Wednesday, September 14, 2011

To Test a Paleo Theory

I kind of want to start some regular series on this blog. This would normally be a good entry for one of them, I think. (I haven't fully planned them out.) But today it is true, and today I haven't figured it out yet.

Oh my god I am so high right now.

What did I do?

I've been eating various versions of paleolithic/archevore diets for about a year now. I decided to go out and gorge on some steamed rice to see what happens. (Specifically to distinguish between the effect on my system of glucose compared to galactose.)

Well...I'm so high relative to how I high I expected to get off rice. I'm drunk. I'm actually drunk. I cannot concentrate. I am entertained by making siren noises and randomly waving my arms. I'm lightheaded. (The rice feels like a solid object got lodged in my gut.) Lots of things are funny that shouldn't be, in a nervous giggle sort of way. I'm starting to get jittery. No wait, I am jittery - I'm starting to have to suppress tremors in my hands. The tremors are chaotic, not regular. The tremors make me want to spaz out. I want to punch something just because it would be a sharp movement. Come to think, it started at least by the time I requested the bill - I did so with a sharp, birdlike motion, out of character for me. (Though this turned out to be a better strategy.)

These tremors are actually entertaining. I'd prefer to keep watching my hands shake than keep writing this post. Okay now I'm actually waving my arms randomly. I didn't exactly decide to, it was just fun at the time. Well, not randomly, I'm doing the wave by myself.

On the plus side I am thinking faster. I'm having more ideas, of roughly my average quality. (Such as having it occur to me that this post might be worthwhile.) I don't want to stop talking. Anybody have a spare ear I can talk off?

Ow, my gut hurts. I'm not full, or satisfied, it just hurts and is obviously telling me stop and/or not to do that again.

Talking about it has changed the sensation, except that my gut still hurts. Not a lot, but it is not exactly subtle. (Or possibly the insulin spike is successfully neutralizing the glucose toxicity.) The things I described above sound fun instead of retarded.

I don't care if you want to read this or not. Screw you, basically. You should care, dammit! (Not really: that is the drugs talking.)

I'm high on rice!

Kids, to starch, just say no.

Will update if there's a second wave. Ow, my gut's getting worse. Or right now, I guess.

Now I'm intentionally doing the wave by myself to see if it is fun. It is making me dizzy and lightheaded. And yes it is. Though that might be because, "Heh, I'm doing the wave by myself, AND I"M NOT EMBARRASSED TO ADMIT IT!" So basically, screw you guys, again.

Yes the spontaneous desire to do the wave has gone, but others have replaced it. But don't worry, you wouldn't want to do any of them in public either. Right now, I would find it exciting to be in public. I'm high, screw you.

The idea of embarrassing myself because 'screw you' is getting more appealing. Oh god I'm legitimately considering going outside and actually doing it. It's raining. Apparently I don't much care. (I won't actually do it; I do retain reasoning capacity.)

Gut hurts less, but feels more funny. Ooh, if I move wrong I get a sharp pain, not the usual dull kind. Ah, I'm starting to really feel the remaining hunger; it's softening the ache but now I'm hungry. It's kind of hard to tell where the ache because ow starts and the hunger begins; the hunger feels a bit sick. Yeah now I'm a little nauseous.

I recognize all these sensations from when I ate staple carbs. The

Ah, calm begins to return. A trend or a cycle?
As I begin to come down, it wasn't so much that I enjoyed being weird but that I enjoyed the idea of wanting to be weird, and actually doing it reinforced the idea that I actually wanted to. The 'fun' sensation could easily just be a 'lots of energy' sensation.

Ow, my gut hurts. I'm beginning to spontaneously wonder whether you care.
My gut objects. It definitely thinks you should care.

Sitting up straight is not a good idea, I found. Okay, yeah, I'm not even going to test that. Gut, if you want me hunched the fuck over, you can go right ahead. Back, you're just gonna have to deal with it.

I feel like I need to burp. I don't think I do. Still feeling contradictory hunger and don't-eat-there's-a-lump-in-the-way sensations. (For lack of a better term.) Definitely want to eat but can't.

Ooh, the energy feeling is having a second wind. Jitters are gone - I can evoke them but I don't have to suppress them.

Hey hunger, how do you feel about rice? It would work, apparently.
Gut objects to the idea.
Yeah, that's a better description of hungry-but-can't-eat.

Rice-induced hunger is familiar from my cereal days. It's like hunger mixed with that jittery energy feeling from earlier. I'd forgotten I used to feel like that.

Hmm, new sensation. Err, a staring sensation. Neck's a bit jittery, brain feels...um...yeah. It feels...um....I think? Yeah. Stuff. It feels like what you feel like when you produce that kind of thing. Airy, but full of stuffing.

Spontaneous impulse to grin like a mad clown. To grin as such, say, "Hi guys, I'm high! Whee! Or aaaaaagh! Something!"

Rice. This is what rice is doing to you; you just think it is normal. Go on, just try it the other way, see what the difference is.

