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In the middle of the night, Hans Spaans finds himself being overwhelmed by cramps slowly
tightening up the muscles in his arms, back, thighs and calves until his whole body is
a knot of pain, and he’s practically paralyzed.
So what is the strategy he uses to deal with these Parkinson’s symptoms?
He buries his face into his pillow, and begins yelling a string of curse words.
Hans had found that putting himself into a rage somehow gave him strength.
The furious shouting works him up enough to get to his feet and he would then continue
the fit by kicking a couple pillows around.
And then, as the anger faded away, so did his cramps and he can suddenly move freely.
This case, featured in Scott Carney’s book “What doesn’t kill us,” is a rare instance
where anger can be helpful.
Somehow, channeling this strong emotion had substantial physiological effects on Hans.
The connection between emotions in the mind and the state of our body is apparent in the
fact that mood disorders like anxiety and depression are often associated with other
disorders like irritable bowel syndrome, heart disease, chronic pain and chronic fatigue.
Last time I discussed the “theory of constructed emotion” which says emotions are not simply
triggered by things happening outside your body, your brain also takes into account data
from inside your body and compares that against your past experiences to create an emotion.
This means that we have two avenues for controlling our emotions.
We can’t always control what’s happening outside of our body, but we can change the
software in our head.
The other strategy, which we’ll be focusing on today, is changing what’s happening in
our body.
Going back to Hans, his strategy was effective, but the anger was self destructive and was
breeding resentment in him.
So what did he do instead?
His new, more effective strategy involves deep breathing and taking Cold showers and
ice baths.
Something about the cold would shock his body enough to break through his Parkinson’s
symptoms without having to work up a fit of rage.
Some research has found that there is a loss of noradrenaline neurons in the brain in Parkinson’s
patients.
And, Interestingly, Noradrenaline, also called norepinephrine, is one of the neurotransmitters
released when you are exposed to the cold.
People submerged in 14 degrees celsius water up to their shoulders experienced a 530% increase
in norepinephrine, a reduction in cortisol, and a 250% increase in dopamine.
Norepinephrine has substantial effects on focus, attention, vigilance and it improves
mood.
And disturbances in norepinephrine transmission is thought to also be a key component in depression.
You may have heard of serotonin reuptake inhibitors being used as antidepressants, but there are
also antidepressants that work by inhibiting the reuptake of norepinephrine.
Cold showers seem to be a big topic of interest nowadays, and there’s a couple different
reasons why - they reduce stress, improve immunity and enhance muscle recovery.
But I think the bigger reason is they just make you feel really good.
At this point let me just say that this is what I mean when I say emotions are negotiable.
Let’s say you’re having an emotional response to something like… getting fired.
You’re filled with anger, resentment and worry, but if you step into a cold enough
shower, the change in your physiology - the boost in norepinephrine and dopamine may have
affected your mood enough that you’re no longer a walking ball of worry, and you’ve
realized at the very least, a solution to your problem exists.
If cold exposure seems too drastic for you, heat exposure can also improve mood.
In this talk, Dr. Rhonda Patrick is explaining the benefits of using the sauna.
The heat exposure changes how your brain responds to feel good endorphins.
When you’re exposed to high enough heat, something called dynorphin is released.
Dynorphin is like the opposite of endorphins because it makes you feel uncomfortable.
That’s not the result we’re going for, but when dynorphin is released, more of the
receptors that endorphins bind to are created and it sensitizes them to endorphin.
This means the next time you make endorphin whether it’s from exercise or laughter or
giving someone a hug, the positive endorphin effect will be stronger.
Dr. Patrick explained how she got interested in this topic when she was a graduate student
working towards her PhD - she had to deal with the overwhelming stress and anxiety that
came from multiple exams and multiple time consuming experiments.
“I was experiencing a sense of, at times, crippling anxiety.”
She found that after using the sauna quite frequently - about 5 times a week, her mood
was noticeably enhanced, and she had less anxiety and was generally able to handle stress
much better.
Cold and heat exposure are things you can do quickly to affect your mood, but something
that takes a bit longer with a potentially bigger payoff is to reduce inflammation.
When researchers want to study a disease, one challenge they have is finding out how
to recreate the disease in animal models.
There are plenty of studies that look at ways to treat depression by studying rodents with
something called “lipopolysaccharide induced depression.”
Lipopolysaccharide is something that induces a violent inflammatory response in humans,
and is used experimentally to rapidly create inflammation in animal models to study all
kinds of inflammatory diseases.
These diseases could be anything from diabetes, inflammatory bowel disorders, rheumatoid arthritis,
to parkinson’s disease, alzheimer’s disease, anxiety and depression.
A decent rule of thumb is if something causes inflammation, especially chronic inflammation,
it will probably make you feel crappy.
Studies have found that people with depression have higher biomarkers for inflammation by
up to 50%, and the risk of major depression increased as c-reactive protein increased.
C-reactive protein is a biomarker for inflammation.
In one study, people were injected with one of three substances: saline, lipopolysaccharide,
or interferon - another inflammation inducing substance.
The people with the saline showed no change, but the people injected with the inflammatory
substances, interferon and lipopolysaccharide, experienced an acute increase in depressive
symptoms like anxiety, feelings of social disconnection and anhedonia - the inability
to feel pleasure.
So if chronic inflammation is at the very least a component of depression, it’s safe
to say that keeping inflammation low is a good strategy for maintaining positive mood
and keeping emotional reactivity in check.
The ways to keep inflammation low are probably unsurprising: get enough sleep, get enough
exercise, keep a healthy weight, don’t spike your blood sugar, and cut out refined carbohydrates,
sugar, processed vegetable oils, trans fats and artificial sweeteners.
A new study released just this month in the Journal of Inflammatory bowel diseases found
that the artificial sweetener Splenda increases inflammation in mice afflicted with Crohn’s
disease-like symptoms.
I’ll wrap this up with a quote from Dr. Lisa Barrett’s book “How emotions are
made” : “When you experience affect without knowing the cause, you are more likely to
treat affect as information about the world, rather than your experience of the world.”
Basically, what this means is that we are prone to accept our emotions as accurate evaluations
of what’s happening in the world, unless we know the causes of these emotions.
For example, people report more happiness and life satisfaction on sunny days, unless
they are explicitly asked about the weather.
So, when you apply for a job, it’s better to interview on a sunny day because the interviewer
isn’t going to be thinking about the fact that they're more positive because sun exposure
enhances serotonin production in the brain.
They’re just going to think “I felt pretty good when talking to that person, I guess
it’s because that person is a good candidate.”
In the same way, it’s easy for us to think that the reason we feel bored and stressed
at work is because our job sucks.
But maybe if you got better sleep and stopped eating power bars for breakfast, you wouldn’t
feel so irritated during the weekly meeting.
And sometimes the difference between feeling anxious and overwhelmed and feeling challenged
and motivated is more exercise, less alcohol and maybe hitting the sauna.
We can’t snap our fingers and change our emotions whenever we want, but when we become
aware of the various causes of our emotional state, we can calmly seperate ourselves from
the emotion and start making changes that will allow for better emotional responses.
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