Atian_1
1d ago
This is true in my experience. I know anti-vaxxers pre-covid. They were largely new-age types, very liberal before woke was a thing, and hypochondriacs/against letting their children play outside much. I will say they were anti-doctor visits/checkups though. But like the OP said maybe not if there was something really serious like asthma.
The new post-covid antivaxxers are conservative folk that probably do let their kids play outside/in the dirt more than the average "pro"-vaxxer, but I don't think these are in any studies yet.
Atian_1
12d ago
Interesting. So perhaps legalization + deregulation is the way to go if you're going to legalize at all, otherwise don't legalize.
I was talking with some friends and family and they mentioned that full legalization of drugs would stop cartels from existing. Being the a bit contrarian, I am looking for other opinions than those in my personal circle.
What would happen if we legalized every drug out there? The argument is that anyone who would take such drugs, is already taking it despite it being illegal, and that there's nothing so addictive that if you try it once you're hooked for life/ruined your life. So their argument is: anyone who would be addicted already is, and the only effect of keeping the drugs illegal is that criminals are in charge of selling and producing them instead of capitalists/entrepreneurs who are above the law, and that there will be less stuff that is spiked/laced because of regulations. I'm not sure if it is true that all drugs are "safe" to try just once, what if there are drugs that are instantly addictive and ruin your life for having tried them once? Are there?
Also, what if legalizing (due to those imposed regulations) increases the price. Essentially, what if requiring drug producers to not lace their products, etc. makes it prohibitively expensive for the main population that is seeking out these drugs, meaning there will once again be a black market for them. The only benefit I can see to legalizing is that there might be some light/medium psychedelic drugs with mental health or spiritual benefits that middle-class/wealthy people will be able to access without going against the law, but I don't see how legalizing would get rid of cartels specifically? Can someone steelman the anti-legalization stance to me better than I've been trying to do?
I suppose we could also go full libertarian and have no regulations and full legalization. Perhaps that would stop cartels then, because companies can produce shit-quality drugs legally without needing to be criminals and kill people for it? (And perhaps with supply/demand, companies (which have access to better human capital than gangs) will learn to get more efficient with their production so they end up producing good quality drugs cheaply?).
My beliefs are that drugs are just a negative for society, so if we could get rid of them that's just better. If we can't get rid of them, we should minimize the number of people using them. And that legalizing "feels" like it will produce a world with a lot more drug users and that's a bad thing. Is this belief is wrong? I can't really debate people based off the above "vibes"-based reasoning but it feels wrong to legalize something like hard drugs, unless I've been lied to about how dangerous they are?
Atian_1
17d ago
Do we know how much of that is from practice though? And genetically faster reflexes/selection bias if you're interested in being a "quickdraw guy"? Can the average man really reach to disarm a knife faster than the knife holder can cut the disarming arm? I'm asking because I'm not sure, I don't know the answer here?
Atian_1
27d ago
Not to mention a lot of apps suck on the phone when compared to their desktop or browser versions. Wunderground app for example. I like to click on local weather stations and view their temperature history and some other stats, the app doesn't let you do as much of this and not very easily.
Atian_1
6mo ago
Interesting, yeah I'd say when going to failure mostly. I don't think my form is the issue necessarily, but perhaps I'm not great at identifying subtle slipping of form. Regardless, I think you make a good point that it's best to stop much earlier than failing a rep.
Atian_1
6mo ago
I think you have the consensus correct. For rehabbing injuries I believe the consensus is isometric or eccentric exercises at 80% of 1RM. But the consensus hasn't served me very well. Slow, controlled exercise is always how I have injured myself too.
Personally, I have started to do concentric-only exercise for my current injured area (not explosive though) and it seems to be working better than the eccentric-only regime my PT had me on. Concentric-only and steady pace, not "extra slow" and not fast or explosive, using a bit of momentum generated from non-injured body parts indeed, seems to be way less stress on your tendons than "slow, eccentric, force being generated primarily from the injured body part".
It could be that you and I are just using too much load on slow exercises because explosive movements might inherently limit your load a bit more, so perhaps the time integrated/accumulated force is higher when training at the same rate of perceived effort in slow exercises vs. explosive ones, thus you get injuries on slow exercises more than explosive ones. Whereas with the explosive exercises at least you're still getting high peak forces to trigger adaptations but the accumulated force isn't too much. It is sort of against common sense though, I mean slow/controlled just sounds safer and better than explosive but my experience is more in line with yours than with the consensus so I don't know what to think.
