This white powder will kill me one day
jacquesmattheij.com
jacquesmattheij.com
My taste changed within just a couple of weeks. By the third or fourth week if I accidentally drank sweetened iced tea instead of unsweetened I would nearly spit it out due to the awful taste. I also cut out all artificial sweeteners, effectively eliminating any experience of sweetness from my diet. I think previously I had drunk so much Diet Coke and eaten so many sugary things that I had conditioned myself to need that sweet taste on a regular schedule. I think one thing that helped was that I started making tea using high-quality, whole-leaf teas from adagio.com. They have such interesting flavors, I find they don't need sugar.
I'm not sure I can speak to the work-related effects of not eating sugar since I was spending most of the time in the hospital with my friend. I can say that my overall mood became much more stable; there were no more mid-afternoon crashes and I genearlly found I had more energy. Being about 360 pounds at the time, this one dietary change was enough for me to lose 60 pounds over the next 12 months while still leading a mostly sedentary lifestyle.
That said, I also cook and eat lots of vegetables. (Green beans are quick and great! Just rinse them, steam them, and don't eat any inedible looking ends. It's best if you don't overcook them.) I never feel run down after meals any more like I used to, though I can still feel a bit tired after a particularly high fat meal. On the whole, I have a lot more energy, though I have been told that I'm a lot more irritable now. Maybe it's time to do some programming "in anger?"
Sweet potatoes as carbs are very good for you; fruit (particularly pears, apples, coconut - very good for you, pineapple, bananas).
The topic is quite complicated and difficult to navigate, but there's a lot of good information out there. Particularly in the primal/paleo lifestyle (which I think is a little bit extreme but the knowledge and rationale is sound).
This is controversial at best (see, for example, http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-sweetener-...). I know there's money behind corn/HFCS, but what is your source for this claim?
Of course, this isn't evidence one way or the other for the claim in question, really. Bad arguments for side A aren't arguments for side B - just hoping others find it as amusing as I did.
> gluten, is the worst, worse than sugar
These sound like dubious claims to me. Do you have a citation?
And to say legumes are bad when they are actually by far the best kind of carb you can eat is nuts. (Nuts are good too.)
You think you were helpful and I am not because you believe what you say. But you have not stopped to consider that perhaps you are simply wrong and I am calling you out on it.
Your problem is that you wrote something wrong - doubly wrong. You wrote that gluten is a carb, and that it's bad for you. But not only is it not a carb, it's also not bad for you unless you are sensitive to it. Wheat is what took humanity from weak scattered encampments to full civilizations, it's not called the staff of life for nothing.
And when you added the legumes are bad for you, all doubt I had if perhaps you were right vanished.
I'm telling you straight up, STOP being pedantic! This is a discussion forum, not a scientific peer-review!
"...all doubt I had if perhaps you were right vanished." who the hell wants to even have a reasoned conversation with you? I sure don't - I'm willing to be educated or have my mind changed but now you're both being pedantic and throwing insulting sentences into the mix COMPLETELY throwing out my desire to be educated BY YOU.
Fuck off. You're an example of what's wrong with Hacker News IMHO - this used to be a great place for conversation but its devolved heavily into a hostile discussion environment.
And I never said anything even remotely pedantic. (Thinking gluten is a carb is not pedantic - it's wrong.)
You have been told you were wrong from a whole bunch of different people, but somehow decided they were all me. It's interesting to speculate on why you did that. A mental defense against being told you were wrong perhaps?
It's time for you to go restart your eduction on this matter from scratch - and not from me.
HFCS is a solution of unbonded fructose and glucose. The most common HFCS is 45% glucose / 55% fructose.
HFCS may be worse for you if fructose is worse for you. That said, the concentrations aren't that much different.
I'm not going to dig out the citations (because I'm not sure where I'd find them) but I'm pretty certain I read recently in a credible source:
* Fructose is worse for you
* ... but HFCS and sugar contain similar amounts
* HFCS is really bad for you
* ... but no worse for you than sugar (which is also really bad for you)
For people in general, they aren't. For me in particular, they might be especially bad. In any case, I'm essentially doing the Atkins Diet as an experiment. (I suspect I'm pre-diabetic.)
I've read in a few places that restricting your diet to 600 calories a day for 2 weeks has shown a reversal in type 2 diabetes. If you believe you're pre-diabetic, perhaps this may help? If it works for full blown diabetics, could it also work for a pre-diabetic?
There are tonnes of pages in Google on this but the jist is that this study was done at the Uni of Newxastle and it's funnily enough called the 'Newcastle diet'. Here's a link with more info: http://www.diabetes.co.uk/diet/newcastle-study-600-calorie-d...
That's excellent information. Thanks!
Define "bad".
Lots of these posts seem to come around to the same few topics so if you've read this before, safely move one.
But, IMO, carbs are about your fitness goals. The way carbs interact with your body dictate that they should be considered in conjunction with your fitness goals. I don't consider carbs "bad", but I do consider them completely misunderstood.
When I'm trying to lose weight, say for a meet or a show or perhaps for getting ready for my preseason, I limit carbs and use my own modified carb-cycling routine.
When I'm trying to get much stronger and gain weight, I use another version of my own modified carb-cycling routine.
Carbs are the key. Of course carbs aren't bad (so I agree with the overall statement), but they can be extremely detrimental for someone looking to lose weight or a sendentar person looking to just maintain.
