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2020 Annual Review from the Happier Lives Institute

Congratulations on an excellent year of research and thank you for your contributions to this cause area!

To offer a perhaps under-explored research thread in the treatment and mitigation of cluster headaches and migraines, which I haven't seen in pieces from HLI or OPIS, there appears to be moderately high efficacy (for n=18) of a ketogenic diet on reduction in incidence of such headaches:

"Of the 18 CCH patients, 15 were considered responders to the diet (11 experienced a full resolution of headache, and 4 had a headache reduction of at l... (read more)

MichaelPlant

Thanks for your comment and for bringing this to our attention. One of the pleasures, but also pains, of SWB research, is that there is simply an enormous scope of it; basically everything impacts well-being one way or another. The result is that many potentially fruitful avenues of research are left unturned. I don't expect we'll be pursuing this specific line of inquiry, or headaches in general, with the next year or so. The only scenarios in which I would see that change would be if (1) a major donor appeared and would (only) fund us to look at headaches or (2) we already had a lot of donors following our recommendations - we don't have any such donors now, which is necessarily the case because we don't have any all-things-considered recommendations(!) - and our inside view what the headaches might be more effective than our hypothetical top pick and so worth investigating. As a hot take on your particular suggestion, this is a very small study and I've heard lots of horror stories about dietary research, so this causes me only a (very) minor update, sorry!

Using Ibogaine to Create Friendlier Opioids

qfrerichs5y27

Thank you. I certainly agree that in most occupations (operating large machinery, doing difficult cognitive tasks) and studying, it is not of benefit to feel high on the job. However, I would note important to note that 1) partial opioid agonists have significantly more mild euphoriant properties than full agonists and 2) Kratom, which contains a partial mu-opioid agonist, has traditionally been used in Southeast Asia by field laborers as a ‘labor enhancement’ to enjoy their work more and combat their pain problems (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article

... (read more)

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