🙅🏻♀️ Scarcity & Excess
The psychological and biological benefits of restraining ourselves
Why it can be good to restrain ourselves
After a short (somewhat unexpected) break from writing, it feels great to be writing again. We went for a holiday last week to the wonderful Yorkshire, where the land was green as far as the eye could see. Living in London and having everything at your fingertips, despite all its merits, can be a bit loud and overwhelming (especially when you live next to the train tracks). The rhythm of London is so fast, you feel like you’re constantly running out of time.
Yorkshire was so calm and quiet, it felt like we had more hours in the day. I wonder if this was mostly due to the fact that we barely had to do any cooking — because one perk of staying with your (or your boyfriend’s) grandparents is that they look after you and make sure you’re well fed. And well fed we were. To say that Sam’s grandparents know their way in the kitchen is an understatement. Every meal was a meal out of a 5 star restaurant, and every night we went to sleep in a state of an almost food coma.
Not that I’m complaining — I’d do it again in a heartbeat! But did I pack on a pound or two? Probably 😂 I told myself I was on holiday and I deserved it, but I was really getting spoiled and craving all the comfort. As the trip came to an end I was slowly gathering motivation to get back into my routine but to be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to it. Until I heard this Radiolab episode.
People tell you too much comfort is bad, but you never really understand why. But research and studies have shown that there are psychological as well as real biological benefits of hardship, as revealed by the tale of the wonderdrug Rapamycin.
Rapamycin’s discovery & antifungal properties
The story starts with a microbiologist called Surendra Nath Sehgal, or Suren. Suren had a passion for studying drugs. He grew up in the area of Khushab, which is in modern day Pakistan. He got his PHD at 25, and he migrated to Canada as a result of the partition that took place between India and Pakistan. Around the time that he started his life over in Canada, the Canadian government had sent a team of scientists to do a medical expedition on Easter Island because of how removed this place was from the rest of the world.
The scientists set off on a mission to explore the island, learn everything there was to learn about the people, the plants, the animals, even the bacteria. So they took dozens of samples of soil from all over the island, to send back to scientists in Canada to take a look, including Suren. As he began isolating unique compounds from the soil, he discovered a compound with a unique structure which, after experimenting with it for a while, he realized that this compound could be antifungal. After testing it on dogs (and even his friend’s wife!), he was sure that this drug was onto something. He named it Rapamycin, after the Rapa Nui island that it came from.
But there was a problem. He started to see some immunosuppresant properties in Rapamycin — meaning that not only does it freeze fungi, it also freezes your immune cells. When you have an infection, you want your immune cells to grow quickly so they can fight off the infection. Needless to say, the pharmaceutical company he was working at ordered to have this drug thrown out. But Suren had big ideas for this drug, so he decided to steal it.
Rapamycin’s reemergence
Fast forward to the late ’80s, organ donation was making its debut and starting to take off. However, doctors would soon find out that many patients were struggling to accept their brand new organs because their immune systems would reject them. Suren, who’d kept his wonderdrug all this time, saw this as an opportunity for Rapamycin to make its comeback. And he was right. Because of Rapamycin, patients responded to their transplants well.
This was music to his ears. He was inspired — so much so that he decided to start taking it himself. You see, Suren had been diagnosed with cancer. He was stage 4 and had been told that he only had 6 months to live. But he’d seen the power that Rapamycin had. It’s a drug that tricks cells in your body to thinking there are low nutrients when nutrients are there — effectively stopping the cells from growing. This was essentially an experiment he did on himself, to test how far Rapamycin could go.
6 months came and went, and he was still there. 5 years later, he began to wonder if it was really the drug that was keeping him alive. He thought there was only one way to find out. He stopped taking the drug, and in about 6 months, the cancer came back. This time, he decided to let nature take its course. But until his very last day, he was still writing a paper about the antitumor properties of Rapamycin.
Our biological need to go into a state of scarcity
So this is where I try to link it back to my first point — why is it that having an excess of something can be bad for you?
It turns out that our bodies have two states: a state of where you’re getting nutrients, and a state where you’re not getting nutrients. Because of the way we’ve evolved, you can only do one and not the other. When you’re getting nutrients, your body is essentially building and growing. And only when you don’t have nutrients or access to food, your body goes into a state of fixing. It recycles the pile of junk that has been built up in your cells.
What Rapamycin does is it tricks you into thinking that you have little nutrients, which stops the cells from growing and gives them a chance to get rid of the pile of trash that’s been sitting there for a while. This is the stuff that can lead to disease.
We’re so used to feeling comfortable that we avoid anything with the slightest hint of pain, when it can actually be good for you. My boyfriend thinks this is a sales pitch for intermittent fasting, and I suppose it could be 😅 But it feels like a metaphor that can works across many areas of life. The ability to adapt to scarcity and difficult situations is what allows us to survive, because as we all can agree, sometimes life presents us with some tricky situations.
And it has some psychological benefits, too
Of course too much scarcity can be harmful, but deliberate scarcity using self-control is shown to have some psychological benefits. A study on short-term fasting shows that although as fasting progressed participants felt increasingly hungrier, they also experienced positive feelings such as a sense of control, power, and satisfaction. It’s highly likely completing a fast gave them a great sense of achievement and therefore increased their satisfaction level.
Who would have known a drug extracted off the dirt on Easter Island could teach us so much?! But honestly, I wrote about this for mostly selfish reasons — so that I can remind myself to stop being a wuss when faced with adversity in the future. Starve a little — it’s good for you! Get in that cold water — it’s good for you!
What I’ve been up to
Aside from trying to get back into the swing of things (i.e. writing again), I’ve been enjoying the glorious weather — when it’s not raining. We went paddleboarding yesterday and hung out with people. Yes — we stayed out until pretty much midnight, something I had not done in a while. It was an amazing reminder of how great it is to meet new people and to socialize. Of course naturally I got tired around 11 because I’m a grandma, but nothing beats being in good company in sunny London.
What’s on my radar
The Dawn Wall
This documentary is everything. It follows the story of Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson as they go on their journey of free-climbing El Capitan. It’s not just another climbing story — if you’re not familiar with Tommy Caldwell, your mind will be blown by his amazing background. He is my new hero.
Hamam Magazine
Hamam Magazine’s tagline is The Magazine of Letting Go. It explores the art and culture of bathing from all over the world, stripping you back down to the essence of simplicity. The magazine features writing, photography, and artwork from talented individuals, all put together into one stunning publication.
As always, thank you for supporting this little side project of mine and for getting to the end of this week’s newsletter! If you’ve enjoyed this week’s episode, please share with your friends! 😊
