How much energy does it take to think?(quantamagazine.org)
quantamagazine.org
How much energy does it take to think?
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-much-energy-does-it-take-to-think-20250604/
77 comments
At the risk of asking a dumb question, what really is mental fatigue and do all people experience it the same way?
On one hand, I understand -- and feel very directly -- physical fatigue, and the metabolic limitations if I try to say run slowly versus push hard up to my lactate threshold. I am currently training for a marathon, and know to train by following progressively heavier loads of long distance runs, interval training, stretches and rest periods to develop my speed and endurance.
But mental fatigue really just isn't a phenomenon that I personally relate to. I know some people say they can perhaps work 4-6 focused hours in a work day, and that's it. Whereas my brain seems to be able to work at essentially the same intensity for as long as I want it to, up to 18 hours a day, and then I need a bit of sleep to recover. So I don't quite comprehend mental fatigue, or what a cure for it would be. I don't even know how I would increase my ability to avoid mental fatigue other than minimising distractions (like HN!) and just keep thinking more for longer.
How do other people here experience mental fatigue (or not)?
On one hand, I understand -- and feel very directly -- physical fatigue, and the metabolic limitations if I try to say run slowly versus push hard up to my lactate threshold. I am currently training for a marathon, and know to train by following progressively heavier loads of long distance runs, interval training, stretches and rest periods to develop my speed and endurance.
But mental fatigue really just isn't a phenomenon that I personally relate to. I know some people say they can perhaps work 4-6 focused hours in a work day, and that's it. Whereas my brain seems to be able to work at essentially the same intensity for as long as I want it to, up to 18 hours a day, and then I need a bit of sleep to recover. So I don't quite comprehend mental fatigue, or what a cure for it would be. I don't even know how I would increase my ability to avoid mental fatigue other than minimising distractions (like HN!) and just keep thinking more for longer.
How do other people here experience mental fatigue (or not)?
Mental fatigue is something that can manifest in different ways.
To keep it short, for me, It is like I can think down a path, but slowly, it is like I have this plodding speed, if I try to think 'quicker' (or more reactive/agile) it feels like a lot of effort, like I have to focus and push myself. The more effort I apply the more energy I use. The more energy I use the longer this state lasts for. The longer this state lasts for the more chance I develop physical issues. When I am in this state, I can't mentally fit pieces together. It is like I am wearing oven mits and trying to build lego. It just doesn't fit together. oh and I get really clumsy, my movement becomes really uncoordinated.
So it is like I have a smaller pool of energy, and I can spend it slowly over a longer period. Or faster over a shorter period. When I go over my limits, then see above.
The only cure, is rest, and that is usually about 3 days of not pushing myself mentally too hard, to get back to a reasonable baseline. It is improving, if we had had this conversation three years ago...
I have seen this in other devs, a friend of mine has MS and she needs to meter her energy levels like this. My neighbour came out of hospital after a serious illness and she has some of these symptoms. It is more common than you would think.
To keep it short, for me, It is like I can think down a path, but slowly, it is like I have this plodding speed, if I try to think 'quicker' (or more reactive/agile) it feels like a lot of effort, like I have to focus and push myself. The more effort I apply the more energy I use. The more energy I use the longer this state lasts for. The longer this state lasts for the more chance I develop physical issues. When I am in this state, I can't mentally fit pieces together. It is like I am wearing oven mits and trying to build lego. It just doesn't fit together. oh and I get really clumsy, my movement becomes really uncoordinated.
So it is like I have a smaller pool of energy, and I can spend it slowly over a longer period. Or faster over a shorter period. When I go over my limits, then see above.
The only cure, is rest, and that is usually about 3 days of not pushing myself mentally too hard, to get back to a reasonable baseline. It is improving, if we had had this conversation three years ago...
I have seen this in other devs, a friend of mine has MS and she needs to meter her energy levels like this. My neighbour came out of hospital after a serious illness and she has some of these symptoms. It is more common than you would think.
For me the mental fatigue is mostly related to context switching, being disturbed (slacks, meetings etc but also side quests to the original problem), and working on a fuzzy problem.
Working a few hours in such environment is very fatiguing.
