Ray Peat on learned helplessness
"About 1957, psychologists noticed that a rat could learn helplessness: if they held a rat until it stopped struggling, it would then die much sooner than a normal rat does when put into a barrel of water. They also found that they could immunize their rats against learned helplessness, by previously allowing them to experience success in a similar situation. The short-term learned helplessness apparently does something to block the efficient use of energy, so that the animal dies of exhaustion very easily, i.e., it has depleted one source of energy without mobilizing another."
- Nutrition For Women
0 upvotes"Energetically, the estrogen-dominated metabolic state is less efficient than the oxidative state which is dominated by thyroid and progesterone (or testosterone). The estrogen state, like the rats state of learned helplessness, is parasympathetic, in the sense that many chemical balances have moved away from the mobilized sympathetic or adrenergic state. The estrogen state, for example, depresses blood sugar, while the mobilized state spares glucose by oxidizing fat."
- Nutrition For Women
0 upvotes"In the state of learned helplessness or chronic despair, the relative dominance of the cholinergic system keeps the body in the inflamed, hypometabolic condition, in which rheumatoid arthritis,"
- November 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"The cholinergic dominance of the state of learned helplessness increases the formation of substance P, a small peptide molecule that produces the sensation of pain, and probably itching. Many types of cancer cell are known to produce substance P."
- May 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes"When the organism as a whole is overburdened, with stress physiology passing into the learned helplessness™ or shock states, its metabolism shifts in the direction of reductive, pseudohypoxic metabolism, in which the nervous system suppresses oxidative metabolism,"
- July 2016 - Ray Peat's Newsletter
0 upvotes