Vicious and Virtuous Cycles

THE INVERSE OF ANY VICIOUS CYCLE IS A VIRTUOUS CYCLE! You can break the cycle at any of the steps. What makes a vicious cycle so vicious is that it “heads down” and thus has gravity on it’s side. Its easy to let a vicious cycle continue and takes effort to break the cycle and especially to reverse the momentum. The GOOD NEWS is that momentum works both ways. As you build momentum in a virtuous cycle you will want to continue in that direction and most of the virtuous cycles FILL YOU WITH ENERGY thus allowing for more momentum to be built and more cycle to be broken. With some “luck” you can create a chain reaction and health can turn around quickly (this works both ways though). I will be adding to these as they come to me.

• The most well know vicious cycle is likely alcohol dependence. It goes like this: Drink to feel better, feel worse after due to withdrawal/hangover, drink more to feel better (hair of the dog), rinse and repeat.

  • over time tolerance to alcohol increases leading to more damage and worse feelings of withdrawal, thus more difficulty in breaking the cycle but also greater need for breaking the cycle if health is being made a priority.

    • Alcohol is one of few drugs where withdrawal can lead to death. If you are dealing with severe alcohol dependence seek professional help. If you aren't approach this cycle with caution.

      
      

• THE most common vicious cycle is America's (and probably western civilization's) favorite drug and often addiction. Coffee/caffeine. Here's how it goes. Drink caffeine for energy. Caffeine blocks adenosine so you don’t feel tired and temporarily raise cortisol and adrenalin. Due to this blocking of tiredness and increase in stress hormones many people then either overexert themselves and or under recovery due the the relatively long half life of caffeine. This leads to more exhaustion which often leads to more caffeine. And so on.

  • Caffeine also puts the body in a state that it prefers carbohydrate metabolism which can lead to the carb cycle below

    
    

• Another common cycle in the world of exercise is the use of pain management medication (of various sorts ranging from NSAIDs and to steriods, to opiates and surgery). Rarely, if ever, is pain caused by a deficiency of some drug. However drugs are often used to treat the SYMPTOM of pain and becuase the pain is not caused by a deficiency of that drug the drug will NOT solve the problem. Because the problem isn't being solved and the pain is being ignored, it isn't uncommon for the pain to get worse while the symptom was numbed. This happened to me when I got an epidural in my back, once the drug wore off the pain came back with a vengence because I was doing all the things that the pain would have told me not to do. I have come to believe the pain is protective in many cases. Many people at this point increase the dosage or the frequency while continuing to neglect the root cause of the pain. This cycle can repeat until surgery feels like the only option. And it very well may be depending on how much damage was allowed to accumulate while the symptoms and the problem were being ignored.

• Eating low quality food with low density of nutrients, leads to lack of satiation, which leads to overeating, leads to weight gain, which can trigger emotional eating often of low quality food.

  • This is less of a cycle that independently feeds itself but still very common.

  • This can also lead to over exertion and poor recovery as people "punish" themselves for eating "bad" and then lack the nutrients to recover.

• More cortisol in the body leads to more belly/visceral fat leads to decreased diaphragmatic function/breathing, leads to more stress, leads to increased cortisol leads to lower hormones…???

  • This one leads in to Carbon Dioxide tolerance (due to poor breathing mechanics/habits) as well as poor sleep cycles and many others.

  • The body will sacrifice the production of sex hormones (testosterone, estrogen, progesterone) for the production of stress hormones (cortisol) as they all are produced from the same precursor (pregnenolone).

  • The function of the diaphragm is closely tied to the function of the Vagus nerve which is critital in managing the Autonomic Nervous System (fight/flight or rest/digest).

• Never exercising leads to low energy, which leads to less exercise, leads to less energy, and less exercise and on and on

  • Over time movement becomes labored or even painful creating even more resistance to reversing this cycle.

  • Many attempt to break this cycle with caffeine which becomes its own loop and can amplify this one.

• Having low energy also leads to low focus, which leads to low demand (but high cost) activities such as doomscrolling on the phone/apps, which leads to overstimulating the brain, which leads to poor sleep due to overstimulation (and blue light), which leads to low energy. Repeat.

  • This can also lead in to other cycles such as less exercise and poor food choices.

  • Many attempt to break this cycle with caffeine which becomes its own loop and can amplify this one.

• Poor breathing habits will negatively impact sleep, poor sleep increases ghrelin which makes you feel hungry, fatigue influences food choices. This can put you in a low energy loop, or often, a high carb loop, which can then bring you back to this loop via pressure from bloated guts on the diaphram leading to poor breathing habits.

  • Many attempt to break this cycle with caffeine which becomes its own loop and can amplify this one.

• Over-breathing lowers Carbon Dioxide tolerance, induces more feelings of breathlessness, encourages more over-breathing, further lowers Carbon Dioxide tolerance and on

• High carb diet decreases blood pH (or increases acidity, they are synonomous), the body compensates for this by increasing breath rate to expel Carbon Dioxide and increase pH (lower acidity), Carbon Dioxide is needed for Oxygen delivery so the body feels exhausted so high carb options seem more attractive and so on constantly trying to find balance.

  • This can also lead to lower Carbon Dioxide tolerance.

  • If breathing is managed and an individual does not over breathe it is possible to avoid this cycle.

• Low Carbon Dioxide tolerance leads to a lack of Carbon Dioxide in the blood, which leads to extra tension in the muscular system (CO2 is a vasodialator, meaning lack of CO2 is a vasoconstrictor). Tension in the muscles leads to extra metabolic Carbon Dioxide produced. This may further contribute to over breathing to lower Carbon Dioxide, leads to lower Carbon Dioxide tolerance. Which leads to more tension in the muscles. And so on.

  • Tension in the muscles also includes restriction in the blood vessels and airways which can lead to difficulty breathing as well as elevated blood pressure

• Over training and under recovering leads to high cortisol, which leads to tissue breakdown and storage of visceral fat, which leads to reduced capacity because of the under recovered muscle and tissue that is also broken down by cortisol, which leads to more overtraining because the capacity is reduced and the limit of training is lower (which few people accept) and or harder training to reduce the body fat that the cortisol produced (the cortisol that was produced by the training method). Eventually this leads to injury in which case capacity is greatly reduced as is output leading to worse movement and self image which can amplify this cycle once “cleared for exercise” from often incomplete rehabilitation.

  • This is further detailed in my blog on Training vs “Working Out”
    

• Many people under-eat to lose weight, which leads to low energy due to lack of calories and nutrients. They then have a tendency to overtrain due to increased stress hormones and under-recover due to lack of nutrients. The increased stress hormones lead to a lack of quality sleep, further exacerbating lack of recovery. Poor sleep often leads to poor food choices. This leads back to weight gain from food and or over-breathing from high carbs and bloated guts and or injury from pushing too hard in a fatigued state. This leads to several other loops

  
  

VIRTUOUS CYCLES

• Lift weights, feel better, less emotional eating, more energy, lift more weights, and on (and look better)

  
  

• Bring attention to the breath, mind gets a break, breath finds balance, better sleep.

  
  

• More energy from being more fit, less need for caffeine, better sleep, more energy, and so on

  
  

• Better sleep, better food choices, less body fat and more energy, more exercise and less stress, repeat.