Hacker News Reader

> The change in clarity of mind and focus were life changing to me.

Feeling smart != being smart. I was once doing a water fast for a week and felt rather enlightened after a few days, like any problem would be easy. Upon trying to churn on some more advanced math proofs and programming stuff, it seemed to actually be harder than it would usually be. In fact I quickly decided that my time would be better spent walking around outside in the woods.

Fasting isn't really the same as keto of course. But I wonder if there are actual studies proving an increase in problem solving skills during something like a ketogenic diet or similar.

> Feeling smart != being smart

Like many psychedelic users can attest to. The mindset of enlightenment is just another mindset that can be produced by the brain by doing the appropriate actions

There are is an unfortunately large proportion of them that are fooled by the emotion and believe it.

For me, I get drunk and I start to feel really smart and enlightened, however next day I usually cringe, but who knows maybe it was the drunk me that was the smart one and the cringing me is just too narrow minded and judgmental.

It really depends on the task, some people are better at speaking a foreign language after they've had a few drinks.

The sober mind has been trained to carefully construct grammatically flawless sentences for the teacher. Hence the sober mind is hesitant, fearful and prone to second guessing itself.

The drunk mind he knows it not matter. Tempo and rhythm importanter. No stopping. Know not how conjugate don't conjugate. Not remember word loan other lingua. Say story no stopping manier words is gooder.

I found that I had to get over feeling like I was mocking a foreign accent, before I could become even passably-for-someone-bad-at-it good at an accent for the one other language I've ever tried to semi-seriously learn. In fact, leaning into "mocking" it was the fastest way to improve. I bet that it's easier to get past that perceived faux-pas when a few drinks in....

I'm pretty sure a drunk mind can read what you commented with ease and get the point, while a sober mind would get stuck and think "what is this" and do multiple takes before getting the point.

Same with music.

I can confirm. While visiting Russia and having a few drinks with friends, I could understand everything perfectly even though my vocabulary was just a few words! Just kidding of course but we seemed to be understanding each other really well and later when everybody was sober, we recalled it being a good time.

oh, so that's why they become less intelligible to their native friends!

That. Joscha Bach pretty much summarized the problem with just one word: Overfitting. I've since spotted the pattern several times. People going all in on psychedelics, seeing them as the solution to almost everything. Leary and McKenna starting a cult. Esp. McKenna and the true hallucination story make it pretty obvious that these two brothers overdid it so much that they couldn't just leave it behind, they had to follow up and supposedly go deep on that stuff.

> just

I am always skeptical of instances of normal consciousness that claim to know the unknowable.

Like how could one even conclusively fact check such a thing? Do people even try?

I think if you're curious about this sort of thing you have to go the route of the gnostic and try to experience it for yourself (the bidirectional link between your actions and your mental state, I mean). Meditation is one approach, drugs another. Perhaps in the future we'll have the tools to study this stuff more quantitatively, but for now the mind seems to be mostly mystery to science?

I'm interested in why it's become normalized for people to know the unknowable, and a lot of those afflicted are scientists. Plus, I don't see science making a lot of progress on the front.

Hmm, maybe I'm not sure what you mean about people knowing the unknowable? To me, whether something is unknowable or not is a property that can change over time as technology/epistemology develops. On the other hand there have always been (and probably will always be) people making confident assertions about things they don't know for certain. Getting at some sort of truth is an uncommon goal for monkeys =).

No disagreement from me about science making progress on the mind.

> On the other hand there have always been (and probably will always be) people making confident assertions about things they don't know for certain.

Here's how it works: "Oh, that is just...".

Ignore billions of these per day in the system, and you get what we constantly complain about but don't know how it came to be. Science developed a method to deal with this phenomenon that works quite well, but it is only applied in very narrow domains.

At certain scale, systems no longer appear as systems.

> Feeling smart != being smart. I was once doing a water fast for a week and felt rather enlightened after a few days, like any problem would be easy. Upon trying to churn on some more advanced math proofs and programming stuff, it seemed to actually be harder than it would usually be.

Exactly. Often touted for silly reasons, but it's definitely 100% true: feelings are not facts. Feeling healthier does not mean you are healthier. Feeling clearer does not mean you are clearer, etc.

My ability to focus deeper and for a longer period of time increased substantially - I'm afraid my IQ is still the same ;)

I can't say I get smarter, but I have very vivid memories of after-fasting days, and in the morning it was really easy to focus on anything I would choose to focus on, the mind would be extremely concentrated and still.

Your body requires nutrients to function. Deliberately depriving your cells of those nutrients can't possibly be good for them and likely does them harm. You evolved to survive such catastrophes of course, but the key word is "survive".

What states of mind can be induced by fasting is a separate consideration, it seems to me.

I don't think deprivation is the right model. Cells are still getting nutrients, just from different sources, particularly fat. Animals have 500 millions of years of evolutionary experience using this energy source.

I would be more concerned about the harm caused by not using this metabolic pathway, at least occasionally.

