There's one very simple "nootropic" that I've discovered many years ago and have been doing most days of the week. Buying a cup of coffee and taking a walk in nature. It makes me feel better than just coffee or just walking in nature. Another benefit is that in the days I can do this, I have something to look forward to since waking up.
In myy experience it works even better with a stimulant with a smoother curve than caffeine and optionally a bit more intensive (but still on lighter side) exercise.
Was just about to say this, Modafinil is my stimulant drug of choice. 100mg. Really smooth and lasts all day. I do need to take amitryptiline to help sleep but I have noise intolerance related sleep issues anyway and the combination of the two meds is complementary. My only regret is not starting sooner - I had a rather anti drug bias and saw needing medication as a weakness.
Just an anecdote, but Modafinil is one of the worst stimulants I have tried. It’s great as a one-off tool for something like staying awake to drive late at night, but every time i have taken it I get intense depression and aggravation for the next 2 days. It’s really strange. Things that normally do not worry me cause great mental suffering. If it wasn’t for that and the deep sleep impact, it would be great. I read the half life is ~16 hours.
AFAIK highly depends on the person, I've given 1/4 or 1/2 doses to people and the most common reaction is that it is like a coffee. It seems the strong reactions are a minority of users. Specifically for me, I have long term dopamine dysregulation, so it hits really strong. Without the amitriptyline there is no way I could say on it.
Any dopamine booster (agonist / reuptake inhibitor) has wildly different effects on different people. Or across different times in their life. Anecdotes are good to share, because they illuminate the variety of experiences that one should be prepared for.
Even Vyvanse vs Adderall XR are reported to have markedly different effects on the same person -- and after metabolic conversion, they're supposed to be the same active ingredient with fairly similar time release duration.
Modafinil and armodafinil I find to be excellent at getting rid of tiredness. I find for me if I take too much, I’ll get nausea that’s only curable by a sleep cycle. Armodafinil tends to last much longer.
The downside I’ve noticed is that one side effect many people don’t realize is how it affects the body for some people. It can cause increased blood pressure among others - which can lead some people to feel anxious.
Body follows mind, mind follows body.
(As in my body feels anxious, so I must be anxious ).
I personally find the effects from Modafinil to be kind of like caffeine but with less side effects / longer lasting / more effective.
Good simple nootropic, but I like the cup of coffee even better with a 200mg capsule of a high quality L-Theanine to give a zen-like calm to the stimulation of the caffeine. Underrated as heck IMHO.
I am still yet to see any decent studies into whether or not L-Theanine actually does anything at all. Studies never seem to find anything statistically significant, yet so many people swear by it. I'm inclined to say it is placebo.
Any brands that you would consider high quality? I'm currently using Nutricost, but only because it was the cheapest, and I didn't know they were allowed to fiddle with quality on these things.
Going to make a wild guess that coffee’s contribution is its classic stimulant effect, which is well known.
Not sure why the nootropics people are always trying to come up with alternate theories for why something works when substances like caffeine are well studied and known to provide a mood boost.
They work until they don’t in my anecdotal experience. Any substance it seems the first time is the best. Then, slowly, my brain chemistry adapts, and it becomes less effective. Sometimes a higher dose works for a while. But it never lasts. Then side effects start to build up, and before long it’s counterproductive. SNRIs worked, until after a few months I lost all my endurance (running) and libido. Kratom was wonderful at almost everything, until it eventually stopped hitting as hard and skipping it caused withdrawals. Micro dose maybe worked but very quickly wasn’t effective (like after 2-3 times with psilocybin, or a couple months of ketamine) many others on this list have a similar track record with my brain. Good at first but the effect wears off after a while and usually end up worse off for it.
> They work until they don’t in my anecdotal experience. Any substance it seems the first time is the best. Then, slowly, my brain chemistry adapts, and it becomes less effective.
It’s wild to me that the nootropics community evolved into a hybrid between the recreational drug community and supplement enthusiast communities while forgetting all of the lessons people learned in those communities long ago.
So much of the nootropics discourse is about compounds that have a moderate to high recreational value: The above post is talking about Kratom (an opioid) as if it was a nootropic, which would be unfathomable under the original description of nootropics.
The linked article also includes psilocybin, tianeptine (a compound that started out with some myths about serotonin but was later discovered to be an opioid), and phenibut (an extremely addictive substance, see /r/quittingphenibut )
The latter substance is known for temporarily reducing anxiety and giving a confidence boost, which is a common theme among substances cited as helpful. Something about calling them “nootropics” seems to reset people’s expectations and they forget that all recreational drugs make people feel some combination of euphoria, motivation, confidence boost, anxiety reduction, or stimulation at first, before tolerance takes in. People find themselves not only tolerant to these substances, but in withdrawal when they don’t take them (as mentioned above)
Phenibut is one of the most obvious recreational drugs that got pulled into the “nootropics” label for years. Nootropics Depot got caught importing large numbers of drums of this substance for resale. They deleted a lot of the discussion about their lawsuit on /r/nootropics (did you know they control the subreddit?) and have put forward a very selective version of the story that makes them look like the victims. Meanwhile it was one of the most common debilitating addiction stories coming out of supplement and nootropics communities until word spread that it was highly addictive and the withdrawals were very long.
Whatever meaning the word “nootropic” originally had is long lost. It’s now a blanket term for experimenting with powerful supplements or prescription drugs under a different name. I think that alternative name has left a lot of people blind to the reality of what they’re doing. They also frequently don’t realize that self-reported feelings of drug liking effect are not indicative of the drug’s objective positive effects.
That's an insightful observation! I have several friends who are into nootropics and would recommend to me various things they are trying. I simply limited to things that can be bought at Whole Foods or CVS; I trust that these places only sell me supplements or OTC drugs, not potentially dangerous prescription drugs.
I think the difference is definitely that Phenibut enhances cognition. It doesn't just reduce anxiety and at small doses the anxioltyic effect is mild while the cognition boost is noticable. Things like Xanax and Etizolam or Valium don't have the same cognition boost unless someone is suffering from anxiety and even that is often overruled by the sedative properties.
Kraton I couldn't make the same argument and not familiar with tianeptine / gas station scag.
The suggestion/allusion that the EU's GDP per capita is lower than the US due to Adderall and Dexedrine not being approved/available is wild. Kind of makes me not want to take seriously the rest of the article...
Adderall is a performance enhancing drug, and widly used as such. Its nigh on impossible to compete at the highest level workplaces with doped employees if you are a natural worker.
The graph implies is that aderall causes people to perform at 150% on average if 100% of the workforce is on it. I say that both implying that aderall has such a massive objective effect and implying it is so widely (ab)used are the laughable ramblings of a psychonaut at worst and unsubstantiated at best.
I'm not even certain it's fair to refer to these things (or modafinil) as nootropics, as nootropics (as defined by the person who coined the phrase) should lack stimulate/sedative properties.
Data is well presented but the conclusions are iffy. But hey, maybe Europe can stop limiting its own industry with regulation if they just up that dextroamphetamine dose?
It is frustratingly hard for me to trust most any nootropic discussion nowadays. Without many large random trials, there are as many questions as answers afterwards.
It doesn't help that I'm on Adderall, but if left to my own devices, would absolutely skip it. I'm assuming I benefit in the able to think way from it. Largely the only reason I know I missed a dose is if I find I lose my patience quickly with others.
That, historically, does not work well for neurochemistry. Large random trials are good for an average biological response of profitable chemicals, but it seems there are significant differences in neurochemistry, between people, that these don't capture. If you've ever had a prescription for most anything mental related, like ADHD, depression, etc, there's never just one drug, there's a panel that you just kinda go through until one works for your personal neurochemistry, with some having detrimental side effects for some people.
Unsurprisingly, it seems to be the same with many of these nootropics. I've had several very negative reactions to common nootropics at fractional doses, where others have positive experiences at many times the dose. A few resulted in migraines every day I took it, until I stopped, with one quickly resulting in depression and the only suicidal thoughts of my life, which went aways just as fast as I stopped. One hurt my short term memory so much I couldn't repeat a phone number (a very potent racetam like).
Some nootropics are precursors, which are mostly self regulating/supplements, but there are many out there that very actively poke low level neurochemicals, and your personal response will vary, just as is expected in the regulated drug world.
Min/maxing personal neurochemistry won't come from large random trials.
> Unsurprisingly, it seems to be the same with many of these nootropics.
Controlled trials are actually very revealing of the placebo effect, which is a rampant confounded in nootropics communities. When people spend months reading about new nootropics, then a week waiting for it in the mail, then they take their first dose with excitement and anticipation they generally report feeling something.
The nice thing about trials is that they can start separating out this placebo effect.
Several people have done self-trials with different compounds with surprising results. Gwern is perhaps the most famous. Whenever people post about magnesium being a life altering substance or producing profound effects I also point them to his measured magnesium trials where the net effect over time was beginning to trend negative.
One of the myths in nootropics communities is that everything is a matter of neurochemistry and everyone is substantially different. In reality, RCTs are actually great at capturing enough people to see subgroups responding if you have enough people.
One thing most nootropics people don’t acknowledge enough is how often placebo effect appears in RCTs. Perform an RCT for depression and the placebo group will get better. It happens in every study. Give college students Adderall before an exam and they will report performing better, despite no statistical improvement in their grades. Now consider these facts in light of all of the scattered nootropics forum reports from people claiming different substances cured their depression or made them smarter. Not surprisingly, if you check their post history more recent comments will show them off on a new tangent trying a new substance, the old one long forgotten as a short trial that didn’t work out.
I hear what you are saying, but I have a hard time thinking it is an argument against RCTs. Notably, Adderall is a strong counter to this idea. It is clearly effective per all of the tests it has been through. Not surprisingly, it is one of the only ones listed in this website that works. Quite well.
There is an argument that people should treat their own lives as an experiment. Where you track the things you do and see if you can find patterns on mood and productivity and such. If you want to know what generally works, though, there is no counter to effectiveness in RCTs, though?
Put differently, when has evidence ever gone counter to RCTs? Not just are there some questions that an RCT hasn't covered, but times it has been counter to the results?
> Adderall is a strong counter to this idea. It is clearly effective per all of the tests it has been through.
That's a good example, because the statement "clearly effective" is absolutely false, as will be stated by a doctor when they prescribe it to you, and can be found in the documentation that comes with the medication. It is not appropriate or effective for some people, and is detrimental for others (accounts of both are found trivially online).
Adderall has some fairly clear cases where you shouldn't prescribe it, but this is largely not a secret list of "your unique biochemistry means we have no idea whether it will work for you" level of uncertainty. And, at large, this learning has been reinforced by RCTs. Such that I still don't see this as an argument against them?
You misread. I never made an argument against RCT.
> "your unique biochemistry means we have no idea whether it will work for you" level of uncertainty.
If by "work" you mean feeling something happen after you pop some pills, then sure...it's amphetamine.
If by "work" you mean "improved outcome", again, refer to the drugs documentation or are pharmacist, and also observe the existence of ADHD drugs that are not Adderall. The person prescribing it to you will quite literally tell you that it doesn't work for everyone, and go down the list of available drugs until you find something that, in fact "works for you", all entirely based on your personal response to the drug. Those reasons range from ineffectiveness (too high dosage requirement), unacceptable personality changes, to, of course, the rare full psychosis.
Difference in amphetamine response is well documented [1]:
> The clinical effects of amphetamine are quite variable, from positive effects on mood and cognition in some individuals, to negative responses in others, perhaps related to individual variations in monaminergic function and monoamine system genes.
