Limitless Expanded Edition – by Jim Kwik
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This is a little flashier in presentation than we usually go for here, but the content is actually very good. Indeed, we’ve featured Jim Kwik before, with different, but also good content—in that case, physical exercises that strengthen the brain.
This time, Kwik (interspersed with motivational speeches that you may or may not benefit from, but they are there) offers a step-by-step course in improving various metrics of cognitive ability. His methods were produced by trial and error, and now have been refined and enjoyed by man. If it sounds like a sales gimmick, it is a bit, but the good news is that everything you need to benefit is in the book; it’s not about upselling to a course or “advanced” books or whatnot.
The style is enthusiastically conversational, and instructions when given (which is often) are direct and clear.
Bottom line: one of the most critical abilities a brain can have is the ability to improve itself, so whatever level your various cognitive abilities are at right now, if you apply this book, you will almost certainly improve in one or more areas, which will make it worth the price of the book.
Click here to check out Limitless, and find out what you can do!
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CBD Oil’s Many Benefits
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CBD Oil: What Does The Science Say?
First, a quick legal (and practical) note:
CBD and THC are both derived from the hemp or cannabis plant, but only the latter has euphoriant psychoactive effects, i.e., will get you high. We’re writing here about CBD derived from hemp and not containing THC (thus, will not get you high).
Laws and regulations differ far too much from place to place for us to try to advise here, so please check your own local laws and regulations. And also, while you’re at it, with your doctor and/or pharmacist.
As ever, this newsletter is for purposes of education and enjoyment, and does not constitute any kind of legal (or medical) advice.
With that in mind, onwards to today’s research review…
CBD for Pain Relief
CBD has been popularly touted as a pain relief panacea, and there are a lot of pop-science articles out there “debunking” this, but…
The science seems to back it up. We couldn’t find studies refuting the claim (of CBD as a viable pain relief option). We did, however, find research showing it was good against:
Note that that latter (itself a research review, not a single study, hence covering a lot of bases) describes it matter-of-factly, with no caveats or weasel-words, as:
“CBD, a non-euphoriant, anti-inflammatory analgesic with CB1 receptor antagonist and endocannabinoid modulating effects”
As a quick note: all of the above is about the topical use of CBD oil, not any kind of ingestion
CBD for Anxiety/Depression
There’s a well-cited study with what honestly we think was a bit of a small sample size, but compelling results within that:
A study published in the Brazilian Journal of Psychiatry tested the anxiety levels of 57 men in a simulated public speaking test.
Compared to placebo…
- Those who received 300mg of CBD experienced significantly reduced anxiety during the test.
- Those who received either 150mg or 600mg of CBD experienced more anxiety during the test than the 300mg group
- This means there’s a sweet spot to the dosage
There was also a clinical study that found CBD to have anti-depressant effects.
The methodology was a lot more robust, but the subjects were mice. We can’t have everything in one study, apparently! There is probably a paucity of human volunteers to have their brain slices looked at after tests, though.
Anyway, what makes this study interesting is that it measured quite an assortment of biological markers in the brain, and found that the CBD had a similar physiological effect to the antidepressant imipramine.
CBD for Treating Opioid Addiction
There are a lot of studies for this, both animal and human, but we’d like to put the spotlight on a human study (with the participation of heroin users) that found:
❝Within one week, CBD significantly reduced cravings, anxiety, resting heart rate, and salivary cortisol levels. No serious adverse effects were found.❞
This is groundbreaking because the very thing about heroin is that it’s so addictive and the body rapidly needs more and more of it. You might think “duh”, but most people don’t realize this part:
Heroin is attractive because it offers (and delivers) an immediate guaranteed “downer”, instant relaxation… with none of the bad side effects of, for example, alcohol. No nausea, no hangover, nothing.
The problem is that the body gets tolerant to heroin very quickly, meaning your doses need to get bigger and more frequent to have the same effect.
Before you know it, what seemed like an affordable “self-medication for a stressful life” is very much out of control! Many doctors have personally found this out the hard way.
So, it’s ruinous:
- first to your financial health, as the costs rapidly spiral
- then to your physical health, as you either suffer from withdrawal or eventually overdose
Consequently, heroin is an incredibly easy drug to get hooked onto, and incredibly difficult to get back off.
So CBD offering relief is really a game-changer.
And more…
CBD has been well-studied and found to be effective for a lot of things, more than we could hope to cover in a single edition here.
