Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by symlinkk | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

symlinkk

None of this shit works. If it did it would be called medicine.

View on HN

Once it is proven to work, it's called medicine. Prior to that, it's unproven stuff that people are selling to you.

The entire article is about evaluating the trustworthiness of the studies of this particular shit.

> Once it is proven to work, it's called medicine.

Once it's proven to be *marketable*, it's called medicine.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

There are numerous studies supporting it's efficacy, but none that are really independent and conflict-free. This is the start of how something starts to be called medicine.

Caffeine is a very effective supplement that isn’t sold as medicine. So’s creatine.

NAC is a pretty effective supplement which is also coincidentally a medicine sometimes which is why you can’t get it on Amazon anymore.

Yet we have "medicine" that you can buy that in fact is not at all effective (Phenylephrine, for example).

A long tail from the ephedra plant, once similarly an unregulated supplement that absolutely does stuff.

If you're unfamiliar, see https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/uselessness-phenyl....

Where do you think Derek goes wrong?

I don't.

I was replying to someone who was dismissing non "medicine"

Phenylephrine is useless, but ephedrine and pseudo are not, derived from a non "medicine."

Ah, I misunderstood you.

I saw it recently used in the cocktail being administered by an anesthesiologist during surgery. It seems to have a use in staving off hypotension during that sort of thing.

Is it a nasal decongestant? Hell no.

Yeah I was going to say - definitely a real drug just a bad nasal decongestant - and generally overshadowed by other phenethylamines.

I believe that most naturopath are charlatans, selling placebos for more money than they should. However a lot of molecules in use today were discovered in plants and proved their worth in double blind studies.

This is preliminary... you may well be right but it's just a guess at this point.

I disagree just on the grounds that if they're confident it affects serotonin 1A receptors then there's definitely a decent chance it really does _something_. As mentioned Buspar/Buspirone is prescribed for anxiety and affects that exact receptor the most.

Similarly I've seen NAC recommended a lot - by a doctor with a phd in neuropsychology. There's a lot of positive reports about it for several mental illnesses - and there's also reason to beleive it affects glutamate (and in turn GABA).

I think the truth is that many chemicals (or plants) are overlooked. As long as there's a solid idea as to what the mechanism of action is, then I think it has a very real chance of being beneficial to someone.

This wouldn't be the first psychoactive plant/fungus - Cacao, mushrooms, kava, marijuana, acaia (dmt) and opium are all relatively potent (noticable within an hour).

Think of all the "medicine" that we have that came from folk cures or supplements.

A lot of supplements/nootropics don't work, but a lot of them do. The issue is more their efficacy and safety.

This is, of course, addressed in the article and associated comments - namely its second quote and the thread https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/lavenders-game-silexan... .

Reply on news.ycombinator.com