I get out your bloody champs. It's the project that's You's Tiffany and Cook over there in her her rabbit hole chewing on a fucking carrot. I'm not even being funny. I'm not even being metaphoric. It's not an analogy. It's literal, like having fucking bugs. Bunny on the podcast and when I got on, she was just crunching and chomping. What are you? Why are you eating a raw carrot?
Because I didn't want to feel like for the next half an hour, I deep down I wanted to punch you and David in the face, so I thought I'd take the edge off with a carrot.
Why is the lady allowed to say that towards two men? But if a man said that towards two women, I'd be in trouble.
It's probably probably running out on it.
The gispo goialispaw was a joke. We know she, we know God here, oh god. It was a rhetorical question.
Everyone.
I didn't really mean it. There's no there's nothing in it. Don't send you an email. But Gilespo is going to answer it anyway. Fuck, that's the problem you have him on. You ask any question there's a fucking answer. Come on, what is it?
Testosterone of course is the answer. Yeah, well, because because the version of humans that has the testosterone supplement can be quite dangerous, and so it has to have rules around it.
I don't want to point out that there's a female on the show that's probably got more testosterone than you, Gilespo.
So a, you know, are you whized honestly? Because yeah, she's fit and works out on everything, But that doesn't mean she's got more testosterone. No, that is well, well not unless she's taking extra of course.
No, No, I don't think.
I don't think versions there. I don't know.
I don't think there's anything on board that's untoward. I don't think. I don't think Wada are going to be knocking on her bloody door anytime on a rabbit hole anytime soon. You should ask Gillespo what is the what is the underlying mechanism of your your hangariness, tiff, your pensity to want to punch someone in the face when you can't get a carrot or similar?
Yeah, David, why is hungry such a big emotion for me?
Huh, Well, it's probably to do with the whole reward cycle thing, So it's you know, the purpose of our dopamine system is to make as seek useful rewards, and one of the most basic useful rewards is food. So if you're genuinely hungry, then your dopamine system is firing up to force you to get food and respond to that hunger. So you are on edge. Dopamine Remember, its function is to put you on edge, make you more focused, make your muscles work better, make you more determined to
achieve the rewards. So that's probably what you're experiencing.
Wow, I am carrot in hand.
Well, a carrot in hand? Did the carrot help? I feel like a carrot's not particularly helpful?
Look, and it did. But it's better than an apple. If I eat an apple when I'm hungry, it makes me makes you hungrier. Great, Yeah.
You know?
Or do you want to know why? Yes, So.
Get comfortable everyone, No.
This one's a quick one. So fructose, which is the primary sugar in an apple, is it causes It fires the hunger system, so it fires the appetite. Its function is to make us want to eat more. So, from an evolutionary perspective, if we've got something sweet, it was usually the thing we shoved in our mouth first because it's sweet. We like sweet things, and it actually makes us hungrier and gets our appetite system going and ready
for real food. So that's why. And a lot of people will tell you that, a lot of people will say, if I'm hungry, the worst thing in the world I can eat is an apple, because as soon as I do, I'm even hungrier. Now, mind you, karras probably not a great solution because it's got some fructose in it too, but nowhere near the quantities of of something like an apple.
I normally eat my apples and pears with peanut butter, with nut butter on them, and Harps teased me the other day when I said that they are delicious.
My sister in law did that too, and I thought she was totally insane because she take she'd slice a bit of apple off and then put peanut butter on it, and I thought she was insane till I tried it. It was really nice, so good.
Well, I think what that does too, it because you're putting the fat with the sugar at low is what they call I don't know if they still use that term, but glycemic load. So it doesn't create such an insulin response, so you probably do you get hanged? Are you if you have that and some nut butter, are you satisfied after that or do you still want more?
Yeah?
No, that's why I have it.
And the fat. The fat is what what he needs.
Gillespo, you were telling us, I don't know if you want to share this, but fuck it, I'm opening the door. You were telling us before we press the record button that it's very, very differ dificult for people who are vegans and eat only kind of raw vegan diets, which there are not a lot, but there are people that it's almost impossible enough for them, impossible for them to get enough calories eating that way to survive.
Based. Yeah, I'm a little reluctant to talk about this too much because it's a vague memory of a study I read as I was reading about something else, but I'm pretty sure that's what it said, which is a raw food diet cannot supply sufficient calories to keep an
adult human alive. So and the only sort of asterisk on that is that unless you include a lot of raw foods that have a lot of fat in them, like avocados and in that particular study, I think they observed that a large percentage, very large percentage of the diet of those people who were doing this successfully or at least managing to stay alive. I guess we're people who were doing it with a large amount of avocado in it.
I've got a question, when did David, When did humans start cooking food cooking meat?