I've written about this extensively in my fitness books. Each book recommends a certain general food philosophy based on the goals of the book generally geared around carbs: type to consume, when to consume and how much. I firmly believe that if more people understood the interaction with carbs and the hormones in their body they would have the capability of leading healthier lives.
I'm still on my transition phase, having moved from desert spoons to teas spoon in my coffee and diet softdrinks, though I do like a full fat cola with food. But have been interested in this berry they have which makes bitter/sour things taste sweeter. That is something that does seem to be a more palatable approach to quelling sugar addiction and could make for a rather nice cup of coffee, evern the cheaper stuff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synsepalum_dulcificum is the bean which I'm on about and you may of heard of it already in the name `miracle fruit`.
All that said, I don't think anybody can name a person that has regretted giving up sugar, though I'm happy to sit in the moderatly decling usage and wont deny it.
But we all blame the sweets as children, even though as children we have a bias towards sweet tasting foods. This is genetic and a health preserving one as well as sour/bitter foods are in general covers most posioness edibles and it is not until we get older do we loose that bias and aquire a more palatable acceptance to bitter/sour tasting foods and drinks. Our eyesight also is biased to the red spectrum when were younger and biases towards blue as we get older, again red being dangerous in nature.
So geneticly there are reasons we are all born sugar addicts, and given the reasons and the way civilisation is modernising forward then it is a trait that may eventualy drop from our genetic code, though that will still be a long way away due to the benifit it serves babies and small children who are still learning what and what they can and can not eat.
Wikipedia says:
> Aspartame has been found to be safe for human consumption by more than ninety countries worldwide, with FDA officials describing aspartame as "one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved" and its safety as "clear cut", but has been the subject of several controversies, hoaxes and health scares.
Do you have a reference for that assertion?
However, the point is, artificial sweeteners have been around for quite some time, and there haven't been any indications that sweeteners cause cancer. On top of that, there have been numerous studies by the FDA and other organizations in Europe, all coming to the same conclusion. So unless you are implying a lack of credibility in those institutions, I don't see how claiming "sweeteners probably increase chances of cancer" as anything but fear mongering.
Also, you can't really compare the way things were vetted for safety over a century ago to how they are vetted today.
The comparision to vetting safty a centuary ago and now is valid as in 100 years time we will have even better vetting and products in common use today could possibly be banned by the standards in 100 years time. That is also within a humans lifetime (given how long we will be living by then, statisticaly speaking as a trend). So the comparision is whislt not a dierct comparision but one of highlighting how time effects oppinion based upon new data collected over that period. If atifical sweetners still approaved in 100 years time then great, but it is a bet I would not take.
And again, there's just no comparison between the state of science today and the state of science a century ago. For a point of reference, the idea of blinded and randomized trials was a new concept when asbestos first came under suspicion.
The implication that the efficacy of science will improve in the next 100 years comparably to how it did in the last 100 years is spurious. Scientific understanding is being continually refined, but it is not a linear progression. Take the difference between our understanding of the shape of the earth in 800BC vs. 600BC; the model went from a flat earth to a spherical earth. That's a giant leap in 200 years. Then in the next 350 years they nailed down the size of the earth to within about 20% of the true value. An impressive advance, but surely a lesser one. Then, over the next 2250 years, we've gotten a more accurate measurement of the size of the planet, and noticed that it's a bit oblate rather than a perfect sphere. As science advances, the rate of progress slows; that's just how it works.
Fact the FDA has banned unbanned and rebanned and unbanned so many of these artificial seetners that even they over time you can see why people are so unsure becasue historicaly that is how they have been themselfs. I also stated I drink diet soft drinks which contain them, my choice so you can see that fear mongering is realy my main agenda, clearly.
Now if a institution changes it's mind more than once, I'm sure some aspect of there crdibility is in question. I live in the UK said products have warning and given that, I have resonable doubts about them being 100% safe in every aspect of use, but it is an acceptable risk and may or may not even be a risk at all, we just don't know.
I'm not saying there bad, I'm not saying there good, there have been some that currently appear to do no harm and some that are stilll banned or withdrawn from market historicaly, there are many types of artificial sweetners, some are currently banned some are currently allowed and in that when I say they are probably just as bad as sugar then that is exactly what I mean, there is no 100% prove either way that they are not are that they are, they could be less bad than sugar and they could be alot worse, sorry I didn't quantify it with exact brands but if anybody knew the exact answear then great, but they don't so I excersise resonable doubts.
Until somebody can clearly state that artificial sweetners are safer than sugar overall with regards to health then the debate will always carry on.
The best words I have to say in favor of artificial sweeteners are - you aren't seeing high-profile lawsuits claiming health damages. Lots of FUD, no money. On the other hand, real sugar has a few easily discovered examples, generally derived from the sugar being used in products with "nutritious" or "healthy" labelling:
http://www.inquisitr.com/226431/nutella-settles-lawsuit-for-...
My own experience leads me to think that the body goes through a process that runs something like this: "I don't know what's happening, but I feel like crap. Maybe it's something I ate? Let's crank up the anti-poisoning safeguards, just to be safe." Unfortunately, since both bitter and sour can be indicators of unsafe foods, with the safeguards cranked up, everything that has even a hint of tartness or bite tastes like absolute crap. Suppressing the gag reflex is difficult, and reverse peristalsis after healthy meals is not uncommon. Turning off the tongue's ability to detect bitter and sour makes almost all healthy foodstuffs palatable (although you should probably expect to undergo a little bit of cognitive dissonance -- Brussels sprouts aren't supposed to taste like almost-overripe plums, they just do after sucking on one of these little pills).
