Firewall for the Mind

Introduction

I recently read a compelling New York Times opinion piece by David Brooks called “The Self-Destructive Effects of Progressive Sadness.” It discusses the growing darkness of the national mood, which Brooks terms “maladaptive sadness,” and which he attributes to three trends: a catastrophizing mentality; extreme sensitivity to harm; and a culture of denunciation. The result, the author contends, is a decrease in one’s sense of agency, which causes emotional duress that can eventually lead to sadness and anxiety.

I was hoping the article would suggests ways we can work to mitigate this problem, but it didn’t get into it—that’s a whole other article. This post is me taking a swing at that other article.

Pay attention … or not

I believe the solution to this maladaptive sadness begins with deciding where and how—and, crucially, if—to focus our attention.

Let’s start with the catastrophizing mentality. Humans do have a talent for focusing on the negative. The late Hans Rosling, a Swedish physician and statistician, examined this in his excellent book Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think. This book explains why the vast majority of people—including scientists, executives of multinational companies, journalists, medical researchers, attendees of the Davos World Economic Forum, and others—have historically done really poorly on a multiple-choice test about the state of the world. In fact, people do worse than if they guessed at random; as Rosling explains, they’re “systematically wrong.” Out of nearly 12,000 people tested in 14 countries in 2017, “every group of people … thinks the world is more frightening, more violent, and more hopeless—in short, more dramatic—than it really is.” Rosling identified ten key reasons people err, and one of them is “the negativity instinct.” To some degree, we’re hardwired for pessimism, which is exacerbated, Rosling explains, by “selective reporting by journalists and activists”—which accentuates the negative to create a sense of urgency. (Read this, quick! Donate now!) Meanwhile, he points out, people may feel that it’s heartless to acknowledge that the world is improving when there is still so much wrong with it. But then, naysaying doesn’t help, particularly when it depresses us.

I’m not suggesting that the solution to a widespread emotional health problem is simply to decide to be more positive. I acknowledge that a lot of our vulnerability is more psychological than logical. I can remember being a little kid and only just having learned to swim, and how I would be afraid to venture toward the deep end of the pool. Of course it’s no more dangerous over there; a person can drown in six inches of water. It just seemed more dangerous. As much as I reassured myself that the deep end was no big deal, the sight of that chasm opening up below me freaked me out every time. I finally got over this fear by simply closing my eyes when I got to the deep end. Without the visual stimulus, I could swim all the way across. The point is, “eyes wide open” doesn’t always reduce risk, and can introduce nonproductive anxiety.

Fast-forward a few years to when I’d moved on to bike racing. The Junior field (ages 16-17) in those days was pretty big—50 to 60 riders, typically—and fast. I remember the first road race of the season on a cold day with a strong crosswind, which meant lots of jostling around in the pack. I was feeling really intimidated, especially when I looked back at the large swarm of riders behind me, all of whom it seemed were saving their energy (in my draft) and could come flying past me at any moment. This was a major burden, psychologically, until I decided only to look at the riders ahead of me, and never allow myself to fall back very far. Each time I finished taking a turn at the front, I would only drop back a bit, and then get back into the line at fifth or sixth position. (To worm your way in, you look only forward, at the wheel you want to take.) This way, I was able to pretend I was already in a small breakaway with no swarming peloton to worry about. I did this for about fifty miles until I realized it was always the same riders ahead of me. Finally I sneaked a look back. The pack was gone—we’d dropped them! It wasn’t the size of the pack that mattered, but the quality of the riders near the front.

Far higher achievers than I have employed similar mind tricks. In this great interview, the cycling champion Andy Hampsten talks about the psychological rigor of beginning a pro career in Europe. So often, he was tempted to quit. He describes one such occasion, racing on a terribly cold, snowy spring day in Spain. He was shivering so badly he feared he might crash, and seriously considered abandoning. But then he found a way to deal with his fear: “a silly book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that I thought of … where when the hero was in danger he had special glasses that would turn pitch black so he couldn’t see how dangerous things were. It’s best not to know … so I tried to apply that.” Instead of focusing on how frigid and dangerous this downhill was, he tried to look forward to the climb ahead, where he could warm up and the speed would be lower. His crisis of confidence hadn’t been driven by a fully reasoned assessment of the conditions; it was just negative self-talk. By choosing not to dwell on that negativity, Hampsten not only finished the race, finished the season, and made the transition to a world class professional, but grew his confidence and famously won the 1988 Giro d’Italia stage race by dominating a legendary mountain stage in a snowstorm.