At the transition? Well, you know, I wasn't there, but I was, Oh, Craig was, Yeah, I thought it might have been, but I didn't want to say anything. At the transition from the tree hanging version of us, well, you know, it's wrong to say version of us because we're a separate species. But in the evolutionary transition from generally being in jungles and swinging around in trees into the grassland version, where there were no trees and things to do, where we had to do some outside the
body processing of our food supply. And so what we found is that we could get by with a lot less intestine if we process the food before we put it in our mouths, which is what cooking is. So that's breaking the food down using fire before we put it into our body. So we need a lot less intestine to do that, and what we save in intestine we make up for in brains. So there's a strong theory that the reason we were able to grow such large brains and be what we are is because of fire.
Because we discovered that the fire was bloody handy in predigesting food, and if we predigested it, we didn't need anywhere near as much a testine and we could invest those resources in growing brain instead of gut.
So the answer to your question tip is nine thirty eight.
The question when I don't know the exact time, but sometime between the transition between chimpionzee like versions of us and US versions of us.
Did you see that they just recently David pushed the modern Homo sapient timeline back by two hundred thousand years from three hundred thousand to half a million, Like, I didn't see that, but yeah, what they call modern Homo sapiens.
Yeah, that was the big question is what we did to all our cousins, because we weren't the only species of human, not by a long shot. So Neanderthals were a separate species, for example, but there were others. And how you think it's robusters, that's me yep. So the big question is what do we do to them? Because we probably did something to them, so I.
Think we all know what we did to them. That's okay, it's and we haven't stopped doing that to each other. By the way, we're.
The only species of humans left, so there could have been other species. Well, there were other species and they didn't survive and we did, which makes a casta finger suspicion in our direction.
I suspect that's an interesting question, though, Tiff. It is it is? And how long I should know this? But you'll definitely know because you're the smartest bloke on the show. Agriculture What is that like ten thousand years old? About ten thousand? Yeah, it's what allowed.
Us to live in groups larger than about one hundred and fifty because suddenly we could not have to we didn't have to move to the food. We kept the food and we created it, and then we could have large groups of humans around where we created the food.
So we noticed that the grasses and so on could be you know, you can grow fields of the things and take the grains from them and then feed large amounts of people, so which necessitated us evolving the capacity to work well with other strangers, which is we've talked about many, many times on the show, which is how we evolved empathy, and why we evolved empathy is we have to be able to trust other humans.
Le'd be fascinating, all right, now, that's not what we're talking about today. But beautiful, beautiful intro. We are going to chat today. I don't even know why, but about transcranial electrical stimulation. I have a really fundamental and I say basic fundamental understanding of what that is and why it's used. But why are we chatting about that? Why are your interest in that?
Because the t GA in Australia has recently approved that. I think I didn't get a chance to look up this article before I came on here, but I think this is the case in the last few weeks or so for treatment of depression. And this is the so just for people who are not quite sure what this is. This is they look like a skull cap sort of a thing. Put it on your head for about twenty minutes a day, passes an electric current into various bits
of your brain. And this is not the kind you know In one flock flew over the cokoo's nest where you're getting a little bitt of me or anything. This is very very mild electrical current, and if it's done right, it has been shown to produce improvement in symptoms associated
with depression. And this is in double blind trials where this is the kind of thing you can try pretty effectively, which is that you can give someone a cap to put on their head that makes it feel like they're getting electrical stimulation, but they're not, and so they don't know if they're getting it. You don't know if they're
getting it, the researchers don't know. It's all double blinded and you can measure the utcomes and so there have been studies done in this, quite recent studies in it that have shown that it can improve symptoms associated with anxiety, depression, and even addiction. So there's a recent study done on
marijuana addiction. Long term marijuana addiction, which is off marijuana is often prescribed for pain relief, increasingly so, and the hidden story there is that there's often a significant risk of addiction and getting people off the marijuana addiction once it started it can be very very difficult, and there have been studies using this kind of technology to essentially break the addiction, reduce the cravings, improve sleep, outcomes, improve anxiety,
are comes, improved withdrawal symptoms, all of those kinds of things. So this is an interesting technology. The more interesting bit from my perspective is why why does this work? What is it doing in the brain that is causing this to have this effect? Because it's an interesting effect. If you look at the studies on this and say, Okay, what are they saying are the outcomes from this? It is very very similar to the kinds of outcomes that we've talked about before, where I said what you need
to do is find something to increase your focus. So if you are addicted to something, if you're suffering anxiety, for suffering depression, you need to find something to increase your focus. And so remember we've talked about you could do, you know, take up playing a musical instrument, you know, as something that gets you into that flow state where
you are increasing focus. And if I think mentioned you know, one of the big ones that's historically been there is meditation and those sorts of things which achieve the same sort of thing which is putting you into a state where you are entirely focused on just one thing. So the outcomes from studies that show those sorts of things are very, very similar to the artcomes that we're seeing for these electrical stimulation studies. And so the big and
obvious question is how is it doing it? And the answer is, according to a couple of recent papers on this, is it's showing it's been shown to stimulate dopamine. So this electrical stimulation is causing dopamine stimulation in the right parts of the brain where it's applied in the right way, it's causing dopamine stimulation. So it's an artificial way of inducing focus. So yeah, we could do a little experiment on Tiff, because you know she's when she's craving food
and it's making her angry. You could stimulate dopamine by putting one of these things on her head and see if the cravings go away, and according to the studies, there's a good chance they would. So that's the kind of thing we're talking about, which is an artificial stimulation of dopamine, which is of course the way everyone is treating ADHD now. So ADHD is artificial, is treated with artificial stimulation dopamine using drugs, So we know how to
stimulate dopamine very very easily. You give people a stimulant drug, you know, like ADHD medication or cocaine or any other stimulant. Not sorry, not advocating giving cocaine into ADHD kids, but I'm just saying that the mechanism is the same. And so the interesting thing here is you're achieving that kind of result, but not with a drug and also not with any herbal gerbil you know, prayer mat or anything.