Ritalin is also ineffective for some, for unidentified reasons [2]:
> The response rates to MPH among adult ADHD patients range from 25 to 78 % in controlled trials (Wilens et al. 2011).
If you aren't against RCTs, then I don't think we disagree? Your post certainly makes it sound like you feel there are better ways than RCTs to get an idea of how well things work.
And fair that "work" is not necessarily a binary answer. I think we can easily agree there is no panacea out there. But that doesn't mean you can't make pretty good learning based on the trials.
In common probabilistic game terms, we know that most hands are not as good as pocket aces at hold em. Even if we can say that the aces will not win near 20% of the time.
> It doesn't help that I'm on Adderall, but if left to my own devices, would absolutely skip it.
The difference is that you’ve taken it medicinally for years, whereas most nootropics users are early users who are experimenting with high placebo priming.
Stimulant prescriptions have a high churn rate because many people take their first few doses and feel euphoric, then think it’s going to be like that forever. Fast forward a couple years and the fun is long gone so it’s a different story.
Nootropics forums are dominated by posts from people saying “Just took my first dose of $substance and I feel amazing!” which is the least useful measure of how well it will treat someone long term.
Even when I started Adderall, I never felt anything amazing from it. Self reporting mood, as it were, I would think it is not working. It is only that I know I have more patience with things going wrong, that I know it is doing something.
That said, sounds like we are largely in agreement? I have gotten where I assume everything is dominated by noise.
While I like your project, there should be strong warnings. Some of the substances listed, like amphetamines, aren't just supplements, they actively and unavoidably alter your brain function. Their effects are "much less subjective", others, like omega-3, may have (or not) benefits that you don't feel at all.
I echo that. If you're considering this list, please consider talking to a physician first, yes, even if you're in the US. Self-medicating based on randos on the Internet or a few cherry-picked studies is irresponsible, doubly so when dealing with addictive substances with nobody to oversee the therapy, triply so when in a country with no safety net for people with addiction, or sick people in general.
And before you say I appeal to authority, I understand people don't respect doctors or their country's healthcare system, but I suggest they should acquire formal medical education themselves before starting to put random shit in their body. And no, reading the entire body of blogs by Scott Alexander does not count.
1. Apart from ADHD medications, which are very powerful, most drugs and weird obscure supplements have little effect (there are some intriguing but noisy results about peptides).
2. Exercise— especially weightlifting and HIIT— is also very powerful. There's evidence of a dose-response curve where light exercise is good but intense is better.
Arguably this is pretty unsurprising, from an evolutionary perspective. It would be strange if our brains had "one weird trick" to perform a lot better with no downsides, since if it existed evolution should've found it. But being in good shape confers large benefits.
> It would be strange if our brains had "one weird trick" to perform a lot better with no downsides, since if it existed evolution should've found it
It would not be strange at all. We are constantly evolving and so is our environment. This argument is very similar to the "efficient market fallacy", if the market was perfectly efficient there would be no opportunity to create value, but in reality it is highly imperfect.
You need to add that all of this is self-reported/subjective. I've gone under doctor's supervision through L-Theanine+Caffeine, then Modafinil, and finally Ritalin, and to be brutally honest, while I subjectively feel the best when on Ritalin, I am far from certain I would be able to show it in a blind study with an objective problem-solving task.
Also a blind study with these would be hard, as Modafinil has a noticeable effect on heart rate and blood pressure, and general response to stress (at least in my case), and also causes a distinct chemical smell of one's urine.
So regular exercise (lifting, HIIT, and light cardio outdoors) is literally that one weird trick. It's hard to identify any downsides but the upsides are tremendous. It's amazing that people will go out ingesting all sorts of questionable substances just to avoid getting in shape.
> It's hard to identify any downsides but the upsides are tremendous.
I wish! If you're lucky (or not particularly unlucky) that might be true.
I don't feel any mental benefits, nor do I sleep better. Fun kinds of exercise (badminton, football, BJJ) always seem to injure me me over longer time periods (and it takes months, or even years, to heal when you're in your forties). And they are not very forgiving, schedule-wise.
Lifting weights or rowing on a machine is painfully boring, but it does make me feel better physically. It's a great upside, but the downsides are real too.
I found it quite effective in helping me to grind leetcode when I was job hunting while working full-time but YMMV. Perhaps I would've gotten the same gig, but I tried doing a month without it and found my ability to power through was significantly lower than with amphetamines. Maybe it was because the amphetamine gave me an artificially high amount of dopamine which offset the inherently boring nature of the task.
'...nootropic ... “Any substance purported to increase or enhance cognitive abilities." ... communities like the nootropics subreddit, which has a great begginer’s guide.'
At first I thought the mispelling was intentional irony. But the leak to the guide shows that it's just unintentional irony
To add... weightlifting isn't a substance and doesn't fit the definition of a nootropic.
Also, regarding weightlifting... there was no mention about the risk of continuous muscle trauma, scar tissue build-up, nerve damage, and ligament damage.
time to put a pebble on the pile of anecdotal evidence for exercise as a life-changing nootropic. for two years now I've been doing 20 minutes of resistance training and 20 minutes of cardio every day and it helps so much with everything that its reached a point where my wife will flat out tell me "go lift" if I'm being irritable or having a hard time focusing.
I think most people use weightlifting to refer to lifting weights in general. If someone said “competitive weightlifting” then I would assume that to mean stuff like clean & jerk.
Phenibut will FUCK you up. Ever take a big dose? Its like being piss drunk.
Very fun substance also nasty as fuck and undoubtably bad for your brain. (I got weird neurological "withdrawal" symptoms after like 3 days of taking it)
> 5 - 9 means strong effects, definitely not placebo.
It’s impossible for anyone to say this convincingly about their own experience. If it were easy to tell whether an effect was due to placebo, we wouldn’t need blinded trials!
That's because it's obvious due to effects other than the one you're trying to observe. Which is of course the case when you're dealing with psychedelics (and of course many other drugs).
We certainly shouldn't accept subjective evaluations as proof of effectiveness, but that does not give it zero value. The more subtle the effect or the more invested the subject is in establishing the effectiveness of an intervention (or any of many other confounders) the less likely it is to represent proof.
But it is evidence. Think of this as more observational science rather than experimental science; we have to do some work to determine whether it is worth trying to do blinded experiments to validate an effective, and this is that work.
It appears he provided an analysis for subjective perception of effectiveness of various nootropics. I don't see much objective measurement of cognitive performance at all here. This kind of survey has value, but I think to call it "analysis for effectiveness" is very misleading.
It's crazy to me how many people have miserable health, complain about their body and mental state endlessly, but still put up any roadblock they can think of to avoid exercising of any form.
I have chronic fatigue problems, which exercise exacerbates. I swim 3 times a week, but have to carefully regulate the intensity or it triggers post-exertional malaise.
The exercise is important for my general health but it isn't positively correlated with my cognitive functioning. Quite the opposite.
I used to have plenty of energy running 40-50miles per week, but when I ramped up to 80mpw I started nodding off in my chair by 1 PM. Then despite the higher mileage and more intense training, my race times slipped. My half went from 1:23 to 1:28, and I felt drained, irritable and angry unless I took a long break. After digging in, I learned that very high mileage can deplete iron levels. Once I focused on improving my iron absorption, I finally got my energy back and everything clicked. Even while holding 80+ mpw for the upcoming SF Marathon, I still knocked 5% off my Bay to Breakers time (48:51 this year) and cut my 5K PR from 19:17 to 18:37.
I had long covid which manifested as post-exertional malaise and general brain fog, and which was not improving for 2 years, and I essentially solved it with a combination of a low sugar paleo diet (starting as an autoimmune protocol diet for a few weeks to determine some other things that caused flare ups for me like nutritional yeast and capsaicin), lots of walking, light and increasing exercise (especially outdoor exercise), and a dedication to sleep hygiene. Many of which were referenced in the post.
It's a ton of work at first but it's completely worth it -- post-exertional malaise sucks.
Other things that helped me personally: daily cold plunges up to the chin (so you feel it in your vagus nerve), HRV reset breathing exercises, and daily meditation. Wish you the best of luck.
I'm in a similar situation but with multiple sclerosis for over 15 years. I love to exercise, however on some days a medium-intensity cardio session will leave my brain functioning at like 50% which is not great for my job. I gotta work hard to make sure my gas tank has enough for all the tasks planned for that day. My neurologist calls it Energy Management.
It's bad habits from a younger age. I remember in my 20s, I didn't need to exercise at all and yet my body felt perfect. And so was my mental health. It was after several years of sedentary lifestyle that it clicked for me that my health was declining and exercise was needed to restore it. I suspect this could be the case for many: you don't need exercise and your body remains in a tip top shape when you are young.
I’ve been experimenting with making my last meal of the day as far from my sleep as possible ideally waking up at 5am, drinking water / vitamins, exercising by lifting my dumb bells in my studio apartment, eating a 1k calorie breakfast and 1k calorie lunch and done with eating by ~1-2 so I have 4-6 hours to digest before bed
Best sleep I’ve ever gotten.
You don’t know what you’re missing out on until you’ve experienced not good but GREAT sleep.
if that’s too extreme avoid too much water before bed if you’re getting up to pee you are ruining your sleep
Same - I also read a study saying 22% muscle synthesis increase with 40 grams of casein before bed and one saying protein before bed improved sleep quality.
Yes - unless you have to wake up to pee I guess. Casein is one of the slowest absorbed proteins so it releases over 6 hours in most cases. I think soy beans is probably the same since its mixed in with fiber. If you compare it to whey isolate thats absorbed after 1. This doesn’t have the same effect.
Do you really not eat bread? We've got to come up with better ways to categorize foods. At face value such a term seems to imply you should only eat raw food.
I do avoid eating (highly processed white) bread in most meals, because it doesn't make me feel great.
We're really targeting "highly-processed" foods. Personally I draw a line between sausage that went through something resembling a hand-powered meat grinder vs. sausage that has been obliterated into a fine pink sludge and reformed. Both are processed, but the latter is highly processed, with more room for additives.
The issue with sausage isn't the processing, it's the preservatives and the choice of meats (and their corresponding nutrients) that go into the sausage.
My understanding is that degree of "processing" is acknowledged to be an imperfect metric, just one that fits easily with EU labeling concerns. I just don't think that's as useful as is advertised.
I’m not even talking about the fact that flour is processed in the general sense. The generic sliced grocery store loaf itself has added preservatives, sugar, etc that you wouldn’t find in a homemade loaf. When people talk about eating non-processed foods they usually mean eating whole (ex. Fruits, vegetables) or foods without preservatives and stabilizers.
> I think we all mean bleached, stabilized and enriched flour.
The entire point of this conversation is that the meaning of "processed" is entirely unclear, and I still don't understand what beef you have against bleached, stabilized, and enriched flour.
I'd put any amount of money that whatever your concerns are can be addressed with the aphorism "everything in moderation".
The aphorism "everything in moderation" is useful only because it doesn't specify what amount would be acceptable as moderation. Is having a slice of bread a day considered moderation? What about five slices? Is having 10 grams of sugar a day moderation? What about 50 grams? The meaning of "moderation" is conveniently unclear.
>It's crazy to me how many people have miserable health, complain about their body and mental state endlessly, but still put up any roadblock they can think of to avoid exercising of any form.
I don't think it's that weird. Exercising, particularly cardio, for its own sake, without something you're trying to accomplish with your effort, feels very bad.
