‘Food for the Mind’ and how to avoid mental constipation

Why do we have mental issues and my rat Gerome doesn’t?

Food for the Mind and how to avoid mental constipation…..or diarrhoea, whatever your pick is.

This is a transcript of the podcast which  you can find here:

Episode 6. ‘Food for the Mind’ – World According to GEMINI | Podcast on Spotify 

(More mistakes, but spoken with a very cute Eastern accent)

Hello, and welcome to the ‘World According to Gemini’.

Good news first. Gerome the Rat is back. For those of you who don’t know Gerome, he is a friend of mine…. a house rat. Not everyone was happy with Gerome, so our landlady sent a hired killer who installed poison traps around the house. I couldn’t disarm all of them in time, unfortunately. Gerome disappeared. I thought he was gone, but apparently he developed immunity to the rat poison. He came back and ate out kitchen brush. I left a little bit of goats cheese in our secret place. I think it tastes better than the plastic brush made in China. If you want, I’ll send you his photo. He is cute. Young Joe Biden cute..

Anyway, let’s go to our topic.

Couple of weeks ago I published a podcast called a ‘Diet Drama’. It went reasonably well, I got few replies, few moderately insulting comments and one question. A very good question, by the way.

‘Is there any good diet for the mind?’.

So, here goes my two cents, bit first – a disclaimer.

I am not a qualified doctor or psychologist. My recommendations are just that. Recommendations. It’s the sum of something I learned from people who are way more intelligent than I am and a result of my disorganised brain digestive process.

Also, You are not going to like my answer. But that’s ok. Not everyone has to agree with everything I say.

Yesterday I had a conversation with one Gypsy lady who I see every day begging outside the DART. She was complaining that no one has cash anymore. I saw this lady once being collected from the station by the brand new BMW, so I said, ‘My dear, why don’t you invest in a card reader? Sure you can afford it’.

I personally think it’s a great idea but she didn’t. She told me to get lost.

Very uncivilised people, my Gypsy brothers and sisters are.

So. The ‘Mind Diet’.

I am a simple person, so I will simplify everything as much as I can. Let’s go through the basics first.

If you believe the scientists, the first human being appeared on the planet two million years ago. His body was designed by the best engineer in the world – mother nature. It has a very complex life support system which includes hundreds of diagnostic, self healing and self regulating processes running in the background. Practically none of those processes require our conscious input. You see, even from the beginning, our mind wasn’t trusted with anything important, so those processes switch on and off regardless of our intentions. This system is very old, which means it’s reliable, or it would be reliable if it wasn’t for the uncontrollable development of one of its functions, which is called the ‘Mind’.

So, how does it work?

Our sensory system sends information to the brain for processing. It can trigger a response or can be saved as a memory. Our brain has different areas responsible for different functions, but for the purpose of this conversation, let’s simplify it as much as we can.

Our brain is divided by two hemispheres. The right one is associated with emotions, creativity and intuition. It loves pictures of little kittens and cute house rats. My right hemisphere loves Gerome The Rat. My left hemisphere says that Gerome is a heath hazard and has to be treated accordingly. It’s is associated with logic and analytical thinking. Basically, it’s a cold calculating machine, a computer. It doesn’t care about Gerome, it doesn’t love, it prefers puzzles and crosswords.

Originally, those two hemispheres were supposed to work together in harmony, but at some point our society made a choice between the spiritual and technological development, and you know what happened. We started to create tools, machines, science, economy. The ‘Industrial Revolution’ in Europe and America resulted in the explosion of data which needed to be produced and processed, so our left hemisphere started to require more and more processing power. Our rational and logical abilities started to develop rapidly and now our lives are mostly ruled by rational thinking. We stopped listening to our intuition and put our trust in logic and reason. You might say, ‘And what’s wrong with that?’.

Well, there are few monumental problems in this scenario.

Our two hemispheres work in completely different ways. Let’s look at it from the mechanical point of view.

You know the difference between the analog and digital signal? Our right hemisphere basically is an analog system which interprets data as a continuous stream of information. It’s a well established and tested way which is natural and native to every living organism on the planet. The right half of our brain works with intuition and creativity which are are flexible and have no physical limits. The processor in our left hemisphere is based on logic, therefore it is limited. A computer processes data in a digital format. It works by following instructions provided by the mathematical algorithms. It cannot create anything new. It produces results by computing data which was fed into the memory. The results are only as good as data itself. Digital systems are limited by the quantity and quality of data. Also they are limited by physical storage, processor speed, the physical factors. So, our mind is limited by design.

I don’t know the exact numbers, but let’s just say that now, in the year 2023, we receive and process thousand times more information then our grand grand grand parents did few hundred years ago. Our modern education is based on data instead of creativity. We receive hundreds of gigabytes from the social media, TV, radio, news, gossip24/7. Our right hemisphere is somewhat flexible so it’s still coping. The problem is that our left hemisphere, the mind, originally was not designed to process this amount of information, because its functions were secondary. It was supposed to work as part of a team.

