Neurotransmitters & the Five Elements

[dust]

Not really sure what to call this topic or exactly what I want to talk about, so I'll just start here and see. Bear with me.

 

http://www.theinertia.com/surf/the-five-elements-of-athlete-its-all-about-neurotransmitters/

 

Looking up strength programming, and in particular looking for info on the methods used by Charles Poliquin, who has apparently produced Olympic gold medalists in "18 sports" and has influenced some of the more successful strength and movement professionals currently active, I found this.

 

In this article, we learn that Poliquin's approach was initially based on comparing the Five Elements of traditional Chinese philosophy/politics/medicine/science/mysticism/etc -- Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, Earth -- with the four primary neurotransmitters -- dopamine, acetylcholine, gamma-aminobutyic acid, serotonin (and the fifth being a balance of all four). This leads us to look at the Braverman test, which apparently helps us to figure out our neurotransmitter profile.

 

Assuming you've read the article and test and know a little about the Five Elements, a few questions (suggestions, really -- conversation doesn't need to be limited to these):

 

 

One: The Five Elements

 

Do you believe in the five elements as applied to personality?

 

Can this approach apply to physiology / exercise?

 

Do you know what your personality type is?

 

If you are versed in the area: How would you advise someone to find out their dominant element?

 

Can you point to an accurate online summary of the five? Is the above article accurate?

 

 

Two: The Neurotransmitters

 

Where are you (apparently) dominant? (or are you balanced?)

 

Where are you (apparently) currently deficient? (or are you perfect?)

 

Do you believe in this approach as applied to personality?

 

Do you believe in this approach as applied to physiology / an exercise regime?

 

 

Three: Putting them together

 

Can the Five Elements and neurotransmitter personality profiles coalesce?

 

Does Earth correspond with being balanced in the other four in the same way that the fifth neurotransmitter profile means being balanced in all four?

 

Is Poliquin a nutter?

 

 

 

As far as me: The test suggests that I am generally slightly more dominant in dopamine and GABA, and least dominant in acetylcholine; but currently deficient in GABA. I have, however, been told in the past -- and agreed with the notion -- that I am a 'Wood' personality, which apparently should correspond with acetylcholine. So that's all a bit of a muddle... unless conflicting information is presented, I'm not much convinced that they can coalesce. Though I think there may be something to them both taken separately.

 

I may look into improving the balance, trying to increase GABA, just to see how it affects me. Interested in hearing others' views / experiences. Sorry it's all a bit of a muddle.

Edited October 17, 2016 by dustybeijing

[LAOLONG]

In Taoist view the human is composed from yin and yang.

The yin aspect is the body and it is composed by the five elements.

The yang aspect is spiritual and is not composed of the five elements.

Yang is void and in ctm the hollow organs contain it. Yin is material

And in tcm the full organs contain it. The brain is not hollow so it is yin and composed by five elements.

May be that in the hollow part of the brain is the yang

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventricular_system

[LAOLONG]

The five element produce each another : water > wood > fire > earth > metal > water ,and so on.

Neurotransmitter don't produce one another. So the theory that compare Chinese five elements with brain neurotransmitters is wrong.

[joeblast]

The five element produce each another : water > wood > fire > earth > metal > water ,and so on.

Neurotransmitter don't produce one another. So the theory that compare Chinese five elements with brain neurotransmitters is wrong.

it of course would need a less direct interpretation 

 

or maybe a different element model

[dust]

Fair point.

 

Are the characteristics associated with them similar, though? Fire-dopamine, etc?

 

 

 

Looking at the Braverman test again today I cannot help but be struck by how incongruous some of it seems (to me).

