I thought we rejected the null hypothesis in November of 2008. What happened?

Semi-sensitive men will wash dishes, but will not empty the dishwasher. Sensitive men will do both; insensitive men will do neither.

Semi-sensitive men are misunderstood.

Is it possible man learned to run before he learned to walk?

Species History: We owe our brain size to fish and fire; now the oceans are dying. How sad.

Mind Matter: Bad memory leads to shoddy thinking, but organization counters bad memory.

We compete with randomness every day and we rarely win.

By Jim Porto

Self-mastery includes discipline and will power. These concepts have been used interchangeably, but I believe they describe separate behaviors requiring different strategies to develop. They may be distinguished by a simple concept table.

The horizontal axis captures short term outcomes: pain and pleasure. The vertical axis captures long term outcomes: harm and benefit. For most people, activities that produce short term pain and long term harm will not be undertaken so will not be a problem. For example, sticking one’s hand in a fire is not an activity anyone would do, unless motivated by a perverse psychological need. Likewise, undertaking an activity that produces short term pleasure and long term benefit is not a problem. Laughter provides pleasure and as research is beginning to show, has long term benefit from stress reduction.

Problems arise from the remaining two categories: will power and discipline. As children we learn to delay gratification for future benefits. This learned response is re-enforced by our parents, so that we are able to recognize the long term danger even though we are attracted to the short term pleasure. Will power is the learned response to resist short term pleasure to avoid long term harm. For example, if you are allergic to honey, even though you love the taste of it, you cannot, and will not, eat it because it may cause you a severe reaction. Will power requires a passive form of energy.

Discipline, however, requires an active form of energy. Activities that are painful in the short term but produce benefits in the long term are a form of mental and emotional toughness that all successful adults exhibit. Exercising is a good example: discipline is required to get up every morning to run 3 miles in the dark. Discipline is also a learned process but its growth starts later in life as the child becomes more self-directed. The mystery of discipline is how it gets nurtured and how it is sustained. Discipline starts from desire-a desire to achieve a goal; to win a race, to build a better body, to ace a course.

To sum up: both will power and discipline are learned, which means neuroadaptations, primarily in the pre-frontal cortex, account for these behaviors. Under normal circumstances will power and discipline have great survival value and are vital to a successful life. However the normal mechanisms that give us the ability to exercise will power and discipline can be taken over by two destructive behaviors that are not easily unlearned: addictions and compulsions. The potency of the stimulus and the susceptibility of the person (genetic or environmental) will determine if either develops.

Part of the reason why addictions can and often do take such a firm hold on our lives is that we have been built with a “liking” and a “wanting” system. The liking system initiates us into action by activating the dopamine reward system. In turn the liking system activates the “wanting” system by giving heightened salience to, and incentives to seek out, activities initially producing pleasures. Repeated activation of these circuits by indulging in these activities (smoking for example) can, in some individuals, produce neuroadaptations that render the individual’s wanting system hyper-sensitive to the need for stimuli long after the dopamine system ceases to provide pleasure. These neuroadaptations are made through a learning process. That is good news, because what has been learned can be unlearned, albeit with difficulty.

To be clear, addictions are not overcome by the traditional notion of will power (just do it). Much effort is required to reverse the neuroadaptations that lead to addictive behavior. But will power can be nurtured and practiced through a host of strategies that have been developed by the substance abuse treatment professions. Anyone who has successfully kicked the smoking, alcohol, drug, or over-eating habits has overcome more genetic and environmental obstacles than the average person. Developing will power in the face of these obstacles is by far a greater achievement than abstaining when there are no obstacles.

Discipline can look like a compulsion. Behavior is compulsive when it is pursued despite interfering with progress on higher priority goals; health, family relationships, work effectiveness, for example. Compulsive behavior is rigid, automatic and independent from conscious control. Discipline is adaptable, voluntary, and under full conscious control.

Addictions and compulsive behavior are treatable through medication and behavioral modification (neuroadaptations). For all of us, will power can protect us from long term harm while discipline can help us achieve long term benefit.

By Jim Porto

How to manage one’s intake and outflow of nutritional energy in an age of abundance is a vexing problem for much of the world. So much bad science has been conducted on this problem and so much bad advice has been given, that it is difficult to know what to believe. After experimenting and reading many articles and books on nutrition, here is what I have come to believe.

The body is an open energy system. What this means is that energy that comes in must equal energy going out. Excess energy is conserved and stored as fat. Any argument about eating as much as you want because the food ingested is “special” in some way is bogus.

