How to Become Smarter (38 page)

The anti-procrastination approach outlined above should work in healthy people, who have normal mood and no anxiety. The depressant diet may be counterproductive in patients with anxiety or depression. Clinical depression correlates with increased procrastination. Therefore, reduction of procrastination in depressed patients requires the opposite approach—an antidepressant treatment. It should move the mood from “depressed” to “slightly depressed.”

Going back to healthy people, another, less effective anti-procrastination approach is a hot environment (Chapter Two). You can create a hot environment in your room using a heater and a fan. I find the temperature of room air at 29°C (84°F) effective at lowering mood and reducing procrastination. You can put on an additional layer of clothing (e.g., a sweater) to increase the subjective feeling of heat. Moderate heating of the body has sedative effects, i.e. it can improve sleep, slow down mental processes, and can lower mood as well [
352
,
651
]. This approach can allow you to turn up the heat on yourself and to force yourself to start a task that you have been avoiding. In my experience, it is best to use the hot environment in combination with the depressant diet. This combination is more effective at reducing procrastination than either approach alone. Hot hydrotherapy can also help to combat procrastination, but only in combination with a hot environment. (Be careful because this approach causes lethargy.)

In conclusion, research shows that effective time management can also reduce procrastination [
490
-
492
]. In my experience, calendar- and task-management software can simplify your life and help to reduce procrastination. It can also help you become more organized. You can set up automatic reminders for various appointments and tasks. I use Microsoft Outlook, but there are other programs with similar functionality.

• Slightly
  lowering mood and increasing emotional tension can combat procrastination.
  
• The depressant diet, which is based on boiled red meat, boiled grains, and nuts, can reduce procrastination, as can a hot environment.
  
• Once you get started on a reading or writing task, you can discontinue the depressant diet.
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Different mental tasks require different mental abilities or different sets of mental abilities. For example, reading tasks require a set of mental abilities that is different from that necessary for performance of writing tasks. This section focuses on mental abilities that you need to enhance in order to improve reading comprehension, i.e. understanding of printed text. These mental abilities or mental attributes include alertness, fluid intelligence, attention control, and attention span.

The discussion of dyslexia or reading disability is outside the scope of this book. The neurological impairment in dyslexia is unrelated to the aforementioned mental abilities and most likely involves the difficulty associating written characters (letters) with specific sounds of speech. The latter is not the only theory and there are other theories about pathophysiology of dyslexia. The techniques presented in this chapter will improve alertness, fluid intelligence, and attention control, but they are unlikely to correct the underlying neurological cause of dyslexia. Therefore, these techniques should improve reading comprehension in both healthy and dyslexic people, but they will not cure dyslexia.

Going back to the specific mental abilities that are necessary for good reading comprehension, alertness or wakefulness is one such ability. Alertness means the absence or low levels of mental fatigue and sleepiness. Fatigue and sleepiness can worsen performance on many types of tests, including those that require reading comprehension. Hence reducing sleepiness and fatigue, in other words, increasing alertness will be beneficial for performance of reading tasks. There are different degrees of alertness, ranging from passive wakefulness to hyperactive wakefulness. Since hyperactivity often correlates with inattentiveness or distractibility [
498
], excessive alertness will have a negative effect on reading comprehension. The level of alertness somewhere between passive wakefulness and active wakefulness should be optimal for good reading performance.

Fluid intelligence is another mental ability that is important for understanding of complex texts. Chapter One defined fluid intelligence as an ability to understand and solve novel problems, which also includes the ability to understand novel concepts. You may recall that fluid intelligence is different from crystallized intelligence, which represents accumulated knowledge and skills. A high level of crystallized intelligence, that is, prior knowledge of the subject matter and good vocabulary will facilitate any type of reading. It is not the focus of the present discussion and we will talk about it later. You could say that fluid intelligence is the same thing as quality of computing hardware, in other words, how well the brain works regardless of knowledge. Note that there is not a strong correlation between the level of fluid intelligence and comprehension of texts of low-to-moderate complexity [
26
]. On the other hand, fluid intelligence is most likely crucial for grasping complex concepts in more difficult texts, such as research articles or college-level textbooks.

The third relevant mental ability is attention control, which includes the ability to maintain attention on an object or subject for extended periods of time. This ability is also known as sustained attention. Academic reading involves keeping one’s attention in the text for hours at a time. Distractibility, or an inability to maintain the focus of attention on the text, impairs reading comprehension and makes learning problematic. We talked about the attention function at length in Chapter Three. That chapter describes some techniques that improve attention in healthy people and maybe in patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The fourth mental ability is attention span, also known as working memory or short-term memory. This concept describes how much information a person can hold in memory for short-term use: within seconds to minutes. Information held in working memory is quickly lost or forgotten as opposed to long-term memory where the brain can store information for years. Working memory is crucial for many mental tasks, for example for complex calculations, when a person must hold several numeric values in his/her mind simultaneously in order to perform various manipulations with these data. Copious working memory (good attention span) is necessary for understanding of long sentences or grasping a lengthy argument in a text. Studies have identified different types of working memory, which are more or less independent of each other. For example, people have spatial working memory (deals with shapes and orientation of objects) and verbal working memory (deals with language). This book does not discuss working memory at length and it is unknown whether the techniques described here can improve working memory. Psychostimulant drugs improve some components of working memory in healthy people and in patients with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, although these drugs are controlled substances, illegal without prescription. Some of this book’s methods (high-protein diets and cold hydrotherapy) share many similarities with stimulant drugs and, in theory, should improve some components of working memory. Controlled studies and further research are needed in this area. To summarize, good working memory is useful for reading comprehension, especially when it comes to complex texts.

