Loading practices
Loading practices
Areas › Your body › Food, caffeine and fuel
This is not an argument for doing everything at once until you are exhausted. It is an argument against giving up on the whole idea when the first thing you try only helps a bit. A bit from each of three routes is a real change. It also explains why recovery from this sort of thing feels slow while you are in it and surprisingly solid when you look back.
There is a sign for them in the lifeless earth: We give it life and We produce grain from it (Quran 36:33). Ground that looks finished is not finished.
يس
وَءَايَةࣱ لَّهُمُ ٱلۡأَرۡضُ ٱلۡمَيۡتَةُ أَحۡيَيۡنَٰهَا وَأَخۡرَجۡنَا مِنۡهَا حَبࣰّ ا فَمِنۡهُ يَأۡكُلُونَ
There is a sign for them in the lifeless earth: We give it life and We produce grain from it for them to eat
Qur’an 36:33read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
The combined approach has some support in the nutrition literature. A systematic review of nutrients used alongside antidepressants found reasonable evidence for omega-3, SAMe, methylfolate and vitamin D, and little for the rest. The pattern is worth noticing: a few specific additions help on top of existing treatment and most do not, so combining is not the same as taking everything.
Sarris J, Murphy J, Mischoulon D, Papakostas GI, Fava M, Berk M, Ng CH. (2016). Adjunctive Nutraceuticals for Depression: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses.. The American journal of psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Several small improvements that each ease a different load add up to more room than any one of them gives you.
Pick one small change and leave the rest alone. A full overhaul asks the most of you at the point when you have the least to give, and it usually collapses in the second week.
Caffeine buys about half an hour of sharper focus and takes the payment out of your sleep. It is a decent tool for a particular hour, and using it in place of treatment usually leaves you worse off across the day.
Even where a herb has good evidence behind it, that evidence belongs to the plant and not to the bottle in your hand. Testing keeps turning up products that do not contain what the label says.