Mind Over Matter: How my neurochemistry has navigated my life and work.
“Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there”
Growing up, I remember constantly feeling like I was mentally stuck. I was constantly struggling to find some existential meaning, feeling the weight of the world on me, had had no sense of clarity.
It was such a strange place to be in at the age of 13. Sure — teenage angst is one thing and trust me, I gave my parents hell going to Phish shows all through my teenage years). This was different. It was as though a constant fog had settled in my mind. This perpetual state of fogginess would come to be the catalyst for a 20 year expedition to find mental peace.
For a while, this expedition was manifest through physical exertion. I became obsessed with running half-marathons — which was probably due to that consistent release of endorphins called “runners high.” I took up weightlifting in an attempt to cross strength barriers. I attended a survival training school which was designed to take me out of my comfort zone. I swam with a state champion swim team because I wanted to experience the hardest physical training I could imagine.
While those were challenging — they never quite got me to a momentous breakthrough. As I got older, I discovered meditation, yoga, neural linguistic programming, cognitive behavioral therapy, and more rigorous workout routines that pushed me to discover new depths of endorphin boosts. My evening reading material introduced books on Buddhism, Taoism, and anything that would help my mind expand existentially and spiritually. Yet still it never seemed to provide the clarity I needed.
It wasn’t till I met this Doctor Victor Nuño, D.O., who as an osteopathic physician combines his allopathic (M.D.) training with integrative and holistic medicine, that I began to find this piece of mind.
His practice specializes on finding underlying causes for the impairments to optimal health — namely micronutrient deficiencies, poor lifestyle habits, neurotransmitter imbalances, hormone dysregulation and food allergies/sensitivities. With his help, I started to understand why I was on this journey to find mental clarity. Dr. Nuño’s recommendation was to run a bunch of tests to create a general profile of my body: genetic testing, micronutrient, neurotransmitter, and hormones levels.
A quick little lesson on neuroscience/neurochemistry (by Dr. Victor Nuno)
The most interesting results pertained to my neurotransmitter levels: GABA, glutamate, norepinephrine, epinephrine, dopamine, and serotonin. These chemicals are responsible for how we feel and most particular to me: happiness and motivation. Neurotransmitters are chemicals found in the brain that communicate to the rest of your body and affect many physiologic processes and influence things like mood, weight, motivation, drive, and stress — among other things.
The chemicals that make up neurotransmitters are ultimately the cocktail that can play a key role in your outlook in life, health, and attitude. These neurotransmitters are not only produced and utilized in the brain, but are present in many other places in your body. Platelets have a good amount of serotonin. Dopamine is found in the large amounts in the intestines. Norepinephrine and epinephrine are secreted by the adrenal glands. It no wonder that psychoactive drugs that influence these chemicals have a wide range of side effects, since these other properties are essentially ignored by most doctors.
The adrenal glands are intriguing since they produce a lot of hormones in addition to catecholamines (epinephrine and norepinephrine), but the other hormones it produces like cortisol, aldosterone and DHEA are regulated by hormones secreted from the brain (anterior pituitary). The adrenal medulla, which secretes the catecholamines, is NOT regulated by any hormone, but rather the sympathetic nervous system. This system is autonomic (meaning not under conscious control) and influenced by stressors to the body (mechanical and chemical alike). This means that if you have one leg a little shorter than the others, stand or sit with poor posture, or do a repetitive task — you are likely increasing your catecholamine levels by way of your autonomic nervous system.
My results were quite shocking.
I basically don’t produce or metabolize Serotonin, Dopamine, Norepinephrine and Epinephrine effectively Additionally, my Cortisol levels had been affecting my sleep patterns — well that was because this stress hormone was through the roof at 2am. As Dr. Nuno put it, it was though “as though you were running from a saber tooth tiger.” This was pretty alarming — in fact, my doctor was beyond shocked that I was functioning.
Me: What does this mean?