 

Acetylcholine nature:

You are adept at working with your senses and view the world in sensory terms. You are highly creative and open to new ideas. You are a quick thinker who is always taking other people into consideration. You are devoted to making things the best they can be, no matter how much effort it requires. You are flexible, creative, and spontaneous, and are willing to try anything new as long as it promises to be new and exciting. If your acetylcholine nature is in balance, you are intuitive and innovative. You take pleasure in anything involving words, ideas, and communication. (Acetylcholine is produced to a great extent in the parietal lobes of the brain, which is responsible for language, intelligence, and comprehension) You may be ideal in the roles as counselor, mediator, think tank member, yoga and meditation instructor, religious leader, and in public service. Strong acetylcholine levels are associated with high brain speed, which impacts the creative function, so artists, writers, advertising professionals, and actors are frequently acetylcholine dominant. You are extremely social, even charismatic. You love meeting and greeting and making new friends. You come across to others as authentic and grounded. People find you charming, and you find relationships come easy to you. You invest a great deal of energy and time into your relationships and feel that you are personally reaping the rewards. You are an optimist, and your see the possibilities in people. You are attentive to the needs of children and romantic with you significant other. You are good at remembering other people’s feelings and reactions, and this enables you to not hurt others. You are altruistic and benevolent. You love adventure. You are open to new things and not afraid of failure. You like to travel, but you can also enjoy reading about the lives of others. Your quest for learning makes you interested in a variety of topics and adept at sharing your knowledge with others.

 

The stuff highlighted in green resonates with me very well. Open to ideas, creative, considerate, taking pleasure in words and ideas, etc.

 

The stuff in red is pretty much as far from me as possible. Social, charismatic, friend-making, charming! Hah!

 

It doesn't seem like there's any possibility of me fitting into any of the groups, and I don't think anyone I know does either. In which case, what's the point? If nearly everyone is the 'fifth' option -- a balance of all 4 -- doesn't the whole thing become redundant?

[LAOLONG]

There are chinese diagram of the five elements that instead a circle the elements are arranged in a cross with earth in the center. Fire is up and symbol the south ( opposite to the direction in west culture ) water is down symbol the north

Left is wood symbol of east , right וs metal symbol of west. May be from that diagram that earth in the center is a combination of the other elements.

Edited October 17, 2016 by james bond

[blue eyed snake]

i've had a look at it, 

 

seems to me that the relation between neurotransmitters and behavior is overly simplified. The neurotransmittersystem is a very intricate one, to take these four and try to explain everything with it does not sound good to my ears.

 

No idea whether there is any valid relation between the chinese way of looking with the five elements.

 

about gaba, if you would want to try it take natural gaba, it's bacteria produced and exactly the same as what your body produces. Therefore it can pass the blood-brain-barrier, which synthetic gaba does not ( or hardly)

http://eu.iherb.com/Thorne-Research-PharmaGABA-100-60-Veggie-Caps/18741

 

start with a low dose, not more then half a capsule, to find out what it does, it can make one feel very drowsy when the own body-supply is really too small. I remember the first time i took 50 mg I had to lay down for about four hours, slowly the body gets used to it and one can heighten the dose. But then, my shortage of gaba is very large.

 

further he writes something like ' melatonine is a gaba booster', it's not!

When you take gaba, the body will more readily produce melatonin, but when you take melatonin, the gabaproduction of the body gets smaller. This is the reason that people find that when they take too much melatonin for problems with falling asleep, they cannot fall asleep at all and begin to feel stressy

 

another gaba enhancer that is not mentioned in this document are hop-cones ( the thingies used for brewing beer) makes for a nice bitter tea.

 

but i do not advise to take gaba without consulting a knowledgeable practician.

[LAOLONG]

In ancient china the five elements stand for the five colors ,earth yellow ,water blue black , wood green ,fire red ,metal white. Also in traditional Chinese music the scale i five notes, pentatonic. Every element has a animal symbol , fire red Phoenix bird , water a black/blue turtle , wood a green dragon , metal a white tiger. Earth i don't remember which animal.

[dust]

another gaba enhancer that is not mentioned in this document are hop-cones ( the thingies used for brewing beer) makes for a nice bitter tea.

 

 

Does that perhaps mean I could just drink more ale? 

