I send out a newsletter (at maximum once per week) with excerpts from content that I’ve been reading, watching, and listening to, along with notes and key takeaways. If you’d like to subscribe, send me an email at contact@sundaynewsletter.com with the subject line: “add me to the list”
If you’d like to check out the newsletters from the past, visit sundaynewsletter.com
You can find examples of content from past editions of the newsletter included below:
Recommended Reading: Probing the Enigma of Multiple Personality (Published in the New York Times)
Notes:
This might just be the most mind blowing article I have ever read. I think it should be required reading for every medical student.
It discusses cases of patients with multiple personalities. These personalities alternatively gain control over a single body.
When a given personality is in control, the body may exhibit certain reactions that are not present when another personality is in control.
Excerpts:
“When Timmy drinks orange juice, Timmy has no problem. But Timmy is just one of close to a dozen personalities who alternate control over a patient with multiple personality disorder. And if those other personalities drink orange juice, the result is a case of hives. The hives occur even if Timmy drinks orange juice and another personality appears while the juice is still being digested. What’s more, if Timmy comes back while the allergic reaction is present, the hives will cease immediately, and the water filled blisters begin to subside.”
“In people with multiple personalities, there is a strong psychological separation between each sub-personality: each will often have his own name and age, and often some specific abilities and memories. Frequently, for example, personalities will differ in handwriting, artistic talent, or even knowledge of foreign languages.”
“For more than a century, clinicians have reported isolated cases of dramatic biological changes in people with multiple personalities as they switched from one to the other. These include the abrupt appearance and disappearance of rashes, welts, scars and other tissue wounds; switches in handwriting and handedness; epilepsy, allergies, and colorblindness that strike only when a given personality is in control of the body.”
Recommended Reading: Excerpt from Rhonda Patrick’s E Book
Early life bacterial exposures influence immune health
“The skin microbiota forms the body’s first line of defense against pathogens and external threats. Changes in environmental exposures can drive bacterial dysbiosis, a condition in which the overall makeup of the skin microbiota is altered. Bacterial dysbiosis is associated with allergies and sensitivities. A new study suggests that early life exposure to Acinetobacter bacteria, which are ubiquitous in the environment and commonly found in soil, provides protection against inflammatory disorders and allergies.
The study was conducted among 180 children living in Karelia, a region that straddles the geopolitical borders of Finland and Russia. Whereas the Finnish side of Karelia is modernized, the Russian side has maintained a traditional lifestyle that involves farming and outdoor work. The children from the two regions were examined for symptoms of allergies and sensitivities to common allergens when they were between the ages of 7 and 11 years and again when they were between the ages of 15 and 20 years. Samples of the children’s skin and nasal microbiota were collected for analysis.
The prevalence of allergies and allergen sensitivities was 3- to 10-fold higher among Finnish children, compared to Russian children. In addition, Russian children rarely exhibited hay fever or peanut sensitivity. Generally, these findings were replicated at the 10-year follow-up examination. The children’s skin and nasal microbiota demonstrated notable differences. In particular, the Russian children’s microbiota had a diverse, abundant population of Acinetobacter bacteria. These findings suggest that early life exposures modulate the risk of developing allergies and allergen sensitivities later in life.”
Notes:
In my mind, this is fantastic evidence to support the “hygiene hypothesis,” and may provide a partial explanation for why rates of allergies have been skyrocketing in the past couple decades.
Recommended Reading: When The Evidence Says No But Doctors Say Yes
Excerpts:
“In a 2013 study, a dozen doctors from around the country examined all 363 articles published in The New England Journal of Medicine over a decade — 2001 through 2010 — that tested a current clinical practice, from the use of antibiotics to treat people with persistent Lyme disease symptoms (didn’t help) to the use of specialized sponges for preventing infections in patients having colorectal surgery (caused more infections). Their results, published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, found 146 studies that proved or strongly suggested that a current standard practice either had no benefit at all or was inferior to the practice it replaced; 138 articles supported the efficacy of an existing practice, and the remaining 79 were deemed inconclusive.”
In a 2012, research was conducted to determine how stent implantation stacked up against other methods of cardiovascular treatment. The conclusion of this research was that putting stents into stable patients seem to provide absolutely no protection from heart attacks.
“A meta-analysis of sleep-aid drugs in older adults found that for every 13 people who took a sedative, like Ambien, one had improved sleep — about 25 minutes per night on average — while one in six experienced a negative side effect, with the most serious being increased risk for car accidents.”