Nutritionally, the body needs fats, carbohydrates and proteins to function. The best diet strategy is to avoid fad diets and to exercise portion control, which limits caloric intake. The only types of food to minimize in the diet are those that are highly processed and filled with preservatives. Highly processed foods are low in micro-nutrients and fiber which help fine tune the fitness system. They also have a higher probability of introducing contaminants, which could mutate genes in healthy cells into cancerous causing genes.

For men maintaining a waist size of 35 and under; and for females a waist size 29 and under are sensible targets for controlling obesity. A sound nutritional program and a rigorous and consistent fitness effort will achieve this objective.

A single method of controlling caloric intake will not work for everyone. My program started many years ago when I became a vegetarian. Even though I had an active workout schedule, I still had difficulty controlling 10-15 pounds of excess fat.

Over two years ago, I decided to fast one day a week. I initially told myself that this “experiment” had several purposes-it helped me balance my energy equation so that I did not put on excess fat; it was a reminder to me what it means to be hungry since many in the world, despite our abundance, still go hungry; and it was a good exercise in discipline. A year and a half ago, I started fasting twice a week. (From Sunday night to Tuesday morning and from Wednesday night to Friday morning.)

I have since found another reason for intermittent fasting. Life extension. Research in animals consistently shows that a calorie restricted (CR) diet of about 30% extends life expectancy by 40 %. What a bonus! So here are the numbers.

Given my level of physical activity, I need about 2500 calories a day to maintain my weight. If I follow a CR diet, I would consume only 1750 calories a day (.70 X 2500). Most folks who follow a CR diet, and there are many who do, look like it.

One of the articles I read took a closer look at the testing protocol used on the laboratory animals undergoing the CR diet. The author found that lab technicians fed the animals every other day and not daily with a reduced amount. The inference: intermittent fasting also works to extend life. Some evidence has since been developed to support this observation.

So I figure I need 17,500 calories a week (7 X 2500) but I take in roughly 12,500 calories (5 X 2500). Thus my weekly reduction in calories is 29% (5000/17,500). Pretty close to the 30%. There is little evidence to suggest at what age animals have to start a CR diet to extend life. Since I am starting so late, I figure the benefits are minor to me. But a 20 year old starting an intermittent fasting routine of two days a week could conceivably extend life to 118 years (84 X 1.40).

I have lost body fat and have a waist size of 34. But the mystery to me is that, even with this intermittent fasting routine of twice a week, my vegetarian lifestyle, lifting weights twice a week, running 3-6 miles 4 to 5 days week, I still am carrying a few extra pounds of fat. I look fit, but I do not look skinny. I take this as evidence that the body adapts by altering metabolism to accommodate my eating behavior.

Finally, building on this last observation, which may not stand up to scientific scrutiny, I believe that the life extending benefits of intermittent fasting for a CR diet may be caused by a reduction in base metabolism rates. One way of looking at this is that the wear and tear on our cellular furnaces is reduced and thus our cells can last longer. My goal then is to reduce metabolism and fat at the same time. Several popular diet books make a big deal about increasing metabolism to reduce weight. This appears backward to me.

By Jim Porto

Despite VP Cheney’s proclivity for secrecy and his ability to pull it off, for the rest of us, we have entered into the age of no privacy. Comments at a public hearing, letters to the editor, references in a news item (even the police blotter), minutes of a meeting, newsletters (church or otherwise) will eventually be posted to the Internet. Just to prove this-Google your name. While you are at it, check ZoomInfo, a site that employs web crawlers to search for information on millions of people.

This general loss of privacy has not been uniform. Those with power, like our Vice President, have powerful tools to maintain their privacy, often at public expense. We should insist on uniform and open standards across all spectra of our society. We can lament the loss of privacy but there is a positive side. When we are aware that our words and actions will eventually be posted for all to read and see, then maybe we will think twice before saying or doing something that is either unethical or illegal. This may become a mild deterrent to the psychopaths among us who prey on ignorance and operate within the shadows of people’s lives.

New generations may not be as enamored with modesty as past generations. With the pornofication of society, postings of intimate pictures to U-Tube by a disgruntled lover may not be disconcerting. But if you think of the Internet as an extended resume, then a U-Tube posting becomes part of one’s reputation and may have significant costs in the market place.

I recently talked to a headhunter about placing our students. He affirmed that he Googles every candidate that he tries to place. You can bet that part of the reference check that every employer now does is a Google search on final applicants. What are the chances that an applicant will get an offer if negative information shows up on the search?

The age of no privacy may, ironically, restore the value of having a good reputation. Attention to one’s reputation may help direct and govern behavior, which can’t be all bad.