Meaning, or a sense of purpose in life, is tied metabolism: activity that is meaningful and meets a felt need supports the body's anabolic and catabolic systems, while work that conflicts with a person's sense of meaning shrinks functional capacity. In observational cohorts, higher self-reported purpose was linked to lower mortality: 15% lower per standard deviation of purpose over 14 years in one US cohort, and 46% lower for the top versus bottom quartile over 4 years in another.

Meaningful work

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In Generative Energy (chapter 18, "The Tradition of Truth"), skilled work and an important opportunity draw a person's vitality forward, and a life split between routine work and entertainment is the diminished alternative.

A person's vitality is drawn forward by meaningful work, that is, we grow to meet the demands of an important opportunity.

— Ray Peat[1]

Our present lives are usually divided between routine work and entertainment. The entertainment is supposed to enliven us, to help us recover from the deadening effects of routine work. Some people put great energy and concentration into their hobbies, because they find the activity intrinsically interesting. Such intrinsic value and interest is what should be demanded of our work.

— Ray Peat[2]

When people feel that they are in possession of their own lives, then problems become opportunities. Each problem leads to new problems. The world draws us forward, and we are not defined by an "occupation" or "profession," but by the work we have achieved, and the problems we have confronted.

— Ray Peat[3]

Children kept apart from their parents' work learn "a world of functionless entertainment"; children allowed to take part become apprentices and learn effectiveness. Without either skill or an inherited sense of status, "they may inherit helplessness."[4]

Meaning and stress physiology

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The same task can build or wear down the body depending on what it means to the person doing it. Discomforts seen as steps toward a goal bring adaptation and new skill; recurring tasks that clash with a person's sense of meaning reduce functional capacity.

When recurring discomforts can be seen as meaningful steps toward a goal, our physiology adjusts, increasing skills that make the tasks easier, but adaptation to a poor environment has a biological cost. To the degree that recurring tasks conflict with our sense of meaning, they can cause our functional capacity to shrink.

— Ray Peat[5]

The same newsletter takes up a 1950s psychology case: a young woman with a diagnosed loss of interest in life, traced to the prospect of "a life of meaningless work," recovered fully once she found a demanding academic situation that used her abilities.[6]

When activity is meaningful, and is seen to be meeting a felt need, the catabolic and anabolic systems support and strengthen the components of the functional system that has been activated. Everything we do has an influence on the streaming renewal of the adaptive living substance.

— Ray Peat[7]

The framework comes from Soviet functional-system physiology and its analysis of Pavlov's reflex of purpose: the brain builds a model of the situation and the organism's needs, and the expected outcome decides whether adaptive systems are mobilized or catabolic processes take over.

Any particular external situation can create stress or not, depending on what it means to the individual. The perception of a possibly good outcome mobilizes the creative adaptive abilities, in a functional system that includes an external goal and relevant physiological processes; the failure to see possibility in the situation—anticipating failure rather than success—demobilizes the systems of adaptation, and the excitation caused by unsatisfied needs produces generalized catabolic processes.

— Ray Peat[8]

Curiosity, esthetics, creativity, and stimulation are "necessarily and deeply linked to metabolic efficiency and structural-anatomical development."[9]

Meaningful activity and culture

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Finding novelty and opportunity in a large context, rather than habitual, ritualized, or trivial activity. Stimulating conversation and spontaneous sex are good examples. Our (industrialized corporate) cultures are designed to exclude meaningful activity as far as possible. Music, theater, literature, research, adapting to a new culture, and political innovation are activities that can be meaningful.

— Ray Peat[10]

Part of the therapeutic effect of any method lies in the effort itself and in "meaningful interactions":

Making an effort to learn how to use techniques of food, hormones, light, activity, etc., is similar to the effort needed to work with a psychologist, and the effort itself is part of the therapy—the particular orientation of the psychotherapist isn't what's therapeutic, it's the ability to participate in meaningful interactions, that is, the ability to provide a situation in which the person can practice being human. When people start thinking about the things in their life that can be changed, they are exercising aspects of their organism that had been atrophied by being in an authoritarian culture.