Explosive usually has less eccentric loading, depending on what it is you're doing that is explosive. Wonder if that is a factor too.
Atian_1
7mo ago
Yeah I've grown to detest the "just so fallacy". Not just in politics/government but in health/medicine, too. It seems too common to just accept things as axioms that don't have to be true, or are at least modifiable.
Atian_1
8mo ago
Interesting, this was really helpful and comprehensive, thanks for your perspective!
Atian_1
8mo ago
Oof. Point taken...I already have osteoporosis so it would suck to deteriorate bone quality. I figured up to now that because my growth was stunted I'd be particularly suited for HGH, but with low bone density I think it might be that I'm particularly not suited for HGH.
They are finally confirmed to be getting denser now that I'm maintaining a middle-range-normal BMI instead of a borderline normal BMI, and if I manage to naturally get to a density Z-score of 0 maybe there will be some natural thickening that occurs, who knows. I'm not hugely optimistic about the prospect of noticeable natural thickening at my age but I don't think anyone has studied whether bones only recover density versus recovering both density and some thickness in recovery from malnutrition as an adult.
At least my search turned up no results on recovery of bone thickness. "Catch up" growth obviously doesn't work for height after growth plate closure, but nobody out there seems to be even asking the question about catch-up growth of bone thickness. I hope the phenomenon exists and doesn't depend as much on growth plate status, but haven't had any measurable thickening in myself yet. I guess I'll be a case study if my ankles and wrists circumference somehow grow to what they should be genetically (around 20-25th percentile most likely, currently sitting somewhere off the chart below the 1st percentile).
Atian_1
8mo ago
That's an interesting observation. But I believe at some point you would get to a small enough region that the term stops being used altogether, IOW at some point it doesn't regress any further, because it's a term outsiders use to represent a group that differs from them along the "Yankee" axis, but eventually if you zoom in geographically you get a group too coherent in the "Yankee" sense that they wouldn't want to stratify themselves further along "Yankee" lines, if that makes sense. I guess you could call that the origin of the Yankee axis. Like "New Yorker" might regress to mean a dweller of New York City once you're inside NY state, but it can't regress any further...at that point you're at the origin of the NewYorker axis, even though the "origin point" has been expanded beyond a single geographical point to include an entire city of hundreds of square miles. This feels like a conversation from Seinfeld.
Atian_1
8mo ago
Hey man thanks a lot, this is very informative. Looks like there are some serious risks of long-term use...so most likely would only do this for a year and see what happens while eating a surplus. Yeah, the neanderthal look would be an unwelcome side effect. Figured there could be a dose somewhere in between that would do what I want without fucking up my face completely, but perhaps this magical goldilocks dose doesn't exist. I will look around and see if I can find one of those powerlifting physicians you speak of.
Atian_1
8mo ago
How safe is HGH? What's the highest possible safe dose? Is there a highest possible safe dose? Will a high dose do anything (thicken bones like your feet, hands, wrists, ankles, vertebrae) that a low dose won't? I'm actually trying to thicken my ankles and wrists to see if thicker bones allow for a larger tendon CSA which allows me to do more in the gym without overuse pain, because my growth was stunted. It seems like acromegaly patients do get significant thickening of the bones I care about, however, do you need a mega-dose to achieve that thickening or not?
Atian_1
8mo ago
Anybody here know if mostly-but-not-completely torn ACLs can recover on their own well enough for someone to play pro soccer again? I have a relative that mostly tore his a few months ago, it has now healed over with scar tissue but is still lacking the proper thickness and orientation of fibers. He has no pain now (after months of rehab) and jogs everyday now, does some weight vest workouts and is squatting more weight than he did before he got injured.
He injured some other stuff that has healed somewhat too. Surgeons want him to get surgery and said ACLs can't heal on their own, yet my relative literally has imaging evidence that it has healed to some extent already in just a few months, but the surgeons chalked it up to just being scar tissue and not falling under their definition of healing. There are studies that say athletes do just as well conservative management as surgery for that injury. Anybody here have experience with this stuff? Thanks.