On the other hand, when I work on a single thing, no disturbance, clear problem definition, having all necessary skills to do the thing, I can work 10h and it's not fatiguing.
Working a few hours in such environment is very fatiguing.
On the other hand, when I work on a single thing, no disturbance, clear problem definition, having all necessary skills to do the thing, I can work 10h and it's not fatiguing.
It depends on the kind of work. If it's routine stuff, past seven hours or so, I can keep going and not feel tired, but I increasingly don't want to, and the feeling that I'd rather be doing something else becomes very distracting. If the work is technical and intellectually rewarding, I might feel inspired to continue, but I start making mistakes and past a certain point, it becomes counterproductive. If the work requires conceptual or creative insights, my brain stops delivering them for free and my backup methods for squeezing them out start failing too. If I'm speaking or writing, I lose the thread and my words lose their punch and personality.
My occasional bouts of insomnia bring a different kind of all-encompassing fatigue. I become overemotional. At my most sleep-deprived, I struggle to operate a kettle. Things were different when I was younger. Writing up my PhD, I essentially slept every other night for months, yet stayed sharp, productive.
> Whereas my brain seems to be able to work at essentially the same intensity for as long as I want it to, up to 18 hours a day, and then I need a bit of sleep to recover.
Potential variable explaining this - what's your age? I could do this too in teens/twenties.
> How do other people here experience mental fatigue (or not)?
Just normal tiredness / distraction. Two days of actual full-on active pairing on something tricky and I just want to go to sleep after work.
Potential variable explaining this - what's your age? I could do this too in teens/twenties.
> How do other people here experience mental fatigue (or not)?
Just normal tiredness / distraction. Two days of actual full-on active pairing on something tricky and I just want to go to sleep after work.
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Mental fatigue is when your brain is tired, but your body is not.
In other words, you don't want to sleep or lie down, you want to stop thinking.
In other words, you don't want to sleep or lie down, you want to stop thinking.
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Perhaps fatigue is not limited by energy but by the byproducts of energy usage to do work. It becomes much more complex to tackle if that's the case, instead of finding ways to allow the brain to use more energy when available we would have to mess around with the cleanup processes which are much less well understood.
I don't think we will have a way to "cure" mental fatigue until we more completely understand both the mechanisms behind thinking, as well as resting, and at the moment we barely scratched the surface of them.
I don't think we will have a way to "cure" mental fatigue until we more completely understand both the mechanisms behind thinking, as well as resting, and at the moment we barely scratched the surface of them.
One theory about the needfulness of sleep is that the brain uses the period to literally pump toxins out, on a very slow rhythm - minutes of contraction "squeezing" the byproducts out of the sealed environs of the brain to the general body system, where they can be filtered and removed.
>if we could find a way to be fully on all of the time if we so wish, that should come with a great increase in quality of life
In fact what would happen is that it would become the new normal and everyone would be expected to pop the "pep pills" and work 20 hour days. Source: the military.
Perhaps the real increase in quality of life is not feeling the pressure to be "on all the time"?
In fact what would happen is that it would become the new normal and everyone would be expected to pop the "pep pills" and work 20 hour days. Source: the military.
Perhaps the real increase in quality of life is not feeling the pressure to be "on all the time"?
What if we could be off all the time? Jesus, that would be so glorious.
My layman observation from tons of pop sci consumption is that the rate of metabolism seems to correlate greatly with life expectancy. Running at 100% all the time would likely wear the system out much sooner, e.g. due to higher oxidation and increased cancer risk.
Even if you are correct, the article discusses more efficient thinking as a goal.
If you have to floor the gas to make it out of your driveway, versus owning a well-tuned highly efficient modern car, those are two very different sorts of "metabolism".
If you have to floor the gas to make it out of your driveway, versus owning a well-tuned highly efficient modern car, those are two very different sorts of "metabolism".
Let’s wait for proper research. One mans observation is just that.
I'd be concerned about the side effects. Sounds like burning the candle by both ends
Cocaine?
Main points are that brain takes ~20% of body's Base Metabolic Rate, and that active thinking takes 5% more than BMR.
Whole body context: - Base Metabolic Rate (awake): ~1.0-1.1 kcal/kg/hr - Deep Sleep Metabolic Rate: 0.8-0.9 kcal/kg/hr
CG says brain follows this as well.