Humans are evolutionarily adapted to running. Yes, going from a modern sedentary lifestyle to running will feel rough for a few months as you acclimate (and most people don't start off at the slow 11 min. / mile [7 min. / km] pace they should). But there's a reason marathons are so popular, running and exercise starts to feel really good.
> Yes, going from a modern sedentary lifestyle to running will feel rough for a few months as you acclimate
Right. Which is why people don't exercise. That's a lot to ask of people with other things on their plate.
To be clear, I know I should exercise. I just find it very difficult to do so, and it's very easy to convince yourself you should do something else with that energy.
I think team sports are probably the best way to get into exercise. This allows tying the benefit directly into a reward system. I ran long-distance in high school and, without teammates to let down, it was very difficult to push myself beyond the bare minimum effort. Most of us don't have the ability to summon a team sport into our work schedule though.
The problem with exercise is that we have evolved to be energy efficient and this includes being lazy when we have food/shelter so the resistance to it is high.
However once we start exercising for any period of time and observe the positive outcomes then the difficulty drops and it becomes enjoyable.
The problem is peoples expectations and approach.
> Yes, going from a modern sedentary lifestyle to running will feel rough for a few months as you acclimate
This is a terrible idea and for someone who has been sedentary they will likely just injure themselves and/or feel miserable. People don't have realistic expectations. It's better to do something like "couch to 5K" running on a grass or a dirt track. In a couple of weeks they will feel good after a run (if they are not too distracted and outward looking) then from there the runners high reinforces the behavior and they will look forward to exercising.
Many people find the data and record-breaking in running a good reward system. There's all kinds of goals to try to achieve, from your best time at 10 different distances, to weekly miles, to a longer and longer distance like a marathon.
Team sports are harder to work into a schedule, which is why running is easier to start for many people because it just requires a pair of shoes and leaving the house yourself. For others, there's a parallel social angle where you can also make many friends you see regularly at clubs and enjoy the same activity together.
A time scale that the human brain is terrible at recognizing or adapting to or internalizing.
Our reward hardware doesn't work well for exercising because it wasn't needed for exercising. You either did physical activity or you starved to death.
People w/ fibromyalgia don't seem to benefit from exercise the way others do. For normal people, exercise does some tissue damage but it grows back stronger. People with fibro get the damage but they don't get the regrowth. So a bit of "overdoing it" that I might mostly bounce back from in a few days could have one of my wife's friends down for six weeks.
Terrible advice. The muscles need blood (nutrients), and you're going to take something that vasoconstricts? You're then going to couple that with an increased heart rate?
I unironically offer the opinion that half a teaspoon of creatine is a much better alternative.
> Terrible advice. The muscles need blood (nutrients), and you're going to take something that vasoconstricts?
ADHD patients seem to be able to exercise just fine (and -importantly- don't seem to be suffering widespread muscle death) when on Adderall and similar. I bet folks like that are pretty glad that the body is a complex, robust system that does reasonably well in a fairly wide range of internal and external environments.
I honestly do not believe hardly any of the studies about adderall. I am an adhd patient and playing tennis on amphetamines once spiked my heart rate above 200. Not good. Also vasoconstrictors + valsalva technique for lifting heavy weights = anuerysm risk.
So, respectifully to the studies, im calling bullshit.
Been on them for over decade, they don't work that way -- at least for me. Not sure I want them to work that way either. I am not sure working out on stimulants is the best for the body. The candle that burns twice as hot burns twice as fast.
I think the big road block for many people is that exercise itself also hurts?
I know that is a hurdle I have with my kids. They complain that jogging/running hurts. It is hard to convince people that that never really changes, and that it also hurts for the people that are doing it every day. Obviously acute pains are a different thing, but there is a reason recovery is a vital part of exercise. We all have to recover from pushing limits. You can't expand your limits without pushing, though.
My trick was to find a way to obligate myself to finish. Biking to work was a huge win for my fitness. Even on days I didn't really want to bike a few more miles at the end of the day, I still had to get home.
For my kids, I'm trying to convince them that a lot of the things they find uncomfortable are things they just aren't used to. Ergonomics have fooled a lot people into thinking "feels right" is the initial state of something, I think? You still have to train yourself to get used to a lot of things.
Jogging is for adults...if they're kids they'd be far better served by playing sports or something. You'll run a mile or two in a soccer or frisbee game without even trying, it will be fun, and you'll socialize
The most important thing is not to "blow" your endocrine system. If you overload it your body will subconsciously avoid exercise. The full body max-weight workout will feel good the first time, then soon, mysteriously, you won't want to go back to the gym.
My suggestion is to stop your workout a little before you want to, almost as if you're disappointed it's over now, which will make you want to go to the gym the next day more consistently.
Ish? I can similarly claim that the most important part of any exercise is showing up. Surprisingly apt for any work. Just showing up is obnoxious in how effective it is.
Similarly, for many nootropic reports, "just doing something" is far more effective than people give credit. Especially if it is a choice to do something. Successfully executing one choice seems to confer some success at executing on the next one. (Note, successful execution does not imply successful outcome...)
I'm convinced this is why people that start their routine with "just make your bed every day" get a surprising amount of success.
All of which is to say that I agree you shouldn't blow yourself out. My push back is that you are probably far less blown out than you think after a workout.
I suspect there's a problem with 20th century materials underlying this.
There's no particular reason why running on asphalt, or even running on a treadmill, shouldn't hurt. It might! It's not a natural surface. And hard surface + modern shoes might not be a good enough combo to overcome the pain it creates.
I live near a beach and run on sand every other day; I don't have body pain problems. But change the surface and I think I would.
Running on asphalt is almost certainly easier than running on anything in the past. Try running on a rocky beach someday. :D. Running cross country through trails, you should expect that you will be going far slower than you could comfortably do on asphalt.
The shoes things is an odd one. Current thinking is that a lot of the effort people went through to dampen the shock to knees oddly resulted in people accepting longer periods of stress on their knees than they would have had they learned a different gait. That said, building up callouses on your feet, as was the norm before shoes, by definition hurts?
I hate that I put "running" as my example. Standing and walking would also make my point. Physically using your body is more difficult than not. And if you aren't used to it, it is a type of hurting.
Heck, learning to play a musical instrument is the same way. Guitars hurt your fingers as you build up the ability to play. Piano doesn't have the same pain, but expect a sore hand after a few sessions.
I hate running and I played soccer for the majority of my life.
As I've gotten older, I've found other activities to fill the void such as rock climbing and mountain biking. Both can be strenuous when you want them to be, but you can also take it easy. Combined with low level weight training, I've found it a lot more enjoyable since both require your brain to be 100% engaged when doing it so there's also a mental boost as well.
You reference that they can be strenuous. My bet is that you often choose to push to a strenuous feeling often during the training period of each of these. My further bet is what you call "strenuous", I'm asserting that those unfamiliar would call "painful."
To be clear, I'm not claiming that you are constantly hurting yourself. I am claiming that if you weren't familiar with the feeling, you'd call it a pain. I'm thinking back to the original Matrix, "why do my eyes hurt?"
My issue with exercise is that it's boring as sin. I rather do manual labor or play a sport than go to a gym. There is just something that feels so artificial about running on a human-designed hamster wheel or picking up heavy objects and putting them back down for no reason real, useful reason.
You have my sympathies. It can be boring. Boredom is not, necessarily, a bad thing, though? Certainly, some folks could use a bit more boredom in the day. :D
I'll also posit that you do the boring stuff now so that you can do the exciting stuff later.
Apologies that my example invited specific consideration. Long hikes are also somewhat "painful" for people that don't do them often. Walking to the bus stop is something I have seen many kids avoid, if they have the option.
That is, I'm not hurting in my joints from running. My pains there will be much more attuned to how hard it is for me to "push" at speeds. That said, pushing at any speed is how I have managed to increases the speeds that I can push.
It’s possible to do exercise with just as much cardio intensity as running but without impact/pain. Cycling on a trainer bike (eg. Peloton) is one popular choice.
And for many people, being out of breath is what they will cite as hurting. Indeed, pushing to exhaustion is form of pain. Whether you do it over a long period or short just leads to different forms of pain.
And agreed that acute pain should take special care when folks are doing something. But the research is getting somewhat clear that cushioned shoes and such can be awkwardly counter to avoiding problems.
It's not a dichotomy, both is good. I find my sleep and appetite improving with exercise, too; sleep can improve with physical tiredness on top of mental.
The more you age, the more you need regular sleep, it seems. Its basically the only thing that I can't fix nowadays any other way but going to bed. Modafinil can help for a couple of days but that's it.
And yet, nobody mentions how supplements can't generally damage you, but a few days in a gym can fuck you up for an entire year, even with a lot of experience. I basically never met anybody who does regular resistance training without having some sort of pain somewhere, all the time.
Maybe if you are underdoing it its possible but if you follow the muscle building theory, you are certainly going to get fucked eventually. Even the slightest position issue can make your tendons hurt for months... No wonder all athletes are on BPC 157, TB 500 and friends...
I talked to exercise professors and random people alike, and they all tell the same story. Professor said that I should get used to pain.
Too bad exercise seems to be a must after you are 50+ and no amount of good nutrition and vitamin megadosing will suffice for optimal health and particularly insuline resistance. Prior to that age though, you can get away without it.
As one of those random persons who has been weightlifting for 10+ years and is currently in their late 30s, I look great and I feel great. Yes, there is pain because you’re breaking down muscle fibers which repair and become stronger. Lots of people experience delayed onset muscle soreness, which is temporary. Some people don’t learn how to do things correctly and don’t listen to their body so they injure themselves.
What is the muscle building theory? Not everyone who does weightlifting is aiming for hypertrophy. Some are aiming for strength.
Honestly, it sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself not to do it. That’s okay. It’s difficult to know where to begin and avoid potential injury. It does take some time to learn. I like to recommend starting with a functional training class. This kind of class provides a guided session in building strength in everyday movements and provides a steady pace to really tune in to your body. It’s very difficult to injure yourself.
> Honestly, it sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself not to do it.
I am still doing it, and I do feel good in general. However, I have constant pain in one part of the body or other which is something I can manage (if its too strong, ibuprofen or friends). The entire gym is full of NSAIDs.
It's just that nobody underlines this aspect of exercise. I know its good for metabolism, brain health, cardiovascular health, looking good etc so you trade serious disease for more or less pain.
> I basically never met anybody who does regular resistance training without having some sort of pain somewhere, all the time.
As a counterpoint, since you seem to like anecdata: I am around 50 and have been doing weightlifting for the last 8 years. No pain. No injury. Extreme positive effects on my entire life.
I would respectfully suggest that you need to a) know what you are doing, e.g. start with a trainer, and b) not try to be an olympic athlete, e.g. reach reasonable benchmarks and not try to be a weightlifting champ.
I don't know what "exercise professors" are, but you might want to talk to different people.
Exercise professors are guys teaching exercise science on universities.
Your experience is extraordinary, you seem to be protected for some reason or have high pain threshold or simply do not exercise hard enough. "Extreme positive effects on your entire life", that's so unbelievable, there is no such thing apart from acute drugs. I would respectfully suggest you to not deceive others, if you are deceiving yourself.
I am not trying to be an athlete, I am just observing the world around me. I also recommend exercise, its just not a silver bullet the guys like you are promoting. Its also almost totally useless for weight control, the thing that most people exercise for.
I guess my response would be that yes, you will develop lots of random little aches and pains and small injuries, but the counterpoints are:
- Before I exercised regularly, I developed aches and pains in upper and lower back, also a shoulder for some reason. These all went away thanks to pull-ups and pushups. Lack of exercise will also wreck your body—if you have not experienced this I have to assume you are very young.