— Ray Peat[11]

Giving up

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The events of any day can move a person toward "learned helplessness" or toward "creative productivity."[6] A medical diagnosis can produce it, letting serotonin "get out of control," because it "makes you think of yourself as a machine that needs fixing."[12] Giving up has the chemistry of shock:

When you give up, going into shock and giving up is biologically involves things such as too much nitric oxide, too much serotonin, and too much acetylcholine, so it's too much of the relax and be serene. It goes over the edge into quick death.

— Ray Peat[13]

The give-up syndrome of extreme trauma, the apathy and death without obvious organic cause seen in prisoners of war and other people facing inescapable trauma, has been proposed to be a dopamine imbalance in frontal brain circuits and a pathology of normal passive coping (hypothesis paper).[14][15]

Selye and Pavlov

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In Hans Selye's Stress Without Distress (1975), purpose is a condition of health and boredom a form of distress:

In this sense, and to my mind, the aim of life is to maintain its own identity and express its innate abilities and drives with the least possible frustration. To remain healthy, man must have some goal, some purpose in life that he can respect and be proud to work for.

— Hans Selye[16]

The average citizen would suffer just as much from the boredom of purposeless subsistence as from the inevitable fatigue created by the constant compulsive pursuit of perfection; in other words, the majority equally dislike a lack of stress and an excess of it.

— Hans Selye[17]

Ivan Pavlov described a "reflex of purpose" to the Third Congress of Experimental Pedagogy in Petrograd on 2 January 1916, and separately a "reflex of freedom." A 1990 Soviet review of Pavlov's work treats the reflex of purpose as an inborn drive for mastery, in which perfecting a skill is its own reinforcement regardless of the goal's practical value, and the reflex of freedom as the precursor of the will.[18][19] Pavlov's orienting or "what is that?" reflex, the alertness provoked by something new, was in his view the most basic and powerful reflex.[20]

Research

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All of the studies below are observational cohorts or meta-analyses of cohorts. They show associations between self-reported purpose and later health, and cannot show that raising purpose causes longer life.

Purpose and mortality

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  • MIDUS cohort, 2014: 6,163 US adults aged 20 to 75 were followed for 14 years, and 569 died. Each one-standard-deviation increase in purpose was linked to a 15% lower risk of death after adjustment for positive relations with others and positive and negative affect. Age and retirement status did not change the effect. Purpose was measured with three questionnaire items of low internal consistency (α = 0.36).[21]
  • Health and Retirement Study, outcome-wide analysis, 2022: among US adults over 50, those in the highest purpose quartile had a 46% lower risk of death than those in the lowest. The models adjusted for earlier purpose, earlier outcomes, and a broad set of other factors. The top quartile also had a 43% lower risk of depression, but purpose was not associated with many of the other 35 outcomes.[22]
  • Health and Retirement Study, 2019: in adults over 50, the lowest purpose category had about 2.4 times the death rate of the highest. Deaths from heart, circulatory, and blood conditions showed a similar excess.[23]
  • Rush Memory and Aging Project, 2009: among 1,238 older adults without dementia, a person at the 90th percentile of purpose had about 57% of the death rate of a person at the 10th percentile, after adjustment for depressive symptoms, disability, neuroticism, chronic conditions, and income.[24]
  • Meta-analysis, 2016: across prospective studies, higher purpose went with about 17% lower all-cause mortality. Cardiovascular events fell by a similar margin.[25]

Purpose and health behaviors

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In 13,770 Health and Retirement Study adults who met behavior guidelines at baseline, the top purpose quartile had a 24% lower likelihood of becoming physically inactive, 33% lower likelihood of developing sleep problems, and 22% lower likelihood of developing an unhealthy body mass index over up to eight years, compared with the lowest quartile. Purpose showed no association with heavy alcohol use.[26]

Faith

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Faith, including religious involvement, spirituality, and related practices, associates with lower mortality in many healthy cohorts. The clearest signal often sits on organizational activity such as regular church or service attendance.