"Particularly fat"

Fat contains lipids, not nutrients save the fat soluble ones.

Fat itself is a nutrient [1], providing one of the most important bodily requirements of energy. The body requires other nutrients as well, and has methods of storing them. Fasting does not mean going without them. The nutrients of most interest to fasting are probably essential amino acids which can not be synthesized and ionic electrolytes.

Free protein and amino acids only last a couple days in the body before being used for muscle or being irreversibly converted to fat. When necessary, the body can break down muscle to obtain essential amino acids.

The relevant electrolytes the body needs are sodium, potassium, and magnesium, which it maintains fairly deep stores of in the bones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrient#Macronutrients

> From a metabolic perspective (e.g. ketogenic therapy), mind wandering can be seen as the result of blood glucose fluctuations that cause mental fogginess and impair focus

Could you please provide some sources for this?

https://brainenergy.com

Gosh! Another self-help book to "cure" my ADHD and depression! /s

Sarcasm aside, we already have cures for these disorders. It's absolutely insulting to struggle for decades dealing with mental health problems, for the medical industry to hold the cure (which, incidentally, is also the key to allowing you to perform a lot of self-care steps which would improve your mental health), and to then be told that — no, you won't receive the cure because you're not our "ideal patient" so, instead, maybe try and bang your head against this self-help book that "cures" the disease. Obviously, the disease will be cured if you just try hard enough! Or if you just, idk, Cope With It.

The majority of self-help books exist to generate money and only end up reinforcing the point of view that if you are struggling with mental illness it must be your fault. They take the burden off the rotting, decrepit husk of capitalism and put the burden back on to you. "Oh, you have struggled every day of your life with X? Ah, but this self-help book solves X, so if it doesn't work that must be your fault and you need to struggle harder with the methods in the self-help book!"

I hear you. I lost a best friend last year after moving in with him and getting effectively bullied and belittled over my ADHD, which he was adamant was made-up and was just a skill issue that I could meditate my way out of. After he became increasingly hostile and psychotic I had to cancel my lease. Really screwed me up for a while.

Listen, stop playing with serious mental illness.

I suffer from severe mental illness since I was young - ketogenic therapy is evidence based medicine and has changed my life in a way medication never has.

When you downplay this emerging field of metabolic health you're preventing many people to have access to a treatment that can save their lives.

Please inform yourself better - do not careless spread misinformation that can hurt other people.

> ketogenic therapy is evidence based medicine

There is only anedotal evidence and an animal study that a ketogengic diet reduces ADHD symptoms. There are reasons to be hopeful, but to call this "evidence based medicine" is a lie.

I find it unfortunate that the Keto diet attracts such fanaticism. It makes it much harder to find good information about it.

You can find good information here - https://metabolicmind.org

I couldn't find anything on that site that wasn't marketing material. I didn't dig deep into that organization but it appears to be run by the type of fanatics that I am talking about. It is dedicated to advocating for a certain type of treatment, not dedicated to gathering what we do and don't know about the topic.

I'm not sure why you keep using the term fanatics in what should be a civil cpnversation - it makes me think that either you have an agenda you're trying to hide your simply put you're an extremely rude person.

I'm using the word "fanatic" becuse I think it's meaning is the closest to what I am trying to describe: "a person marked or motivated by an extreme, unreasoning enthusiasm, as for a cause." It isn't intended as an insult or perjorative, but a descriptor.

I am coming from the perspective of being genuinely interested and wanting to try such a diet but unable to find any good information in the sea of fanatical marketing.

> Please inform yourself better - do not careless spread misinformation that can hurt other people.

Please inform yourself on ADHD research. When you downplay the role of genetics in mental illness you're preventing many people from having access to life-changing treatment. The irony of your last statement is quite something. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC161723/

It's wonderful that ketogenic therapy has changed your life. That has absolutely no bearing on people with different a brain structure. Ketogenic diets can be beneficial, meditation is essential, but there are aspects of ADHD that simply cannot be fixed other than introducing more dopamine into your brain.

Watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUAbqXcSAzg&t=24s

It's a Oxford’s Keto for ADHD & Depression Randomized Controlled Trial

My personal story is with psychosis which is as severe a mental illness as there can be - and I'm very thankful there are doctors and researchers out there battling all the misinformation about metabolic therapies.

People have different brain structures, but all brains are composed of cells and cells depend on their normal metabolic pathways to do their job.

I actually took dopamine reducing drugs for more than 20 years and I do know from personal experience how these drugs mess up people's lives.

So, yes I'm following a ketogenic therapy to, via metabolic normalization, regulate my dopamine pathways, and after 20+ year of misery I finally feel like I have a brain and a life.

I hope everyone has the chance to benefit from this research as I am benefiting, because I do know how painful it is to be prescribed these drugs for life.

> I actually took dopamine reducing drugs for more than 20 years and I do know from personal experience how these drugs mess up people's lives.