They won't give you back your appetite, but they sure make eating feel a lot less like a punishment for unspecified crimes in a previous life or some such.
These days, I prefer unsweetened iced tea. I may add sugar to hot tea (usually black teas) but not often. I also found that soda tastes a bit odd to me these days.
Tragically, when cheap hfcs appeared, the food industry decided to start putting the stuff everywhere. Now it is very hard to avoid it even if you do not eat anything sweet.
I consciously quit sugar about 6 months ago, and lost a ton of weight, and feel much better for it. However, I recently had to travel to the US for work, and avoiding sugar there was near on impossible. You guys have the chips stacked against you...
Granted, Newegg are retailers rather than manufacturers, but country-based product restrictions are surprisingly common[0].
[0]: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22we+only+ship+to+locations...
While the entry notes some well-known harms of sugar, it fails to note a few thing points:
- Sugar withdrawal can be modestly severe, but it's not physiologically habituating, and a couple of weeks of abstinence will get you through the worst of it.
- Quantity, quality, and timing matter. Keeping total carbohydrate low (~50 - 150g day) will minimize much of the effects. Keeping sugars/carbs mostly low-glycemic minimizes the negative impacts. Consuming carbs in the morning or post-exercise (when body stores are naturally depleted) puts them where they can be utilized immediately (liver and muscle glycogen stores, not converted to fats).
- Much of the sugar in the standard American / standard western diet (SAD/SWD) is in the form of hidden, added sugars in processed foods. A teaspoon of added sugar in tea is minimal. The 10 teaspoons in a 12 oz. can of Coke (or any other soft drink) are rather more. Or the sugars in various canned, prepared, baked, or other foods. Make your own food or eat raw / natural / unprepared foods and you'll greatly reduce your sugar intake.
- Exercise, both strength training and cardio, change how your body processes sugar, and greatly reduces the negative effects of same.
Something's going to kill you. Need not be sugar.
You have agency.
Simple carbs spike serotonin levels, and then collapse them soon afterwards. People want to feel good, so they eat more sugar, which leads to another spike. This is by definition addictive!
It is also a vicious cycle. Too much sugar consumption can lead to obesity, which can then lead to depression, and of course sugar is already a person's go to treatment for feeling "down".
Thus the cycle continues.
Do you mean that obese people suffer reduced self-esteem which leads to depression, or do you refer to some kind of bio-chemical linkage? (Or something else entirely?)
Heroin withdrawal can kill.
Sugar withdrawal will not.
If he's that biorythmically dependant upon sugar, then the likely problem is that he's not getting sufficient sugar elsewhere in his diet. He could reduce the sugar in his tea while adding fruit and likely achieve the same end more effectively (while upping fibre intake, for example).
But phrasing this as a problem of addiction to a "poison" is a loaded approach that closes off less dramatic and likely much more effective measures. And honestly, if his weight's not a problem, then relax and enjoy your addiction--you could have it a lot worse :)
Just a sidenote: fruits are carby, so you still have the same problem if you replace wheat/sugar with fruit. They are slightly better for you because of the balance of fiber, but if you just replace wheat and sugar for fruit you are likely to end up similar health issues.
From a Coke, you feel the stimulation and then the drop in energy afterwards.
An apple just makes me feel good. There's no over-stimulation like sugar, and no drop in energy afterwards.
It's well known that the body processes sugars in foods very differently (sodas, honey, fruits, etc.). Unfortunately, not much is known about why or how, from what I know.
But something to keep in mind: humans have been eating fruits, presumably as long as we've existed. Drinks and desserts with concentrated cane sugar is a new thing. It wouldn't be surprising if evolution has adapted us well to the former (in moderation), but not that latter.
You mentioned honey, and I don't know which group you assigned it to, but many people make this mistake: honey is "natural", but it is every bit as pure and unhealthy a sugar as high fructose corn syrup, or similar.
Whereas caffeine stimulates for several hours, and I never feel less energy afterwards with caffeine.
The effect is definitely the sugar.
Some, but not enough to discount the fact that it is essentially sugar you're eating.
>That said, whole fruit (as opposed to juice, in which much of the fiber is removed) is a reasonably good food choice. Especially for breakfast or post-workout.
I think that's problematic though. People use fruit as a food choice, a mainstay of their diet, thinking it's healthy because it's "natural" or a similar line of reasoning. But it's still sugar and needs to be eaten sparingly just like candy or cake. A lot of fruits have a GI of candy bars, and almost all are in the blood sugar disrupting range of starches, refined wheat, etc, that should be eaten in very limited quantifies. For breakfast, that depends, if you are eating it with a lot of protein and fat, and it's a small amount, sure. But just eating mostly fruit for breakfast is a bad idea.
I have to respectfully disagree with you about fruits. Fruit is more than just sugar, it's a source of vitamins and minerals and it should not intentionally be limited from your diet. Of course you need to eat a variety of different fruits (and vegetables).
"A lot of fruits have a GI of candy bars..."
Can you give some examples?
A piece of fruit and a candy bar are not nutritionally equivalent even if they share the same GI. In fact, most fruits are low in GI. See for yourself by going to the University of Sydney GI database.
http://www.glycemicindex.com/foodSearch.php
We all need to eat fruit and vegetables daily as part of a healthy diet. It's misleading to claim that fruit can cause health issues or should be limited in your diet without providing evidence to back it up.
