TRASCRIZIONE 🔗
WEBVTT
1
00:00:02.814 --> 00:00:14.143
If panic attacks are very common across us as humans, and we certainly all experience some form of anxiety from time to time, is there a beneficial adaptation of this?
2
00:00:14.203 --> 00:00:22.809
If you go back to evolutionary psychology, what's the benefit of a panic attack?
3
00:00:22.849 --> 00:00:24.631
We're in the middle of a panic attack.
4
00:00:24.671 --> 00:00:28.794
How is this conceivably helping, or is it just miswiring?
5
00:00:28.874 --> 00:00:32.417
We've shared an email thread, but I'd love your thoughts on that.
6
00:00:33.500 --> 00:00:33.861
Yeah.
7
00:00:34.581 --> 00:00:37.365
Fear is evolutionarily favorable.
8
00:00:38.066 --> 00:00:45.896
And the thing that I think really strikes people when I say this is that your brain isn't concerned about your well-being.
9
00:00:47.118 --> 00:00:48.500
It's concerned about your safety.
10
00:00:50.110 --> 00:01:13.833
And so, evolutionarily speaking, somebody who's gathering berries in the woods and hears the growl of a hungry tiger in the woods and is able to effectively mount a fear response that is strong enough to quickly get them out of danger will be more apt to be able to reproduce and die.
11
00:01:14.273 --> 00:01:27.137
pass that trait on to their descendants as opposed to somebody who maybe has a blunted fear response or perhaps those who flop and they aren't able to get away or fight the danger.
12
00:01:27.917 --> 00:01:37.320
And the thing is that our brain isn't very good at discerning real from danger sometimes.
13
00:01:37.480 --> 00:01:42.062
Have you ever heard of the study of the little Albert study with the kid and the bunny?
14
00:01:42.742 --> 00:01:42.982
No.
15
00:01:43.707 --> 00:01:48.470
Okay, so this is an old, they were so mean to kids back in the day.
16
00:01:48.850 --> 00:01:50.071
There's this study.
17
00:01:50.091 --> 00:01:56.815
It took this little baby named Albert, and they sat him down, and they put a fluffy bunny in front of him.
18
00:01:57.255 --> 00:01:59.316
And he's, like, reaching out, and he's touching the bunny.
19
00:01:59.336 --> 00:02:00.977
He's like, oh, this is so nice.
20
00:02:00.997 --> 00:02:02.738
And happy, happy bunny, no fear.
21
00:02:03.679 --> 00:02:10.443
The next time they put him in front of the bunny, they blast a loud horn behind him and scare the living daylights out of him.
22
00:02:11.446 --> 00:02:13.328
They repeat that stimulus.
23
00:02:13.388 --> 00:02:16.551
They expose him to the bunny, the loud horn.
24
00:02:16.912 --> 00:02:22.998
And so then he started to cry when the bunny came near, even if there wasn't the scary horn.
25
00:02:24.082 --> 00:02:25.403
It's the Pavlovian effect.
26
00:02:25.443 --> 00:02:27.364
Like this is not rocket science, right?
27
00:02:27.904 --> 00:02:28.844
Right.
28
00:02:29.565 --> 00:02:41.190
So what we found in that research that was, I think, a particular interest in this conversation is that his fear became generalized to all sorts of fuzzy critters.
29
00:02:43.011 --> 00:02:48.494
And so people who experience panic and anxiety oftentimes are,
30
00:02:48.750 --> 00:03:04.984
that feels like out of the blue, or I have no idea why I'm having this response, it could be that, number one, they have this predisposition to having anxiety to begin with, perhaps evolutionarily favorable.
31
00:03:05.823 --> 00:03:15.630
And secondly, is that the body has stored some sort of association with that cue that's in their environment as dangerous.
32
00:03:16.091 --> 00:03:21.895
And the salience network is an association of brain areas and the insular, the thalamus.
33
00:03:22.459 --> 00:03:30.988
And it's scanning all of the data in the environment, billions and billions of data points from your external environment, your internal environment.
34
00:03:31.468 --> 00:03:35.212
And its job is to decide, is this relevant?
35
00:03:35.832 --> 00:03:41.098
And I need to pass it on to the amygdala, the emotional processing part of the brain, or is this irrelevant?
36
00:03:41.138 --> 00:03:41.918
We can ignore it.
37
00:03:42.018 --> 00:03:44.060
We ignore lots of stuff going on around us.
38
00:03:45.061 --> 00:03:45.422
But...
39
00:03:46.432 --> 00:03:54.837
There may be things in the environment that we don't know that the insula sends to the amygdala, and the amygdala asks the hippocampus, hey, have we seen this before?
40
00:03:55.297 --> 00:03:56.278
Memory part of the brain.
41
00:03:56.298 --> 00:03:59.440
The hippocampus is like, oh, yeah, this reminds us of this, this, and that.
42
00:04:00.020 --> 00:04:13.509
And then the amygdala will send on a fear signal to your hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis, and we may be panicking before the prefrontal cortex, your logical brain, even knows what's going on.