Two circles

So, am I just suggesting we put our heads in the sand? That’s the whole trick, just ignore apparent threats? No, of course it’s more complicated than that. In his editorial, Brooks goes on to say, “People who provide therapy to depressive people try to break the cycle of catastrophic thinking so they can more calmly locate and deal with the problems they actually have control over” (italics mine). Societal catastrophes like climate change, systemic racism, and the vanishing middle class are all real problems, of course, but they have something in common: they are beyond the ability of most individuals to combat. They’re bigger than us, which is why we feel so powerless.

This brings me to a useful concept (which I’ve mentioned in these pages before, so bear with me if this is review): the distinction, as described in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, between the “circle of influence” and the “circle of concern.” Below is the author’s schematic. The idea is that we should spend most of our mental energy on what we can influence; for example, learning to manage our own stress. We should avoid spending too much energy on the circle of concern, such as the future of democracy, because that’s where most of us are largely helpless.

Did Hampsten’s team management emphasize to him how dangerous the race over the snow-covered Gavia Pass would be? Did they remind him that that no American had ever even finished on the podium of the Giro, which he now stood to do but only if he didn’t crash out in this dangerous stage? Did they show him a highlights reel of riders crashing on descents in bad weather? No, that would be pointless, and worse—and that would all be in the circle of concern. Instead, the team focused on what aspects of the race they could influence. They went around to all the sporting goods stores in the area and bought up all the cold weather gear they could find to equip their riders. They prepared Hampsten for success, and—since literally no other team had thought of this—in doing so they gave him an edge over his competition. (That stage of the Giro has become legendary; the tifosi (Italian fans) call it “the day the big men cried.”)

Why now?

Okay, so it’s best to separate what information is actionable, and what isn’t. But the Seven Habits book was published in 1989; if the matter is this simple, why is everyone’s emotional duress seeming to increase so much, and so fast, now? As reported by the National Institute of Mental Health, “more than one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness (57.8 million in 2021).” If a growing sense of powerlessness can be linked to people spending more mental energy in the circle-of-concern space, what is causing that increase?

The Internet and social media are obviously implicated and I’m clearly not the first person to assert that. Even if we set people’s habits aside for the moment, the pace of bad news has accelerated, and it can feel like our reaction time has to be faster. Consider the meltdown of the Silicon Valley Bank: as described in this Charles Schwab article, “With the effects of rapid news flows, especially via social media, and banking that can be done quickly and via mobile devices, the bank’s collapse happened with lightning speed.” Much of the ripple effect across the economy has been due to sudden and unwarranted loss of confidence in the banking industry as a whole; as Schwab put it, “The main channel of contagion so far is more psychological than systemic.”

But where the mental health crisis is concerned, it’s not just the speed of the Internet at work; it’s how we choose to use it. Brooks cites a culture of denunciation. Sure, you can denounce others without the Internet but it’s a lot harder. I mean, unless you’re a professional whose work can get printed on paper, what are you going to do—pass out leaflets? Stand on a street corner braying? Collar your colleagues at the water cooler? No, when people are feeling fed up about vaccines, politics, or any other battle in the culture wars, they go post vitriolic comments beneath articles, or send tweets, or otherwise leverage the computer network that connects five billion people.

With all this bold negativity on display, it’s no wonder, as Brooks points out, so many people have developed extreme sensitivity to harm. In the parlance of the schoolyard bullying culture I grew up in, “they can dish it out but they can’t take it.” Well, maybe that’s not totally fair, but I think there’s something complicated going on around being a bully in one moment, and wanting to appear sensitive the next. The thickness of people’s skin, so to speak, is selective. For example, progressives criticize Jane Eyre because one of its protagonists participates (albeit “off screen”) in colonialism without the author denouncing him for it, so anybody who has experienced systematic oppression might find this triggering somehow. They say it’s best, therefore, to write the book off as “problematic” and not use it in schools. But then they go off and watch “Breaking Bad,” a show about a guy who cooks meth, or “Real Detective,” which repeatedly shows graphic footage of a young woman’s naked corpse. If challenged on whether this could possibly be healthy to take in, they’ll say, “Oh, it’s just, you know, edgy.”