Even people with Type 2 diabetes are not discouraged from eating fruits. See the advice here for example from Diabetes UK (a charity). They are a credible and trustworthy source of advice for people with diabetes in the UK.
http://www.diabetes.org.uk/MyLife-YoungAdults/Food-and-diet/...
One final link, a 2011 report from Cancer Research UK found that over 40% of cancers diagnosed in the UK were from avoidable lifestyle choices. For men, the number one culprit was tobacco. Number two culprit? Lack of fruit and vegetables in the diet.
You can dump a bunch of vitamins into a bottle of coke, that doesn't mean you can eat it without limit and remain healthy. The carbs are still there, and if fruit makes up a significant number of the calories you intake, you are going to have all the same problems you have when you eat a large number of carbs per day from other sources like candy and pasta, just to a somewhat lesser degree. With fruit, you still don't want to go over the daily number of carbs (~40).
>Even people with Type 2 diabetes are not discouraged from eating fruits. See the advice here for example from Diabetes UK (a charity). They are a credible and trustworthy source of advice for people with diabetes in the UK.
First of all, the site you listed is fairly low quality and significantly out of date:
>All fruit and vegetables are low in fat and calories and a good source of vitamins and minerals.
This isn't the nineties. Fat isn't considered bad for you according to any modern scientific theory except to some degree in relationship to heart disease, and for diabetes patients, is beneficial because it helps stabilize your blood sugar.
Secondly, yes, you should eat small amounts of fruit per day and large amounts of vegetables a day. I never claimed otherwise but the site simply fails to point out that fruit should be taken in significantly lesser quantities than vegetables.
>A piece of fruit and a candy bar are not nutritionally equivalent even if they share the same GI. In fact, most fruits are low in GI. See for yourself by going to the University of Sydney GI database.
Searching for individual foods is a terrible way to compare GI levels. And no, most fruit is not "low in GI", most are high and compare to starchy foods and even candy, as I stated earlier. Fruits like tomatoes that are not sugary/starchy are considered vegetables btw.
>Number two culprit? Lack of fruit and vegetables in the diet.
That's somewhat irrelevant. It's the combination of fruits and vegetables that keeps you healthy, and honestly, you probably could do without sugary fruits entirely if you ate enough quantity and variety of vegetables. It's the fresh plant material rich in minerals/vitamins that's good for you. In any case, small amounts of fruit should be sufficient to add nutritional value and not pose a risk, just as small amounts candy shouldn't pose a risk if eat in very small doses.
They look at the vast majority of people in their environment who do drugs on a regular basis, often throughout their entire lives, and appear to be fine and happier for it. Then they look at you and, since you are in the minority, immediately conclude that you are overreacting.
I grew up with a few friends who abstained from drugs completely. As they grew older and gained perspective, they slowly let down their guard and most of them fell into familiar patterns of reasonably healthy, occasional drug use. A few others had drug problems.
The fact is that a minority of people have the right mix of personality, circumstances and chemistry to become addicts. To make the decision to abstain from any kind of drug use, you are eliminating the small chance that you could become an addict, which is commendable. But what you don't know is that eliminating that chance comes at a great cost. What your peers were trying to tell you was "dude, trust us, it's worth the risk!" A good friend might have said, "friend, if you never take risks, you'll never experience the full richness of life!"
If I were your friend, I would say, quite honestly, that I cannot, almost as a rule, trust anybody who has not tried a variety of mind altering substances. The insight that they provide is, in my opinion, essential to developing an open mind and a deeper perspective on life. Moreover I would be wary of anybody so, to me, risk averse.
But your argument would still be that I don't properly understand the risks. Perhaps that is true, but here is my point:
I respect your decision to eliminate the risk of your becoming an addict, but I don't think that it is appropriate for you to be indignant. Rather, you should be sorrowful.
If anybody who is encouraging others to use a drug wants to see the other side of the coin, try ordering a tea or water instead of a beer at a bar, and see how people react. Repeatedly I have been asked what I wanted to drink, answered tea or water, and a couple of minutes later a beer arrives. Don't be so boring, it's here now, drink it! Note that sometimes I do drink alcoholic beverages, so it's not even that they want me to experience something new. I never replace other people's drinks by tea, heck I've gladly helped people buy marijuana (legally).
P.S. my kid brother is addicted to cigarettes and it's certainly not because one day somebody suggested it to him as friendly advice and he thought "Wow, you're right, smoking cigarettes would be so beneficial for me".
I think that about sums it up.
I think it's unwise but not immoral. And a person who has taken a drug and is having a difficult experience shouldn't be thinking thoughts like, "this is wrong and I knew it is wrong and that's why I'm suffering" because that will enhance the bad-trip/panic-attack element but, instead, "I made a decision and now I'm having this experience and the only thing I can do is learn from it".
I like the Eastern approach to morality better than the Abrahamic one. Negative actions aren't "immoral" and don't make you a "dirty" person; they're unskillful and, given that we've been in samsara for a long time, we've all done a lot of extremely unskillful things.
I think you're right on about sugar. The amount of it that people are consuming is ridiculous. Obesity in the U.S. is a real problem. I've seen people ruin their lives with soda. One person I know is at least 300 pounds (135 kg) and most of it is from soda. He drinks, on average, 4 20-oz (590mL) bottles per day. That's 960 empty calories, or a pound of fat every 4 days (!).
Also, I know a couple people who are now dealing with the end stages of diabetes. Really ugly stuff.
