I think mountain/hillbilly culture in the US is very much its own thing and cannot be understood by lowland Americans. Maybe people in Scotland / Afghanistan / etc. will understand it better.
Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties
141–150 of 211 posts
Re: Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh it's all just Lies and Statistics. It's like how 'non drinkers' die earlier than those who lightly drink. But no one who reports it writes the next sentence to explain that, non drinkers include people who don't drink to manage chronic health conditions and thus skew things with their ill health making it seem like alcohol is required to be healthy. I suspect in the future death by choice, in a palliative setting…
> But no one who reports it writes the next sentence to explain that, non drinkers include people who don't drink to manage chronic health conditions and thus skew things with their ill health making it seem like alcohol is required to be healthy. Can you point to the study that makes this claim without controlling for other health issues? Otherwise, you're just making stuff up, which is worse than what you accuse th…
This study seems to be a pretty important one (cited by Harvard in a blog post about alcohol's effects on health). It doesn't necessarily go into preexisting health conditions beyond broad markers like BMI, smoking, and cancer history. It says one of the limitations of the study is that it doesn't account for socioeconomic status, which is probably correlated with general health (can't afford as much alcohol if you're poor and you age less healthily).
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
Re: Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
For that to be true, you'd need to establish that blood oxygen levels differ significantly across altitude adapted individuals, and I don't believe that this is the case. Also, when I first moved from Philadelphia to a village in New Mexico at 6000', I remember reading that I should plan on a 3 phase adapative process that would take as much as 9 months to complete. This makes me give less weight to things like the 2…
I agree. Low oxygen just doesn't make sense. It's more likely the higher cosmic rays and other space weather, which are already known to cause suicidal thoughts, as well as other mental health problems.
I think that warrants a citation
Re: Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties
#144I recall seeing this article from 2014 referring to suicides in Utah ('utah paradox') and how neuroscientist Perry Renshaw was trying to link it to altitude: http://mic.com/articles/104096/there-s-a-suicide-epidemic-in... which links to another study from 2011: http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/appi.ajp.201... "Together, the stray statistics and stories about life out west tipped off Renshaw to a common…
Is depression and suicide significantly positively correlated to asthma or other breathing disorders?
Preferably low-grade to rule out gross pathology.
Re: Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties
#145Needs a [2011] tag.
Re: Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties
#146Related interesting read: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p...
TLDR: Author researches obesity epidemic in US, finds out negative correlation between obesity and altitude and comes to a hypothesis that it may be due to possible higher concentration of lithium in the water in lower areas
Wonder if this is also the reason in this case since lithium is an antidepressant
Re: Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties
#147Median household income seems like a pretty bullshit metric when talking about parts of the country where it's not uncommon for multi-million dollar ridgetop mansions to coexist with gross poverty. All of the high elevation country I've visited (disregarding obvious outliers like Denver and the front range) had a few things in common: very wealthy people enjoyed having homes there and the rest of the locals were dirt poor with no obvious opportunities for social or economic advancement.
Re: Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
I understood that rural air is significantly worse than urban due to all the pesticides.
I live in a rural area and air here is significantly better than smog filled and ozone enriched air in the city I used to live in. Not to mention the lack of winter fog that can linger around for weeks at times. And that's excluding the light and noise pollution that are inevitable in urban areas. Yeah, living in a rural area is pure hell.
What do you believe Ozone is?!?
Re: Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties
#149I haven't dug into their controls, but it seems to me that higher altitude may be associated with remoteness.
Also altitude’s correlation with climate.
I'd say Utah and Colorado probably have better climate due to their elevation. If they were at sea-level they would probably be insanely hot.
Re: Positive association between altitude and suicide in U.S. counties
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree. Low oxygen just doesn't make sense. It's more likely the higher cosmic rays and other space weather, which are already known to cause suicidal thoughts, as well as other mental health problems.
I think that warrants a citation
This makes me think. What if there was a database of conjectures. Each has an id number. The database could link to all sorts of media, scientific studies, etc. supporting or disputing each conjecture. Then you could just give the id number and folks would also get all the pro and con material they might like. Even things like "the earth is a sphere" could link to educational videos and whatnot. And even things like "political leaders who I disapprove of are in fact lizard aliens" could link to whatever material supports or disproves it. It'd be nice too if we could categorize these things: disputed, hypothetical, scientifically studied but not independently verified, multiple independent validations, technologies rely on the fact that this works, etc. I dunno why your point made me think of that.