---
title: Fixing Concentration
date: 2010-07-13
techne: :rough
episteme: :broken
toc: true
---

I had serious problems concentrating. Typically, I rapidly lost focus or just
felt blah and unmotivated the whole day, often with a (minor to medium)
depression thrown in for good measure. Here's what I tried and how I finally
fixed it.

Diet and Drugs
==============

Caffeine
--------

<%= image("coffee_cat.jpg", "totally safe") %>

Caffeine drastically improves my concentration. It gives me an indiscriminate,
but very narrow focus. I can work for hours on basically anything, but find it
hard to change topics or decide what to do in the first place. But if I made
those decisions early on and arranged it so that I could work all day without
disturbances, then caffeine works really well. However, I noticed that this
concentration isn't "real" concentration, but rather a synthetic kind. It
*feels* similar, but instead of increasing my capacity it simply makes me ignore
my tiredness. So I sit for hours, thinking I'm doing useful work, when I really
only burn myself out and get really sloppy.

And there are more problems with caffeine. Most importantly, it reduces
serotonin and builds up a resistance. Because of the resistance, you either soon
get diminishing returns while still dealing with all of the downsides, or you
keep on increasing the dosage till you crash. I typically went the crash route.
Reduced serotonin levels lead to an unstable mood, depression, crankiness and
twitching muscles. All very sucky.

Furthermore, caffeine screws up my sleep. It improves some part of it, but makes
it less regenerative and harder to fall asleep. However, a sudden large dose has
the opposite effect. I fall asleep easily and dream very vividly, totally
cocaine-fueled. While I won't *feel* sleep-deprived, I will still *be* it.

Because of this, I'd strongly advice against caffeine. 

Animal Fat
----------

Despite what virtually all common wisdom is going to tell you, animal fat is
probably the most important thing for you to eat. (The second-most important are
bacteria[^bacteria]). As I'm a bit lazy, I'll do no convincing here and leave
this to the [Paleo][] crowd. (Ignore the libertarians. Just try it yourself for a
week and be amazed.) If you are an vegetarian, then you really shouldn't be one.
But the very least don't be a vegan, k?  Because then you are royally screwed
with regards to food.

[^bacteria]: I'm just gonna send you over to [Seth Roberts][Seth Bacteria] on
    this. I completely agree with him on everything about nutrition, having
    tested it all myself. Seriously, grab yourself some strong jogurt (not the
    sweet stuff, but the good, sour one), kefir or miso and eat it. Every day.
    You can thank me later when most of the problems you just lived with are
    gone.

Eating about 50-100g of butter refuels my energy almost completely in less than
20 minutes and greatly increases concentration. I perform better on all
intelligence and memory tests I used and find learning (especially with Anki)
to be easier and more enjoyable. I'm now reworking my diet to get in as much
as I can. I eat plenty of quark, butter (even raw) and as fatty a dinner as I
can get away with. 

Butter is my clear favorite. Very high-fat (>50%) cream, cheese or quark work as
well, but I don't like their taste too much. I do eat a lot of quark with about
15-20% fat content, though, and the occasional psychedelic cheese[^cheese].

When choosing butter, be sure to pick one from grass-fed cows. It contains high
levels of Omega-3, which also greatly increases all kinds of mental functions
and general health. A good and wide-spread brand is Kerrygold, although there
are often local alternatives as well.

[^cheese]: I'm not kidding here. I have no idea what exactly is causing it, but
    *something* in certain cheeses is clearly psychedelic. I get a trippy mood,
    incredibly wild dreams and even some mild hallucinations. I suspect the
    tryptophan, but it doesn't really fit the dosage and only seems to happen
    with cheese. Anyway, I recommend Danish Havarti.

The other component is protein. I'm not yet sure about a good base level, but I
found that eating a lot more meat and eggs also helps. Not as noticeable as with
fat (that is, the effect doesn't kick in right away), but it's certainly there.

Just as with animal fat, this doesn't apply to any plant source. Soy or flour
don't count as a good protein source because of all their other negative
effects. I know how much living without grains sucks, being a big fan of pizza
and tofu, but having collected data for months now, I can quite clearly say
that, at least for me, grains are never worth it. They screw up your digestion,
your mental performance and sap away your energy. That feeling of being totally
sated and need for a nap after dinner? That's the grains. It's not normal.
Eating dinner should have you *more* active than before, not *less*. 

Protein
-------

TODO

Sugar
-----

TODO

St. John's Wort 
----------------

St. John's Wort has gotten quite a bit of attention recently for being as least
as effective as all other depression medicine while generally having far less
side-effects.

So far, it has been very successful in both preventing my typical seasonal
depression beginning around November and in aborting an ongoing depression. I
also took it during my most recent caffeine withdrawal and I think it greatly
improved it, but I'm quite unwilling of doing another as a control.

I'm unsure if there is any positive effect beyond preventing the depression. I
had no noticeable side effects despite taking 900mg of it for months. As a test,
I stopped a week after my caffeine withdrawal was over, as my serotonin levels
were stable anyway and I suspected that St. John's Wort slightly decreases
motivation, at least when it is unnecessary.

Unfortunately, I had about a week of withdrawal, which mostly resulted in mild
mania, severe tiredness and low motivation. Still more pleasant than caffeine
withdrawal and certainly better (and shorter) than depression, which could last
for months. I would still advocate slowly reducing the dose instead to avoid
withdrawal.

After that, my motivation didn't really recover. My mood was stable and my sleep
returned to more normal levels, but I was still wasting a lot of time, as is
typical for depression. So I went back to my daily dose and am quite happy with
the result. I'm still trying to find the perfect dosage that is *just* beneath
the overdose when my muscles start twitching and I get nervous. About 600mg work
seems to work, though. I may try getting off again next spring, nonetheless,
after everything has stabilized more.