I took a large dose to accentuate the symptoms for easy analysis. (See how different that sentence is from when I didn't care?) While indeed it may not be scale independent, the reasonable assumption is dose-response.

You rely less than totally on starch, and have some resistance from chronic exposure. (Also my metabolism may be slightly broken from chronic insulin toxicity.) But fact is you probably feel all these things at a low level.

Which is annoying. I like decaf coffee with table cream. Table cream has way, way too much glucose in it, and the coffee tastes simultaneously bitter and empty without it. Empty like chewing on glass.

You'd think 'waving my arms is fun' would be a nice state. Easily entertained means cheap entertainment which means lots of wealth. I would certainly think so...until now.
No, it is way more comfortable not being high. Relaxed, satisfying. Jittery is definitely bad. I would never have realized I was jittery, nor that I didn't have to be, if I hadn't gone paleo. (I intuitively realized this long before I consciously realized it.)

Sober is, "I can move if I want to." Sugar high is, "I have to move....!"

Oh god now I'm stiff. My joints normally don't crack. Both shoulders just (slightly) cracked simultaneously.

My muscles...pre-ache. It doesn't actually hurt, but it has all the other parts of an ache. If it got worse it would definitely hurt.

It's sort of like the non-hurt ache from being sleepy or having worked out, but noticeably different. It's unmistakeably a sugar-ache not a tired ache. It feels...flatter? I feel a bit jellified. It is unsatisfying, unlike a workout ache. It doesn't lead to the impulse to lie down like a sleepy ache.

But overall is definitely 'ow.' Yeah: it's like what I imagine waking up from a phaser set to stun is like. I have a sensation of having been hit by something. It is inherently unpleasant. (Should you care? I'm not sure...)

Ooh, more airy brain fog. Hold up a minute - I'm just going to watch it pass.

Spontaneous thought: hey guys, I'm writing.

That is definitely a curtain.

Yup, sure is a curtain.

Did you know it is brown? Sort of a light brown. It's got floral crap on it. (I didn't pick it.)

Hey impulses, do you care that they don't care? Not so much, eh? Just want me to tell them that my curtains are brown, then? You do. I see.

I have a nintendo DS. It is a good game. (Dude, it isn't a game.) Wheeeeee....

I like peanuts. They are tasty. Did you know? I bet...something.

The key here is I could stop, but these urges aren't normal. Which reminds me my gut hurts. I want to see what they are, perhaps characterize them.

I have a potato. That was a lie. You should like potatoes. Potatoes are brown. Not brown like the curtains. Yes they are. No they're not.

My hands are pre-tingling. So pins and needles without the actual tingles. The joints are stiff. Arthritis-y, in fact. They're stuttering - getting caught and releasing. Also mild throbbing in all ten fingers. Not apparently in time to my heartbeat, so that's weird. The finger throbbing is also not synced across fingers.

My stomach feels sugary. That's really just the succinct way to put it - sugary. Starch-staple hunger feels sugary. Though it currently doesn't have that burning sensation table sugar has, so non-burny sugar. Instead it has an element of the feeling of breathing in, except at the stomach.

Ooh I can sit up again, mostly.

The muscle ache is on the cusp of actually hurting. Ah, and there's the rush of blood to the head, a headache precursor.

It's like a mild flu case. Muscles don't actually quite ache, head doesn't actually quite hurt, but they're clearly flirting with the idea.

Hands feel slightly alien. If I wave them, they got just a smidge further than I told them to. They're surprising me...just a bit.

You know when you black out, your vision narrows, and your head feels like it is filling with blood? Expanding a bit, I think is a good analogy? My head's gone half a step down that road and then stopped. I can easily induce it to go further, though it settles back.

Yeah, confirmed I'm feeling muscle fatigue, but in a different way from workouts and sleepiness. Simultaneously, it is late enough I should be getting yawny and eyelid-droopy and I'm not.

Muscles unexpectedly fatigued, even though I know they're fatigued. I rested and then it was worse when I moved again.

Spontaneously tempted to deliberately clench my face muscles, inducing the pre-headache to touch its peak. (Presumably to force the correction harder? Why is this urge spontaneous?)

Muscles surprisingly fatigued again.

Right, okay, that should be enough. I think. 'Ow my stomach' is really the point here. Though I have a meta-point that mindfulness can show up things you never expected, even when applied to raw physical sensations.

Okay, yeah. Never, ever, ever doing that again. You can stop punishing me now, body, I get the point.

My metabolism is fast enough that I have the hangover from poisons the same night.

I wonder if you care how bad it gets. If you do, I should briefly update at the nadir. I probably won't.

For science and stuff. Pretend I said that excitedly. This has been a great success, as an adventure. When the hangover's gone, I will be pretty excited.

Huh, the hangover has an element that feels kind of home-y. Like going to sleep in my own bed.

Right, yes, enough logging. Alrenous. Stop. Stop --- yeah. Stop.
Brain fog rolling in.
Stop.

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