Not commenting on the political aspects, but it seems like they covered way more benefits of estrogen than they did benefits of testosterone. This irks me because it reminds me of all those nutrition articles that praise one food's benefits, like how uniquely special quinoa is because it has magnesium, this, that, etc. When you could write the same exact article replacing "quinoa" for some other food, because there's tons of foods with identical or better nutrient profiles. Anyway:
You can't just list the cellular and global benefits of estrogen and not list the same benefits of testosterone. Testosterone has to be just as if not more muscle-sparing than estrogen. It is interesting and probably true that estrogen would shift fuel source more to fat, which does sound useful for very long-distance events, but just like women have more estrogen receptors and all the benefits that come with it, men have more testosterone receptors and all the benefits that come along with it, benefits that I could imagine would be relevant to hunting as well. The article doesn't seem to be doing a fair comparison.
For one, male-levels of testosterone uniquely allow tendon and ligament CSA to increase from exercise, which is injury-protective. Bone and muscle CSA will be larger, and fast-twitch muscles and power will be useful for certain game. I think it depends on what kind of game you are chasing, and whether you're going to run 100+ miles or maybe just a marathon or maybe just a short distance, idk.
Atian_1
11mo ago
Agreed re: "I think the human body is capable of far more than modern scientific reductionism allowed for." And very interesting that you were able to grow by releasing stored tension.
Atian_1
11mo ago
Interesting thoughts, thanks for the response. To your last point, ironically, it was on gender affirmation subreddits that I found the most accurate information on possible ways to boost height, including mentions that growth plates don't generally close until the early 20s, and that it's partially from lower HGH levels that people don't grow much in their early 20s, or that sometimes postural and hormonal changes can indeed increase height a bit through cartilaginous growth, etc. And even discussion on future possibilities of growth plate implantation/restoration. It was only in those subreddits that the discussion was taken seriously and practical advice given.
Atian_1
11mo ago
Good points, XY problem is exactly the term to describe what I'm talking about, I did not know about that term before. I agree the research is unclear, that's what I hope will change someday. Somewhat agree there are better things one could do with their time in most cases, well actually fully agree there are better things to do with ones time, but my point would be that height optimization doesn't have to exclude those other things necessarily.
I am arguing to build a pretty big umbrella and cover a bunch of cases, for me in particular I have definitely not maxxed out everything else in my life to the point where height is the only thing left to optimize. However, it is a pretty foundational thing, height and frame size that is, in that you can't lose it once you have it for the most part. It matters more for social success at the extremes of short stature. Also medically, larger frame size (by this I mean bone diameters, like wrist/ankle thickness) pays dividends into old age, promoting greater bone strength in a way that muscle gain alone does not. So it's a bit different from other things we can optimize, height/skeletal optimization would be a more secure investment if it pays off, although it might not pay at all. Although like you said, the research is kind of unclear on how to optimize height...my post discussed using common sense (and the few studies/info we do have) to optimize it, but yeah maybe that's not really enough to justify the effort for most people.
Interesting response, thanks. I agree it's not a bad thing and there's nothing wrong with wanting to make oneself more attractive to women, and that one doesn't need to hide that intention. I think that's a change I could make based on what you said, I could be more clear about my intentions not just in this matter but in all arguments I make. It's definitely one of my intentions, I don't just want to optimize for optimization sake, I want to optimize things I care about, attraction being one, overall strength potential being another, business being another, other health reasons and bone strength later in life being another, etc. Yet only one of those, the attraction one, would create tension if you voiced it in a place not as "free" as this one. I think you make a good point re: I am trying to depoliticize the matter of increasing height. That is true. Perhaps because I want more research or at least inquiry on this front, and when things get political in a way that goes against the mainstream, maybe the research won't get done. Also, I think it matters that there are multiple reasons that increased height and overall size is beneficial.
For example, enough people agree on the many benefits of weightlifting that if a guy is asking how to get stronger (even if he's asking for a reason that disagrees with someone's politics), nobody is going to withhold advice and all would speak freely. Most everyone recognizes the benefit of being stronger. So I suppose I'm trying to get at something like that but for height, although maybe the two are not ever going to be treated similarly. Height is indeed very valued by women, but short stature and frame size also increases cardiometabolic risks later in life, bone strength later in life, a bunch of things really. I started caring about height because of attraction, and caring about frame size for health reasons, but honestly I see so many benefits to both at this point (social benefits and health benefits) that the only reason it isn't treated like weightlifting is because it's really only something you can do if you're a kid, in your teens or in your early 20s, so it's not something most people who need to improve their health (who would likely be older) can do to improve their health, unless research into reopening/inserting natural growth plates comes around, unlike weightlifting which is something anyone can do effectively at any age. That and maybe side effects of HGH.
Makes sense
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