So it suggests brain power use varies from 0.8 minimum to 1.1, with an extra 0.05 for thinking. This supports ideas that thinking is a relatively minor brain function, at least energetically.
Whole body context: - Base Metabolic Rate (awake): ~1.0-1.1 kcal/kg/hr - Deep Sleep Metabolic Rate: 0.8-0.9 kcal/kg/hr
CG says brain follows this as well.
So it suggests brain power use varies from 0.8 minimum to 1.1, with an extra 0.05 for thinking. This supports ideas that thinking is a relatively minor brain function, at least energetically.
Anecdata, but I remember writing software for a startup and getting thirsty. We had a fridge that had all sugar-free sodas because one of the founders was diabetic. I remember drinking a soda and still feeling really thirsty. Drank another and still didn't solve it. It finally dawned on me that my brain just really wanted the sugar for the easy calories, and the sugar-free soda obviously wasn't fixing this at all. Thinking hard definitely burns calories faster than not.
> they concluded that effortful, goal-directed tasks use only 5% more energy than restful brain activity
That parallels the other conclusion that we don't really use that much more energy when at rest and when exercising. If energy isn't used by movement, it gets used for whatever to consume the predetermined daily energy budget.
Our bodies seem to be really set up to work with a consistent fixed energy amount and dealing with allocation of it instead of optimizing idle efficiency. We don't idle.
That parallels the other conclusion that we don't really use that much more energy when at rest and when exercising. If energy isn't used by movement, it gets used for whatever to consume the predetermined daily energy budget.
Our bodies seem to be really set up to work with a consistent fixed energy amount and dealing with allocation of it instead of optimizing idle efficiency. We don't idle.
> Theoretically, the top speed for a neuron to feasibly fire and send information to its neighbor is 500 hertz. However, if neurons actually fired at 500 hertz, the system would become completely overwhelmed.
> Our neurons, however, have an average firing rate of 4 hertz, 50 to 60 times less than what is optimal for information transmission.
Could this explain the time dilation you can get when under high stress - is this your brain just firing as fast as it can?
> Our neurons, however, have an average firing rate of 4 hertz, 50 to 60 times less than what is optimal for information transmission.
Could this explain the time dilation you can get when under high stress - is this your brain just firing as fast as it can?
This is a vast simplification. Every neuron has a different preferred baseline firing rate. Not all neurons can fire at 500 Hz. In fact, most neurons in neocortex fire at a much lower firing rate. (most neurons are in the cerebellum!)
As for the internal sense of time, there isn't a consensus as to how it is kept, but for the cognitive time scale, it seems that it is a distributed time keeping mechanism rather than some sort of central unified clock mechanism.
As for the internal sense of time, there isn't a consensus as to how it is kept, but for the cognitive time scale, it seems that it is a distributed time keeping mechanism rather than some sort of central unified clock mechanism.
Fun fact: when it is cold, and you need more heat inside you, it doesn't take any energy at all. In fact nothing takes energy, except physical work.
The same is true for households, if it's winter, and you have the heating on, washing clothes, cooking, mining bitcoin, they are all free, since every Joule metered in the electricity meter converts to heat.
The same is true for households, if it's winter, and you have the heating on, washing clothes, cooking, mining bitcoin, they are all free, since every Joule metered in the electricity meter converts to heat.
That is a fun fact, but it's not universally true. If that "work" includes endothermic reactions, like hydrolysis, then it would run counter to your heater.
But off the top of my head I can't think of any household or bodily processes that would be endothermic so functionally I think you're correct.
But off the top of my head I can't think of any household or bodily processes that would be endothermic so functionally I think you're correct.
Fun facts, brain consumes about 20-25% of body's total energy despite being only 2% of the body's mass.
I'm very surprised the article and also the corresponding paper on human energy didn't even mentioned the crucial role of mitocondria but ironically related linked article on mitocondria at the bottom of article (perhaps based on the magazine recommendation algorithm) does points to it [1],[2].
[1] Mitochondrion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion
[2] ‘Turbocharged’ Mitochondria Power Birds’ Epic Migratory Journeys:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/turbocharged-mitochondria-pow...