43
00:04:15.325 --> 00:04:36.560
And so not only is this biologically wired into the human brain where emotions travel faster than thoughts and logic, but then these stored programs that are adaptations that are trying to protect us can become maladaptations that actually create panic and anxiety, which can feel like they come out of the blue.
44
00:04:37.195 --> 00:04:40.439
Yeah, because you you can't they you feel them, you can't explain them.
45
00:04:40.459 --> 00:04:43.943
And in fact, when you try to explain them, they make no sense.
46
00:04:44.203 --> 00:04:56.658
So the traditional ways to address these right and you went to school and learned some of these, maybe not so much from a psychiatrist perspective, but certainly some of that training, I would imagine.
47
00:04:56.958 --> 00:05:01.420
It's about the chemical imbalance theory, but that's not a complete picture.
48
00:05:02.821 --> 00:05:04.822
How do you view the chemical imbalance?
49
00:05:04.842 --> 00:05:09.064
Well, first off, what is the chemical imbalance theory and how do you kind of view that theory?
50
00:05:09.925 --> 00:05:13.706
Yeah, I write about this in, I think, chapter six in the book.
Load full transcript
51
00:05:14.207 --> 00:05:22.831
And so the chemical imbalance theory came from when they discovered a teeny little cell in the gut and they called it enteramine.
52
00:05:23.632 --> 00:05:24.713
which is serotonin.
53
00:05:25.574 --> 00:05:29.098
And so they're like, wow, this is an amazing groundbreaking discovery.
54
00:05:29.558 --> 00:05:30.379
What does it do?
55
00:05:31.320 --> 00:05:44.714
And they found that if you were to manipulate the levels of that neurotransmitter so that there were more serotonin available, that interestingly, some people felt better.
56
00:05:46.048 --> 00:05:49.430
And so there's a big jump in conclusion.
57
00:05:50.370 --> 00:05:54.492
Oh, more serotonin means less depression.
58
00:05:55.112 --> 00:05:58.094
Less serotonin means more depression.
59
00:05:58.614 --> 00:06:02.276
Therefore, depression must be caused by an imbalance in serotonin.
60
00:06:02.296 --> 00:06:03.476
We just got to give people more.
61
00:06:04.557 --> 00:06:11.540
And so then naturally, pharmaceutical companies were like, let's try to help give more serotonin.
62
00:06:11.560 --> 00:06:12.961
So they created Prozac.
63
00:06:13.021 --> 00:06:13.341
It was the
64
00:06:13.802 --> 00:06:15.983
the first psychiatric medication.
65
00:06:16.023 --> 00:06:20.845
It took more than 20 clinical trials to beat placebo, but that's neither here nor there.
66
00:06:20.865 --> 00:06:22.845
We don't have to talk about that.
67
00:06:23.345 --> 00:06:24.346
That's neither, right?
68
00:06:25.466 --> 00:06:26.266
Placebo.
69
00:06:27.107 --> 00:06:30.148
Yay, it beats placebo one time in one study.
70
00:06:30.728 --> 00:06:38.311
And so, by the way, I've just had some conversations recently about this because because in our mind, like we just said, it beats placebo.
71
00:06:38.751 --> 00:06:43.573
And and the way that I've always interpreted that and probably a lot of the audience is like, oh, great.
72
00:06:43.793 --> 00:06:44.853
Then it cures depression.
73
00:06:45.374 --> 00:06:51.436
No, it has some impact on depression or whatever it is they're trying to address.
74
00:06:51.796 --> 00:06:54.657
And it can be as low as a three percent difference.
75
00:06:54.857 --> 00:06:56.998
And now you have a viable medication.
76
00:06:57.658 --> 00:06:58.439
That's crazy.
77
00:06:58.499 --> 00:06:59.059
But go ahead.
78
00:07:00.650 --> 00:07:01.411
Touche.
79
00:07:01.531 --> 00:07:02.071
I love it.
80
00:07:02.111 --> 00:07:03.172
Yes, it's true.
81
00:07:03.792 --> 00:07:08.915
And so then we made this gap, this leap across this huge chasm, and now it's a cause and effect.
82
00:07:08.955 --> 00:07:10.756
And not really much changed.
83
00:07:10.796 --> 00:07:13.377
And this was in the 1960s until around 2022.
84
00:07:13.417 --> 00:07:27.685
There's this giant meta-analysis that was done looking at the research papers pertaining to the philosophy that a chemical imbalance, aka balances in your neurotransmitters, so serotonin, dopamine, and
85
00:07:28.525 --> 00:07:32.549
adrenaline, things like that, that that's the cause of mood disturbances.
86
00:07:32.589 --> 00:07:36.213
And it turns out that that was completely unsubstantiated.
87
00:07:36.253 --> 00:07:38.835
The data did not say that.
88
00:07:38.855 --> 00:07:45.922
And so 2022, we're like our main understanding of mental health is now out the window and
89
00:07:47.003 --> 00:07:48.824
And it leaves us scratching our heads.
90
00:07:48.944 --> 00:07:53.107
And I think that's the best place to be in medicine and research.
91
00:07:53.567 --> 00:07:58.350
Because when we don't know, that's when we get to start being curious.