Mortality

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Religious involvement associated with greater survival across 42 independent samples.[27] In initially healthy populations, religiosity/spirituality predicted lower mortality. Weekly religious-service attendance went with a larger drop, and cardiovascular mortality was about 28% lower.[28] Church/service attendance in healthy people showed roughly 25% lower mortality after adjustment for confounders.[29] Through 2010, at least 121 studies examined spirituality/religiosity and mortality; 68% found greater S/R predicted greater longevity (5% the opposite), and among 63 methodologically most rigorous studies the split was 75% vs 5%.[30] A 2024 narrative review of spirituality and longevity summarizes the same attendance and S/R survival literature; higher spirituality/religiosity associates with lower mortality risk in that evidence base, including after adjustment for relevant confounders.[31]

Scripture reading

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In a survey of 1,115 Black, Hispanic, and White American churchgoers in South Texas (2017-2018), reading scripture for insights into the future attenuated the positive association between major life events and psychological distress among congregants who did not believe the world is fundamentally evil and sinful.[32] Among congregants who believed the world is evil, scripture reading amplified the association between life events and distress. Whether scriptural coping is beneficial for mental health can depend on a believer's broader assumptions about the nature of the world.

Process theology

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Asked whether he believes in God, Peat placed his view next to David Ray Griffin's Process Theology:

David Ray Griffin's Process Theology would be similar to my view.

— Ray Peat[33]

In interviews the same orientation appears as process theology grounded in Alfred North Whitehead.[34] Elsewhere it is framed as Blake's sense of consciousness as readily as process theology.[35]

