Prediction: Why the same stimulus feels different in different circumstances

Today, I deal with one of the most enigmatic themes in health.

Why does my body respond differently to the same stimulus?

Why can I eat anything on my holiday but get bloated when I eat it at home?

Why can I walk miles on a vacation, but feel too tired to walk to the kitchen at home?

It is not just a travel or vacation that affects me.

On some days I eat everything I can see and there is no change in my weight. On other days, I starve and my weight goes up.

If you magnify the issue to a larger group, it is even more confusing. Some people drink and have perfect health. Others live the perfect life and develop diseases or worse.

So what is going on?

The body is an incredibly complex learning and prediction machine.

On an minute to minute basis, your body has to recognize and predict a massive amount of information.

Categorically, we are speaking about sight, sound, smell and touch. But we are also speaking about the way you slept, your mood, whether you exercised or not, and what you ate.

All of these would be used by your brain and body to respond. It would then release digestive enzymes, hormones, repair cells, make new ones all while trying to keep your body in homeostasis or balance.

While doing all of this, it has to predict your current level of energy or ability to digest a particular nutrient.

Clearly, your body has the ability to walk or digest, in some circumstances as we just discussed.

So, is it merely a learning and prediction error?

Is that why, when you jog your body out of the normal, travelling for example, that your body “forgets” to make the same prediction it did at home?

Could you then replicate the experiment at home?

Research seems to indicate a memory of some sort at the cellular level.

Your cells retain memories of experiences. Changing the circumstances, breaks the pattern recognition, allowing for a different outcome.

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