I have a scheme to help you navigate these waters and fight the tide of these increasingly anxious times. But before I begin: what follows isn’t for everybody. If you feel a strong need to grow your knowledge of the precise cause and extent of the world’s problems, and feel that proper virtue signaling can’t be achieved without sharing what you’ve learned, and that your personal identity depends on upholding a culture of personal punditry, you should just stop now. Go read something else.

What? You are still with me? You want to continue? Great! Let’s get started.

Opt out of the culture war

The first thing I’d like to establish is that in the culture war that’s raging, we should all be conscientious objectors. Why? Because this is a war that can’t be won. Our strong opinions are being weaponized, but we aren’t actual soldiers and we’re not being deployed with any battlefield tactic that can actually prevail over a known enemy. Political extremists and Internet algorithms are drawing out our built-in impulse to find someone to blame for the world’s problems, just to foment our opposition and thereby increase our loyalty. (The “blame instinct” is another of the ten reasons Rosling cites for people misunderstanding the world.) Unless we’re politicians or policymakers, we aren’t changing the world when we rail against it; we’re just collateral damage in a war that will never end.

I’m not saying we have no role in the world’s problems. Of course if we’re concerned about climate change we should try to walk, bike, take mass transit, etc., and vote for programs that address the problem. And those of us who are parents have a duty to educate our children and help them become responsible adults. But when somebody who isn’t a parent and hasn’t been a student in forty years wants to collar me and go on a tirade about the “crap” that “they” are teaching in “our” schools, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to run for the hills.

Take ownership of your attention

If a chain smoker complained to you that he was chronically short of breath, or a fast food junkie groused about how hard it is to lose weight, you’d probably be biting your tongue. Where our physical health is concerned, it’s easy to tie the willing consumption of a dangerous substance to the natural consequences it produces. Some of us are outspoken about this; consider the age-old cliché, “My body is a temple.” Fair enough, but what about our minds? We’re less likely to question the growing tendency we have to be glued to our screens, scrolling through our feeds. I do hear people confessing that they probably waste too much time on social media, but this is given with the half-serious, hangdog air of somebody acknowledging something fairly harmless, like a caffeine addiction. Nobody treats overconsumption of polemic Internet content as a big problem. But I believe this content is a pollutant, and possibly as dangerous to our mental health as tobacco or junk food are to our physical health.

I think it’d be easier to get people to agree with this concept if I took the partisan angle and said either that Fox News is toxic to the brain, or that NPR is, depending on my audience. But it isn’t so much the position itself that’s the issue; as Brooks, and the Seven Habits book, point out, the despair comes from railing against what we can’t solve (and guess what: blaming one party or another doesn’t actually help). So when we use platforms that track our interests, and that have learned how to push our buttons, we’re signing up for a steady diet of emotional unease. What’s needed is the wisdom to understand the threat here, and the discipline to shelter our minds from constant provocation. It’s realizing we can choose whether or not to peer into the chasm at the deep end of the pool.

Firewall for the Mind

In the realm of computer networks, a firewall is a device (or software function) that enforces rules about what communication, or “traffic,” is permitted. It filters out threats based on where content is coming from, what type it is, and so forth. Early firewalls had an access control list with simple rules like “allow [or deny] any traffic from [source] to [destination].” Modern ones are very sophisticated; for example, the one governing my home WiFi blocks all gaming, social media, and pornography, as well as any traffic from China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Russia, or Syria.