Excerpt from Breath: The New Science Of A Lost Art, by James Nestor
“”We took in psychotic people, people no one else wanted to deal with, people for whom many medicines weren’t working,” said Dr. James Eyerman, a psychiatrist who has used this therapy in his practice for the past 30 years.
From 1989 to 2001, Eyerman led more than 11,000 patients at Saint Anthony’s Medical Center in Saint Louis through Holotropic Breathwork. He documented the experiences of 482 manic depressives, schizophrenics, and others, and found that the therapy had significant and lasting benefits. A 14 year old who tried to slit his own throat breathed a few Holotropic breaths and sailed off into an altered state of “pure consciousness.” A 31 year old woman addicted to several drugs had an out of body experience and, afterward, sobered up and went on to lead a 12 step program. Eyerman saw thousands of similar transformations and reported no adverse reactions or side effects.
“These patients would get pretty wild, but it worked for them,” he told me. “It worked incredibly well, and the hospital staff just couldn’t figure out why.”
Notes:
Recently, a friend and I were discussing our experiences with both ayahuasca and Holotropic Breathwork. He mentioned that he had tried Holotropic Breathwork several years prior to working with ayahuasca and it had no noticeable effects. (I’ve also noticed this to be the case with about 1 out of 10 people who I’ve breathed with in group HB sessions.) However, after working with the ayahuasca, he was consistently able to enter into an altered state within minutes of beginning this form of breathing. Food for thought.
Recommended Reading: The Two Types of Knowledge: The Max Planck/Chauffeur Test
Excerpts:
“Charlie Munger, the billionaire business partner of Warren Buffett, frequently tells the story below to illustrate how to distinguish between the two types of knowledge: real knowledge and pretend knowledge.”
“I frequently tell the apocryphal story about how Max Planck, after he won the Nobel Prize, went around Germany giving the same standard lecture on the new quantum mechanics. Over time, his chauffeur memorized the lecture and said, “Would you mind, Professor Planck, because it’s so boring to stay in our routine. [What if] I gave the lecture in Munich and you just sat in front wearing my chauffeur’s hat?” Planck said, “Why not?” And the chauffeur got up and gave this long lecture on quantum mechanics. After which a physics professor stood up and asked a perfectly ghastly question. The speaker said, “Well I’m surprised that in an advanced city like Munich I get such an elementary question. I’m going to ask my chauffeur to reply.””
“In this world we have two kinds of knowledge. One is Planck knowledge, the people who really know. They’ve paid the dues, they have the aptitude. And then we’ve got chauffeur knowledge. They’ve learned the talk. They may have a big head of hair, they may have fine temper in the voice, they’ll make a hell of an impression. But in the end, all they have is chauffeur knowledge. I think I’ve just described practically every politician in the United States.”
Organization I’ve been learning about: The University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies
Excerpt from their website:
“Founded in 1967 by Dr. Ian Stevenson, the UVA Division of Perceptual Studies (UVA DOPS) is a highly productive university-based research group devoted to the investigation of phenomena that challenge mainstream scientific paradigms regarding the nature of human consciousness. DOPS researchers objectively document and carefully analyze data collected regarding extraordinary human experiences.”
“The DOPS core research mission is the rigorous evaluation of empirical evidence for exceptional human experiences and capacities that bear on whether mind and brain are distinct and separable and whether consciousness survives physical death.”
Note:
If you’d like to learn more about what the key people in the Department of Perceptual Studies have to say, you can check out this talk, delivered at South by Southwest. Note, the first couple minutes are a repeat of the video linked to above. Skip to 2:05 for the beginning of the talk.
