= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
VAuroch comments on Open thread, July 28 - August 3, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (241)
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.