and how extreme that sort of thing is, since if people are getting results like “I can handle going to school now”, then people should be more aware of it than they are.
I’m pretty sure I already know the most important reactions for me—I’ve gotten to the point that there’s not anything really really wrong anymore. I didn’t expect the rest to just be in a book somewhere, since what I’ve already found out by experimenting doesn’t match up to any known pattern other than “diet does stuff”.
You might want to poke around Chris Kresser’s blog—he’s a non-doctrinaire paleo guy, and his commenters include a lot of people with unusual symptoms.
Thanks! I’ll have a look.
You might want to poke around Chris Kresser’s blog—he’s a non-doctrinaire paleo guy, and his commenters include a lot of people with unusual symptoms.
You can also try using Eureqa; it’s good for finding potential correlations and relationships. It also tries to suggest possible experiments.
Thanks! That looks interesting.