I’m not suggesting you focus on creating a technical impediment to this or that Internet content. A firewall for the mind isn’t something you’d configure on any device, but rather a more general rule base you create and adhere to around how you’re going to use your brain and what you’re willing to focus it on. It’s about what information, news, entertainment, etc. you’re going to allow in, what you’re going to ration, and what you’re going to reject, whether it’s online, printed, broadcast, or spoken. I propose that instead of passively receiving what’s pushed toward us, we should each start with a general rule—“deny all”—and then make specific exceptions based on what will educate, entertain, or enlighten us without any side effects like frustration, existential angst, anxiety, or a feeling of doom and gloom. This should be highly personalized—never mind what everyone around you is focusing on. After all, that’s not working out so well lately.

As an adult I’ve never had cable TV; I was a late adopter of cell phones and smartphones; I eschew all social media. I also refuse to talk about politics with just about anybody. Those are aspects of my personal firewall, and my rule base has adapted according to what’s going on in my life. For example, when my wife was pregnant, I blacklisted the book What to Expect When You’re Expecting, which is a terrorist tract designed to terrify new parents. As I headed in to my third decade in corporate America I stopped looking at “Dilbert” because it was just too cynical. In the years following the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, with political polarization at a fever pitch, I stopped reading the political articles in The New Yorker precisely because they took me deep into circle-of-concern territory where, like all kinds of people across the political spectrum, I felt aggrieved but helpless.

Of course your own rule base can be whatever you decide, but you might start with a few general questions:

• Is this content making me happy?
• Is it making me money?
• Is it making me laugh?
• Is it edifying or entertaining?
• Is it satisfying my curiosity?
• If it concerns a problem or an issue, is there some specific action I can take that will actually help?
• Does this content dwell on bad news that occupies only my circle of concern?

Existing mental firewalls

It would be naïve for me to pretend this concept is entirely new, and in fact people have been building their own mental firewalls since the dawn of human existence. The problem is, the rules are often set up not around protecting our brains from sadness and anxiety, but around tuning out what doesn’t match up with our tastes and/or belief systems. Choosing between Fox News and NPR is part of a rule base, after all. Where things are going particularly awry is that cable TV programming, much modern print journalism, and in particular the myriad content providers on the Internet are tailoring their product to us. This seems like a favor except that the end goal is always to maximize our outrage and hang on to our attention for as long as possible. The circle of concern is their happy stomping ground—not yours. Good mental firewalls thwart these mechanisms.

In general, I go after content that primarily exists to entertain or enlighten me, not persuade me. Most fiction, for example, is free of any specific agenda (and when a work’s social conscience seems too prominent, to the point it’s just depressing, I reserve the right to withdraw). Where nonfiction is concerned I particularly enjoy topics that aren’t in the news, and which nobody is bickering about, such as (to cite a convenient example) this article on caterpillars in which I encountered all kinds of delightful, non-pressing information. For example, the “caterpillar of the silver-spotted skipper … uses an air-gun-like appendage in its anus to send its [feces] pellets soaring. This practice, known as ‘fecal firing,’ discombobulates parasitic wasps.” Stuff like this argues for a more nuanced model of attention involving a Circle of Delight.

This isn’t to say the caterpillar article was all rosy; it did explain how scientists are now seeing significant declines in insect diversity and population that could become an ecological crisis, based on how many plants depend on insects for pollination. So did I start combing the Internet for more information on this problem? Did I try to make it part of my feed? No. I don’t have a feed, I’m not a scientist, and this simply isn’t my problem to solve. That’s the kind of line that I have to draw … which I think you should draw, too.

[Speaking of drawing, the art at the top of this post is by my younger daughter.]

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“Glycogen Window” for Sports Recovery - Proven!

Introduction

Haven’t heard of the glycogen window?  It’s a period of time, roughly half an hour immediately following exercise, during which any carbs you ingest provide extra benefit in restoring muscle glycogen.  In other words, if you exercise good and hard, you not only deserve a treat but are well advised to have one because it’ll help you recover.  Among my racer pals, post-ride chocolate milk is all the rage.  (Protein, calcium, and antioxidants are also touted as important recovery aids.)