I mean — and I don't mean to be harsh here — if you have ADHD and Depression, of course dopamine-reducing drugs messed up your life. The issue with ADHD is (generally) insufficient dopamine with unusual dopamine release that leads to peaks and troughs in the dopamine response. Even a cursory amount of knowledge here makes it easy to conclude that dopamine reducing drugs will obviously make things worse.

If you feel comfortable sharing, what is the meditation technique you practice? I am a Vipassana practitioner and found your observation to be anecdotally true - the commonly stated reasoning for the prescribed diet in a Vipassana course is that it minimizes the amount of blood diverted from other organs (i.e. the brain) to aid in digestion.

In any case, I found your statement "nothing to lose and could always return to my previous, though less-than-optimal, lifestyle" quite inspiring - thank you!

My approach these days is to follow a meditation mantra:

1. Slow down - the moment I'm aware my mind is no longer quiet and alert because of some trigger (internal or external)

2. Stop suffering - I do a quick body scan for the associated sensations along the body, tell myself this is just a temporary mood change, it will go away the same way it made its way into my body and mind

3. Take a deep breadth - I focus on my breadth for a few seconds and relax

4. Let it go - I know I should not blindly believe any thoughts or feelings that take over my mind and try to get back to a relaxed state of mind

I do this all the time not just during a few minutes of formal pratice. Its so ingrained in my way of being that some people close to me say my personality drastically changed.

But there's still a long way to go.

Learn zazen and zen Buddhism meditation. All other methods are inferior.

Simply observer your own thoughts and do not evaluate them as good or bad. Do this until you forget who you are.

Simple yet extremely difficult

It is not very Buddhist to characterize other methods as inferior [1]. Perhaps the words of the Buddha himself would be the best guidance for you on this.

1. https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/various/bl014.ht...

No doubt, a strike from the stick is in order

> 3. This can also be seen as a kind of reinforcement learning: we train ourselves to notice when we are mind wandering - this process in itself, after some time, conditions the mind to focus on the present moment

I'm not sure how generalizable this is. Young kids that are still developing seem very present in most circumstances. I almost think we settle into mind wandering as we develop more responsibilities and have to plan further ahead and think about contingencies.

Not being present is an ego protection mechanism. Its classic psychology. As children get older, they develop ideas of who they are and naturally develop ways to protect their emotions.

When peoples' mind wanders, they cling to things that made them feel good or "Day dream" of things that would make them feel good. They're not planning ahead or thinking about contingencies.

Dealing with reality is hard, and being present means continually facing this harsh world. You can observe this with not just kids but adults in the modern world as people are more and more detached from reality and can live in some fantasy context by reinforcing with social media and internet echo chambers

Frankly, calling it classic psychology isn't saying much given the replication crisis. I think what you describe definitely happens sometimes, but to paint all mind wandering in this way seems like a stretch.

Any high level readings you can recommend on this? I'm not looking for a textbook, but something to give me a general overview of this and related concepts.

What I think is interesting in your point number 3. is that a social framework be the reinforcement mechanism. Growing up in an isolated environment could presents one reality growing up in a strong social environment presents another reality.

The coping skills in one reality my not translate to the new reality.

Do you have any thoughts about the possibility that it wasn't ketosis but instead just a lack of gluten?

I've not tried either but I've heard the same result attributed to making both changes (hard to know because they tend to coincide).

I think the main issue is the unhealthy up and down insulin spikes caused by modern high carbs diets.

That feels right. And it's good news too. I think I need to make some kind of similar change and for similar reasons and I'd really not like to eat and much meat as it takes to maintain ketosis. But there are a lot of ways to be blood-sugar-aware...

Look into the 'Slow Carb' diet - in simple terms you cut out sugar/processed carbs and replace bread/pasta/potato/rice with beans and extra veg.

Then one day a week you eat what you want. I personally find it far easier to follow than Keto - and while the affects aren't as extreme, when I was being strict with it, I was at my leanest and healthiest I've ever been.

Do we really need to group potatoes in there ? They're not processed carbs at all and have more protein than most people think

They cause an insulin spike so yes - but you can bend the rules however you want. For me just doing something where I stop myself gorging on sweets/chocolate is half the battle. Anything that spikes my insulin makes me crave sweet foods.

What is "monkey mind"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_mind

more broadly , the difference between reacting and responding to a stimulus

It is also known as karma mind in the Zen Buddhism.

Obsession over things that benefit you and avoiding things that hurt you.

It's called reverie. The stream of thinking that you naturally have when you're not deliberately trying to focus.

Essentially, one thought leading to another which leads to another and so on, without you having to make any effort.

Most people identify so much with their thinking, they aren't aware of it as a "thing"; it feels like it's something you're doing.

What are you thinking about?

But if you try to just pay attention, say to your breath, going in and out, after a few seconds you'll discover you slipped back into thinking, as described above, back into reverie.

Continued failure, despite your increasing resolve, to stay just listening to your breath reveals this fact: you can't stop "your" thinking mind from recapturing your attention.

So it seems like a monkey, that is, a thing which jumps around, from thought to thought, a separate entity from you, one which will not obey you.