See also

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References

[edit]
  1. ↑ Ray Peat, "Generative Energy", p. 131
  2. ↑ Ray Peat, "Generative Energy", p. 143
  3. ↑ Ray Peat, "Generative Energy", p. 143
  4. ↑ Ray Peat, "Generative Energy", p. 136
  5. ↑ Ray Peat, "Stress, inertia, aging", Ray Peat Newsletter, March 2015
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Ray Peat, "Stress, inertia, aging", Ray Peat Newsletter, March 2015
  7. ↑ Ray Peat, "Adaptive substance, creative regeneration", raypeat.com
  8. ↑ Ray Peat, "Endotoxin, Stress, Depression", Ray Peat Newsletter, May 2011
  9. ↑ Ray Peat, "Genes, Carbon Dioxide and Adaptation", raypeat.com
  10. ↑ Ray Peat, "Body Systems & Functions (Meaningful Activity, Brain Health)", Ray Peat Forum
  11. ↑ Ray Peat, "Mind-Body Connection", Ray Peat Insight, 2012
  12. ↑ Ray Peat, "Ask the Herb Doctor: Brain "Barriers"", KMUD, 49:04
  13. ↑ Ray Peat, "Heart, Brain, Cancer, and Hormones", Your Own Health And Fitness, 16:52
  14. ↑ Leach J. "'Give-up-itis' revisited: Neuropathology of extremis," Med Hypotheses. 2018;120:14-21. doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2018.08.009. PMID 30220334.
  15. ↑ Georgi Dinkov, "People Can Die as a Result of Giving Up (A State Caused by Low Dopamine)", Haidut
  16. ↑ Hans Selye, "Stress Without Distress", 1975, p. 103
  17. ↑ Hans Selye, "Stress Without Distress", 1975, p. 68
  18. ↑ Simonov PV. ""Reflexes of purpose and freedom" in the comparative physiology of higher nervous activity," Neurosci Behav Physiol. 1990;20(3):230-235. doi:10.1007/BF01195460. PMID 2215892.
  19. ↑ Pavel V. Simonov, "Reflexes of Purpose and Freedom in the Comparative Physiology of Higher Nervous Activity", 1990, p. 230
  20. ↑ Ray Peat, "How do you know? Students, patients, and discovery", raypeat.com
  21. ↑ Hill PL, Turiano NA. "Purpose in life as a predictor of mortality across adulthood," Psychol Sci. 2014;25(7):1482-1486. doi:10.1177/0956797614531799. PMID 24815612. PMC4224996. HR 0.85 per SD of purpose.
  22. ↑ Kim ES, Chen Y, Nakamura JS, Ryff CD, VanderWeele TJ. "Sense of purpose in life and subsequent physical, behavioral, and psychosocial health: an outcome-wide approach," Am J Health Promot. 2022;36(1):137-147. doi:10.1177/08901171211038545. PMID 34405718. PMC8669210. 12,998 adults, 4-year follow-up; mortality RR 0.54.
  23. ↑ Alimujiang A, Wiensch A, Boss J, et al. "Association Between Life Purpose and Mortality Among US Adults Older Than 50 Years," JAMA Netw Open. 2019;2(5):e194270. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.4270. PMID 31125099. PMC6632139. 6,985 adults, 2006–2010; HR 2.43; heart, circulatory and blood conditions HR 2.66.
  24. ↑ Boyle PA, Barnes LL, Buchman AS, Bennett DA. "Purpose in life is associated with mortality among community-dwelling older persons," Psychosom Med. 2009;71(5):574-579. doi:10.1097/PSY.0b013e3181a5a7c0. PMID 19414613. PMC2740716.
  25. ↑ Cohen R, Bavishi C, Rozanski A. "Purpose in Life and Its Relationship to All-Cause Mortality and Cardiovascular Events: A Meta-Analysis," Psychosom Med. 2016;78(2):122-133. doi:10.1097/PSY.0000000000000274. PMID 26630073. 10 studies, 136,265 participants; all-cause mortality RR 0.83; cardiovascular events RR 0.83.
  26. ↑ Kim ES, Shiba K, Boehm JK, Kubzansky LD. "Sense of purpose in life and five health behaviors in older adults," Prev Med. 2020;139:106172. doi:10.1016/j.ypmed.2020.106172. PMID 32593729. PMC7494628.
  27. ↑ McCullough ME, Hoyt WT, Larson DB, Koenig HG, Thoresen C. "Religious involvement and mortality: a meta-analytic review," Health Psychol. 2000;19(3):211-222. doi:10.1037//0278-6133.19.3.211. PMID 10868765.
  28. ↑ Chida Y, Steptoe A, Powell LH. "Religiosity/spirituality and mortality. A systematic quantitative review," Psychother Psychosom. 2009;78(2):81-90. doi:10.1159/000190791. PMID 19142047. Meta-analysis of prospective cohorts: combined hazard ratio 0.82 for mortality; weekly attendance HR 0.73.
  29. ↑ Powell LH, Shahabi L, Thoresen CE. "Religion and spirituality. Linkages to physical health," Am Psychol. 2003;58(1):36-52. doi:10.1037/0003-066x.58.1.36. PMID 12674817.
  30. ↑ Koenig HG. "At least 121 studies," ISRN Psychiatry. 2012;2012:278730. doi:10.5402/2012/278730. PMID 23762764. PMC3671693.
  31. ↑ Dominguez LJ, Veronese N, Barbagallo M. "The link between spirituality and longevity," Aging Clin Exp Res. 2024;36(1):32. doi:10.1007/s40520-023-02684-5. PMID 38341843. PMC10859326.
  32. ↑ DeAngelis RT, Acevedo GA, Vaidyanathan B, Ellison CG. "Coping with an Evil World: Contextualizing the Stress-Buffering Role of Scripture Reading," J Sci Study Relig. 2021;60(3):645-652. doi:10.1111/jssr.12728. PMID 35950085. PMC9358904.
  33. ↑ Personal Beliefs, Ray Peat email exchange
  34. ↑ Ray Peat, "One Radio Network: What is a virus anyway?", One Radio Network, 99:16
  35. ↑ Ray Peat, "Generative Energy #64 - Life, Energy, Estrogen, Fibrosis, Calcification, Process Theology, Altruism", Generative Energy