I'm very surprised the article and also the corresponding paper on human energy didn't even mentioned the crucial role of mitocondria but ironically related linked article on mitocondria at the bottom of article (perhaps based on the magazine recommendation algorithm) does points to it [1],[2].
[1] Mitochondrion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion
[2] ‘Turbocharged’ Mitochondria Power Birds’ Epic Migratory Journeys:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/turbocharged-mitochondria-pow...
Is there a drug that can overclock the brain from 4Hz to like a 100Hz? Since up to 250Hz is fine, that's well within, right?. Sure that'd make me burn at least 100/4*20%=5 as many calories (probably in sugar), but that's something I could provide with soda and cookies for a day.
Not sure why you're being voted down. That's a very sensible and obvious line of thought given the claims in the article. If it's true that our brains are optimized for very low calorie environments but could work much faster, then if and only if there aren't other good reasons to run at low clock rates, "overclocking" the brain could unleash enormous new levels of human intelligence.
Obviously, there are a huge range of possible problems there. Overclocking CPUs is dangerous for heat reasons and the brain generates a lot of heat. Without a doubt, lots of things in the body and mind are evolved around the assumption of a 5-10Hz clock rate. But even just a doubling, or an increase in the efficiency of neuronal transmission ... well, the mind boggles even just trying to imagine what could be done if you can optimize neuronal transmission.
Obviously, there are a huge range of possible problems there. Overclocking CPUs is dangerous for heat reasons and the brain generates a lot of heat. Without a doubt, lots of things in the body and mind are evolved around the assumption of a 5-10Hz clock rate. But even just a doubling, or an increase in the efficiency of neuronal transmission ... well, the mind boggles even just trying to imagine what could be done if you can optimize neuronal transmission.
Overclocking the brain is called ADHD, and you probably don't want it (I do and its not exactly pleasant)
Anything that can increase the speed of your brain will have negative impact on you overall. Many drugs can make your brain more capable, but at what cost.
Note that the human brain already accounts for 20% of total glucose consumption despite making up only 2% of your body mass.
I’ll just let the CPU developed over millenia handle clock speeds by itself.
Maybe start by asking what does it mean to think?
From the article: "Jamadar’s analysis showed that a brain performing active tasks consumes just 5% more energy compared to a resting brain. When we are engaged in an effortful, goal-directed task, such as studying a bus schedule in a new city, neuronal firing rates increase in the relevant brain regions or networks — in that example, visual and language processing regions. This accounts for that extra 5%; the remaining 95% goes to the brain’s base metabolic load."
To me it is fairly obvious that those tasks are not what creates the highest loads on the brain. The "thinking load" from active, in-person, social interactions is much higher.
From the article: "Jamadar’s analysis showed that a brain performing active tasks consumes just 5% more energy compared to a resting brain. When we are engaged in an effortful, goal-directed task, such as studying a bus schedule in a new city, neuronal firing rates increase in the relevant brain regions or networks — in that example, visual and language processing regions. This accounts for that extra 5%; the remaining 95% goes to the brain’s base metabolic load."
To me it is fairly obvious that those tasks are not what creates the highest loads on the brain. The "thinking load" from active, in-person, social interactions is much higher.
If our brains are energy misers, maybe the real supercomputers are the ones that can do more with less—not the ones with the most flops. This could reframe how we design efficient algorithms and even AI: sometimes, the best strategy isn’t processing power, but predictive efficiency.
Maybe the next breakthrough in cloud computing isn’t more cores or larger GPUs, but better energy allocation and anticipation, just like the brain.
Maybe the next breakthrough in cloud computing isn’t more cores or larger GPUs, but better energy allocation and anticipation, just like the brain.
Isn't that what is happening on the whole, going from soccer field energy guzzling hardware to laptop to mobile and server farm processors like ARM that are reasonably energy-efficient? There's only that much energy you can squeeze into a small space, so efficiency becomes a bottleneck.
What good is having all data and knowledge somewhere else than in your pocket when and where you need it, so having computing devices in form factors convenient for human beings must be a major driving factor.
Remains to be seen if everything will still revolve around data centres or if devices will start talking to each other in the future, which might be a more democratic way to go.
