Who Is The "Culprit": Thinking sad or Thinking Itself?

The Thinking Man sculpture at Musée Rodin in Paris (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last Monday (about 10 days ago) I had a major heart problem occurred unexpectedly. I was grateful that later on a fried came by to help me with some dinner. Before she left, my condition was still ongoing, so she went to CVS to see if there were any medicine could help to release rapid heart beating. She didn't get any, but couple of suggestions: drink some cold water and good sleep. About the cause, the pharmacist told her there are two: heart malfunction, and thinking too much unhappy or sad things.

What the pharmacist said must have reasons, but by my own experience  his words are not sufficient. First of all he didn't mention one of very important reason for heart malfunction: energy overdrawn. I believe fatigue can be the biggest burden to heart, that's why marathon competition is basically a "heart function competition". Second, about "thinking negative", I am not in complete agreement with this popular notion. My own experience tell me that it was not necessarily thinking "negative", but "thinking too much" that damaged my heart or other physical function, no matter thinking "positively" or "negatively". To be more specifically, it is logic type of thinking, problem solving thinking, memorizing, or any other type of LEFT SIDE brain works that overdraw my energy, caused many negative physical consequences. In fact, I enjoy thinking, which means I am happy when I doing such things, but I still got sick because my body simply cannot support my "happiness".

Why? I am not a scientist so I cannot put this in a profession analysis. But put my understanding in plain words, I think the reason is that our left side of brain is like brain muscle, when it works it would cost our body energy. Imagining our bodies would get trouble if we over exercised, same when we over exercised our left brain.

What would be the worst is thinking too much without physical exercise. I found a analogy here: a car motor and battery. Imagining battery is our brain (left brain), car motor is our body (or heart), if the car is being driving, motor is working, battery gets charged; but if we only turn on electric without turning motor on, letting battery working alone, battery dies very soon. So is our body function, if we keep physical exercise, our brains would get "charged", we can think more, and think sharper; but if we don't exercise, our brain function cannot work as well we want. Not only that, a sedentary life style - using too much brain but not body, we get into chronic health problems*.

At least this is how I got mine problems - during all earlier years of my life I exercised very little and thought too much. Now, since my body function is so weak that the damage of thinking has been more and more 'tangible". I found whenever my health was not in good shape, any serious reading or thinking would cause my heart beating irregularly (or any other type of malfunction) almost immediately. On the contrary, "thinking sad", or sadness alone never caused me any discernible physical problems. I remember when my mother died almost two years ago, I was sad, overwhelmingly, for several weeks, but I did not get any relapses, not even minor crashes. Not only that, strangely, shedding massive amount of tear even help me sleep, so my health condition was even more stable.

I understand that there is a difference between "thinking sad" and "feeling sad" - the former is more like a negative thinking, stress or depression, the later is more a emotion release, which is not necessarily a type "thinking".

So my point is simple: it is not necessarily "thinking sad" that make us ill, but thinking itself. Of course I am not against thinking at all, since it is one of my favorite "hobbies". I believe as long as we feel good, keep balance between physical and mental work, certain logic thinking is just like body exercise in gym, is healthy.




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*I have a person observation and thought on the strong anti-rationalist tendency existed in Chinese traditional culture. It is a common belief among Chinese people that "thinking" is harmful to physical health, and because of this belief, Chinese culture never encouraged logic reasoning, never developed true science. The reason of this, I believe partially is because of the Chinese people's belief, partially because of the overall health condition of Chinese population. Chinese civilization encouraged a sedentary life style from beginning, and this lifestyle weakened Chinese people's physical condition (I once said that all Chinese medicine is about Chronic fatigue syndrome). I am also more and more convinced that cultural ideology somehow related to the its people's physical condition, i.e., the physically stronger people, such as nomads, tend to be more adventurous, and physically less strong people, such as those agricultural type of people, are more reserved or conservative. While many ancient (and modern) Chinese people are right about the fact that thinking could be harmful to physical health, they failed to realized that physical strength can also enhance mental power.

An Unexpected Heart "Attack"

Yesterday morning, while everything felt perfect normal, my heart suddenly raced up. I first thought it was temporary, but it ended up a full 12 hours with rapid heart beating (120 - 130 per minute). I struggle cooked simple lunch, later evening a friend came to helped with dinner (how grateful! This was actually the first time someone came over taking care of me for all these years).
Even during my heart fast beating hours, I knew it was "temporary", because beside my heart, all other parts or function of my body felt normal. All my previous crash or relapse, even though my heart did not race so rapidly, my overall body function was "tangibly" weakened, and I could felt that it would not recover for a certain period of time. So, that why after last night sleep, I now feel quite normal again, except a little weakness overall.
However, the "attack" was serious, I was not able to stand up for over several seconds, because if I did so, my heart would rush to high rate which my body could not sustain. So all those 12 hours yesterday, I was kept horizontal, except when I had to get up, and whatever I had to do, I have to finish quick.
So because of the seriousness, I wonder what caused this heart-raid. I guess again, my improved condition probably made me a little careless. I remember previous day (Sunday) I had two classes, biked about 25 minutes, also, I did some lifting - I tried again to put my bike into my SUV. Plus, my diet was not good enough on Sunday. So probably all these added up, caused my Monday problem. Or my recently reading and writing also increase my energy use, which my body could not support without difficulty?
Anyway, I got to slow down again. It looks like, there still is a long way to go, for myself to be perfectly healthy.