Some further reading that may interest you includes:
- CBD against Diabetes in mice / in vitro / in humans
- CBD against neurological diseases (in general, in humans)
- CBD against arthritis in mice / in humans
- CBD specifically against the pain of rheumatoid arthritis / of osteoarthritis
Let us know if there’s any of these (or other) conditions you’d like us to look more into the CBD-related research for, because there’s a lot! You can always hit reply to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom
Read (and shop, if you want and it’s permitted where you are):
10 Best CBD Oils of 2023, According to the Forbes Health Advisory Board
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Ras El-Hanout
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This is a spice blend, and its name (رأس الحانوت) means “head of the shop”. It’s popular throughout Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, but can often be found elsewhere. The exact blend will vary a little from place to place and even from maker to maker, but the general idea is the same. The one we provide here today is very representative (and for an example of its use, see our Marrakesh Sorghum Salad recipe!).
Note: we’re giving all the quantities in whole tsp today, to make multiplying/dividing easier if you want to make more/less ras el-hanout.
You will need
- 6 tsp ground ginger
- 6 tsp ground coriander seeds
- 4 tsp ground turmeric
- 4 tsp ground sweet cinnamon
- 4 tsp ground cumin
- 2 tsp ground allspice ← not a spice mix! This is the name of a spice!
- 2 tsp ground cardamom
- 2 tsp ground anise
- 2 tsp ground black pepper
- 1 tsp ground cayenne pepper
- 1 tsp ground cloves
Note: you may notice that garlic and salt are conspicuous by their absence. The reason for this is that they are usually added separately per dish, if desired.
Method
1) Mix them thoroughly
That’s it! Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits?
- A Tale Of Two Cinnamons ← this is important, to understand why it’s critical to use sweet cinnamon specifically
- Sweet Cinnamon vs Regular Cinnamon – Which is Healthier? ← not even exaggerating; one is health-giving and the other contains a compound that is toxic at 01.mg/kg; guess which one is easier to find in the US and Canada?
Take care!
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The Aesthetic Brain – by Dr. Anjan Chatterjee
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Dr. Anjan Chatterjee (not to be mistaken for Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, whose books we have also sometimes reviewed before) is a neurologist.
A lot about aesthetics is easy enough to understand. We like physical features in humans that suggest a healthy mate, and we like lush and/or colorful plants that reassure us that we will have plenty to eat.
But what about a beautiful building, or a charcoal drawing of some captivatingly eldritch horror? And what, neurologically speaking, is the difference between a bowl of fruit and a painting of a bowl of fruit? And what, if anything, does appreciation of such do for us?
In this very readable pop-science book, we learn about these things and many more, from the perspective of an experienced neurologist who explains things simply but with plenty of science.
Bottom line: if you’d like to understand how and why your brain does more things than just process tasks necessary for survival, this book will give you plenty of insight.
Click here to check out The Aesthetic Brain, and learn more about yours!
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GABA Against Stress/Anxiety
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A Neurotransmitter Less Talked-About
GABA is taken by many people as a supplement, mostly as a mood modifier, though its health claims go beyond the recreational—and also, we’re of the opinion that mental health is also just health, and if it works, it works. We’ll explore some of the claims and science behind them today…
What is GABA?
GABA stands for gamma-aminobutyric acid, and it’s a neurotransmitter. It’s a lot less talked-about than for example dopamine or serotonin, but it’s very important nonetheless.
We make it ourselves inside our body, and we can also get it from our food, or supplement it, and some drugs will also have an effect on its presence and/or activity in our body.
What foods is it found in?
- Animals, obviously (just like in human brains*)
- Fermented foods (many kinds)
- Yeast
- Tea
- Tomatoes
- Mulberries
For more details, see:
γ-Aminobutyric acid found in fermented foods and beverages: current trends
*However, we do not recommend eating human brains, due to the risk of CJD and prion diseases in general.
What claims are made about it and are they true?
For brevity, we’ll give a little spoiler up-front: all the popular claims for it appear to be valid, though there’s definitely room for a lot more human trials (we skipped over a lot of rodent studies today!).
So we’ll just drop some of its main benefits, and human studies to back those.
Reduction of stress and anxiety
GABA decreases task-related stress and anxiety within 30 minutes of being taken, both in subjective measures (i.e., self-reports) and in objective clinical physiological measures:
Cognitive enhancement
It’s not a does-everything nootropic like some, but it does have clear benefits to episodic memory:
❝GABA intake might help to distribute limited attentional resources more efficiently, and can specifically improve the identification and ordering of visual events that occur in close temporal succession❞
One of the things that makes this one important is that it also deals with the often-asked question of “does GABA pass the blood-brain barrier”:
❝The present findings do give further credence to the idea that oral ingestion does allow GABA to reach the brain and exert direct effects on cognition, which in the present case were specific to temporal attention.❞
Read more:
Supplementation of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) affects temporal, but not spatial visual attention
Potential for more
We take care to give good quality sources, so the following study comes with a big caveat that it has since been retracted. Why was it retracted, you wonder?
