It happened again!
A delayed physiological response to consuming a very particular type of snack?!
Well, have I got a story for you!
Readers who have read the first issue of this newsletter may remember that I reported that, the day after consuming lime cheesecake and omega 3 fish oil capsules, I started to experience low mood and
at one point, I actually cried, although I was confused and not sure why I was so sad
Well, the same drop in mood happened at roughly the same time of day after eating the same type of food the previous evening, in both cases - albeit a different flavour the second time.
The night before
11:00pm: Lemon cheesecake, followed by 2g Omega 3 fish oil, and 150mg Tru Niagen
Slept 6h.
During the day
8am: 150mg Tru Niagen, 1000 IU Vitamin D, 0.2mg Vitamin K2, 1mg Vitamin B12, 5mg Lithium Orotate
Felt OK… until I was waiting at the bus stop after going shopping. It was reasonably cold.
I started to have thoughts like “Life is very hard [I think I actually meant for everyone!], and perhaps too hard for me to cope with”, and “I will probably not be able to find a new girlfriend because no-one will like me because of [reasons X, Y and Z]” - these are thoughts which I don’t have, and don’t agree with, during my evening periods of “normal, positive mood”. To me in this positive mood now, those thoughts seem irrational - a case of short-lived irrational anxiety.
But it got so bad that I eventually started crying.
Even though I was briefly conscious of the fact that it might have just been caused by a drop in temperature or something physiological like that, I pushed that thought aside, because my worries felt very real to me right then.1
So, there’s only one thing for me to do:
Have another lemon cheesecake with my Omega 3 fish oil capsules tonight, and see if the same delayed reaction happens again tomorrow.
Even though this time, I will hopefully remember that I’m potentially going to get so upset that I start crying - and therefore, armed with that knowledge, I might be able to use logic and reason to intervene with myself and stop it from happening - or failing that, to stop it as soon as it starts.
The things I do for science…
(Well, there’s also the small matter of me forgetting to buy more chocolate mousse today, so I’m unable to revert to my slightly more reliable technique of pairing Omega 3 capsules with chocolate mousse.)
If anyone has any idea what a physiological mechanism behind this effect might be, let me know in the comments below. It might be worth mentioning that:
along with the supplements I mentioned above, I am also taking the medications verapamil and colestyramine light;
this particular effect didn’t seem to happen with my prior medication regime.
I suspect that this is an evolutionary adaptation: that my DNA makes my brain wired in such a way as to “override” rationalisations when it experiences strong negative emotions, because otherwise people like me, that are good at rationalising, would be able to talk ourselves out of stressful emotions too easily.
It turns out that in between 0.1% and 1% of people, verapamil causes depression. Maybe I am one of those people, but when I take the omega 3 with chocolate mousse, that combination is able to prevent the depression taking place in the next 24 hours.