 

Will look into the natural stuff and more about GABA

 

 

 

seems to me that the relation between neurotransmitters and behavior is overly simplified. The neurotransmittersystem is a very intricate one, to take these four and try to explain everything with it does not sound good to my ears.

 

No idea whether there is any valid relation between the chinese way of looking with the five elements.

 

For sure, it is oversimplified. I don't know why, for a little while, I entertained the idea that it could possibly be so simple.

Well -- I thought -- if the Five Elements are so straightforward (people can apparently be diagnosed fairly accurately), why not these?

 

Also, it obviously ignores more fundamental genetic disposition (in favour of changeable neurotransmitter-based disposition) and circumstantial factors (childhood, lifestyle, etc).

Edited October 17, 2016 by dustybeijing

[LAOLONG]

To boost the serotonin level after eating a heavy meal rich in tryptophan

To eat something with sugar.it is complicated metabolic explanation but sugar > insulin make it easy to tryptophan to enter the brain and becoming serotonin in the brain.

[blue eyed snake]

Does that perhaps mean I could just drink more ale? 

 

Will look into the natural stuff and more about GABA

 

 

 

 

For sure, it is oversimplified. I don't know why, for a little while, I entertained the idea that it could possibly be so simple.

Well -- I thought -- if the Five Elements are so straightforward (people can apparently be diagnosed fairly accurately), why not these?

 

Also, it obviously ignores more fundamental genetic disposition (in favour of changeable neurotransmitter-based disposition) and circumstantial factors (childhood, lifestyle, etc).

 

more ale...   

 

no, alcohol has a shortterm relaxing effect, but in the longterm it tends to get the relaxing part of the neurotransmittersystem out of whack. So you'd best stop drinking ale, if you have, indeed, a shortage of gaba that is.

[LAOLONG]

From wikipedia: it has been demonstrated in both animal[27] and human tests[28][29][30] that ingestion of a meal rich in carbohydrates triggers release of insulin. Insulin in turn stimulates the uptake of large neutral branched-chain amino acids (BCAA), but not tryptophan into muscle, increasing the ratio of tryptophan to BCAA in the blood stream. The resulting increased tryptophan ratio reduces competition at the large neutral amino acid transporter (which transports both BCAA and aromatic amino acids), resulting in more uptake of tryptophan across the blood–brain barrier into the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).[31][32] Once in the CSF, tryptophan is converted into serotonin in the raphe nuclei by the normal enzymatic pathway.[27][29] The resultant serotonin is further metabolised into melatonin by the pineal gland.

Edited October 17, 2016 by james bond

[Andrei]

One: The Five Elements

 

Do you believe in the five elements as applied to personality?

 

For sure the five elements give your personality. Look into BaZi the four pillars of destiny and you'll see how the Chinese Astrology analyse this.

The modern psychology reach same conclusions:

 

Can this approach apply to physiology / exercise?

Yes of course. Weight lifting and anything anaerobic boost dopamine, anything aerobic, taichi, yoga boost serotonin

Usually people are drawn towards their type, like a dopamine dominant will be drawn towards weightlifting and extreme sports while a serotonin dominant will be drawn towards yoga taichi but this is wrong because the activities they are drawn into are creating more imbalance in their bodies that they already have. A correct approach is to practice the OPPOSITE activities you are drawn into so that you achieve balance and once you are in the middle, the balanced spot you can do whatever you like as long as you know your own limits and your imbalances.

 

Do you know what your personality type is?

Wood and Water dominant

 

If you are versed in the area: How would you advise someone to find out their dominant element?

Chinese Astrology BaZi

 

 

 

 

This link is a gold nugget:

http://advancedpsychcare.tripod.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/braverman.test.pdf

 

I used to associate Fire with dopamine and Water with serotonin by my own research on this subject and couldn't find yet an explanation for Wood/Wind and Metal/Earth, but now it makes a lot of sense to associate Wood/Wind with Acetylcholine and Metal/Earth with GABA.