It’s about the sample; they cite “30 healthy adults”, but neglected tp mention that this figure was initially 46. What happened to the other 16 participants is unclear, but given that this was challenged and the challenge not answered, it was sufficient for the journal (Nature) to pull the study, in case of deliberate sample bias.
However! Running the numbers in their results section, a probability of 0.03 is very compelling unless the disappearance of 16 subjects was outright fraudulent (which we regrettably cannot know either way).
Here’s the study (so take it with a pinch of salt, considering the above), and taken at face value, it shows how GABA supplementation improves accurate reactions to fast-moving visual and auditory stimuli:
RETRACTED ARTICLE: γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) administration improves action selection processes: a randomised controlled trial
…so, hopefully this experiment will be repeated, without disappearing participants!
The sweet spot
You may be wondering how something that slows a person down (having a relaxing effect) can also speed a person up. This has to do with what it is and isn’t affecting; think of it like a “focus mode” on your computer or other device that greys-out everything else a bit so that you can focus on what you’re doing.
It’s in some ways (by different neurochemical pathways, though) a similar effect to the “relaxed alertness” created by l-theanine supplementation.
There’s also a sweet spot whereby GABA is toning some things down just the right amount, without adversely affecting performance in areas we don’t want slowed down. For the science of this, see:
Is it safe?
GABA is “Generally Recognized As Safe”. However:
- you should speak with your pharmacist if you are taking any medications for blood pressure or epilepsy, as GABA supplementation may cause them to work too well.
- you should absolutely not take GABA with alcohol or opioids as (dose-dependent for all the substances involved, and also depending on your metabolic base rate and other factors) its acute depression of the CNS can mean you relax and slow down too much, and you may find yourself not breathing often enough to sustain life.
Aside from that, it is considered safe up to at least 1g/kg/day*. Given that popular doses are 120–750mg, and most people weigh more than 750g, this is very safe for most people:
United States Pharmacopeia (USP) Safety Review of Gamma-Aminobutyric Acid (GABA)
Where can I get it?
We don’t sell it, but for your convenience, here’s an example product on Amazon
Enjoy!
Don’t Forget…
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Staring At The Sun – by Dr. Irvin Yalom
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A quick note first: there are two editions of this book; the content is the same, but the cover is different. So if in your region it has a bright yellow cover and the subtitle is the excitable “Overcoming The Terror Of Death” rather than the more measured “Being At Peace With Your Own Mortality”, that is why; different regional publishers made different choices.
For most of us, dying is the last thing we want to do. We may fear it; we may ignore it; we may try to beat it—but it’s a constant existential threat whether we want it or not.
This book is about “death anxiety”, either direct (conscious fear of impending death) or sublimated (not necessarily realising what we’re avoiding thinking about it). In its broadest sense, the fear of death can be described as rational. But angst about it probably won’t help, so this book looks to help us overcome that.
The style of the book is largely anecdotal, in which the author uses examples from his therapeutic practice to illustrate ways in which the fear of death can manifest, and ways in which it can be managed healthily.
Subjective criticism: while this author developed existential therapy, many of the ideas in this book lean heavily on the psychodynamic approach derived from Freud, and this reviewer isn’t a fan of that. But nevertheless, many of the examples here are thought-provoking and useful, so it is not too strong a criticism.
Bottom line: there are many ways to manage one’s mortality, and this book brings attention to a range of possibilities.
Click here to check out Staring At The Sun, and manage your mortality!
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Quit Drinking – by Rebecca Dolton
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Many “quit drinking” books focus on tips you’ve heard already—cut down like this, rearrange your habits like that, make yourself accountable like so, add a reward element this way, etc.
Dolton takes a different approach.
She focuses instead on the underlying processes of addiction, so as to not merely understand them to fight them, but also to use them against the addiction itself.
This is not just a social or behavioral analysis, by the way, and goes into some detail into the physiological factors of the addiction—including such things as the little-talked about relationship between addiction and gut flora. Candida albans, found in most if not all humans to some extent, gets really out of control when given certain kinds of sugars (including those from alcohol); it grows, eventually puts roots through the intestinal walls (ouch!) and the more it grows, the more it demands the sugars it craves, so the more you feed it.
Quite a motivator to not listen to such cravings! It’s not even you that wants it, it’s the Candida!
Anyway, that’s just one example; there are many. The point here is that this is a well-researched, well-written book that sets itself apart from many of its genre.
Don’t Forget…
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