I suppose I should add that this glycogen window thing isn’t widely viewed as hard science.  I first read about it in “Bicycling” magazine back in the ‘80s; cycling hero Andy Hampsten wrote about it.  I’d link to the article, but I doubt “Bicycling” has archived all their issues electronically like “New Yorker” has.  (Perhaps “Bicycling” assumes their readers have no patience for text, especially old text that has been regurgitated countless times anyway, with articles like “It’s you—fit, fast, and self-trained!” and “10 easy ways to improve your power!” run in constant rotation.)

Naturally, I believed what Hampsten wrote because he won the Giro d’Italia and the Alpe d’Huez stage of the Tour de France.  I began eating things like ice cream, fruit, or yogurt right after a ride or race, and immediately noticed an improvement in my recovery so I’ve stuck with it over all these years.  (Yeah, it could be a placebo, but if so, it’s a strong one.)

In this post I will make a cursory examination of the evidence against the glycogen window theory, before presenting substantive proof, recently obtained from a very talented young scientist, that the glycogen window is for real.  Here is the scientist, enjoying the fruits of her labors, both scholastic and athletic.

The case against glycogen window

It didn’t take long to find “evidence” against the glycogen window theory.  The first Google hit came from an online magazine called evidencemag.com.  I won’t summarize their arguments—you can read them right here—but suffice to say, I’m not impressed.  This article depends entirely on a) other people’s research, and b) sentences beginning with “there’s little evidence that,” which only show the lack of information available to the author.  Perhaps evidencemag.com will retract the entire article after reading this post and seeing my evidence. 

One other thing:  their headline is really wishy-washy:  “Why Most Endurance Athletes Don’t Usually Need to Eat After Workouts” (italics mine).  It wouldn’t hurt to define what an endurance athlete is, and why some would sometimes benefit.  Meanwhile, this glycogen window thing (according to what I’ve read in support of it) only works if you do it as a standard practice—which means that nobody needs to do it sometimes.

That said, one thing mentioned in that article does present damning evidence against the glycogen window theory.  It’s one of the footnotes, linking to an article that supposedly supports the notion:  a book called “The Lance Armstrong Performance Program: Seven Weeks to the Perfect Ride.”  Obviously, if Lance Armstrong—a known liar—says the glycogen window is legit, then it must be a myth, right?  Well, it’s not actually that simple.  You see, it’s clear Lance didn’t really write that book, but merely lent his celebrity to the project.  So we’re still good.

You know what?  I’m tired of paying lip service to the glycogen-window haters.  You can research their silly positions on your own.  It’s time to get to the proof that it’s valid.

Hard science

Occasionally, I make the time to carry out scientific experiments on my own.  For example, I proved that cyclists have extremely high pain thresholds (click here) and that rinsing—the practice of tasting something sweet without actually ingesting any calories—actually does increase athletic performance (click here).  But I don’t have time to test every theory I come across.  Thus, when I had the opportunity to leverage the considerable brainpower, time, and energy of my daughter Alexa, I jumped on it.  (As I’ve documented here, I’ve long dreamed of exploiting my children’s intellect for personal gain.)

Here’s how I got my chance:  my daughter was assigned a science project having to do with heart rate.  It was supposed to be a fairly simple affair, such as measuring the heart rate of each test subject before and after eating chocolate.  (Needless to say, it’s never a problem finding subjects for such a study.)  Obviously Alexa could have done a really easy project like that, but you can guess what happened:  I got involved and pressed my personal agenda.

It wasn’t hard to get Alexa to tackle a difficult research project, because a) as a budding athlete and lifelong lover of sweets, she has a vested interest in validating the glycogen window theory, and b) she knew she’d get some treats, in the form of candy and accolades, during the testing process.

Of course, using heart rate to measure the benefit of sports nutrition is not particularly straightforward.  Alexa’s methodology involved measuring the change (i.e., delta) in heart rate between lying down and standing up.  On the morning after exercise, this delta is usually greater than if the subject didn’t exercise the day before.  Alexa sought to determine if getting a snack during the glycogen window reduced this morning-after effect.  (Where did she get this idea?  From me.  I read it somewhere, ages ago, and a coach once explained it to me.)