- Exercise also causes lots of random little injuries. For example basketball gave me an ankle and a knee that have never been quite the same. But, I find that exercise itself helps dampen the pain response and makes them more bearable. I have ankle and knee warmup routines that help a lot.
Among people I have met, exercisers with injuries have full lives who are able to live around their injuries. Non-exercisers also develop little pains over time of being sedentary, and end up being much more constrained in what they can do.
Ive been doing 3x weekly calisthenics for about 3 years and apart from occasional overuse-tendon-soreness that clears up in about a week, ive never had any problems. In fact im way less prone to injury and an ongoing shoulder issue I had cleared up after getting better at pullups
So, I disagree with you. If you take it slow and listen to your body and maintain good form youre golden.
You should absolutely get a trainer, ideally one who has education in physiotherapy.
I got muscle problems from _not_ doing resistance training, my bad posture caught up with me finally. And I was doing quite a bit of cardio (treadmill walking), so my general health was OK.
It took months to build up muscles enough to avoid stressing the same overworked muscles, but eventually I had no pain whatsoever.
Soreness is not a bad thing. And it's true that people who regularly exercise will often be in a state where they feel some level of soreness somewhere. That's the kind of pain people say you should embrace.
It's also true that lots of folks injure themselves exercising. Sometimes this leads to having to take time off to recover.
But people who don't exercise are more at risk of injury in general. This is because their tendons, bones, and muscles are less able to deal with sudden stress.
> And yet, nobody mentions how supplements can't generally damage you
Not talking about soreness. Soreness is trivial. I currently have 2 tendons hurting and everybody in my gym who exercise constantly.
But I agree with you, people who don't exercise are more at risk of injury in general.
> > And yet, nobody mentions how supplements can't generally damage you
> And last of all - this is plainly not true...
It's true, its just that pharma wants to sell you drugs. No wonder Pauling called it orthomolecular medicine, claiming that "right" molecules are basically non toxic.
Unless you are a complete retard and take millions IU of vitamin D or you are a special case. There are no reported deaths with supplements in the last 30 years.
That’s just not true. I’ve been lifting heavy for many years and have had my share of injuries, sure. But they heal. My body feels great. I’m almost 50 and I have no back pain, or other pains I see people constantly complaining about that are near my age and don’t do any resistance training. The only reason I injured myself is because I overreached. So that’s in ones control. I tend to overdo it from time to time if I’m trying to hit a goal. But nobody needs to push that hard and there are many ways to avoid it.
The fact is resistance training is vital for able bodied folks to avoid feeling pain later. And of course it has many other benefits than that. Even just pulling on some resistance bands can save your back and shoulders and the chance of injury there is minuscule.
> I basically never met anybody who does regular resistance training without having some sort of pain somewhere, all the time.
Hahahahahahahahaha
Been doing ~daily resistance training for > 10 years, have a hell of a build, and do not experience anything like this. I have had a couple of injuries, but never anything that caused me pain outside of the gym.
Ditto for many of my friends/colleagues.
Sounds like you may just be in a bubble of fatties
> a few days in a gym can fuck you up for an entire year, even with a lot of experience. I basically never met anybody who does regular resistance training without having some sort of pain somewhere, all the time
> Maybe if you are underdoing it its possible but if you follow the muscle building theory, you are certainly going to get fucked eventually. Even the slightest position issue can make your tendons hurt for months...
I think your definition of "underdoing it" is what's fucked. If your goal is to optimize your enjoyment of your body now and in the future, then do whatever works best to serve that goal in the gym. I have no idea what "muscle building theory" is, but if it causes constant injuries that require pain medication, then it probably isn't the best way to pursue your goals.
> Too bad exercise seems to be a must after you are 50+
This really varies from person to person. Judging by the people I know, the non-resistance-trainers are worse off at least by forty, earlier for many. Everybody has pain, but people doing resistance training have less pain while being able to enjoy more activities.
Personally, I started having occasional back pain in my mid-twenties, often when I woke up in the morning. My dad said it started at the same age for him and got slowly worse over time, and he just put up with it. A few years later I discovered weightlifting, and a year later I wasn't waking up with back pain anymore -- one of the many things about lifting weights that completely surprised me. (I got into it in the early 2000s, when 99% of the information online was meathead bullshit just drenched in testosterone, sexism, and homophobia, and I was lucky to stumble across a single web site that made a case for lifting weights without the off-putting machismo. I never had a bunch influencers promising that lifting weights would cure every problem in my life, so almost everything positive about lifting weights came as a surprise to me.)
A problem that both my parents started experiencing around forty, and which I encountered on the same schedule, was chronic knee pain. It took me a couple of years to figure out some contributing factors and fix them, but now I don't have knee pain, while still enjoying a lot of activities that my parents gave up long before my age.
My friends sometimes say things like, you hurt yourself playing soccer, isn't that dumb? Why are you doing things that hurt you? And my question back to them is, can you even play soccer? How many years has it been since you could play soccer for even five minutes without seriously hurting yourself? I'm going to take a few weeks off and then I'll be able to play soccer again, what's your plan? Late thirties and early forties is when sedentary people discover that attempting to join in on fun physical activities is not as pleasant for them as they remember, and/or likely to result in an injury that takes a long time to heal, so they start to opt out. When you see someone in their forties look particularly satisfied while they stand to one side at a gathering while others are playing a casual pickup game of soccer or Ultimate, it's because they're internally congratulating themselves on having the wisdom not to try.
Obviously I'm going to hit limitations that exercise can't fix. But in the meantime, I'm hitting one problem after another that exercise can fix, and seeing my sedentary friends hit the same eminently fixable problems like brick walls.
> If your goal is to optimize your enjoyment of your body now and in the future, then do whatever works best to serve that goal in the gym
Why would my goal be enjoyment? I follow the science and do what must be done. I don't enjoy broccoli or fish too, but still eat them. I enjoy sugar, but I totally do not eat it.
> A problem that both my parents started experiencing around forty, and which I encountered on the same schedule, was chronic knee pain.
I never had a knee pain until I started exercising. Taking turmeric now for it.
> My friends sometimes say things like, you hurt yourself playing soccer, isn't that dumb?
Your friends are right. I played basketball entire life, and now I stopped it, because if somebody hits me I am in pain for days. You have to aknowledge your age and that you are more fragile and heal very slow, even with optimal nutrition and supplementation and gadgets like red light.
This is a beautiful bit of statistics, but perhaps displaced into self-reflection.
All therapy, practiced with any consistency, is effective -- probably because sacrificing for one's self builds up self-investment, and self-investment leads to self-protective decision-making that improves outcome and outlook.
Nootropics with perceptible feedback will always seem to be working. This might make their practice more consistent initially, but actually undercuts the build-up of self-regard by replacing it with dependency.
The statistical and analytical perspective is the mature way to handle objective decisions over stochastic processes, and it's the right approach for validating drugs at population scale.
But for personal assessments, decisions, and planning, the statistical can at best provide warnings about addiction or ineffectiveness. But more dangerously, it can give a veneer of objective confidence reinforcing self-destructive feedback loops, and suppress the uncertainty that would drive reflection and personal integration.
It's much better to embrace uncertainty, and share with a friend.
> All therapy, practiced with any consistency, is effective
This is just clearly false?
I don't mean to go super-literal here, but unless you have a very narrow definition of what counts as therapy (or if your definition of "therapy" is simply "any thing which, practiced with consistency, is effective") this is not even wrong.
There's one very simple "nootropic" that I've discovered many years ago and have been doing most days of the week. Buying a cup of coffee and taking a walk in nature. It makes me feel better than just coffee or just walking in nature. Another benefit is that in the days I can do this, I have something to look forward to since waking up.
In myy experience it works even better with a stimulant with a smoother curve than caffeine and optionally a bit more intensive (but still on lighter side) exercise.
Can you give some examples of the stimulants?
Modafinil 50-100mg or micro dose of long release amphetamine like Vyvanse.
Was just about to say this, Modafinil is my stimulant drug of choice. 100mg. Really smooth and lasts all day. I do need to take amitryptiline to help sleep but I have noise intolerance related sleep issues anyway and the combination of the two meds is complementary. My only regret is not starting sooner - I had a rather anti drug bias and saw needing medication as a weakness.
Just an anecdote, but Modafinil is one of the worst stimulants I have tried. It’s great as a one-off tool for something like staying awake to drive late at night, but every time i have taken it I get intense depression and aggravation for the next 2 days. It’s really strange. Things that normally do not worry me cause great mental suffering. If it wasn’t for that and the deep sleep impact, it would be great. I read the half life is ~16 hours.
AFAIK highly depends on the person, I've given 1/4 or 1/2 doses to people and the most common reaction is that it is like a coffee. It seems the strong reactions are a minority of users. Specifically for me, I have long term dopamine dysregulation, so it hits really strong. Without the amitriptyline there is no way I could say on it.
Any dopamine booster (agonist / reuptake inhibitor) has wildly different effects on different people. Or across different times in their life. Anecdotes are good to share, because they illuminate the variety of experiences that one should be prepared for.
Even Vyvanse vs Adderall XR are reported to have markedly different effects on the same person -- and after metabolic conversion, they're supposed to be the same active ingredient with fairly similar time release duration.
Modafinil and armodafinil I find to be excellent at getting rid of tiredness. I find for me if I take too much, I’ll get nausea that’s only curable by a sleep cycle. Armodafinil tends to last much longer.
The downside I’ve noticed is that one side effect many people don’t realize is how it affects the body for some people. It can cause increased blood pressure among others - which can lead some people to feel anxious.
Body follows mind, mind follows body.
(As in my body feels anxious, so I must be anxious ).
I personally find the effects from Modafinil to be kind of like caffeine but with less side effects / longer lasting / more effective.
I thought that these are only accessible illegally or for treatment of specific conditions like ADHD or narcolepsy.
Is there some way to legally get it for the use being discussed here?
Good simple nootropic, but I like the cup of coffee even better with a 200mg capsule of a high quality L-Theanine to give a zen-like calm to the stimulation of the caffeine. Underrated as heck IMHO.
I am still yet to see any decent studies into whether or not L-Theanine actually does anything at all. Studies never seem to find anything statistically significant, yet so many people swear by it. I'm inclined to say it is placebo.
Good recent writing on the topic: https://dynomight.net/theanine-2/
Any brands that you would consider high quality? I'm currently using Nutricost, but only because it was the cheapest, and I didn't know they were allowed to fiddle with quality on these things.
Nootropics Depot [0] appears to be a high-quality vendor. They claim to test every batch of every ingredient in-house for all of their supplements.
[0] https://nootropicsdepot.com/l-theanine-capsules/
I have personally found them to be a high-quality vendor [/anecdata]
Any difference from the 2-for-1 from Walgreens (private labeled)? Or is that the problem? We don’t really know what we’re getting?
Probably the slight MAO inhibiting effect of coffee.
Going to make a wild guess that coffee’s contribution is its classic stimulant effect, which is well known.
Not sure why the nootropics people are always trying to come up with alternate theories for why something works when substances like caffeine are well studied and known to provide a mood boost.
> I have something to look forward to since waking up
That's... sad! I look forward to every day! I look forward to breathing when I wake up! I hope that changes for you soon.