What good is having all data and knowledge somewhere else than in your pocket when and where you need it, so having computing devices in form factors convenient for human beings must be a major driving factor.
Remains to be seen if everything will still revolve around data centres or if devices will start talking to each other in the future, which might be a more democratic way to go.
I think there should also be a measure of how you think. It would seem plausible to me that a fields medalist would use considerably less energy to come up with solutions to general problems in math than someone else.
What about how much energy is needed to not to think?
Some people that struggle with overthinking, the approach of thinking definitely is different from how we think when working on something. So is the energy used is different as well?
"Thinking" covers a wide spectrum of activity and intensity, no? I glanced through the references and the only tasks I found were Tetris tasks.
A weird thing I've noticed that I've never seen discussed anywhere is that when kids are concentrating / thinking hard, they start breathing heavily. I wonder what is going on with this.
Random thought: what LLMs do may be just a tiny fraction of what real brains do, so artificial reasoning is probably a much easier problem than an artifical brain.
Then again...
Our brains only developed their abstract reasoning capabilities after we already possessed a cognitive ‘platform’ for learning in a very physical context. Or rather, our cognitive capabilities for things that may seem totally extraneous to reasoning in fact developed in tandem with it. Think, fine motor control over our fingers and opposable thumbs, and the corresponding development of spatial and physical reasoning and hierarchical planning, that allows us to analyse a problem and build a tool with our hands to solve it.
The ‘bitter lesson’ [0] seems to be that we humans are not very good at designing the algorithmic machinery for cognition—better we let the machine discover its own mechanisms. Take the case of AlphaGo, the performance of which greatly improved when the human data was thrown away.
So, perhaps there is a pathway to artificial reasoning that shortcuts past many functions of an artificial brain, as you put it, but it also looks quite like we’re not ourselves going to be able to architect it, and that reasoning has not emerged from the current LLM paradigm of digesting the written knowledge of all humanity.
Where human general-purpose abstract reasoning naturally arose from concrete, goal-directed interaction with the physical world, perhaps we need to recreate that environment for machines to learn to learn and reason themselves.
That need not necessarily be physically embodied, which would surely be heavily constrained in numbers of learning trials. Quickly searching turned up this [1] example of reinforcement learning to walk in a sim, which is then transferred to physical.
I wonder how far the approach can go... Could agents learn to talk to each other? Looks like there’s some recent research in that direction too [2].
[0]: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~eunsol/courses/data/bitter_lesson...
[1]: https://www.figure.ai/news/reinforcement-learning-walking
[2]: https://www.ifaamas.org/Proceedings/aamas2024/pdfs/p2725.pdf
Our brains only developed their abstract reasoning capabilities after we already possessed a cognitive ‘platform’ for learning in a very physical context. Or rather, our cognitive capabilities for things that may seem totally extraneous to reasoning in fact developed in tandem with it. Think, fine motor control over our fingers and opposable thumbs, and the corresponding development of spatial and physical reasoning and hierarchical planning, that allows us to analyse a problem and build a tool with our hands to solve it.
The ‘bitter lesson’ [0] seems to be that we humans are not very good at designing the algorithmic machinery for cognition—better we let the machine discover its own mechanisms. Take the case of AlphaGo, the performance of which greatly improved when the human data was thrown away.
So, perhaps there is a pathway to artificial reasoning that shortcuts past many functions of an artificial brain, as you put it, but it also looks quite like we’re not ourselves going to be able to architect it, and that reasoning has not emerged from the current LLM paradigm of digesting the written knowledge of all humanity.
Where human general-purpose abstract reasoning naturally arose from concrete, goal-directed interaction with the physical world, perhaps we need to recreate that environment for machines to learn to learn and reason themselves.
That need not necessarily be physically embodied, which would surely be heavily constrained in numbers of learning trials. Quickly searching turned up this [1] example of reinforcement learning to walk in a sim, which is then transferred to physical.
I wonder how far the approach can go... Could agents learn to talk to each other? Looks like there’s some recent research in that direction too [2].
[0]: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~eunsol/courses/data/bitter_lesson...