An Update and A Brief Review On My Past

I have been doing steadily well for several months. No major crashes, and if I over exercised, the "consequence" usually last only for hours, or maximum couple of days, during which I could still take care of myself. I give myself a score about 80% (which is better than my last year 80% at the same time, because I started to score my energy more reservedly).
All my treatments are still diet, rest and exercise. I equipped with some multivitamin, which seems helpful, but overall, I know foods are the most essential.

Looking back, here is a list of the symptoms I had (or still have) for all past years, start from the most severe ones:

1. Heart malfunction (include beating too fast or too slow, or irregularly. Sometime they came slowly, sometime suddenly. One type of symptoms seems like heart muscle spasm, but I was not "scientifically" sure);
2. Shortness of breath (asthma like);
3. Stomach upset (extreme hunger/heartburn);
4. Extreme fatigue;
5. Constipation,
5. Arthritis;
6. Muscle sore and pain;
7. Brain fog and headache.

The heart problem exists since my early teen years and had been ignored by myself until my middle 30s - when it was too serious to be overlooked. Doctors could not find any solutions so I had to work on it on my own. Even though I found treatment: exercise (walking), but at the time (between about my age of 35-45) my tough fate didn't allow me to have full care which I desperately needed. These tough life experience worsened this heart problem, also brought me all the extra different symptoms, and together with my heart problem, they made negative circles, or chain reactions frequently by triggering each other, especially during the past a few years.

The negative circle is like this: my heart is desperately in need of exercise., and exercise needs energy, so, the less energy I have, the less I could exercise; and the less I exercise, the weaker my heart functions; the weaker my heart functions, the less I am capable of exercising. so on and on...
The positive circle is this: the better energy I have, the more exercise I could do, so my heart would function better; and the better my heart functions, the more exercise I could do, so the more energetic I feel.

The cause of the bad circle looks like my heart, as most doctors would suggest. But I know it is not (at least at this stage), because I had the heart problem since I was very young. I would say it is a "genetic" problem. If heart was my only problem, exercise would simply solve it. But as we can tell from the circle I describe above, in order to exercise, I need energy. So, the real cause is lack of ENERGY.

How can I get energy? Foods. We humans are not like plants who can MAKE energy by themselves, we need foods from which our energy transfer. All these years I had been doing terribly on my diet, so not only  my body lacked energy, but also in huge "debt". No doubt I had stomach problem (hunger) too. So during the past two years I was pretty much working on diet. I also realized that, not all foods are right for our body - different people, or people in different health condition need different type of foods. So what would be the right foods for me? This is another big lesson I learned during the years with huge price! The right answer is "listen to my body", instead of listen to doctors or nutrition professionals*. This, is a simple policy that I followed for these couple of years (I also found, that my body would send out clearer signal what it needs when my health condition is better. So when health is bad, it's also harder for me to know what I want to eat). And finally, I found I am closed to the positive circle.

Of course, I am not really there yet, but I see the light.




*Of course, I am not saying that we cannot take their words as suggestions. But strictly follow their advices is not the way I would recommend. I also understand that many people who have no ideas about what their bodies need will have to listen to experts.

Heart Muscle Weakness - the Root Problem of My Chronic Heath Condition?

I had a "perfect" day yesterday, did things more than I expected, and did not feel anything wrong until I was ready to sleep - when that familiar heart weakness (actually "malfunction" is a better word) occurred. And this morning I woke up with a "not much better" feeling, realized my only option was to cancel all my Saturday classes. But, the good thing is, with a sudden enlightenment that came from no where, I realized what exactly wrong with my heart - weak heart muscle!

The reason I believe that my heart muscle is the ultimate "culprit" (at least one of major one!) is, for so long time, I've been always struggling  with my limit of energy - in order to feel better, or get my heart stronger, I have to exercise, but if I exercise just a bit over the limit, I got serious trouble. And this limit seemed to be impossible to figure out, if I stopped at the time I really feel tired, it is no doubt too late. So I really should stop before I really feel tired, say 5 or 10 minutes before, but this is a real problem, because I would always feel good before tiredness really comes, how could I tell when is the "5 or 10 minutes before"? Yesterday was an example, I even felt quite good after all day's busy working. This morning, I suddenly thought about how muscle works - it gets sore NOT during exercise, but AFTER exercise. And this resembles exactly how my heart functions. So I think it must be the weak heart muscle who messed up so many things for so long.

Of course, I also have so many other issues than just heart muscle, but I do have my reason to believe this is a major one. For what I know there is no truly a treatment for this problem but exercise. So, as I understood long time ago, if I want live a healthy life, I must walk everyday!