In the middle of the night, Hans Spaans finds himself being overwhelmed by cramps slowly tightening up

the muscles in his arms, back, thighs and calves until his whole body is a knot of pain, and he’s practically
paralyzed. So what is the strategy he uses to deal with his Parkinson’s symptoms? He buries his face into
his pillow, and begins yelling a string of curse words. Hans had found that putting himself into a rage
somehow gave him strength. The furious shouting works him up enough to get to his feet and he would
continue the fit by kicking a couple pillows around. And then, as the anger faded away, so did his cramps
and he can suddenly move freely.

This case, featured in Scott Carney’s book “What doesn’t kill us,” is a rare instance where anger can be
helpful. Somehow, channeling this strong ​emotion​ had substantial ​physiological​ effects on Hans. The
connection between emotions in the mind and the state of our body is apparent in the fact that mood
disorders like anxiety and depression are often ​associated with other disorders​ like irritable bowel
syndrome, heart disease, chronic pain and chronic fatigue.

Last time​ I discussed the “theory of constructed emotion” which says emotions are not simply triggered by
things happening outside your body, your brain also takes into account data from ​inside​ your body and
compares that against your past experiences to create an emotion. This means that we have two avenues
for controlling our emotions. We can’t always control what’s happening outside of our body - if a stranger
wants to cut us off in traffic, we can’t do anything about that, but we can change the software in our head.
The other strategy, which we’ll be focusing on today, is changing what’s happening in our body - our
physiology.

Going back to Hans, his strategy was effective, but the anger was self destructive and was breeding
resentment in him. So what did he do instead? His new, more effective strategy involves deep breathing
and taking Cold showers and ice baths. Something about the cold would shock his body enough to break
through his Parkinson’s symptoms without having to work up a fit of rage.

COLD
S​ome research​ has found that there is a loss of noradrenaline neurons in the brain in Parkinson’s patients.
And, Interestingly, Noradrenaline, also called norepinephrine, is one of the neurotransmitters released
when you are exposed to the cold. ​People submerged in 14 degrees celsius water​ up to their shoulders
experienced a 530% increase in norepinephrine, a reduction in cortisol and a 250% increase in dopamine.
Norepinephrine has substantial effects on focus, attention, vigilance and it improves mood. ​And
disturbances​ in norepinephrine transmission is thought to also be a key component in depression. You
may have heard of serotonin reuptake inhibitors being used as antidepressants, but there are also
antidepressants that work by inhibiting the reuptake of norepinephrine.
Cold showers seem to be a very big topic of interest ​nowadays​, and there’s a couple different reasons why
- they ​reduces stress​, improve immunity and enhance muscle recovery. But I think the bigger reason is
they just make you feel really good.

Now there are more examples I’m about to get into, but at this point let me just say that this is what I mean
when I say emotions are negotiable. Let’s say you’re having an emotional response to something like…
getting fired. You’re filled with anger, resentment and worry, but if you step into an ice bath or a cold
enough shower, it’s really hard to hold in your head any thoughts other than “holy crap this is cold.” Then,
the change in your physiology - the boost in norepinephrine and dopamine may have affected your mood
enough that you’re no longer a walking ball of worry, and you’ve realized at the very least, a solution to
your problem exists.

Next, like cold exposure, heat exposure can also improve mood.

HEAT
In this talk, Dr. Rhonda Patrick is explaining the benefits of using the sauna. The heat exposure changes
how your brain responds to feel good endorphins. When you’re exposed to high enough heat, something
called dynorphin is released. Dynorphin is like the opposite of ​en​dorphins because it makes you feel
uncomfortable. That’s not the result we’re going for, but when dynorphin is released, more of the receptors
that endorphins bind to are created and it sensitizes them to endorphin. This means the next time you
make endorphin whether it’s from exercise or laughter or giving someone a hug, the positive endorphin
effect will be even stronger. Dr. Patrick explained how she got interested in this topic when she was a
graduate student working towards her PhD - she had to deal with the overwhelming stress and anxiety that
came from multiple exams and multiple time consuming experiments. “​I was experiencing​ at times,
crippling anxiety.​” She found that after using the sauna quite frequently - about 5 times a week, her mood
was noticeably enhanced, she had less anxiety and was generally able to handle stress much better.

DIET & ​INFLAMMATION

Cold and heat exposure are things you can do quickly to affect your mood, but something that takes a bit
longer with a potentially bigger payoff is to reduce inflammation.

When researchers want to study a disease, one challenge they have is finding out how to recreate the
disease in animal models. Good news for us but bad news for lab rats. There are plenty of studies that look
at ways to treat depression by studying rodents with something called “lipopolysaccharide induced
depression.”​[​1​][​2​][​3​][​4​][​5​][​6​][​7​]​ Lipopolysaccharide is something that induces a violent inflammatory
response in humans, and is used experimentally to rapidly create inflammation in animal models to study
all kinds of inflammatory diseases. These diseases could be anything from diabetes, inflammatory bowel
disorders, rheumatoid arthritis, to parkinson’s disease, alzheimer’s disease, anxiety and depression. A
decent rule of thumb is if something causes inflammation, especially chronic inflammation, it will probably
make you feel crappy.

Studies have found that people with depression have higher biomarkers for inflammation by up to 50%,
and the risk of major depression increased as c-reactive protein increased. C-reactive protein is a
biomarker for inflammation.[​R​]

In ​one study​, people were injected with one of three substances: saline water, lipopolysaccharide, or
interferon - another inflammation inducing substance. The people with the saline showed no change, but
the people injected with the inflammatory substances, interferon and lipopolysaccharide, experienced an
acute increase in depressive symptoms like anxiety, feelings of social disconnection and anhedonia - the
inability to feel pleasure.

So if chronic inflammation is at the very least a component of depression, it’s safe to say that keeping
inflammation low is a good strategy for maintaining positive mood and keeping emotional reactivity in
check.

The ways to keep inflammation low are probably unsurprising: get enough ​sleep​,​ get enough exercise​,
keep a healthy weight​, ​don’t spike your blood sugar​, and cut out ​refined carbohydrates​, ​sugar​, processed
vegetable oils, trans fats and artificial sweeteners. A ​new study​ released just this month in the Journal of
Inflammatory bowel diseases found that the artificial sweetener Splenda increases inflammation in mice
afflicted with Crohn’s disease-like symptoms.

CONCLUSION
I’ll wrap this up with a quote from Dr. Lisa Barrett’s book “How emotions are made” : “​When you
experience affect without knowing the cause, you are more likely to treat affect as information about the
world, rather than your experience of the world.​” Basically, what this means is that we are prone to accept
our emotions as accurate evaluations of what’s happening in the world, unless we know the causes of
these emotions. For example, people report more happiness and life satisfaction on sunny days, unless
they are explicitly asked about the weather.

So, when you apply for a job, it’s better to interview on a sunny day because the interviewer isn’t going to
be thinking about the fact that sun exposure enhances serotonin production in the brain. They’re just going
to think “​I felt pretty good when talking to that person, I guess it’s cause that person is a good candidate.​”

In the same way, it’s easy for us to think that the reason we feel bored and stressed at work is because our
job sucks. But maybe if you got better sleep and stopped eating power bars for breakfast, you wouldn’t feel
so irritated during the weekly meeting. And sometimes the difference between feeling anxious and
overwhelmed and feeling challenged and motivated is more exercise, less alcohol and maybe hitting the
sauna.

We can’t snap our fingers and change our emotions whenever we want, but when we become aware of the
various causes of our emotional state, we can calmly seperate ourselves from the emotion and start
making changes that will allow for better emotional responses.