92
00:07:58.970 --> 00:07:59.251
Right?
93
00:07:59.271 --> 00:08:01.292
We get to start asking questions.
94
00:08:01.872 --> 00:08:07.696
So your depression is probably not caused by a chemical imbalance.
95
00:08:07.716 --> 00:08:08.516
Maybe it could be.
96
00:08:08.556 --> 00:08:09.977
Some people do truly feel better.
97
00:08:10.417 --> 00:08:13.399
But it may not be because your serotonin goes up.
98
00:08:13.519 --> 00:08:14.680
Some antidepressants.
99
00:08:15.237 --> 00:08:17.438
tend to be a little bit anti-inflammatory.
100
00:08:18.518 --> 00:08:22.559
And there are also domino effects that can occur with these medications.
101
00:08:22.619 --> 00:08:26.400
So it's not necessarily like stop your antidepressant.
102
00:08:26.420 --> 00:08:27.281
They don't do anything.
103
00:08:27.601 --> 00:08:28.601
That's not what I'm saying.
104
00:08:29.221 --> 00:08:39.084
I'm saying that the conclusion that we drew that says that a chemical imbalance is the cause of your depression, that that is not a scientifically rigorous conclusion.
105
00:08:39.536 --> 00:08:53.143
So is it possible that the chemical imbalance is in fact the cause, but the solution is significantly more complex than just introducing more of that chemical, more or less, or trying to control that specific chemical?
106
00:08:53.923 --> 00:08:56.164
I think that's a really brilliant hypothesis.
107
00:08:56.184 --> 00:08:57.385
It's not cause, but yeah.
108
00:08:58.345 --> 00:09:05.329
I like the direction that you're going though, because you're looking at, we know that manipulating chemicals in the brain can create changes.
109
00:09:06.379 --> 00:09:09.901
But how do we get between the letter A and the letter Z?
110
00:09:09.961 --> 00:09:14.483
What are all of the letters in the alphabet, all the biofeedback loops in the middle of that?
111
00:09:15.304 --> 00:09:15.804
We don't know.
112
00:09:15.964 --> 00:09:16.404
We don't know.
113
00:09:16.424 --> 00:09:17.845
We have tons of theories.
114
00:09:18.365 --> 00:09:20.527
And I talk about tons of them in the book.
115
00:09:21.167 --> 00:09:24.409
But wow, we have a lot of questions that we don't have answered.
116
00:09:24.429 --> 00:09:26.850
And I think that's really exciting for mental health.
117
00:09:28.015 --> 00:09:36.919
And my impression is that there are a lot of medications that, yeah, great for depression also may cause suicide, right?
118
00:09:36.939 --> 00:09:40.441
Like there's these situations where it's counterintuitive.
119
00:09:40.521 --> 00:09:47.564
I think even Ambien falls into, hey, great for sleep, but you may find yourself driving down the middle of the road still asleep later, right?
120
00:09:47.844 --> 00:09:53.106
So it really is significantly more complex than I think the...
121
00:09:55.327 --> 00:09:56.908
That theory suggests.
122
00:09:57.008 --> 00:09:57.308
All right.
123
00:09:57.328 --> 00:09:59.510
I want to interject there really quickly.
124
00:09:59.530 --> 00:10:08.874
I think what you're pointing at is something really important is that even if symptoms are mitigated, we don't see evidence of greater health.
125
00:10:10.409 --> 00:10:13.492
And I think that what you just pointed out was really important.
126
00:10:13.532 --> 00:10:22.841
And really, I think something to think about is, okay, maybe the goal is to solve the problem of anxiety and you're not anxious anymore, but now you're suicidal.
127
00:10:23.321 --> 00:10:27.205
Well, I solved the problem, but we don't see greater health.
128
00:10:27.525 --> 00:10:29.767
And I think that's the rate limiting step.
129
00:10:30.068 --> 00:10:31.609
So thanks for letting me interrupt you there.
130
00:10:31.649 --> 00:10:32.230
Yeah, I know.
131
00:10:32.250 --> 00:10:32.770
I like that.
132
00:10:33.191 --> 00:10:42.500
So so again, it needs to it goes back to kind of traditional medicine tends to be the whack-a-mole situation as opposed to like, hey, there's a whole game here.
133
00:10:42.660 --> 00:10:45.703
And if you could just get under the game, you can figure some stuff out.
134
00:10:45.903 --> 00:10:49.365
I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Live Beyond the Norms podcast.
135
00:10:49.905 --> 00:10:51.686
Make sure to subscribe and follow.
136
00:10:52.287 --> 00:10:59.671
Also, make sure not to be that guy, the guy sharing this podcast with people who are not interested in living beyond the norms.
137
00:11:00.391 --> 00:11:11.858
If you would like to learn more about the ESS-60 molecule, the molecule responsible for the single longest longevity experimental result on mammals in history, a full 90% extension of life,
138
00:11:12.458 --> 00:11:14.562
visit myvitalsea.com.
139
00:11:15.103 --> 00:11:18.250
That's myvitalsea, as in carbon, dot com.