"> Part of the reason why people want others to use the same drug is to feel less guilty about their using.
I think that about sums it up."
that is an extremely negative judgement.
So you think that anyone who recommends a drug to you is doing do for the selfish reason that this makes them feel "less guilty" about something they actually consider wrong?
Bizarre. Judgmental. And very wrong.
You might not know which people you know use drugs. Unfortunately, due to the illegality of many useful and helpful drugs, more harmful ones have become popular. Not all drugs are created equal.
There undoubtably was a lot of denial involved. But without knowing more about the biases of the authors, there is a real possibility that they are being overly quick to assume that people need treatment when someone else may conclude that they do not.
It is very untrue that only a minority of people have the right mix of personality, circumstances and chemistry to become addicts. There are indeed drugs which are not particularly addicting for most of us (eg marijuana, LSD). There are other drugs which most people who try them will not do them enough to get addicted (eg heroin and alcohol - though alcohol is one of the few where withdrawal symptoms can kill addicts). And then there are drugs which really do wind up causing addiction in a large portion of people who use them (eg tobacco, caffeine, crack).
Furthermore even if the odds of getting messed up by drugs is small, the potential consequences are not. For instance if I look at relatives I find one who died from lung cancer caused by smoking, another whose brain is still scrambled many years after quitting meth, another who has a constant battle to avoid becoming a crack-head, and yet another who is permanently messed up from fetal alcohol syndrome. Note, I'm not going to friends here - just looking at siblings, nieces, and nephews, including those by marriage. (Yes, I do come from a large family...)
I personally use mind-altering substances responsibly and in moderation. But given how wrong it can go, I would NEVER push someone to use them who was not comfortable. And I would NEVER pooh pooh the risks.
EXCUSE ME? I'm sorry, but give me a fucking break!
I work hard, hit my deadlines, contribute to open source, am loyal to my friends, ready to help at the drop of a hat, and I'm risk-taking enough to be an entrepreneur, yet, look out, I can't be trusted because I choose not to smoke it up? How does that follow logically?
I've attended many parties through the years (the early ones were what are so commonly called "drinking parties" because, well, they're college and high school kids getting drunk), and I grew up in a family who enjoy with a few beers after work and on the weekends.
And throughout this exposure, I've never once had even the slightest itch to actually partake, despite the incredible amounts of peer pressure. But I attended the parties, I hung out with my friends and watched them get drunk (and later high, as they experimented further), and never once I did think "Hey, these conversations are so stimulating, I should totally do this too to improve my cognitive faculty."
No, I thought "Hey, you continue doing what you're doing. Me? I'm going to go back to playing the piano and talking with whomever is coherent enough to hold a conversation, and tomorrow, we'll laugh about all the stupid shit you won't remember doing."
Instead, watching folks get drunk, and holding conversations with folks who were high has only helped to strengthen my complete lack of desire to do these drugs. Not because of some aversion to risk, but because I just frankly don't like what I see in people when they are under the influence - they're generally just idiots.
And yet, despite all this, I know I can trust the trustworthy and not trust the untrustworthy, and I do not hold it against someone if they choose to enjoy certain recreational drugs. Indeed, despite my teetotalism, I paid for the open bar at my wedding.
Frankly, your almost complete trust-wise dismissal based on such a trivial criterion as "willingness to do drugs" is as closed-minded as I can imagine. At least I haven't completely written off an entire section of the population because of a disagreement in how we spend free time.
What I mean by "trust" is deep friendship trust. The kind of trust that's necessary for a best-friendship, love affair, or business partnership.
It's true, my statement was a bit hyperbolic, though I would stress that it is very personal. I meant to say something somewhat like that I'm simply very unlikely to get along with somebody who unilaterally shuns drugs. It is more a conclusion from observation than a matter of principle.
Disagree strongly. I won't discuss personal experiences (real name) and my own usage history is actually quite moderate and I haven't used any (including alcohol beyond one drink) in 4 years, but I've known some heavy users, studied a bit of psychopharmacology, and probably know more about these drugs than you do.
It's true that most people who use psychedelics have positive experiences. These drugs probably shouldn't be illegal (even though I think it is extremely unwise, for most people, to use them). Some of them are probably safer than alcohol.
Still, I think you exaggerate the insight you get out of drug use. You had that creative and spiritual potential inside of you. It's just that most adults are too uptight to unlock it without a chemical crutch, but it's there and people have been experiencing it for centuries without using psychoactive substances.
People who start using drugs regularly start attributing everything that is interesting, creative, or spiritual in their life to the substances they ingest, the "plant teachers". I'm not talking about addiction because the most interesting drugs are generally non-addictive psychedelics, so much as a kind of subtle reliance that creeps up on a person. It can be very destructive in the long term, and yes, I've seen people destroy their minds with psychedelic overuse.
It's important to separate artifacts (visuals, strange thoughts, perceptions of paranormal ability) from the real stuff-- insight, clarity, spiritual experience. Drugs provide a lot of artifacts and some insight. Meditation provides almost no artifacts but more insight. At my age (29) I'm pretty solidly convinced that artifacts are not desirable. Some are beautiful, some are terrifying, but all involve divorce from reality. What we should be doing is diving into reality and figuring out ways to improve it (mostly through mundane processes like being better people, learning, and treating each other better). Karma's real, and the better your actions are, the better your experiences will be.