It developed massively over the years, but it’s still a first generation Intel processor running Windows 98 operating system. It cannot keep up. It can’t cope.

What happens if you force gigabytes of data through the single core CPU? It will struggle for a while and then it will crash, corrupting the operating system, and possibly damaging the hardware.

So, the first problem is that we simply don’t have necessary hardware and software to deal with the data overload. So, quantity is the first problem.

The other problem is data quality. The information we receive is mostly produced by ourselves. Most of it was modified in order to manipulate our actions and responses, it’s speculative and contradictory. Very often it doesn’t represent the factual reality. In other words, most of it is corrupted. What happens to the computer which is fed corrupted data? It creates logical conflicts, the operating system freezes and eventually stops functioning.

That’s exactly what happens with our mind which function is based on logic.

As I mentioned before, we put our complete trust in logic and reason and abandoned our intuition. We backed the wrong horse, and look at the results. Our mind is our curse. Its functions are chaotic, unpredictable, uncontrollable and as the result, we have a bouquet of mental conditions which animals with their undeveloped minds don’t have. Stress, depression, anxiety, psychosis, social, behavioural, communication problems, bipolar disorders and God knows what else. According to the WHO, one in every eight people in the world has a mental disorder. When was the last time you saw a cat suffering from the bipolar disorder? My friend Gerome The Rat, for example. He’s cool, he’s stable. He functions perfectly well. I can hear him right now, trying to eat his way through the wall. Unlike us he has no anxiety, OCD or ADHD which we have because of the one malfunctioning component in otherwise perfectly working system.

In saying so, of course it’s a bit more complex, there are contributing factors, food, chemicals, life style but they are secondary, really.

Now something else. There are parts of the brain which are responsible for our safety. There are processes which are not controlled by our mind, they switch on automatically when there’s a threat. For example, when we are attacked by someone, our adrenals glands starts producing adrenalin, our heart starts pumping blood so more oxygen gets into our brain, our reflexes become faster, unnecessary senses switch off, we get a ‘tunnel’ vision and much more. All of this has only one purpose – to reroute the necessary resources to the organs and muscles which are needed do deal with the threat. It turns us into the lean, mean fighting machine.

I’ll give you an example. When I was a kid, I went fishing. Alone, which was stupid because it was in taiga. I went there and I met a wild boar. I saw him, he saw me and the next thing I remember, I was 6feet up on a tree which didn’t have a single branch. How? I have no idea. When I saw this thing coming at me at 60 miles an hour, my life support system took over and I flew up like a bird. If my mind was responsible for my safety, there wouldn’t be a Gemini podcast right now. I would be a goner.

Our mind is excluded from the important decision making. Why do you think is that? Because it’s not as important as we think.

In saying so..

Our mind is not completely useless and oscillated. It still has the ability to communicate with other parts of the brain and of course it tries to minimise the damage from the data overflow.

Self preservation!! What does it do?

Do you know how and why stereotypes are created?

Our mind is trying to protect itself from overloading by simplifying everything, by getting rid of nuances, by generalising, and instead of dealing with every single event of factor individually, it divides all information into groups. And then it applies very general labels or descriptions to those groups or sets of factors. That’s it. It’s a safety measure.

By trying to find similarities and apply them to the groups of elements we end up with stereotypes like, ‘Germans have no sense of humour, Russians are alcoholics, Romanians are thieves, Americans are fat and loud, French are rude, women cannot drive and Arabs are terrorists’.

Seeing everything in black and white is a life-saver. Well, for most minds anyway, but if you prefer to form your own opinions, if you question everything, if you have independent thinking abilities, then you have a problem. If your mind starts analysing validity of stereotypes, it will arrive at the point of a cognitive conflict, because even though stereotypes are created in order to help our minds, they usually go against logic. Even though we say it, we still know that not all Russians are alcoholics and I personally know one American who is not fat. You see, when we choose to accept and act on something which we rationally know is not completely true, our mind deals with the contradicting data, creating a logical conflict which is ok for the right hemisphere because it’s flexible but not ok for our rational mind working with data. It’s damaging, if you are trying to think for yourself. If not, you are safe. Stereotypes are healthy. They can literally prevent your mind from exploding. Russians are alcoholics and let’s leave it at that.

Now I’ll try to answer the question about the diet for the mind and before I start, I have to make another disclaimer. Because there are exceptions to every rule, I am generalising myself. Well, that makes me a hypocrite, I guess.

So, here we go and please don’t take it personally because it isn’t.

Most of us are not ready for the diet yet, I am sorry. You cannot start eating solid food if your stomach is not functioning properly. You have to heal it first, otherwise you won’t be able to process your food normally. You’ll end up with diarrhoea or constipation. Which is exactly how our minds react to the information feed.