I suspect that 5-HTP works very well, too, although I never got to test it. I
failed to try it a few years back when it was still unregulated in Germany,
although I actually wanted to. It has a very good track record and I would
recommend trying it if St. John's Wort doesn't work for you. I might... obtain
it at some point, but so far, I am happy with St. John's Wort and see no
advantage in switching.

I have a relatively low opinion of most mainstream medication for depression,
though especially SSRIs may be worth a try. Personally, I also had good
short-term success with MAO inhibitors, but wouldn't recommend them because they
are so incompatible with many other drugs or important food. It's just too hard
to eat right and too easy to kill yourself on MAO inhibitors. Also, raised
serotonin levels and drugs don't mix at all, especially MDMA or DXM.
[Serotonin syndrome] isn't nice. It's a bit of a pity, though, but I can live
with that.

Tyrosine
--------

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Now comes the magic bullet. Seriously, Tyrosine is among my favorite chemicals
because it fixes a problem without creating new ones. That's quite rare.

Tyrosine is basically a building block for many important neurotransmitters,
most importantly the catecholamines (CATs) which are necessary for
concentration and proper motivation. If you can't get yourself to do something
you actually want to do (and enjoy), then you have a big CAT deficiency.
Caffeine is by far the most common "cure", but with all its side-effects, it
doesn't really fix the problem.

Tyrosine, for me, does. On the first day, I took 900mg in the morning and all
desire for caffeine was gone. I took another 900mg after dinner and kicked
caffeine immediately. Without any side-effects or withdrawal symptoms. *None*.
If you have ever done a caffeine withdrawal after heavy use, that might already
be the selling point right there. 

I now use 900mg every morning and occasionally 900mg after a nap if I have a
lazy day. I haven't yet experimented with higher doses (up to 4g) because I
don't wanna jinx it. Taking the powder orally (keeping it in your mouth a bit)
has a faster onset (and slight high), but taking capsules seems to have more or
less the same effect. I'm still experimenting with this, though.

I'm now completely caffeine free and have better long-term memory and a far more
usable level of concentration. Full-on caffeine mode is slightly stronger, but
so manic that it is utterly useless. Mental tunnel-vision is not a good thing,
you know. 

With tyrosine, however, my concentration is as it should be. I don't have to
trick myself into starting anything, but can just work right away. I only get
exhausted when I actually did something (and can refuel with sleep and butter)
and not at random times.

As a last piece of evidence, I'm just going to mention three numbers. They are
the number of daily SRS repetitions I could do per day before my brain would
shut down. A year ago, using almost no caffeine and no tyrosine, I managed about
80 reps, max. A few months ago, using caffeine, I got up to 150, maybe 200, but
that's a good day. 100 would be normal. The last two weeks, I did over 500 each
day without breaking a sweat. I got up to 800 after 3 hours of continuous work
and that's still not the maximum level. I just normally stop after an hour or so
because it gets too time-consuming or boring otherwise.

Tyrosine is, however, useless when your serotonin levels are bad. You can be as
concentrated as you want, if you are apathetic, nothing will get done. That's
why I consider St. John's Wort more important, but tyrosine is more noticeable
right away and ultimately the effect I was hoping for.

(Outdated, effect doesn't hold up long-term.)

Nicotine
--------

TODO

Magnesium
---------

I took about 150mg of magnesium for several months for my sore knee. While it
improved the pain, I noticed a minor drop in motivation while using it. I'm not
exactly sure why and I couldn't find many reports, but a friend who used a
similar dose of magnesium at the same time noticed the same thing. This seems to
happen most commonly with magnesium citrate.

Exercise
========

For simplicity's sake, there are two kinds of exercise: resistance training
(short, high strength, causes muscle growth) and long-term endurance training.
The first one is good for you, the second one neutral at best, harmful at worst.

I found endurance training to be utterly useless for concentration. As a
reference, I have a caved-in chest (about medium) and can't swim. For most of my
life, I had very poor fitness levels. During the summers of 2009 and 2010, I
spend 3 months each on jogging. I went from not being able to run for 10 seconds
to running for over 20 minutes without pause and overall jogging sessions of
about an hour every two days. This did not affect my mental capacities in any
way I could notice. It was enjoyable, but that's about it.

Resistance training, however, is completely awesome. January 2011 I started a
serious strength program, including weight gain (from 75kg to 85kg at 185cm of
height) and everything[^strength]. Besides obviously improving my fitness and
confidence, it also increased my energy levels and sleep. Highly recommended.

[^strength]: Specifically, I follow [Convict Conditioning][] and ensure at least
    150g of protein a day, mostly in the form of whole milk, meat and [quark][].
    I exercise twice per week (as prescribed) and level up about one step per
    month for each exercise.

Meditation
==========

Meditation works great, but has a serious disadvantage - it has a circular
dependency on its own effect. In other words, when you practice meditation
daily, it will greatly improve your discipline and concentration (among other
things, like bringing you enlightenment), but to meditate successfully, you need
discipline and concentration. You see how that's a problem?

The typical solution to that problem has been either trying for years until you
finally manage to bootstrap the process or going on retreats or entering a
monastry, for a week to a whole year, where you are forced to meditate and have
no alternative or escape route. It works, sure, but it's both kinda cruel and
very inconvenient. 

Because of that, meditation is more of a middle- to end-game strategy. I highly
recommend it, but you need a certain level of skill and concentration already to
really use it. If you can't get out of bed, then meditation ain't gonna work,
either. For introductions to meditation, I recommend going on a 10 day
[Vipassana][] retreat and [Shinzen Young's][Shinzen Young] videos.  

Sunlight
========

TODO