They work until they don’t in my anecdotal experience. Any substance it seems the first time is the best. Then, slowly, my brain chemistry adapts, and it becomes less effective. Sometimes a higher dose works for a while. But it never lasts. Then side effects start to build up, and before long it’s counterproductive. SNRIs worked, until after a few months I lost all my endurance (running) and libido. Kratom was wonderful at almost everything, until it eventually stopped hitting as hard and skipping it caused withdrawals. Micro dose maybe worked but very quickly wasn’t effective (like after 2-3 times with psilocybin, or a couple months of ketamine) many others on this list have a similar track record with my brain. Good at first but the effect wears off after a while and usually end up worse off for it.
> They work until they don’t in my anecdotal experience. Any substance it seems the first time is the best. Then, slowly, my brain chemistry adapts, and it becomes less effective.
It’s wild to me that the nootropics community evolved into a hybrid between the recreational drug community and supplement enthusiast communities while forgetting all of the lessons people learned in those communities long ago.
So much of the nootropics discourse is about compounds that have a moderate to high recreational value: The above post is talking about Kratom (an opioid) as if it was a nootropic, which would be unfathomable under the original description of nootropics.
The linked article also includes psilocybin, tianeptine (a compound that started out with some myths about serotonin but was later discovered to be an opioid), and phenibut (an extremely addictive substance, see /r/quittingphenibut )
The latter substance is known for temporarily reducing anxiety and giving a confidence boost, which is a common theme among substances cited as helpful. Something about calling them “nootropics” seems to reset people’s expectations and they forget that all recreational drugs make people feel some combination of euphoria, motivation, confidence boost, anxiety reduction, or stimulation at first, before tolerance takes in. People find themselves not only tolerant to these substances, but in withdrawal when they don’t take them (as mentioned above)
Phenibut is one of the most obvious recreational drugs that got pulled into the “nootropics” label for years. Nootropics Depot got caught importing large numbers of drums of this substance for resale. They deleted a lot of the discussion about their lawsuit on /r/nootropics (did you know they control the subreddit?) and have put forward a very selective version of the story that makes them look like the victims. Meanwhile it was one of the most common debilitating addiction stories coming out of supplement and nootropics communities until word spread that it was highly addictive and the withdrawals were very long.
Whatever meaning the word “nootropic” originally had is long lost. It’s now a blanket term for experimenting with powerful supplements or prescription drugs under a different name. I think that alternative name has left a lot of people blind to the reality of what they’re doing. They also frequently don’t realize that self-reported feelings of drug liking effect are not indicative of the drug’s objective positive effects.
That's an insightful observation! I have several friends who are into nootropics and would recommend to me various things they are trying. I simply limited to things that can be bought at Whole Foods or CVS; I trust that these places only sell me supplements or OTC drugs, not potentially dangerous prescription drugs.
I think the difference is definitely that Phenibut enhances cognition. It doesn't just reduce anxiety and at small doses the anxioltyic effect is mild while the cognition boost is noticable. Things like Xanax and Etizolam or Valium don't have the same cognition boost unless someone is suffering from anxiety and even that is often overruled by the sedative properties.
Kraton I couldn't make the same argument and not familiar with tianeptine / gas station scag.
The suggestion/allusion that the EU's GDP per capita is lower than the US due to Adderall and Dexedrine not being approved/available is wild. Kind of makes me not want to take seriously the rest of the article...
Adderall is a performance enhancing drug, and widly used as such. Its nigh on impossible to compete at the highest level workplaces with doped employees if you are a natural worker.
The graph implies is that aderall causes people to perform at 150% on average if 100% of the workforce is on it. I say that both implying that aderall has such a massive objective effect and implying it is so widely (ab)used are the laughable ramblings of a psychonaut at worst and unsubstantiated at best.
I'm not even certain it's fair to refer to these things (or modafinil) as nootropics, as nootropics (as defined by the person who coined the phrase) should lack stimulate/sedative properties.
I think this is clearly a joke
Sure hope so.
Data is well presented but the conclusions are iffy. But hey, maybe Europe can stop limiting its own industry with regulation if they just up that dextroamphetamine dose?
It is frustratingly hard for me to trust most any nootropic discussion nowadays. Without many large random trials, there are as many questions as answers afterwards.
It doesn't help that I'm on Adderall, but if left to my own devices, would absolutely skip it. I'm assuming I benefit in the able to think way from it. Largely the only reason I know I missed a dose is if I find I lose my patience quickly with others.
> Without many large random trials
That, historically, does not work well for neurochemistry. Large random trials are good for an average biological response of profitable chemicals, but it seems there are significant differences in neurochemistry, between people, that these don't capture. If you've ever had a prescription for most anything mental related, like ADHD, depression, etc, there's never just one drug, there's a panel that you just kinda go through until one works for your personal neurochemistry, with some having detrimental side effects for some people.
Unsurprisingly, it seems to be the same with many of these nootropics. I've had several very negative reactions to common nootropics at fractional doses, where others have positive experiences at many times the dose. A few resulted in migraines every day I took it, until I stopped, with one quickly resulting in depression and the only suicidal thoughts of my life, which went aways just as fast as I stopped. One hurt my short term memory so much I couldn't repeat a phone number (a very potent racetam like).
Some nootropics are precursors, which are mostly self regulating/supplements, but there are many out there that very actively poke low level neurochemicals, and your personal response will vary, just as is expected in the regulated drug world.
Min/maxing personal neurochemistry won't come from large random trials.
> Unsurprisingly, it seems to be the same with many of these nootropics.
Controlled trials are actually very revealing of the placebo effect, which is a rampant confounded in nootropics communities. When people spend months reading about new nootropics, then a week waiting for it in the mail, then they take their first dose with excitement and anticipation they generally report feeling something.
The nice thing about trials is that they can start separating out this placebo effect.
Several people have done self-trials with different compounds with surprising results. Gwern is perhaps the most famous. Whenever people post about magnesium being a life altering substance or producing profound effects I also point them to his measured magnesium trials where the net effect over time was beginning to trend negative.
One of the myths in nootropics communities is that everything is a matter of neurochemistry and everyone is substantially different. In reality, RCTs are actually great at capturing enough people to see subgroups responding if you have enough people.
One thing most nootropics people don’t acknowledge enough is how often placebo effect appears in RCTs. Perform an RCT for depression and the placebo group will get better. It happens in every study. Give college students Adderall before an exam and they will report performing better, despite no statistical improvement in their grades. Now consider these facts in light of all of the scattered nootropics forum reports from people claiming different substances cured their depression or made them smarter. Not surprisingly, if you check their post history more recent comments will show them off on a new tangent trying a new substance, the old one long forgotten as a short trial that didn’t work out.
I hear what you are saying, but I have a hard time thinking it is an argument against RCTs. Notably, Adderall is a strong counter to this idea. It is clearly effective per all of the tests it has been through. Not surprisingly, it is one of the only ones listed in this website that works. Quite well.
There is an argument that people should treat their own lives as an experiment. Where you track the things you do and see if you can find patterns on mood and productivity and such. If you want to know what generally works, though, there is no counter to effectiveness in RCTs, though?
Put differently, when has evidence ever gone counter to RCTs? Not just are there some questions that an RCT hasn't covered, but times it has been counter to the results?
> Adderall is a strong counter to this idea. It is clearly effective per all of the tests it has been through.
That's a good example, because the statement "clearly effective" is absolutely false, as will be stated by a doctor when they prescribe it to you, and can be found in the documentation that comes with the medication. It is not appropriate or effective for some people, and is detrimental for others (accounts of both are found trivially online).
Adderall has some fairly clear cases where you shouldn't prescribe it, but this is largely not a secret list of "your unique biochemistry means we have no idea whether it will work for you" level of uncertainty. And, at large, this learning has been reinforced by RCTs. Such that I still don't see this as an argument against them?
You misread. I never made an argument against RCT.
> "your unique biochemistry means we have no idea whether it will work for you" level of uncertainty.
If by "work" you mean feeling something happen after you pop some pills, then sure...it's amphetamine.
If by "work" you mean "improved outcome", again, refer to the drugs documentation or are pharmacist, and also observe the existence of ADHD drugs that are not Adderall. The person prescribing it to you will quite literally tell you that it doesn't work for everyone, and go down the list of available drugs until you find something that, in fact "works for you", all entirely based on your personal response to the drug. Those reasons range from ineffectiveness (too high dosage requirement), unacceptable personality changes, to, of course, the rare full psychosis.
Difference in amphetamine response is well documented [1]:
> The clinical effects of amphetamine are quite variable, from positive effects on mood and cognition in some individuals, to negative responses in others, perhaps related to individual variations in monaminergic function and monoamine system genes.
Ritalin is also ineffective for some, for unidentified reasons [2]:
> The response rates to MPH among adult ADHD patients range from 25 to 78 % in controlled trials (Wilens et al. 2011).
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12716966/
[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4969350/
If you aren't against RCTs, then I don't think we disagree? Your post certainly makes it sound like you feel there are better ways than RCTs to get an idea of how well things work.
And fair that "work" is not necessarily a binary answer. I think we can easily agree there is no panacea out there. But that doesn't mean you can't make pretty good learning based on the trials.
In common probabilistic game terms, we know that most hands are not as good as pocket aces at hold em. Even if we can say that the aces will not win near 20% of the time.
> It doesn't help that I'm on Adderall, but if left to my own devices, would absolutely skip it.
The difference is that you’ve taken it medicinally for years, whereas most nootropics users are early users who are experimenting with high placebo priming.
Stimulant prescriptions have a high churn rate because many people take their first few doses and feel euphoric, then think it’s going to be like that forever. Fast forward a couple years and the fun is long gone so it’s a different story.
Nootropics forums are dominated by posts from people saying “Just took my first dose of $substance and I feel amazing!” which is the least useful measure of how well it will treat someone long term.
Even when I started Adderall, I never felt anything amazing from it. Self reporting mood, as it were, I would think it is not working. It is only that I know I have more patience with things going wrong, that I know it is doing something.
That said, sounds like we are largely in agreement? I have gotten where I assume everything is dominated by noise.
While I like your project, there should be strong warnings. Some of the substances listed, like amphetamines, aren't just supplements, they actively and unavoidably alter your brain function. Their effects are "much less subjective", others, like omega-3, may have (or not) benefits that you don't feel at all.
I echo that. If you're considering this list, please consider talking to a physician first, yes, even if you're in the US. Self-medicating based on randos on the Internet or a few cherry-picked studies is irresponsible, doubly so when dealing with addictive substances with nobody to oversee the therapy, triply so when in a country with no safety net for people with addiction, or sick people in general.
And before you say I appeal to authority, I understand people don't respect doctors or their country's healthcare system, but I suggest they should acquire formal medical education themselves before starting to put random shit in their body. And no, reading the entire body of blogs by Scott Alexander does not count.
The tl;dr is:
1. Apart from ADHD medications, which are very powerful, most drugs and weird obscure supplements have little effect (there are some intriguing but noisy results about peptides).
2. Exercise— especially weightlifting and HIIT— is also very powerful. There's evidence of a dose-response curve where light exercise is good but intense is better.
Arguably this is pretty unsurprising, from an evolutionary perspective. It would be strange if our brains had "one weird trick" to perform a lot better with no downsides, since if it existed evolution should've found it. But being in good shape confers large benefits.
> It would be strange if our brains had "one weird trick" to perform a lot better with no downsides, since if it existed evolution should've found it
It would not be strange at all. We are constantly evolving and so is our environment. This argument is very similar to the "efficient market fallacy", if the market was perfectly efficient there would be no opportunity to create value, but in reality it is highly imperfect.