Imagine a lesson in the classroom and students who are trying to listen to the teacher. Imagine that one of the students has an extreme form of ADHD. He is completely out of control. He is running around the classroom, bumping into everyone, crashing into the furniture, laughing, making noise, trying to get as much attention as possible, interrupting the teacher, starting fights, arguments. He disrupts the class and no one can function properly. This is our brain in its normal state. It’s hyperactive, restless, chaotic, it needs constant stimulation and because it’s not healthy, it’s not able to cope with the sensory overload. It cannot process anything properly. It gets constipated or it gets diarrhoea. When it gets constipated, it stops responding, we have a brain fog, we get confused, disconnected from reality. When we have mental diarrhoea, our mind starts spilling everything out randomly, it makes us yap, panic, argue, make chaotic decisions. I’m sure you know what I am talking about.

It has to be slowed down first, cleaned up, healed, it has to become calm and quiet and only then we can talk about the diet.

We are so used to junk food that we are not in the state to properly process anything we consume, diet or not diet. It’s a waste. Try to read a book, have a conversation with someone or look at the sky without checking your phone every two minutes.

Let’s go back to our computer world and computer vocabulary. What can you do if you have a computer full of junk, spyware, bloatware, viruses, fragmented discs, faulty hardware and corrupted software? What do you do if you want it to work properly?

Clean-up your hard drive and delete everything which is not important, everything which is superficial and everything which is not absolutely necessary. Disable unnecessary background processes.

The oldest practice in the world of slowing our mind down and wiping it free of thought –  Meditation.

It should be done every single day. It has to be as routine as brushing your teeth. Then there is a chance we can start thinking less and feel more.

Next, install a good antivirus. A filter.

Choose well what’s allowed inside your mind and what’s not. Be very careful about the quality of the information you are letting in. Be ruthless. 99% of everything you choose to hear and see is a worthless rubbish. It’s like eating snacks, chocolate bars, crisps, Coca cola. It’s all highly addictive but it has no nutritional value. It fills you up with junk. Every notification from the media results in a portion of Dopamine released in your system. It makes you happy without being happy, exactly like sugar does. If you allow this sewage from the social media and news into your brain it will corrupt your mind and result in a mental constipation. Or diarrhoea, whatever you prefer.

Next. Use efficient power settings. You can make it function on 100% or you can be a bit more economical. Be careful about the intensity of your performance and the amount of data you let in. Using too much processing power creates a stress. Don’t overload your system. Your mind, being the most unstable and vulnerable component in your brain will go first. Train yourself not to stress out about anything irrelevant. Try to learn how to identify what is worth your attention and what’s not, and you might find that your mind needs very little to function well.

Don’t multitask.

Remember, your processor is not an ‘Apple M2’ with 24 cores, it’s a single core Intel. It wasn’t built to run NASA. It can barely manage to do your mail. One task at a time.

Don’t eat and read at the same time, don’t drive and listen to the radio at the same time, don’t combine. Choose one feed for your mind, instead of putting multiple feeds at the same time and not processing any of them properly.

Don’t use it when you don’t have to.

Try to find any activity when you can’t possibly use your phone. Shower, for example. Get used to the fact that you can survive while disconnected from the feed. If you speak to someone, switch your phone off or better leave it home. Keep it in a different room and use it only when absolutely necessary. If you think this is a bad advice, look at it and see, how many of the texts, mails or phone calls you answered were really important or needed? Look at your search history. How many of the pages you visited were really important? Look at information you’ve received and look at the time it took. Was it really necessary?

When you come to the shop, steer away from the newspaper section. When was the last time you saw anything positive or anything of value in the papers? Well, unless it’s a magazine with the naked people. That can be positive.

Break the connection, and break the addiction.

Make sure all your hardware is in good state.

Make sure your physical health is ok, that you eat right, and you sleep proper. Don’t use your computer 24/7. Let it reset itself, regularly. Remember that all healing processes, physical or mental, are happening while you sleep, so…stick your phone into your washing machine before you go to bed and make sure you sleep long and well. Let your body and mind reset and heal.

And that’s exactly what I am going to do right now. Sleep.

Before I go, two things. First – if I didn’t annoy you too much, I have one word for you. ‘Patreon’.

And……If you are serious about helping your mind, find a text which is called a ‘Serenity Prayer’. Print twenty copies and put them all around your house, so you can see it every single day. Make it your personal prayer and make it the most important rule in your life from now on. I don’t remember who wrote it, but I can tell you that there’s more wisdom in those three or four phrases than in all modern books on philosophy, well-being and spirituality put together. Just remember. ‘A serenity Prayer’.

Thank you for listening. Be well, be happy, stay sane, God bless and go to sleep.

Good night!