Excerpt from Touching Enlightenment, by Reginald Ray
“Whatever arises in and through the body does so, as we have seen, in accordance with the operation of karma. Karma holds our locked-up awareness, the larger buddha nature, of which we are only partially aware. Whatever of our karmic totality has not made its way into conscious awareness abides in the body. At any given time, a certain aspect of that totality begins to press toward consciousness; the totality intends that this come to birth now. It might not be pressing toward awareness until just now because, before this moment, it was not ready to do so, having been held at some deep level of enfoldment. Again, it may not have appeared in consciousness because, though ready to emerge at a certain moment as a step in our development, we have resisted it and pushed it back into the body. Either way, at a certain point, there is a pressure from the body toward consciousness, to communicate whatever, in the mysterious timing of our existence, is needed or appropriate. If we resist what is appearing in the body, at the verge of our awareness—and most of us modern people do habitually resist in order to rigidly maintain ourselves—what is trying to arise is pushed back, denied, and again held at bay in the body. There it resides within the shadows of our somatic being, in an ever-increasing residue—as that which our consciousness is in the continual process of ignoring, resisting, and denying. Residing in the shadows, all those aspects of our totality that are being denied admittance into conscious awareness continue to function in a powerful but unseen way, being reflected in the nature, structure, and activity of our ego. This process roughly corresponds to the psychological concept of repression, but there are some important differences. For one thing, the activity of the ego in “repressing” experience is seen here as ultimately not negative, but dynamic and creative in function. In our life, the ego emerges out of the unconscious as the field of our conscious awareness, the immediate domain in which our experience can be received and integrated. At the same time, the ego moderates what it takes in, resisting that which it is unready and unable to receive. There is much intelligence in this. An ego that is too rigid and frozen cannot accommodate the experience that is needed in order for us to grow. But an ego that is simply overwhelmed and pushed aside by experience cannot integrate the needed experience either. Spirituality, it would seem, depends on an ego—a field of consciousness—that can change and grow with the needs of our journey toward wholeness. Thus it is that spirituality is not about “getting rid of” or obliterating the ego, but rather about enabling the ego into a process of openness, increasing experience, death, and rebirth, as it integrates more and more of the buddha nature and itself becomes more aligned with and in service to our own totality. A buddha is not a person who has eliminated or wiped away his or her ego, but someone in whom the ego has integrated so much that there is no longer any room for individual identity at all.”
Excerpt from the book Tribe, by Sebastian Junger
“In late 2015, a bus entering eastern Kenya was stopped by gunmen from an extremist group named Al-Shabaab that made a practice of massacring Christians as part of a terrorism campaign against the Western-aligned Kenyan government. The gunmen demanded that Muslim and Christian passengers separate themselves into two groups so that the Christians could be killed, but the Muslims – most of whom were women – refused to do it. They told the gunmen that they would all die together if necessary, but that the Christians would not be singled out for execution. The Shabaab eventually let everyone go.”
Recommended Reading: To Get Parole, Have Your Case Heard Right After Lunch
Notes:
Summary of a study looking at factors affecting the decision making of judges. The study found that judges were far more likely to grant parole to prisoners if their (the prisoners) hearings took place right after the judges had eaten. Judges were also more lenient early in the day.
Excerpt:
“Overall, judges were much more likely to accept prisoners’ requests for parole at the beginning of the day than the at end. Moreover, a prisoner’s chances of receiving parole more than doubled if his case was heard at the beginning of one of the three sessions (right after the judge had had a snack break), rather than later on in the session. More specifically, it was the number of rulings that a judge made, rather than the time elapsed in a session, that significantly affected later decisions. Every single judge in the sample followed this pattern.”
“As a case study, one of the judges started in the morning by granting parole to about 65 percent of the prisoners; that percentage dropped to near zero by the end of the first session, then rebounded to about 65 percent after the snack break. The same pattern repeated in the second and third sessions.”
Recommended Reading: DMT drug study investigates the entities that people meet while tripping
Notes:
The study was published in the highly reputable Journal of Psychopharmacology
Excerpts:
“When people consume enough DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine) to have a “breakthrough” experience, they often encounter beings that seem autonomous (sometimes referred to as DMT elves), existing in a reality separate from our own… The majority of respondents believed the beings they encountered were not hallucinations.”
“The encounters felt more “real” than reality. This was true for 81 percent of respondents during the encounter, and 65 percent after the encounter. One respondent wrote: “There was an indescribably powerful notion that this dimension in which the entity and I convened was infinitely more “real” than the consensus reality I usually inhabit. It felt truer than anything else I’d ever experienced.””
“The form and nature of these beings vary in reports, but one thing remains curiously constant: People tend to rank these encounters among the most meaningful experiences of their lives. For some people, these encounters change their beliefs about reality, the existence of an afterlife, and God.”
“…approximately one-third (36%) of respondents reported that before the encounter their belief system included a belief in ultimate reality, higher power, God, or universal divinity, but a significantly larger percentage (58%) of respondents reported this belief system after the encounter.”
More notes:
I wrote about this study a while ago, but thought it warranted a repost.
This isn’t an endorsement of psychedelic use. At this point, I am 100% certain that you achieve radically altered healing states of consciousness without ingesting foreign substances, and that going about things this way carries far fewer risks. That said, I believe anecdotes of psychedelic users often contain a tremendous amount of ontological value.
Excerpt from Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts
It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.