[1]: https://www.figure.ai/news/reinforcement-learning-walking
[2]: https://www.ifaamas.org/Proceedings/aamas2024/pdfs/p2725.pdf
Accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid needs to flush waste from brain operation hence the need for rest/sleep.
It is part of why people argue that Chess is a sport.
When grandmasters battle it out for hours in classic chess, thinking ahead of so many branches of moves that I would find unfathomable, they do burn through a lot of energy.
For what is quite a sedentary career choice, I rarely see overweight grandmasters. Though that is probably more correlation of other facts than causation...
When grandmasters battle it out for hours in classic chess, thinking ahead of so many branches of moves that I would find unfathomable, they do burn through a lot of energy.
For what is quite a sedentary career choice, I rarely see overweight grandmasters. Though that is probably more correlation of other facts than causation...
It’s probably also the case that being physically fit and healthy helps one think more clearly. Carlsen notably spends a lot of time on physical health in addition to prep.
I was sort of hoping they'd give an actual wattage figure of how much energy the brain uses, but sadly they don't
That's well known, and is ~20W, with some variation depending on brain size.
This study was about the difference in energy consumption when you are "thinking hard", compared to just resting.
This study was about the difference in energy consumption when you are "thinking hard", compared to just resting.
I guess this is why the machines made the matrix, to stimulate brain activity and extract more than 20W per person :P
So then the 5% increase is on the order of a watt, which is really not a lot.
Less than it takes an LLM to infer
On a related note, the impact of "things" - everything, from inflammation from stress or less sleep or long covid/me/cfs to the effects of ibuprofen or creatine or methylene blue - is staggering.
Anyone who's taken any kind of brain medication that has worked (be it SS/NRIs or DNRIs or antipsychotics or stimulant medications) can tell you how much of what we think "we are", is significantly affected by neurochemistry (amongst a lot of other things too!)
I am not sure how much someone who hasn't experienced it (themselves or via a family member/friend) can really appreciate, and I wish for people to be more cognizant and supportive in general, rather than being judgemental or going "I could do it, why can't you?"
Anyone who's taken any kind of brain medication that has worked (be it SS/NRIs or DNRIs or antipsychotics or stimulant medications) can tell you how much of what we think "we are", is significantly affected by neurochemistry (amongst a lot of other things too!)
I am not sure how much someone who hasn't experienced it (themselves or via a family member/friend) can really appreciate, and I wish for people to be more cognizant and supportive in general, rather than being judgemental or going "I could do it, why can't you?"
Do you mean creatine is bad or good for brain health? I've started taking recently because I heard the positive side argument, is there a negative too? Genuine question :)
Don’t worry, I believe it’s mostly/only good - I’ve also heard it to be good.
I mentioned it specifically because it’s generally considered as a physical body/muscle targeted supplement and not a brain impacting one, but it appears to have an impact on the brain too.
(Anecdotally I did notice a negative impact on sleep personally, but for me it was quite apparent even at a relatively low dose so I realised it quickly, hopefully that’s not the case for you.)
I mentioned it specifically because it’s generally considered as a physical body/muscle targeted supplement and not a brain impacting one, but it appears to have an impact on the brain too.
(Anecdotally I did notice a negative impact on sleep personally, but for me it was quite apparent even at a relatively low dose so I realised it quickly, hopefully that’s not the case for you.)
Thanks :)
High doses have been shown to alleviate the effects of sleep-deprivation.
Genuine answer, I am definitely not a sports nutrition expert.
Your body creates all of the creatine that it needs. However, to do this, your body will need to get all of the nutrients that it can't make for itself.
The brain is like the 'kernel' and the body is mere 'user space'. Regardless of what the situation is in the body as a whole, the brain is top priority, and this applies to creatine. Trust your body, it will ensure that it has adequate creatine for the brain, no matter what happens to you.
Clearly there are advantages in supplementing creatine as any person in the gym will tell you. However, you have two options, either you supplement or you don't. If you don't want to take the supplement route then you can optimise your diet so that your body gets all of the raw inputs it needs. This means adequate levels of everything needed, without the junk.
My suspicion is that the brain and liver have a better idea of what level of creatine your body needs than any medical expert or social media influencer on the planet. Primates have been doing this for millions of years, standing on the shoulders of mammal DNA that has been dialling it in for hundreds of millions of years.