You need to add that all of this is self-reported/subjective. I've gone under doctor's supervision through L-Theanine+Caffeine, then Modafinil, and finally Ritalin, and to be brutally honest, while I subjectively feel the best when on Ritalin, I am far from certain I would be able to show it in a blind study with an objective problem-solving task.
Also a blind study with these would be hard, as Modafinil has a noticeable effect on heart rate and blood pressure, and general response to stress (at least in my case), and also causes a distinct chemical smell of one's urine.
So regular exercise (lifting, HIIT, and light cardio outdoors) is literally that one weird trick. It's hard to identify any downsides but the upsides are tremendous. It's amazing that people will go out ingesting all sorts of questionable substances just to avoid getting in shape.
> It's hard to identify any downsides but the upsides are tremendous.
I wish! If you're lucky (or not particularly unlucky) that might be true.
I don't feel any mental benefits, nor do I sleep better. Fun kinds of exercise (badminton, football, BJJ) always seem to injure me me over longer time periods (and it takes months, or even years, to heal when you're in your forties). And they are not very forgiving, schedule-wise.
Lifting weights or rowing on a machine is painfully boring, but it does make me feel better physically. It's a great upside, but the downsides are real too.
There is one more set of substances that work extremely well in partnership and are not harmful. The first is huperzine-a.
You only like amphetamine for the adrenaline dump and dopamine. Also life changing doesn't necessarily mean for the better.
I found it quite effective in helping me to grind leetcode when I was job hunting while working full-time but YMMV. Perhaps I would've gotten the same gig, but I tried doing a month without it and found my ability to power through was significantly lower than with amphetamines. Maybe it was because the amphetamine gave me an artificially high amount of dopamine which offset the inherently boring nature of the task.
... How are you doing now?
'...nootropic ... “Any substance purported to increase or enhance cognitive abilities." ... communities like the nootropics subreddit, which has a great begginer’s guide.'
At first I thought the mispelling was intentional irony. But the leak to the guide shows that it's just unintentional irony
To add... weightlifting isn't a substance and doesn't fit the definition of a nootropic.
Also, regarding weightlifting... there was no mention about the risk of continuous muscle trauma, scar tissue build-up, nerve damage, and ligament damage.
time to put a pebble on the pile of anecdotal evidence for exercise as a life-changing nootropic. for two years now I've been doing 20 minutes of resistance training and 20 minutes of cardio every day and it helps so much with everything that its reached a point where my wife will flat out tell me "go lift" if I'm being irritable or having a hard time focusing.
When the author talks about "weightlifting", I wonder if they specifically mean the sport of snatch and clean & jerk, or "lifting weights" in general
I think most people use weightlifting to refer to lifting weights in general. If someone said “competitive weightlifting” then I would assume that to mean stuff like clean & jerk.
I've tried everything, and the only things that make any noticeable difference in my experience:
Modafinil, Racetams, Noopept, Phenibut
Noopept seems to be curiously missing from this list?
Yeah noopept is legit. Its effects on learning, recall, and organization of thoughts are significant.
Phenibut will FUCK you up. Ever take a big dose? Its like being piss drunk.
Very fun substance also nasty as fuck and undoubtably bad for your brain. (I got weird neurological "withdrawal" symptoms after like 3 days of taking it)
I've hospitalized myself from an accidental overdose on it, don't have to tell me lol.
Spent 8 continuous hours vomiting with the worst nausea I've ever felt in my life.
Lesson hard learned. I've been using Phenibut for nearly 10 years, I only take it on the weekends.
I quite enjoy high doses, feels much better than drinking without negative physical side effects. I don't drink alcohol in general, to be honest.
It causes next-day depression for me. Could only be purely recreational.
> 5 - 9 means strong effects, definitely not placebo.
It’s impossible for anyone to say this convincingly about their own experience. If it were easy to tell whether an effect was due to placebo, we wouldn’t need blinded trials!
Actually, a lof of blind trials are hard to run precisely because it's so obvious if you're not on the placebo side.
Like...nobody could ever take a macro dose of LSD or mushrooms and not know it.
That's because it's obvious due to effects other than the one you're trying to observe. Which is of course the case when you're dealing with psychedelics (and of course many other drugs).
I'm still in doubt about the effectiveness of parachutes, there's never been a large double blind trial.
I'm stealing this one instead of using "it was revealed to me in a dream."
We certainly shouldn't accept subjective evaluations as proof of effectiveness, but that does not give it zero value. The more subtle the effect or the more invested the subject is in establishing the effectiveness of an intervention (or any of many other confounders) the less likely it is to represent proof.
But it is evidence. Think of this as more observational science rather than experimental science; we have to do some work to determine whether it is worth trying to do blinded experiments to validate an effective, and this is that work.
Related: Scott Alexander did a survey and provided analysis for Nootropic effectiveness - https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/nootropics-survey-2020-resu...
It appears he provided an analysis for subjective perception of effectiveness of various nootropics. I don't see much objective measurement of cognitive performance at all here. This kind of survey has value, but I think to call it "analysis for effectiveness" is very misleading.
This post not only directly references that, but even incorporates the SSC/ACT data into the dataset.
Another win for exercising.
It's crazy to me how many people have miserable health, complain about their body and mental state endlessly, but still put up any roadblock they can think of to avoid exercising of any form.
I have chronic fatigue problems, which exercise exacerbates. I swim 3 times a week, but have to carefully regulate the intensity or it triggers post-exertional malaise.
The exercise is important for my general health but it isn't positively correlated with my cognitive functioning. Quite the opposite.
I used to have plenty of energy running 40-50miles per week, but when I ramped up to 80mpw I started nodding off in my chair by 1 PM. Then despite the higher mileage and more intense training, my race times slipped. My half went from 1:23 to 1:28, and I felt drained, irritable and angry unless I took a long break. After digging in, I learned that very high mileage can deplete iron levels. Once I focused on improving my iron absorption, I finally got my energy back and everything clicked. Even while holding 80+ mpw for the upcoming SF Marathon, I still knocked 5% off my Bay to Breakers time (48:51 this year) and cut my 5K PR from 19:17 to 18:37.
I had long covid which manifested as post-exertional malaise and general brain fog, and which was not improving for 2 years, and I essentially solved it with a combination of a low sugar paleo diet (starting as an autoimmune protocol diet for a few weeks to determine some other things that caused flare ups for me like nutritional yeast and capsaicin), lots of walking, light and increasing exercise (especially outdoor exercise), and a dedication to sleep hygiene. Many of which were referenced in the post.
It's a ton of work at first but it's completely worth it -- post-exertional malaise sucks.
Other things that helped me personally: daily cold plunges up to the chin (so you feel it in your vagus nerve), HRV reset breathing exercises, and daily meditation. Wish you the best of luck.
I'm in a similar situation but with multiple sclerosis for over 15 years. I love to exercise, however on some days a medium-intensity cardio session will leave my brain functioning at like 50% which is not great for my job. I gotta work hard to make sure my gas tank has enough for all the tasks planned for that day. My neurologist calls it Energy Management.
Wow that sounds tough to deal with. I’m sorry you’re dealing with that.
Tried creatine?
Creatine does help some. Staying hydrated and good sleep, too.
I think you need to provide perspective on your experiences when you don't swim 3x a week. Over a valid period,say, ~3mo or so.
It's bad habits from a younger age. I remember in my 20s, I didn't need to exercise at all and yet my body felt perfect. And so was my mental health. It was after several years of sedentary lifestyle that it clicked for me that my health was declining and exercise was needed to restore it. I suspect this could be the case for many: you don't need exercise and your body remains in a tip top shape when you are young.
Remember you probably were exercising until about 18, since it’s required by most schools.
"Physical education" would be hilarious if it weren't sad. It's a pretty impressive feat that it managed to simultaneously:
- make me spend quite a lot of time on something exercise-related (since it was "opposite shift" of regular school classes)
- had me do next to zero actual exercise
- teach me literally nothing about how exercise or training works
- make me hate everything related to exercise for quite a few years
Worse than a waste of time, it was actively harmful.
That’s almost nothing. 1 hour a week, at least in Italy, and mostly sports stuff close to cardio no weight training.
I feel good with at least 4 hours a week of bodyweight training plus some cardio.
I’ve been experimenting with making my last meal of the day as far from my sleep as possible ideally waking up at 5am, drinking water / vitamins, exercising by lifting my dumb bells in my studio apartment, eating a 1k calorie breakfast and 1k calorie lunch and done with eating by ~1-2 so I have 4-6 hours to digest before bed
Best sleep I’ve ever gotten.
You don’t know what you’re missing out on until you’ve experienced not good but GREAT sleep.
if that’s too extreme avoid too much water before bed if you’re getting up to pee you are ruining your sleep
Meanwhile, I'm finding some of my best sleep in a while by having an espresso before bed. :D
On the flip side, I get absolutely garbage sleep if I don't eat within about 1-2 hours of going to sleep.
Same - I also read a study saying 22% muscle synthesis increase with 40 grams of casein before bed and one saying protein before bed improved sleep quality.
So a bedtime glass of milk and small bowl of soybeans is a good move?
Yes - unless you have to wake up to pee I guess. Casein is one of the slowest absorbed proteins so it releases over 6 hours in most cases. I think soy beans is probably the same since its mixed in with fiber. If you compare it to whey isolate thats absorbed after 1. This doesn’t have the same effect.
I really feel casein before bedtime improves my sleep drastically! (I have a bucket of micellar casein powder)
It's amazing what <any form of daily movement> + a diet of "real"/non-processed foods will do for your health.
> non-processed foods
Do you really not eat bread? We've got to come up with better ways to categorize foods. At face value such a term seems to imply you should only eat raw food.
I genuinely don't eat bread. Terrible carb source.
I'll eat steel cut oats, quinoa, rice, beans/lentils, etc.
But not bread.
What makes bread a bad source of carbs?
It's glycemic index score
Ah, are you diabetic?
I do avoid eating (highly processed white) bread in most meals, because it doesn't make me feel great.
We're really targeting "highly-processed" foods. Personally I draw a line between sausage that went through something resembling a hand-powered meat grinder vs. sausage that has been obliterated into a fine pink sludge and reformed. Both are processed, but the latter is highly processed, with more room for additives.
The issue with sausage isn't the processing, it's the preservatives and the choice of meats (and their corresponding nutrients) that go into the sausage.
My understanding is that degree of "processing" is acknowledged to be an imperfect metric, just one that fits easily with EU labeling concerns. I just don't think that's as useful as is advertised.
It is not difficult to make your own bread as well, so easily avoided eating non-processed bread.
> so easily avoided eating non-processed bread.
How do you make bread without flour? Flour is a processed food.
I’m not even talking about the fact that flour is processed in the general sense. The generic sliced grocery store loaf itself has added preservatives, sugar, etc that you wouldn’t find in a homemade loaf. When people talk about eating non-processed foods they usually mean eating whole (ex. Fruits, vegetables) or foods without preservatives and stabilizers.
While yes, flour is ground and therefore processed - I think we all mean bleached, stabilized and enriched flour.
> I think we all mean bleached, stabilized and enriched flour.
The entire point of this conversation is that the meaning of "processed" is entirely unclear, and I still don't understand what beef you have against bleached, stabilized, and enriched flour.
I'd put any amount of money that whatever your concerns are can be addressed with the aphorism "everything in moderation".
The aphorism "everything in moderation" is useful only because it doesn't specify what amount would be acceptable as moderation. Is having a slice of bread a day considered moderation? What about five slices? Is having 10 grams of sugar a day moderation? What about 50 grams? The meaning of "moderation" is conveniently unclear.