Psychedelics seem to be karmic accelerators. They seem to speed up time 100-1000x in that regard: months or years of psychological change, growth or decay, and karmic fruition in a few hours. That might seem like a good thing, but it's often dangerous. You might be "3 months away" from a psychological crisis that, if you actually had that much time to address and resolve the issue, you could weather.
I'm not saying no one should use drugs-- indigenous Americans who use low doses of psychedelics for spiritual purposes seem to have no problem-- but if you do it, you're on the bleeding edge of something that no one understands very well, and in a very demanding (if you're a typical drone, you should never go on a trip on a normal weekend; you need at least 2 office-free days on each end) and intolerant society like ours, it can lead to some really bad outcomes. Worse than the drugs themselves is the way society reacts to them and the changes in people who use them. I've seen people lose jobs because of otherwise manageable HPPD and spiral out of control from there.
Finally, drugs are unnecessary. You can have interesting experiences without them. Most of what makes a good shrooms trip great is spending 6 hours in nature in a somewhat meditative state. How many adults go out into park and sit and think for 6 hours? Almost none, and if they had the mindfulness skill to do this, we'd have a better world. If you learn how to meditate (I don't want to trivialize this because spiritual growth is a lifelong effort, but you can become basically capable pretty quick) you can have experiences of similar quality-- if it's important to you and you make the time. No, you won't get many artifacts through meditation, but I've seen enough people go actually insane not to want artifacts.
Drugs truly are unnecessary. People do themselves a great disservice to believe that through drugs they gain valuable, worthy insight. It's there! You, who took that drug, had that insight inside you. Drugs are not a key to some hidden wealth of wisdom and knowledge.
(I occasionally drink and smoke marijuana, so I am by no means antagonizing against those who do.)
Conversely, I fly airplanes for fun and have a wonderful time doing it. Should I look down on people who have never tried that, the way you stupidly look down on people who don't agree with you on drugs?
I know many of the sub-cultures I'm involved in do exactly that. Motorcycle riders. Musicians. DJs. Burners. HackerSpace members. Artists. All of those circles of friends of mine have some level of scorn/pity for people not participating in their specific thing.
You _shouldn't_ take drugs if it doesn't interest you to do so. Anyone who tries to pressure you into going so should be avoided. Just the same as you'd consider someone trying to pressure people into flying, as opposed to offering an opportunity and backing off if there's no interest shown - would be being a jerk.
But the problem is, carbs are so damned tasty. I always wind up starting to eat a few french fries, a piece of croissant in the morning, a bit of crusty baguette, a bit of cherry pie, a homemade chocolate-chip cookie, a buttered toasted English muffin, a waffle, kettle potato chips, a hamburger with bun, a slide of brick oven thin-crust pizza...
...and pretty soon you're back to where you were before. I eat a lot less carbs now than I used to, and make sure they always have high fat content so I eat less (lots of olive oil on bread/pizza, cookies with lots of butter, etc.), and also try to make sure they're tasty enough to be worth it.
But it's really hard to say no to so many of the delicious things out there!
What I do: 6.5 days of VLC (Very Low Carb) of just protein+fat+green veggies (my typical meal is eggs, bacon and broccoli), less than 30g. On the 7th day, I go carb nuts at night, 2-3 hrs before bed. I don't limit carbs in this to low-GI, either, I eat what I want. I just make sure to get quality protein and keep it low fat as well.
As an added bonus, on the 7th day, just before I go carb nuts, I hit the gym and really, really blast whatever body part I want to see grow. The carbs I consume later are going to spike my insulin so if I make sure my body is primed to actually use the insulin spike, I can actually grow a bit of muscle. BONUS!
The same as our ancestors did for tens of thousands of years. Remember, dense carbohydrates like wheat and carb-rich potatoes are a very recent phenomenon in human history.
From what I know, any kind of significant flour processing arose together with the agricultural revolution, which produces large quantities of wheat for the first time. The agricultural revolution started around 12,000 years ago (but then still had to spread), and Wikipedia mentions:
"It was discovered around 6000 BC that wheat seeds could be crushed between simple millstones to make flour."
In widespread evolutionary terms, we've only been generally been eating flour for a few thousand years.
Homo sapiens has been around for 200k years, but that is just the tip of the iceberg of the much longer evolutionary process that led to us. We and our ancestors have been eating meats, fats, fruits and vegetables for millions of years.
So our high-carbohydrate flour-eating diet is certainly a sudden and recent disruption of our diet, and it is reasonable to expect that there's no way that, in just 100-200 human generations, the gene makeup of homo sapiens could so quickly adapt in a healthy way to such a drastically different diet.
But in widespread use probably quite a bit less.
But that is only if people start using it irresponsibly, like anything, be it water, any vitamin, in excess will not work out great for you. It is when it starts having a noticeable effect upon many that laws and acts change. That is one drive of change, but probably the first sign will be insurance forms asking how many sugars you have in your coffee and how many per week/day.
But as long as I don't have to hovel outside a fire door in the poring rain to get my sugar fix then I'm not too worried about my addiction, worry causes more ill health than the excess sugar I consume and in that I raise my cup (though I did use brown sugar and I'm talking the supermarket version).
Maybe you can set your browser to use English as the default language, then words that are spelled wrong will show up with a red underline.
That said, now that it is there it is a great source of feedback, for all those that have made constructive suggestions in this thread and in the comments on the blog post, thank you very much, and I will certainly take some of those suggestions to heart and implement them.
The paleo/primal food lifestyle would probably interest you greatly.