You're doing it with a piece of technology. Now the interesting question there is is that better Is that a better way to do this than using a drug or using something else that stimulates over I mean, so people have been able to self treat and self medicate all of these symptoms themselves by giving themselves a stimulant like smoking.
So people you know they're suffering stress or suffering cravings, that they know that smoking is a solution, or drinking is a solution, or getting on insta is a solution, or playing a video game is a solution, because all of those things stimulate dopamine. Eating a carrot or eating a carrot, desiring the carrot is what stimulates the dopamine. The eating of it is the satisfaction of it. So the interesting question there is, Okay, so we know we
can this is no miracle. We can stimulate dopamine any number of ways. Why should this thing be regarded as anything more special? Well, because the study seemed to be suggesting this is all like the for what of a better term natural stimulation of dopamine that you get from finding something puts you in a state of flow. So it's not high enough and harsh enough to become addictive in its own right. You're not going to become addicted
to putting the cap on twenty minutes to day. You are, in essence using it as methadine, a methadone for other addictions, which is is giving you enough of a dopamine hit to satisfy the cravings and ap to you going after the other addiction and start to address the symptoms like depression and sleep interruption and anxiety and so on. But it isn't strong enough that they're finding people are becoming addicted to this simulation.
Now you're making me want to go and buy one. I'm just having a little bit of a look here on I wonder if you can find me one of those on craigslist. Iff uses and research. This is AI, everybody, so take it with a grain of salt. Cognitive enhancement, memory, learning, problem solving, improved mental health being studied for depression, addiction, anxiety. As David was talking about rehab, stroke, recovery, motor learning, pain and fatigue, some trials in chronic pain and fatigue syndromes.
That's interesting and in terms of safety, generally considered safe when done properly. Mild tingling, itching or readiness, blah blah blah, rare, rare symptoms, headache, dizziness, long term effects still being studied. But it seems to I mean, we're not again everyone, as David always says, we're not advising or recommending, We're
just having a chat about it. But yeah, I wonder like, is it something that needs to be your understanding anyway, David, that it needs to be used consistently or use it for a period of time and then put it back in the cupboard.
Well, I guess it depends how your mileage may vary. By the way, while you were blathering on there, I did check the TGA.
Hey, why when I'm sharing, am I blathering.
On because you were just reading an AI answer.
I was sharing some.
Anyway while you were reading that AI answer.
Back in therapy. You know what I'm going to need. I'm going to need some transcrani electrical stimulation from a depression from hanging out with that bastard every two weeks.
Possibly, yeah, anyway, Yes, the TGA did to prove it last two weeks ago. So Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration has approved for conditions like depression and chronic pain.
And so would who would prescribe that? Like, not like a psychiatrist, a GP, who like, if somebody's got issues, who's going to make that decision or prescribe or recommend that?
Well, I suspect the first off, as with anything medical,
would would be your GP. So they're your primary health care provider, so you know, and i'd recommend anyone listening to this who's thinking, Oh, I wouldn't mind giving that a try first first porter call, talk to your GP about it, you know, don't I don't know how easy these things are to buy, you know, or even how you get access to them, but they are approved for certain uses in Australia and that's interesting because it's new, and more interesting to me because it's a completely different
way of approaching this. The only other time I've seen technology used as a cure for depression or anxiety is a group in the United States that came out last year and they got the equivalent of TGA approved approval in the United States on what it was, essentially a video game. And I think we may have even talked about it.