Trust the selectively funded science bro.
>It's crazy to me how many people have miserable health, complain about their body and mental state endlessly, but still put up any roadblock they can think of to avoid exercising of any form.
I don't think it's that weird. Exercising, particularly cardio, for its own sake, without something you're trying to accomplish with your effort, feels very bad.
Humans are evolutionarily adapted to running. Yes, going from a modern sedentary lifestyle to running will feel rough for a few months as you acclimate (and most people don't start off at the slow 11 min. / mile [7 min. / km] pace they should). But there's a reason marathons are so popular, running and exercise starts to feel really good.
> Yes, going from a modern sedentary lifestyle to running will feel rough for a few months as you acclimate
Right. Which is why people don't exercise. That's a lot to ask of people with other things on their plate.
To be clear, I know I should exercise. I just find it very difficult to do so, and it's very easy to convince yourself you should do something else with that energy.
I think team sports are probably the best way to get into exercise. This allows tying the benefit directly into a reward system. I ran long-distance in high school and, without teammates to let down, it was very difficult to push myself beyond the bare minimum effort. Most of us don't have the ability to summon a team sport into our work schedule though.
The problem with exercise is that we have evolved to be energy efficient and this includes being lazy when we have food/shelter so the resistance to it is high.
However once we start exercising for any period of time and observe the positive outcomes then the difficulty drops and it becomes enjoyable.
The problem is peoples expectations and approach.
> Yes, going from a modern sedentary lifestyle to running will feel rough for a few months as you acclimate
This is a terrible idea and for someone who has been sedentary they will likely just injure themselves and/or feel miserable. People don't have realistic expectations. It's better to do something like "couch to 5K" running on a grass or a dirt track. In a couple of weeks they will feel good after a run (if they are not too distracted and outward looking) then from there the runners high reinforces the behavior and they will look forward to exercising.
Many people find the data and record-breaking in running a good reward system. There's all kinds of goals to try to achieve, from your best time at 10 different distances, to weekly miles, to a longer and longer distance like a marathon.
Team sports are harder to work into a schedule, which is why running is easier to start for many people because it just requires a pair of shoes and leaving the house yourself. For others, there's a parallel social angle where you can also make many friends you see regularly at clubs and enjoy the same activity together.
"Not exercising" also feels very bad, just on a different time scale.
A time scale that the human brain is terrible at recognizing or adapting to or internalizing.
Our reward hardware doesn't work well for exercising because it wasn't needed for exercising. You either did physical activity or you starved to death.
People w/ fibromyalgia don't seem to benefit from exercise the way others do. For normal people, exercise does some tissue damage but it grows back stronger. People with fibro get the damage but they don't get the regrowth. So a bit of "overdoing it" that I might mostly bounce back from in a few days could have one of my wife's friends down for six weeks.
What I want is a pill that makes me exercise.
I unironically offer the opinion that the pill that you're looking for is amphetamines.
Terrible advice. The muscles need blood (nutrients), and you're going to take something that vasoconstricts? You're then going to couple that with an increased heart rate?
I unironically offer the opinion that half a teaspoon of creatine is a much better alternative.
> Terrible advice. The muscles need blood (nutrients), and you're going to take something that vasoconstricts?
ADHD patients seem to be able to exercise just fine (and -importantly- don't seem to be suffering widespread muscle death) when on Adderall and similar. I bet folks like that are pretty glad that the body is a complex, robust system that does reasonably well in a fairly wide range of internal and external environments.
I honestly do not believe hardly any of the studies about adderall. I am an adhd patient and playing tennis on amphetamines once spiked my heart rate above 200. Not good. Also vasoconstrictors + valsalva technique for lifting heavy weights = anuerysm risk.
So, respectifully to the studies, im calling bullshit.
Caffeine is also a vasoconstrictor, and included in large amounts in most pre-workouts.
Been on them for over decade, they don't work that way -- at least for me. Not sure I want them to work that way either. I am not sure working out on stimulants is the best for the body. The candle that burns twice as hot burns twice as fast.
Sauna is form of exercise surogate.
It is in clinical trials I believe, seriously.
Look up the Regeneron COURAGE trial
It's called anabolic steroid.
The Liver King spent $11,000 a month on them. Too much for me.
Viagra
I think the big road block for many people is that exercise itself also hurts?
I know that is a hurdle I have with my kids. They complain that jogging/running hurts. It is hard to convince people that that never really changes, and that it also hurts for the people that are doing it every day. Obviously acute pains are a different thing, but there is a reason recovery is a vital part of exercise. We all have to recover from pushing limits. You can't expand your limits without pushing, though.
You have to find some sort of exercise/movement that you both enjoy (or at least, don't hate), and doesn't cause you physical discomfort.
Otherwise, you'll never stick with it.
I hate jogging, I have forced myself to do daily jogging for several month periods, but I never stick with it.
For me, incline treadmill at maximum incline and a moderate pace gets my heart-rate up and doesn't feel nearly as awful.
My trick was to find a way to obligate myself to finish. Biking to work was a huge win for my fitness. Even on days I didn't really want to bike a few more miles at the end of the day, I still had to get home.
For my kids, I'm trying to convince them that a lot of the things they find uncomfortable are things they just aren't used to. Ergonomics have fooled a lot people into thinking "feels right" is the initial state of something, I think? You still have to train yourself to get used to a lot of things.
Jogging is for adults...if they're kids they'd be far better served by playing sports or something. You'll run a mile or two in a soccer or frisbee game without even trying, it will be fun, and you'll socialize
Fair, "kids" is including high schoolers that were considering cross country running classes. :D
The most important thing is not to "blow" your endocrine system. If you overload it your body will subconsciously avoid exercise. The full body max-weight workout will feel good the first time, then soon, mysteriously, you won't want to go back to the gym.
My suggestion is to stop your workout a little before you want to, almost as if you're disappointed it's over now, which will make you want to go to the gym the next day more consistently.
Ish? I can similarly claim that the most important part of any exercise is showing up. Surprisingly apt for any work. Just showing up is obnoxious in how effective it is.
Similarly, for many nootropic reports, "just doing something" is far more effective than people give credit. Especially if it is a choice to do something. Successfully executing one choice seems to confer some success at executing on the next one. (Note, successful execution does not imply successful outcome...)
I'm convinced this is why people that start their routine with "just make your bed every day" get a surprising amount of success.
All of which is to say that I agree you shouldn't blow yourself out. My push back is that you are probably far less blown out than you think after a workout.
I suspect there's a problem with 20th century materials underlying this.
There's no particular reason why running on asphalt, or even running on a treadmill, shouldn't hurt. It might! It's not a natural surface. And hard surface + modern shoes might not be a good enough combo to overcome the pain it creates.
I live near a beach and run on sand every other day; I don't have body pain problems. But change the surface and I think I would.
Running on asphalt is almost certainly easier than running on anything in the past. Try running on a rocky beach someday. :D. Running cross country through trails, you should expect that you will be going far slower than you could comfortably do on asphalt.
The shoes things is an odd one. Current thinking is that a lot of the effort people went through to dampen the shock to knees oddly resulted in people accepting longer periods of stress on their knees than they would have had they learned a different gait. That said, building up callouses on your feet, as was the norm before shoes, by definition hurts?
I hate that I put "running" as my example. Standing and walking would also make my point. Physically using your body is more difficult than not. And if you aren't used to it, it is a type of hurting.
Heck, learning to play a musical instrument is the same way. Guitars hurt your fingers as you build up the ability to play. Piano doesn't have the same pain, but expect a sore hand after a few sessions.
I hate running and I played soccer for the majority of my life.
As I've gotten older, I've found other activities to fill the void such as rock climbing and mountain biking. Both can be strenuous when you want them to be, but you can also take it easy. Combined with low level weight training, I've found it a lot more enjoyable since both require your brain to be 100% engaged when doing it so there's also a mental boost as well.
I'm thinking the vocabulary is oddly reflective.
You reference that they can be strenuous. My bet is that you often choose to push to a strenuous feeling often during the training period of each of these. My further bet is what you call "strenuous", I'm asserting that those unfamiliar would call "painful."
To be clear, I'm not claiming that you are constantly hurting yourself. I am claiming that if you weren't familiar with the feeling, you'd call it a pain. I'm thinking back to the original Matrix, "why do my eyes hurt?"
My issue with exercise is that it's boring as sin. I rather do manual labor or play a sport than go to a gym. There is just something that feels so artificial about running on a human-designed hamster wheel or picking up heavy objects and putting them back down for no reason real, useful reason.
You have my sympathies. It can be boring. Boredom is not, necessarily, a bad thing, though? Certainly, some folks could use a bit more boredom in the day. :D
I'll also posit that you do the boring stuff now so that you can do the exciting stuff later.
Building muscle is a real reason
Try walking instead of jogging. If you want more challenge, try walking up on an incline (a natural or on a treadmill).
It's much easier on your joints, and you can adjust the difficulty gradually.
Apologies that my example invited specific consideration. Long hikes are also somewhat "painful" for people that don't do them often. Walking to the bus stop is something I have seen many kids avoid, if they have the option.
That is, I'm not hurting in my joints from running. My pains there will be much more attuned to how hard it is for me to "push" at speeds. That said, pushing at any speed is how I have managed to increases the speeds that I can push.
> I have seen many kids avoid, if they have the option.
Yep. It's seen as just a waste of time, because you can be doing something else (like looking at your phone).
For me the trick was to get a TV in front of a treadmill, and to listen to audiobooks during my walks outside.
> My pains there will be much more attuned to how hard it is for me to "push" at speeds.
That's why walking is so good! With jogging you have to work pretty hard to run even at the lowest speed.
It’s possible to do exercise with just as much cardio intensity as running but without impact/pain. Cycling on a trainer bike (eg. Peloton) is one popular choice.
And for many people, being out of breath is what they will cite as hurting. Indeed, pushing to exhaustion is form of pain. Whether you do it over a long period or short just leads to different forms of pain.
And agreed that acute pain should take special care when folks are doing something. But the research is getting somewhat clear that cushioned shoes and such can be awkwardly counter to avoiding problems.
Yeah, even crazier - some chose to be in mental institutions instead of their homes
The answer to miserable health isn't exercise. It's high quality sleep.
It's not a dichotomy, both is good. I find my sleep and appetite improving with exercise, too; sleep can improve with physical tiredness on top of mental.
It's a shame how strong the reinforcement loops are. It's hard to sleep well without good exercise, and it's hard to exercise well without good sleep.
The more you age, the more you need regular sleep, it seems. Its basically the only thing that I can't fix nowadays any other way but going to bed. Modafinil can help for a couple of days but that's it.
And yet, nobody mentions how supplements can't generally damage you, but a few days in a gym can fuck you up for an entire year, even with a lot of experience. I basically never met anybody who does regular resistance training without having some sort of pain somewhere, all the time.
Maybe if you are underdoing it its possible but if you follow the muscle building theory, you are certainly going to get fucked eventually. Even the slightest position issue can make your tendons hurt for months... No wonder all athletes are on BPC 157, TB 500 and friends...
I talked to exercise professors and random people alike, and they all tell the same story. Professor said that I should get used to pain.
Too bad exercise seems to be a must after you are 50+ and no amount of good nutrition and vitamin megadosing will suffice for optimal health and particularly insuline resistance. Prior to that age though, you can get away without it.