Edited October 17, 2016 by Andrei

[dust]

more ale...   

 

no, alcohol has a shortterm relaxing effect, but in the longterm it tends to get the relaxing part of the neurotransmittersystem out of whack. So you'd best stop drinking ale, if you have, indeed, a shortage of gaba that is.

 

Hmm... I don't want to thank you for denying me more beer but I suppose I must be gracious

 

 

From wikipedia: it has been demonstrated in both animal[27] and human tests[28][29][30] that ingestion of a meal rich in carbohydrates triggers release of insulin. Insulin in turn stimulates the uptake of large neutral branched-chain amino acids (BCAA), but not tryptophan into muscle, increasing the ratio of tryptophan to BCAA in the blood stream. The resulting increased tryptophan ratio reduces competition at the large neutral amino acid transporter (which transports both BCAA and aromatic amino acids), resulting in more uptake of tryptophan across the blood–brain barrier into the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).[31][32] Once in the CSF, tryptophan is converted into serotonin in the raphe nuclei by the normal enzymatic pathway.[27][29] The resultant serotonin is further metabolised into melatonin by the pineal gland.

Interesting

 

 

 

I used to associate Fire with dopamine and Water with serotonin by my own research on this subject and couldn't find yet an explanation for Wood/Wind and Metal/Earth, but now it makes a lot of sense to associate Wood/Wind with Acetylcholine and Metal/Earth with GABA.

 

Also interesting.

 

Will look into Bazi

[Andrei]

This is another interesting article about opiates that replace and disrupt the neurotransmitters in the brain:

 

https://www.opiate-freedom-center.com/opioid-addiction-naturally-increase-your-bodies-endorphins-serotonin/

[Taomeow]

All neurotransmitters are Fire.

 

Some are yin Fire and some are yang Fire.  Some are Fire with Wood and some are Fire with Metal and so on.  The Fire with Fire one is missing, incidentally, the author overlooked it  and went for "balance of the four" as the fifth--  nope, that's not wuxing, which is "five phases" -- but I know it well, since it acts as a primary neurotransmitter in only about 9% of the population and I fall into that category.  It's nitric oxide, NO, and it's a gas...  in both senses.  

 

Rule of thumb: if it's something that acts first and foremost via a firing of a neuron, something that causes a neuron to fire, it's a Fire phenomenon in the body.  All neurotransmitters and hormones are of the Fire phase.  It's not for nothing that the traditional taoist model of human physiology categorizes all these intangibles under the Triple Burner system. 

 

The heartmind, i.e. the psychological manifestations of the Fire phase in the human body, both the source and the recipient of neurotransmitters, can be tweaked with by pouring gasoline or water or throwing wood on that Fire.  In this sense, neurotransmitters are what gets it to burn and what regulates its burning and what burns -- simultaneously.  One can of course study them for their more precise wuxing features and discern Fire with Wood, Fire with Water, and so on, and this way one might know what it is exactly that she throws into the Fire when she reads a book, eats a chocolate bar, smokes a cigarette, or takes a nap.  I've done this work some years ago and am very rusty...  but I will look at the Braverman test, see if anything there rings any real bells, and report back.  Thanks for an interesting exercise. 

Edited October 17, 2016 by Taomeow

[dust]

Ah. Well, I'll wait and see what else you have to say but for now I wonder, based on what you've said: if each is an element coupled with fire, can we not still make comparisons with the Five and discover some similarities?

 

I mean, if serotonin is indicative of Fire + Water, can a serotonin-dominant person still said to be generally dominant in Water?

 

 

Also, based on my own continued doubt over the whole comparison: if Poliquin ascribes numerous world-class athletes' success to his method based initially on this idea, and the idea isn't really accurate, what could his success actually be ascribed to?