I vaguely remember a brief chat about that.
Yeah, yeah, and and my point at the time was, well, of course video games stimulate overman, so you would imagine that that would work. This first time anyone had ever gotten therapeutic approval for the use of a video game. The problem with a video game as a solution here is that it's like saying, my solution to my cocaine addiction is more cocaine. And the problem, by the way, it's an ad running around at the moment where they say guys suffering from nicotine cravings and they call it
that on the ad. I can't remember this, so I think the ads for nicorettes suffering for nicotine craving and they say the solution is nicotine.
I know what that's dawn on me. I'm like, he's got yeah, so let's give him nicotine to stop the nicotine crave.
That's right. Do want to add for someone who's adicted to cocaine and say, well, the solution is you need some more cocaine. So guess what, we've got some for you.
We've got cocaine chewing gum or cocaine patches for you.
Yeah. So, And that's the problem is, that's why these things are not solutions. It's why drinking is not a solution to alcoholism, even though it does make you feel better immediately and does remove most of the symptoms because you are stimulating dopamine, which will help the problem is that usually you're stimulating it too high. You raise the delta foss B threshold. Remember that's the resistance they've offered dopamine, and every time you raise it, you make it harder
to break it next time. The interesting thing about this is this seems like it might be soft enough and slow enough that it isn't quite reaching enough of a threshold to do that, and we used over time may well reduce those symptoms and bring you back down to a more normal level, which is after all what I advocate people do without drugs anyway, which is find that flow state, find that focus state that allows you to
do it. And I guess this is the ozempic of mental health here in that if you can't be bothered doing that, then maybe there's a shortcut here if you.
Had your hand up three minutes ago and David just plow.
Just ignore it. You know why, Tiff, because I have on my screen Craig has made it. I'm sure this is something he's done. It's made, He's made him the feature thing in the So you're just a little icon up in the corner for me, How on.
Earth am I blamed for what's going on on your computering points?
Land?
If what's your question for.
I would interested how what's his name? How closely related or not? This process is to electric electroconvulsive therapy.
Not really, not really, not not really. So this is very low voltages and applied to very specific parts of the brain that are known to be receptive to this. So you can't just get out some batteries and you know, wire them up to your brain. Craig was going to hook himself up to a car battery.
I need some bloody cranial stimulation, some cognitive enhancement.
So this is this is quite when you look at the studies on this and look at the various I mean, there's several different types of it, but look at the way they've been studying and the type they've used and how they've used it. It's really very precise stuff. So it's and it's very low voltage. So this is this is intended to be. And that's why in that AI you were reading out before, Craig, they were saying, you know, in terms of harm, there's no real evidence of harm from this.
Now now he's listening to the AI. A minute ago it was bullshit, and now he's fucking referencing it. I tell you what. But I wonder, David, now that this has been approved, I wonder what practically that means. I wonder if that's going to be I wonder if we'll see that being used, you know, more and more to treat people with these issues.
The interesting bit, and this is the bit I'm really interested in, and I've seen some preliminary work in this is the idea that perhaps this could be used for treatment of ADHD, which remember from our discussions, you know, along the way here, ADHD is the sort of the first stop on the highway to anxiety and depression as a result of your dopemine levels being too low because of addiction and stress. And this should be a reasonable solution to that, certainly a more reasonable solution than the
giving kids drugs. If it works. I think it probably should, just theoretically, and so other people are certainly thinking along those lines as well, because there are trials underway in that respect.
Well, I will be interested to see what happens. Tip would you do it?
If you google it as we speak? Now? How much?
If you can get a home? See if you can get a home kid, jump start your brain off your motorbike. I'll tell you what.
For it now.
Well that's interesting, Well, mate, I think we're done. There was anything else, anything else going on before you go anything on planet Gillespie. That's bloody going off like a frog in a sock.
Do we look there? I'm setting up in websit here. This is it? You know how you're always tell me how I wish at marketing and you're right.
Well, yeah you are.
Well I've sorted that. Well, I'm on the way to sorting that out and so from now on, all people have to remember is my name. So you just go to David Gillespie dot org and you'll see links to all the articles that we talk about, and as a special feature, I'm even going to put links to these chats on that website.
Shit, well, it's about time you dragged yourself out of the bloody nineteen seventies and got yourself, you know, an electronic brochure, a front of housefo you dot org tip? What have you discovered? Have you got a home kid yet?
Cool? Eighteen hundred and I'll have one in the mail.
What is it? Read out? What you're looking at?
Well, now I'm asking chatters about it because I like chatters.
To tell me, oh no, don't ask chatters. All right, that'll do, Doctor Gillespie. We appreciate. We'll say goodbye affair, but mate, thanks for the chat. Always always good to catch up.
Good to chat