(notably, sugar is my most major vice - I kicked gluten, caffeine, alcohol, and many other substances a long time ago. I still consume wheat here and there, but sugar (particularly in juice) is the worst.
The only thing that has worked for me is going completely cold turkey for my two big sugar vices: candy and soda. I haven't had candy in about a year, and I haven't touched soda in three or four years. It gets easier...I don't really crave either of those things ever anymore. I still eat things that have sugar, but I don't really go overboard with anything other than candy and soda, so it's not a problem.
Quit cold turkey; some of us can't handle moderation for some things.
Well, the same thing can be said about anything. Drink water in excess and it can and will kill you (the dose makes the poison). These pieces are frustrating because they take something (fats, sugars, carbs, etc.) that is perfectly healthy in moderation and within a balanced diet and position it as a vice when in fact the vice is the person's over-indulgence. A better title would have been: "Something that I consume too much of will kill me one day".
Sugar may be a red herring here. That sounds like a massive caffeine dependency.
200 cups a day can be lethal, but the water poisoning will probably get you first.
The real dangers are alcohol + caffeine (the caffeine stops you getting tired, so you can drink more), or caffeine powder (one spoon can kill you).
Several liters probably isn't healthy though.
Why do you think otherwise?
Then it comes. He says "Sugar" and I scream "Fuck!!!"
- Eat a little more protein. No need to go crazy, but just have more protein.
- Eat more fiber. Very few people eat enough fiber. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Fruits are a great way to get some sugar, but the fructose in fruit is absorbed more slowly than a cookie.
- Have some cinnamon. I sprinkle a little cinnamon on everything. Occasionally I'll even take a cinnamon tablet. Supposedly helps with cravings.
- Drink more water. When I pretty much stopped having sugar I was having 3-4 liters (roughly a gallon) of water a day.
- Eat good fats. Nuts, peanut butter, almond butter, avocados, etc. Helps with cravings too.
- And of course exercise. There are too many good things exercise does for you.
I have pretty much stopped having sugar (other than in social situations i.e. given a piece of birthday cake). I drink my coffee black, no sugar in my tea, and don't drink any more soda.
Replace 'tea' in this article with cocaine. The cocaine alone doesn't do it for him, he requires there to be some sugar in it. And then blaming the sugar withdrawal for his fuzzy head.
That's basically what's happening here. Except that people tend to ignore that caffeine is a drug that can have some pretty pronounced effects when used a lot and over a long time.
As an avid coffee-drinker - what are these effects? I've read upon caffeine and I've found no clear evidence for permanent harm or good out of coffee.
The wikipedia article actually has a good summary of some of these issues as well as others.
You'll notice that the higher dosages given in that article as being risk factors for things are within the range of 'several liters of iced tea.'
No, on second thought, I will take that back. When I need to drive for another 4 hours or code for another 3, I will sometimes drink straight black coffee, and as long as I do not eat, I will get quite a rush (and probably grind my teeth quite a bit). And if I do either drink past the afternoon, sleep that night will be sketchy/non-refreshing.
A computing parallel would be "All this bloatware is killing my machine. It's so bad I have to regularly run [well-known heinous, performance-killing malware] to fix it."
I honestly wouldn't be that surprised to see a follow-up post later where the author reveals that he was checking to see whether this would exactly happen.
It's pretty frustrating to watch.
"If I don’t use sugar ... then I simply get ... very low on energy. ... I’m not sure what the link is here, all I know is that without that chemical in my bloodstream for some reason I can’t get my head in first gear, let alone second or third."
I found it hard to take that seriously, given that your body will put sugar in your bloodstream regardless of what you eat, and without any sugar in your bloodstream you would quickly die.
Of course, the overall point of the article still stands.
I have no idea why at all. I used to have 2 teaspoons in coffee, like normal coke, sprinkle it over cereal and fruit, and so on. One day I made my usual coffee and it was just sickly. I chucked it down the sink and made a new one with out sugar and its was fantastic. Same for everything else. Weird, but there it is.
I can't help but wonder if you had acquired a taste for beer as a teenager whether you would have less of a sweet tooth now...
I think anxiety and stress is something that is much more harmful to me than smoking a blunt or drinking a glass of whiskey. I never understood why some people take such a black and white (simple) perspective on this. I guess the only reason I could see is if someone very close to them died from one of these vices, but that is kind of an irrational reaction. I understand it, but wouldn't advocate anyone reacting that way.
In short, I don't really see how soft drugs or unhealthy foods in moderate quantity are really harmful in the grand scheme of things.
Sugar is actually more addictive than many other drugs. Rats often preferred it to cocaine and got addicted to it just like a drug.
http://sarvahealthandwellness.com/?p=402 http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2008/12/12/22428/
You might try varying the sugar to brown sugar or honey. Or eat fruits such as grapes which are a source of glucose! Also, apples have been known to wake you up in the morning better than coffee.
That said, I've tried to reduce my sugar intake--no sugar in coffee, etc, but this has been difficult.
You might choose to live your life in a cardboard box, after all, as long as you're happy there. Plenty of people will think you are missing out on life, though. But since you avoid people, you wouldn't care, I guess. Have a good one...
Edited to add: The above assumes it's mostly psychosomatic, which seems quite possible and worth testing but isn't anything like guaranteed. If there is a nutritional component then eating more, smaller meals may help. I assume you're eating breakfast in the first place?
The upsides are that there are no documented negative health effects, it tastes pretty much like sugar, and it has no calories.