Dr. Nuno: Well… It appears as though you have constantly exerted your body in workouts because endorphins stimulate a similar feeling to doses of high serotonin. Additionally, your life’s focus on meditation and seeking out NLP and cognitive behavioral therapy is because your mind is deficient in many of these chemicals. You sought clarity with a reason.
After learning these results, I had one of those moments where you sit back and say to yourself: “I don’t know if I am happy or sad due knowing this.”
Dr. Nuno: There are many factors as to why neurotransmitters may be low, but rather than think we know what the level should be, it is often wise to give the body the raw materials to make the end products in proportion it sees fit.
It actually made me pretty curious as to what life would be like had I had average levels. I began going through questions like “Is my life the result of a chemical imbalance?,” “Would I be on this current path had I had average levels?,” “Would I be more complacent in life and not always searching?,” “Was there an alternative path that would have made me more successful, more loving, more brilliant, or a better athlete?…”
Ironically (or maybe not so after these findings), I was reading a book called “Smarter Faster Better” by Charles Duhigg. In the book, Duhigg sites examples of professionals that create mental models to be more productive and motivate themselves. Duhigg’s takeaway is that we need to get in the habit of building stories, as stories establish narratives that connect dots and provide explanation how of things work in the world.
“Narrate your life, as you are living it, and you’ll encode those experiences deeper in your brain.”
This allows us to visualize things beyond what is in front of us — allowing us to manifest the impossible and create a habit of seeing beyond what is visible.
But is visualizing beyond what is in front of us even possibly? Without having the right chemical cocktail in our bodies, can we effectively tap into our true visions beyond what is in front of us?
I then read Steve Kotler’s book Rise of Superman where he describes similar examples to Duhigg except around extreme athletes. Kotler uses extreme athletes as examples because they push their human bodies past extreme boundaries, and their goals are very clear and precise. Kotler goes beyond mental modeling to be more productive and outlines how the right neuroscience is a key component to the success of these extreme athletes and enables athletes to enter flow states.
If you aren’t familiar with the phrase ‘in the zone,’ it is the neurological state where your pre-frontal cortex of the brain is being used very little and you are running on chemicals of the brain and hormones in the body. This same experience was also discovered in chess players when they were in the middle of a highly competitive chess match.
Furthermore, Kotler went on to explain that the right “cocktail” allows extreme athletes to enter flow states, states where time/space and limits seems to be obsolete:
“Besides neuroanatomical changes in flow there are neurochemical changes. The brain produces a giant cascade of neurochemistry. You get norepinephrine, dopamine, anandamide, serotonin and endorphins. All five of these are performance enhancing neurochemicals. So they make you faster, stronger, quicker and they do the same thing with your brain.”
The most famous book about flow states is a book called Flow (1990) by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In the book, Csikszentmihalyi points to several examples of athletes and musicians to better understand how individuals can accelerate learning processes and attain flow states. The book is almost an anthropological ethnography giving the reader a cultural insight as to why or why not some people are motivated to learn faster as they tap into their flow states.
It goes without saying that famous expression about being mindful is to achieve a balance of mind, body, and soul. In the context of flow, this begins to have a lot of meaning behind it. I like to think that the pyramid of balance for each person is having a strong awareness and to the chemicals (the cocktail in your head and body), spirituality (driving a sense of purpose and connectedness to the Universe), and physical (being active and in shape).
It is popular to to discuss new work habits around deep learning, drafting up vision boards and goals, finding peace at a Buddhist Ashram, attending the next Soul Cycle class, going to acupuncture, or doing the next Yin Yoga session. Instead, I believe we are as species have the opportunity to start learning about how it isn’t one practice or daily ritual that allows us to be successful, it is the combination of being spiritual, physical, and fine tuning our chemistry.
My personal discovery to understand how to become the optimal self has been an incredible journey. My findings on the chemical component is the missing piece — the piece that will enable me to be a better partner, a better entrepreneur, a better investor, a better employee.
“Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there”
Thank you to my editor Valerie Stimac for articulating my message and thank you to Dr. Victor Nuno, D.O for helping craft the science portion of this piece and helping me optimize my self.