Finally, knowledge of the language of a text is important for good understanding of the text, as is familiarity with the subject matter. This falls under the jurisdiction of the mental ability known as crystallized intelligence, which we talked about in Chapter One. A person with a high level of crystallized intelligence will find it easier to read unfamiliar complex texts compared to people with average intelligence. Vocabulary is an important component of crystallized intelligence, and there are several different approaches to building vocabulary, as you will see later in this chapter. We will talk about some other techniques that deal with crystallized intelligence in the next section. The proposed techniques are appropriate for high-school students and people with higher levels of education. For techniques that can improve reading comprehension in preschoolers and grade school students, readers can visit government websites such as the website of the National Reading Panel in the United States.

• Good reading comprehension requires good functioning of such mental abilities as alertness, fluid intelligence, attention control, and attention span (working memory).
  
• Good reading comprehension also requires knowledge of the language of a text (vocabulary) and prior knowledge of the basics of the subject matter (including special vocabulary).
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The previous section showed that good reading comprehension requires effective functioning of such mental abilities as alertness, fluid intelligence, and attention control. In my experience, there are non-pharmacological treatments that can improve these parameters and thereby improve reading performance. Note that you do not need to use any of the methods described below if you have no difficulty with reading comprehension. In this case you can follow conventional lifestyle guidelines [
61
]. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke. On the other hand, you may consider employing the approaches proposed in this section if you encounter a
complex
text that you find difficult to understand.

You can manage alertness as follows. Moderate cooling of the body shares many physiological effects with stimulant drugs, as you saw in Chapter Two. In brief, I developed a procedure called the “
adapted cold shower
.” It is effective at improving alertness, but at the same time is safe and easy to do (as opposed to the regular “sudden” cold shower). You can use the method as follows: start with a tepid shower (34-36°C or 93-97°F) for several minutes, then set water temperature to approximately 20°C (68°F) and start slowly expanding the area of contact with the cold water from the feet up. This gradual adaptation phase should take another 3-5 minutes. After that, you can take the whole-body cold shower for 2-5 minutes. If you are feeling tired and sleepy, the adapted cold shower will make you alert and energetic and
usually
will facilitate performance of various reading tasks. In some cases, it will worsen reading performance, as discussed below. The procedure is safe for healthy people, but you shouldn’t use it if a cough is present. Don’t use it at night because it may disrupt your normal sleep pattern. Don’t use adapted cold showers if you are feeling overactive, because in this case, this procedure will increase distractibility. If your mood is elevated, you should not use cold hydrotherapy either. It can elevate mood further and will reduce motivation for work. You can read more about the possible adverse effects in
Chapter Two
. The adapted cold shower will improve reading comprehension in the following situations: normal or depressed mood; mental fatigue; apathy; “brain fog;” and sleepiness.

Some readers can say that coffee can also increase alertness and therefore it is not necessary to use such a complicated procedure when you can have one or two cups of strong coffee. If caffeine works well for you, then you should continue using it. Coffee is a legal stimulant and there is no reason why you should not use it to improve your mental abilities when necessary. In my experience, coffee has little or no effect on mood and increases nervousness at large doses. The emotional tension is useful for reducing procrastination (more details in the first section of this chapter). Adapted cold showers, on the other hand, do not increase and may reduce nervousness [
376
]. This will worsen procrastination if this problem exists. Therefore, you may have to do a little experimentation in order to find out which of these two legal stimulants works best for you in which situations.

Another mental ability necessary for understanding of complex texts is good fluid intelligence. According to the natural intelligence theory, elimination of all junk food, food additives, and dietary supplements from your diet will improve fluid intelligence. In the natural food pyramid (
Table 3
), this means eliminating all “problem foods” from your diet temporarily: from several days to several weeks. In my experience, this approach can indeed improve mental clarity and improve understanding of academic lectures and complex texts. You can use the following sequence of actions for improvement of fluid intelligence:

a)
   if you understand the required reading material while on the conventional balanced diet, then you do not have to do anything to improve your fluid intelligence;
b)
   if you find some concepts and texts difficult to understand, then switch to the balanced high-protein diet or modified high-protein diet (
Chapter Three
and
Appendix II
);
c)
   if step “b” is not effective, then switch to the antidepressant diet (
Chapter Four
and
Appendix II
);
d)
   if step “c” is not effective, then switch to the fruit-and-vegetable diet (
fifth section
of Chapter Three and
Appendix II
).