The downsides are that it doesn't work like sugar chemically (you can't caramelize it or use it to activate yeast), and that you have to dilute it (I like to just make a very sweet sucralose+water solution to sweeten things with, but you could easily cut it with some other powder like maltodextrin).
The fact is that there is no more reason to believe that sucralose will have some as yet unobserved negative health effect than there is to believe that it will have some as yet unobserved health benefit.
Conversely, imagine if sugar were a newly discovered sweetening compound, seeking FDA approval. They wouldn't get past one safety trial before "serious concerns about long term effects" knocked it out of the running.
Analyzing the relative risks of sugar and sucralose, there is just no case to be made for sugar being the safer bet.
I wonder how abundance of almost everything we want (foods, variety, condiments and abuse) will affect our (my) generation when we're old…
Rule of thumb everything is bad for you, some take larger amounts than others so in that everything in moderation works best.
Also worth noting that if you work in a very hot enviroment were you sweat alot then as well as water salt tablets are required, signs of low sodium are headaches, aches, and flu like sympton feeling and generaly feeling shit, too much salt may be bad for you in general in the longterm but not enough can be more detremental.
Citation? From what I understand, salt can be harmful for people who already have high blood pressure, but there isn't any real proof that salt is harmful for people with normal blood pressure.
Evidence seems to be strongly accumulating that sugar/carbs are very unhealthy. For salt (in people with normal blood pressure), there isn't actually convincing evidence, from what I'm aware. And there are real risks associated with eating too little salt.
Salt intake is a necessity for life.
I guess you could argue being healthier makes you a better entrepreneur/engineer/etc?
But fruit juice is a different matter as the pulp has been removed.
The sugar in it may be natural, but it's still a mind-blowing amount of it.
It's depending on me not lying, but making that committment has already made it a lot easier.
17 days in so far, and hasn't been hard, after total failure before.
Danny (of Beeminder)
Quitting carbohydrates altogether is a stupid idea. Don't do it.
The problem isn't in the calories, which is equivalent per gram with refined sugar, but the fact refined lacks many nutrients. The article you mention is full of crap and doesn't link to any studies, but I can tell you raw sugar has ~5mg per 100g of Iron alone. Refined sugar has absolutely zero. In a 2000kcal diety, you're consuming 50g of sugar daily. You're getting along 1/4 of daily Iron intake if raw sugar is used, for free. I'm not even going to mention Magnesium, which 70% of the world's population is deficient on. I wouldn't say the benefits are negligible.
About Xylitol... what's the point in using an artificial sweetener that lacks any nutrients just because is has lower calories? Just cut caloric crap from the diet. The only benefit is for diabetics.
On the other hand, I hear the Chinese put salt in tea sometimes. That would be even worse. So how can I complain.
And seriously if your head feels disconnected without tea... you could probably use some exercise.
Well Jacques, it is quite strange and disappointing to see that you have spent your life following such a simplistic approach to human brain chemistry.
You seem to have accepted uncritically the message promulgated by your local government about the effects of psychoactive chemicals, that is, that alcohol, "smokes", hash, coke, or "other dope" is bad for your health, and will reduce your lifespan.
In the first place, does it seem rational to you to group the effects of such a wide range of different chemicals together? Tobacco and alcohol, for example, have nothing in common chemically or pharmacologicaly. Their effects on your health or longevity are completely independent of each other. What they have in common is that they have a psychologically pleasant effect, like the other varieties of "dope" you mention.
Perhaps you have bought into the Calvinistic worldview that what is pleasurable must be ultimately harmful. Do you not indulge in such temptingly wicked practices as dancing and umm, recreational sex either?
How about an item by item rational, scientific approach to each chemical? I'm not going to attempt to be exhaustive here, as anyone can look up a hundred resources, but, as a first approach, I think that your strategy of "complete abstention" is misguided at best. Of course anything can be overdone to the point of being harmful, even internet usage, so all of my comments below apply only to moderate, reasonable, sensible use.
Alcohol: Legal, moderate addictive potential, overuse increases violence and recklessness. Numerous studies have shown than moderate usage is beneficial to health. Overuse causes liver problems and Korsakoff's Syndrome. Social lubricant enjoyed around the world.
Tobacco: Legal, highly addictive, carcinogenic. Mental stimulant.
Cannabis: Illegal. Barely to zero addictive potential, cancer preventative/therapy. No known overdose. Stimulates creative ideas. Dissolves obedience to authoritarian world-views.
Coke: Illegal. Highly addictive. Mental stimulant. Causes holes in internasal septum and generally manic asshole behavior.
Psychedelics: Illegal. Highly NON-addictive. A large proportion of users say they have caused the most significant experiences of their entire lives. No known physical effects.
Personally, although I agree with you about sugar, I'm really more concerned that you have accepted a bland, timid, dumbed-down, boring, government-dictated life, than that you are taking any serious health risks.
I think you should take a few risks and get out a little, before you die. How about a fat spliff, a hearty Merlot, and an Ayahuasca trip to the Amazon? You never know, you might find that you've been living your life so far in black and white.
Some people need drugs to loosen up, I can assure you I'm plenty loose without that.
> I'm really more concerned that you have accepted a bland, timid, dumbed-down, boring, government-dictated life
I appreciate your concern, but I promise you that that is not the case.
Each to his own. I enjoy your posts enormously. Maybe some day you will have a change of heart and post about a life changing mushroom trip one day. Stay loose!
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/10/03/drug-in...