[Taomeow]

What his success is based on?  Any number of factors.  Linking neurotransmitters to TCM in a wrong way may not have interfered with his empirical observations and intuitively correct conclusions to an extent that it would cancel his insights.  The same individualized approach could be focusing on entirely different factors -- e.g. in thyroid vs. hypothalamic-pituitary vs. balanced giants in basketball, we are dealing with three different personality types who all benefit from individualized approach.  To discern the type without knowing anything about the underlying endocrinology is quite possible for an observant, keen, experienced coach.  To misname and misattribute what he observes, ditto.  

 

As for Fire with Water meaning someone is Water dominant -- well, a label means nothing without a deeper understanding of the underlying system.  What does Water dominant mean?  Someone well versed in wuxing analysis discerns many different meanings that can boil down (pun?) to Water dominance.  A person has a proprietary phase and a dominant phase that don't necessarily overlap, a deficient and an excessive phase which may overlap with the former, and any number of scenarios in which one is overusing -- abusing -- the excessive phase, precisely because it is easy to come by, and deepening the overall imbalance long term.  Say one's proprietary phase is Fire, but Water is his dominant one, and he's Metal deficient, Earth deficient, Fire deficient.  This scenario will mean that he may accomplish everything he is to accomplish by relying on his dominant phase, Water, by throwing it on the Fire to produce spectacular steam engine power, but after a brief career the resource will be exhausted, the proprietary phase done for, and the ex champion will develop heart disease (as many do) because excessive Water will be putting out the Fire which the deficient Earth won't be able to replenish.

 

So, success in sports is indicative of nothing at all except for the fact that a way was found to rely on whatever is abundant.  It may be abundant at the cost of depleting something else, however, which is why professional athletes are hardly ever paragons of health beyond their prime, and are not famous for their longevity either.  

 

Wuxing analysis is a taoist science that requires years of study and practice to master.  Cognitive neuroscience, ditto.  Superficial parallels to draw between the two based on this or that aspect looking familiar is --

well, I dunno.  A sport?  

Edited October 18, 2016 by Taomeow

[dust]

Indeed, it's no more than a sport to me. I intend to look further into it all -- am in the process of it -- but will likely never delve years-deep into it. They are more of a means to an end, and I would be content with looking at the end without truly understanding the means. Which is why I ask these superficial questions, get confused, and end up chasing my tail...

Edited October 18, 2016 by dustybeijing

[Taomeow]

Nothing wrong with that.  This stuff you go deeper into only if it beckons.  Calls out.  Sometimes fainter with time, and sometimes louder. 

 

In my case, years ago the call of cognitive neuroscience was loud and clear, but once I "got" what it was talking about, which did take a few years and a lot of integration, I came to a place where I decided it has already told me all it had to tell me and stopped listening all that closely.  With wuxing, it's the opposite.  A faint whisper at first, with time it became one of the main themes of a great symphony....  So I'm not likely to stop listening and, on occasion, playing this or that tune I've discerned...

[blue eyed snake]

Hmm... I don't want to thank you for denying me more beer but I suppose I must be gracious

 

Not denying you anything  free choice always.

 

But, if you'd start taking gaba you should stop all intake of alcoholics ( and also weed, sleepingpills and opiate-like substances)

 

just saying...

[blue eyed snake]

This is another interesting article about opiates that replace and disrupt the neurotransmitters in the brain:

 

https://www.opiate-freedom-center.com/opioid-addiction-naturally-increase-your-bodies-endorphins-serotonin/

 

Thanks, nice overview

[Michael Sternbach]

I both read the article and did the test linked in the OP. As a martial artist, I would consider myself a wood type combined with metal (as I'm active in upgrading my style based on certain "theoretical" considerations). However, the test showed dopamine (fire) and acetylcholine (indeed wood) as my dominating neurotransmitters. My gaba (metal) and serotonin (water) levels seem considerably longer.

 

However, I resonate with the "fire athlete" in the article too, the description might actually be more fitting than I was initially aware.

 

Despite all ambiguities, I feel the apparent parallels between these different systems are worthy of further consideration.