You know what?  Alexa describes all this better than I have: 

One way of testing your recovery time is by comparing the delta of your heart rate between lying down (first thing in the morning) and standing up.  After physical exertion, your muscles are tired, and standing takes more effort, raising your heart rate.  This assumption is based off of the existing studies on the subject. My experiment will in part test this hypothesis. However, the main point is to examine the effects of  getting a sugary snack within 35 minutes of exercising (i.e., during the so-called “glycogen window”).  It has been proposed that getting this immediate sugar helps replace muscle glycogen (which is like the fuel in your car’s tank).  This greatly enhances recovery (i.e., getting over fatigue).  In my experiment, half of the test group will have some form of sugar after exercising, during the glycogen window.  By comparing the delta of their heart rates, I will be able to see how the heart rates of the people who had sugar compare to that of the people who didn’t.

Procedure

Alexa’s project got off to a fine start:  she baked cookies for her friend’s soccer team.  Half the team would get cookies right after soccer practice, and the other half would take cookies home to eat later.  (Just try recruiting kids for the control group without offering them tasty snacks, too!)  Unfortunately, the soccer practice got canceled, and though Alexa tried to get half the team to forego snacks after the next game, they all (predictably) flaked.  So she got pretty far behind on her project. 

I always try to strike the right balance between giving my daughter too much help versus letting her make her own mistakes.  So, in this case I helped my daughter find replacement test subjects, but made her drive the project.  This resulted in a real nail-biter:  Alexa didn’t have all the data she needed until the morning the project was due.  At 6:00 a.m. she was frantically collecting the final test results, writing her report, preparing her graph, and putting the whole thing together.  (Perhaps this was the best thing about the project:  she learned the hard way not to procrastinate, and got some good practice working well under pressure.)

Here is Alexa’s procedure, in her words: 

Procedure: People participating will:

1. Take their heart rate first thing in the morning.
2. Stand up and take it again, recording the data, to get a baseline heart rate increase (aka “delta”).
3. Exercise in some way (something aerobic) at some point during that day.
4. Half of the group will have something sugary within 35 minutes of completing exercise; the other half won’t.
5. The next day all will measure their pulse again, first lying down and then standing, and recording the data.

Results

Alexa ended up with ten test subjects, their ages spanning 12 to 50-something.  One subject was herself.  I participated twice:  I served as a with-sugar subject and then (a day or two later) as a without-sugar subject.

In the table below, a row shaded in yellow indicate a sugary snack was received within the glycogen window.  I’m subject #1 and #2.  Alexa is #3.  My brother Bryan is #7.  As you can see, getting a  snack resulted in much less of an increase in the delta; that is, subjects recovered better when they had a glycogen-window treat.

Here is the conclusion Alexa wrote: 

I have concluded that my hypothesis is correct, and having sugar after a workout helps you recover.  The percent change in delta was in every case greater in the people who had no sugar after exercising.  This shows that getting up was more of an effort for them, meaning that their muscles had not recovered to the extent that others had.  This is illustrated by the graph.  The red indicates people who did not have a sugary snack after exercising, and the blue indicates people who did.

Just look at this graph.  The data unequivocally support her thesis.

 Every responsible scientist notes certain caveats that could make the results less compelling, and Alexa is no exception: 

In one case, the data set was not complete, and without a proper baseline delta, I couldn’t calculate that person’s percent change.  If I were to redo the experiment, I would try harder to get that data in time.

Her final sentence is my favorite, with its unexpected twist at the end:

This evidence supporting my hypothesis could prove extremely beneficial in the area of after-sports snack debates.

Happily, Alexa’s findings guarantee that she (and her sister and I) will continue to get glycogen window treats after every serious workout.  For me as a parent, this is a win-win because this coveted sugary reward guarantees my daughters will continue to do serious workouts.  (Alexa will do a 45-minute trainer ride for just five or six jelly beans.)  It’s touching to see these kids racing into the kitchen after exercise, jockeying for position and throwing elbows, yelling “Glycogen!  Glycogen!”

A final note

I realize that neither Alexa nor I made any effort to prove that the lying-down versus standing heart rate delta actually means anything.  But hey, we can’t do it all.  If one of you would study that on your own and send me your results, that would be great.  Or better yet, get your kid to do it!