As one of those random persons who has been weightlifting for 10+ years and is currently in their late 30s, I look great and I feel great. Yes, there is pain because you’re breaking down muscle fibers which repair and become stronger. Lots of people experience delayed onset muscle soreness, which is temporary. Some people don’t learn how to do things correctly and don’t listen to their body so they injure themselves.
What is the muscle building theory? Not everyone who does weightlifting is aiming for hypertrophy. Some are aiming for strength.
Honestly, it sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself not to do it. That’s okay. It’s difficult to know where to begin and avoid potential injury. It does take some time to learn. I like to recommend starting with a functional training class. This kind of class provides a guided session in building strength in everyday movements and provides a steady pace to really tune in to your body. It’s very difficult to injure yourself.
> Honestly, it sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself not to do it.
I am still doing it, and I do feel good in general. However, I have constant pain in one part of the body or other which is something I can manage (if its too strong, ibuprofen or friends). The entire gym is full of NSAIDs.
It's just that nobody underlines this aspect of exercise. I know its good for metabolism, brain health, cardiovascular health, looking good etc so you trade serious disease for more or less pain.
> I basically never met anybody who does regular resistance training without having some sort of pain somewhere, all the time.
As a counterpoint, since you seem to like anecdata: I am around 50 and have been doing weightlifting for the last 8 years. No pain. No injury. Extreme positive effects on my entire life.
I would respectfully suggest that you need to a) know what you are doing, e.g. start with a trainer, and b) not try to be an olympic athlete, e.g. reach reasonable benchmarks and not try to be a weightlifting champ.
I don't know what "exercise professors" are, but you might want to talk to different people.
Exercise professors are guys teaching exercise science on universities.
Your experience is extraordinary, you seem to be protected for some reason or have high pain threshold or simply do not exercise hard enough. "Extreme positive effects on your entire life", that's so unbelievable, there is no such thing apart from acute drugs. I would respectfully suggest you to not deceive others, if you are deceiving yourself.
I am not trying to be an athlete, I am just observing the world around me. I also recommend exercise, its just not a silver bullet the guys like you are promoting. Its also almost totally useless for weight control, the thing that most people exercise for.
I guess my response would be that yes, you will develop lots of random little aches and pains and small injuries, but the counterpoints are:
- Before I exercised regularly, I developed aches and pains in upper and lower back, also a shoulder for some reason. These all went away thanks to pull-ups and pushups. Lack of exercise will also wreck your body—if you have not experienced this I have to assume you are very young.
- Exercise also causes lots of random little injuries. For example basketball gave me an ankle and a knee that have never been quite the same. But, I find that exercise itself helps dampen the pain response and makes them more bearable. I have ankle and knee warmup routines that help a lot.
Among people I have met, exercisers with injuries have full lives who are able to live around their injuries. Non-exercisers also develop little pains over time of being sedentary, and end up being much more constrained in what they can do.
Ive been doing 3x weekly calisthenics for about 3 years and apart from occasional overuse-tendon-soreness that clears up in about a week, ive never had any problems. In fact im way less prone to injury and an ongoing shoulder issue I had cleared up after getting better at pullups
So, I disagree with you. If you take it slow and listen to your body and maintain good form youre golden.
Isn't that just crazy, you have "ongoing shoulder issue" and claim to never had any problems?
It seems that people just widely overhype their lifestyle or simply get accustomed to everyday pains.
No im saying before ever doing any excercise of any kind I had shoulder problems. They resolved within like 2 months of doing a calisthenics routine.
Reading your comments you seem to have a really immature attitude about excercise and you seem to be hell bent on making your point so, whatever
It sounds like they were saying the shoulder issue resolved after they started exercising it.
You should absolutely get a trainer, ideally one who has education in physiotherapy.
I got muscle problems from _not_ doing resistance training, my bad posture caught up with me finally. And I was doing quite a bit of cardio (treadmill walking), so my general health was OK.
It took months to build up muscles enough to avoid stressing the same overworked muscles, but eventually I had no pain whatsoever.
> I basically never met anybody who does regular resistance training without having some sort of pain somewhere, all the time.
That kind of pain quickly subsides after relaxing your routine though. It's not chronic.
The inflammation pathways aren't the same as disease state pathways.
That is simply not true. Any tendon/ligament issue will take at least 6 months.
This isn't an all or nothing. Not everyone is damaging their body.
There's nuance here.
Soreness is not a bad thing. And it's true that people who regularly exercise will often be in a state where they feel some level of soreness somewhere. That's the kind of pain people say you should embrace.
It's also true that lots of folks injure themselves exercising. Sometimes this leads to having to take time off to recover.
But people who don't exercise are more at risk of injury in general. This is because their tendons, bones, and muscles are less able to deal with sudden stress.
> And yet, nobody mentions how supplements can't generally damage you
And last of all - this is plainly not true...
Not talking about soreness. Soreness is trivial. I currently have 2 tendons hurting and everybody in my gym who exercise constantly.
But I agree with you, people who don't exercise are more at risk of injury in general.
> > And yet, nobody mentions how supplements can't generally damage you
> And last of all - this is plainly not true...
It's true, its just that pharma wants to sell you drugs. No wonder Pauling called it orthomolecular medicine, claiming that "right" molecules are basically non toxic.
Unless you are a complete retard and take millions IU of vitamin D or you are a special case. There are no reported deaths with supplements in the last 30 years.
That’s just not true. I’ve been lifting heavy for many years and have had my share of injuries, sure. But they heal. My body feels great. I’m almost 50 and I have no back pain, or other pains I see people constantly complaining about that are near my age and don’t do any resistance training. The only reason I injured myself is because I overreached. So that’s in ones control. I tend to overdo it from time to time if I’m trying to hit a goal. But nobody needs to push that hard and there are many ways to avoid it.
The fact is resistance training is vital for able bodied folks to avoid feeling pain later. And of course it has many other benefits than that. Even just pulling on some resistance bands can save your back and shoulders and the chance of injury there is minuscule.
You just said its true. Yes, most of the things heal, but one day they don't.
I am 50, take 0 drugs, and look better than in 20. Back doesn't hurt.
Metformin did help more than exercise, though.
Note that I didn't exercise at all until 45.
You just focused on what you wanted to and ignored the rest.
Yes, because that is the point I am making. That exercise hurts, sometimes quite a lot. I never said its not beneficial, quite contrary.
> I basically never met anybody who does regular resistance training without having some sort of pain somewhere, all the time.
Hahahahahahahahaha
Been doing ~daily resistance training for > 10 years, have a hell of a build, and do not experience anything like this. I have had a couple of injuries, but never anything that caused me pain outside of the gym.
Ditto for many of my friends/colleagues.
Sounds like you may just be in a bubble of fatties
> a few days in a gym can fuck you up for an entire year, even with a lot of experience. I basically never met anybody who does regular resistance training without having some sort of pain somewhere, all the time
> Maybe if you are underdoing it its possible but if you follow the muscle building theory, you are certainly going to get fucked eventually. Even the slightest position issue can make your tendons hurt for months...
I think your definition of "underdoing it" is what's fucked. If your goal is to optimize your enjoyment of your body now and in the future, then do whatever works best to serve that goal in the gym. I have no idea what "muscle building theory" is, but if it causes constant injuries that require pain medication, then it probably isn't the best way to pursue your goals.
> Too bad exercise seems to be a must after you are 50+
This really varies from person to person. Judging by the people I know, the non-resistance-trainers are worse off at least by forty, earlier for many. Everybody has pain, but people doing resistance training have less pain while being able to enjoy more activities.
Personally, I started having occasional back pain in my mid-twenties, often when I woke up in the morning. My dad said it started at the same age for him and got slowly worse over time, and he just put up with it. A few years later I discovered weightlifting, and a year later I wasn't waking up with back pain anymore -- one of the many things about lifting weights that completely surprised me. (I got into it in the early 2000s, when 99% of the information online was meathead bullshit just drenched in testosterone, sexism, and homophobia, and I was lucky to stumble across a single web site that made a case for lifting weights without the off-putting machismo. I never had a bunch influencers promising that lifting weights would cure every problem in my life, so almost everything positive about lifting weights came as a surprise to me.)
A problem that both my parents started experiencing around forty, and which I encountered on the same schedule, was chronic knee pain. It took me a couple of years to figure out some contributing factors and fix them, but now I don't have knee pain, while still enjoying a lot of activities that my parents gave up long before my age.
My friends sometimes say things like, you hurt yourself playing soccer, isn't that dumb? Why are you doing things that hurt you? And my question back to them is, can you even play soccer? How many years has it been since you could play soccer for even five minutes without seriously hurting yourself? I'm going to take a few weeks off and then I'll be able to play soccer again, what's your plan? Late thirties and early forties is when sedentary people discover that attempting to join in on fun physical activities is not as pleasant for them as they remember, and/or likely to result in an injury that takes a long time to heal, so they start to opt out. When you see someone in their forties look particularly satisfied while they stand to one side at a gathering while others are playing a casual pickup game of soccer or Ultimate, it's because they're internally congratulating themselves on having the wisdom not to try.
Obviously I'm going to hit limitations that exercise can't fix. But in the meantime, I'm hitting one problem after another that exercise can fix, and seeing my sedentary friends hit the same eminently fixable problems like brick walls.
> If your goal is to optimize your enjoyment of your body now and in the future, then do whatever works best to serve that goal in the gym
Why would my goal be enjoyment? I follow the science and do what must be done. I don't enjoy broccoli or fish too, but still eat them. I enjoy sugar, but I totally do not eat it.
> A problem that both my parents started experiencing around forty, and which I encountered on the same schedule, was chronic knee pain.
I never had a knee pain until I started exercising. Taking turmeric now for it.
> My friends sometimes say things like, you hurt yourself playing soccer, isn't that dumb?
Your friends are right. I played basketball entire life, and now I stopped it, because if somebody hits me I am in pain for days. You have to aknowledge your age and that you are more fragile and heal very slow, even with optimal nutrition and supplementation and gadgets like red light.
I designed and marketed "stacks" combined in a simple, small capsule for several years.
The best was galantamine, noopept, acetyltyrosine, and cdp-choline. It was beloved by many.
However, my magnum opus could have been stacks that changed daily, to prevent any neurochemical adaptation or tolerance.
But, at some point the almighty paycheck hijacked my brain. Why not include money as an anti-nootropic in your study?
Judging by the boundless stupidity we are seeing in the world of oligarchs now, maybe too much money is tge ultimate anti-nootropic /s
This is a beautiful bit of statistics, but perhaps displaced into self-reflection.
All therapy, practiced with any consistency, is effective -- probably because sacrificing for one's self builds up self-investment, and self-investment leads to self-protective decision-making that improves outcome and outlook.
Nootropics with perceptible feedback will always seem to be working. This might make their practice more consistent initially, but actually undercuts the build-up of self-regard by replacing it with dependency.
The statistical and analytical perspective is the mature way to handle objective decisions over stochastic processes, and it's the right approach for validating drugs at population scale.
But for personal assessments, decisions, and planning, the statistical can at best provide warnings about addiction or ineffectiveness. But more dangerously, it can give a veneer of objective confidence reinforcing self-destructive feedback loops, and suppress the uncertainty that would drive reflection and personal integration.
It's much better to embrace uncertainty, and share with a friend.
> All therapy, practiced with any consistency, is effective
This is just clearly false?
I don't mean to go super-literal here, but unless you have a very narrow definition of what counts as therapy (or if your definition of "therapy" is simply "any thing which, practiced with consistency, is effective") this is not even wrong.