For me it is therefore a philosophical question. Do I want to believe in nutrition or do I want to believe in gym-bro science?
Aside from the alleged benefits for the brain, there is also the body. I don't want my muscles to be any larger than they need to be. In highly demanding factory jobs or in the military, the people with 'Rambo' bodies don't seem to be as effective as those that have muscles that have auto-sized to the demands placed on them. There is a cost in calories and nutrients to having excess muscle (and fat, for that matter).
It seems to me that the body works on a use it or lose it basis. Don't use your legs and they wither away. Don't use your brain and the same applies. My theory, for which I have no evidence, is that, with your internal organs, the same applies. If you are getting your creatine from animal products or supplements, will your liver lose the ability to create creatine? I don't know, but why run the risk?
By taking the nutrition route I am not running the risks of side effects. With creatine it began with elite athletes a few decades ago and only recently have fitness industry devotees been taking creatine en-masse. We don't know if there are long term side effects because there are no centenarians around that were taking creatine in the 1940s.
A final aspect to it is integrity. If the belief is in nutrition rather than supplements, then one cannot accuse oneself of cheating. Different strokes for different folks, if people want to pump their bodies with supplements, hormones and whatnot, that is on them. They want to be the fastest or the strongest. I don't. My believe is in what I consider to be a healthy diet with zero supplements apart from vitamin B12.
My advice is to take it and learn from your body, to see what the effects are, then end the experiment to see how you compare on a Mediterranean or a whole food, plant based diet. These diets are the benchmarks for longevity, which is what you might want to optimise for.
Your body creates all of the creatine that it needs. However, to do this, your body will need to get all of the nutrients that it can't make for itself.
The brain is like the 'kernel' and the body is mere 'user space'. Regardless of what the situation is in the body as a whole, the brain is top priority, and this applies to creatine. Trust your body, it will ensure that it has adequate creatine for the brain, no matter what happens to you.
Clearly there are advantages in supplementing creatine as any person in the gym will tell you. However, you have two options, either you supplement or you don't. If you don't want to take the supplement route then you can optimise your diet so that your body gets all of the raw inputs it needs. This means adequate levels of everything needed, without the junk.
My suspicion is that the brain and liver have a better idea of what level of creatine your body needs than any medical expert or social media influencer on the planet. Primates have been doing this for millions of years, standing on the shoulders of mammal DNA that has been dialling it in for hundreds of millions of years.
For me it is therefore a philosophical question. Do I want to believe in nutrition or do I want to believe in gym-bro science?
Aside from the alleged benefits for the brain, there is also the body. I don't want my muscles to be any larger than they need to be. In highly demanding factory jobs or in the military, the people with 'Rambo' bodies don't seem to be as effective as those that have muscles that have auto-sized to the demands placed on them. There is a cost in calories and nutrients to having excess muscle (and fat, for that matter).
It seems to me that the body works on a use it or lose it basis. Don't use your legs and they wither away. Don't use your brain and the same applies. My theory, for which I have no evidence, is that, with your internal organs, the same applies. If you are getting your creatine from animal products or supplements, will your liver lose the ability to create creatine? I don't know, but why run the risk?
By taking the nutrition route I am not running the risks of side effects. With creatine it began with elite athletes a few decades ago and only recently have fitness industry devotees been taking creatine en-masse. We don't know if there are long term side effects because there are no centenarians around that were taking creatine in the 1940s.
A final aspect to it is integrity. If the belief is in nutrition rather than supplements, then one cannot accuse oneself of cheating. Different strokes for different folks, if people want to pump their bodies with supplements, hormones and whatnot, that is on them. They want to be the fastest or the strongest. I don't. My believe is in what I consider to be a healthy diet with zero supplements apart from vitamin B12.
My advice is to take it and learn from your body, to see what the effects are, then end the experiment to see how you compare on a Mediterranean or a whole food, plant based diet. These diets are the benchmarks for longevity, which is what you might want to optimise for.
Very much appreciate this philosophy to nutrition and physical development.
Why supplement vitamin B12, incidentally?
Why supplement vitamin B12, incidentally?
Everything else can come from a whole food, plant based diet.
Vitamin B12 is made by bacteria in soil that are important for nitrogen fixation. Animals ingest vitamin B12 because they don't wash their food, we wash our food and therefore any B12 that is in soil.
Meat eaters get second hand B12 that has accumulated in animals, so their requirement is met by eating animal products including dairy and eggs.
Plants don't actually need B12 so there is no B12 in them.
Iodine is something that I choose to get from iodised salt, which is almost supplementation, but I stay clear of all processed foods that have been fortified and supplements. This is also philosophy - I am not an animal. Most livestock gets a smorgasbord of supplements with calories coming from corn, soy or whatever is cheapest.
Vitamin B12 is made by bacteria in soil that are important for nitrogen fixation. Animals ingest vitamin B12 because they don't wash their food, we wash our food and therefore any B12 that is in soil.
Meat eaters get second hand B12 that has accumulated in animals, so their requirement is met by eating animal products including dairy and eggs.
Plants don't actually need B12 so there is no B12 in them.
Iodine is something that I choose to get from iodised salt, which is almost supplementation, but I stay clear of all processed foods that have been fortified and supplements. This is also philosophy - I am not an animal. Most livestock gets a smorgasbord of supplements with calories coming from corn, soy or whatever is cheapest.
Could you describe the effects of methylene blue?of your experience or ibruprofen?
I haven’t taken it myself, but I’ve heard of methylene blue being helpful, especially post TBIs or head injuries.
Wrt ibuprofen, I find it can (at times) massively clear out my brain fog. I suspect it’s primarily due to its anti inflammatory effects. The worse my baseline is, the more noticeable its benefits (upto a point, and apparently dose dependent). I often feel inflammation due to less sleep and due to another chronic heath condition, ibuprofen is like wiping a dirty glass or window clean.
I should probably add that I likely have more inflammation than the average person by a significant amount unfortunately, so your mileage may vary, but when I mentioned it to my GP he wasn’t surprised at all at its effects.
Wrt ibuprofen, I find it can (at times) massively clear out my brain fog. I suspect it’s primarily due to its anti inflammatory effects. The worse my baseline is, the more noticeable its benefits (upto a point, and apparently dose dependent). I often feel inflammation due to less sleep and due to another chronic heath condition, ibuprofen is like wiping a dirty glass or window clean.
I should probably add that I likely have more inflammation than the average person by a significant amount unfortunately, so your mileage may vary, but when I mentioned it to my GP he wasn’t surprised at all at its effects.
Be very careful with these "experimental" (to say in the nicest way possible) things like methylene blue as combining with certain meds like SSRIs could be fatal according to https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2078225/#:~:text=Mo...
Yes, serotonin syndrome is definitely a serious risk. From what I understand, it's typically caused by interactions between SSRIs or MAOIs and substances like methylene blue, rather than methylene blue broadly interacting with many compounds. But I agree - caution is essential when dealing with anything that affects brain chemistry.
More fatal than just taking the SSRIs?
Do they also increase the homicidal ideations?
Do they also increase the homicidal ideations?
They can, in unusual instances. This is why doctors quiz you about suicidal ideations whenever you are prescribed a new SSRI.
Methylene blue is said to allegedly have helped some people with brainfog - especially after covid. But the research is really scarce. Ibuprofen and creatine may also have some positive nootropic effects with recently mounting evidence, but at least they were already very well studied before because of their actual uses. So if anybody wants to try this stuff, I'd stick with those.
I forgot to mention and wanted to add, I would recommend you to go to forums with people far more knowledgeable than me.
Reddit’s r/nootropics is one, I seem to remember blue light forum and longecity also have lots of info about more “cutting edge” experimentation.
As always, be cautious, and oftentimes common and well tolerated things (for example theanine) can be much better than some research peptides.
Reddit’s r/nootropics is one, I seem to remember blue light forum and longecity also have lots of info about more “cutting edge” experimentation.
As always, be cautious, and oftentimes common and well tolerated things (for example theanine) can be much better than some research peptides.
Now available energy is almost certainly not the only reason we have fatigue, so maybe there's other barriers to overcome, but I'm shocked at how little attention this topic gets. In hackernews spirit, if someone could sell a real cure for mental fatigue, you'd change the world