I had a friend who was telling everybody : "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger ... or paraplegic" and it made him laugh every time.
This title made me think of him, I automatically appended "or paraplegic" to the title.
RIP M.
What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Stronger
21–30 of 69 posts
Re: What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Stronger
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right. Belly fat is stored there because a central location is best for the body (although it was sufficiently rare in our evolutionary ascent to afford 40 pounds of belly fat that our bodies didn't adapt well to it, which is why it's so bad for us). In terms of structural imposition on the body, the backpack is worse.
Incidentally, anyone who's hiked will tell you that the best position for heavy weight is at the very top of the pack. The reason is that this puts most of the weight on your hips rather than your back.
Shouldn't it be at the bottom of the pack then ?
Re: What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Stronger
#23I'm very skeptical. Aging isn't there because our genes "need" it. It's there because our genes don't need long lifespans. The gain in reproductive viability that we'd get with a >60 year natural lifespan just isn't enough to justify the constraint that a much longer (or indefinite) lifespan would impose on our genetic "search space". We can live forever and be simple, or we can be complex and get a job done and die.…
Can you translate that for someone who skimmed to "weight on belly versus weight in backpack" ?
Re: What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Stronger
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also: "Walking around with a 40-pound backpack has the opposite effect of carrying an extra 40 pounds of belly fat." Actually walking around with a 40-pound backpack is a bad idea, as compared to carrying the weight at the level of your belly (all other things being equal) because the risk of back damage is much higher.
Right. Belly fat is stored there because a central location is best for the body (although it was sufficiently rare in our evolutionary ascent to afford 40 pounds of belly fat that our bodies didn't adapt well to it, which is why it's so bad for us). In terms of structural imposition on the body, the backpack is worse.
What I meant in my other comment is: can you help me figure out how to map structural imposition to lifespan probability in a meaningful way?
Re: What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Stronger
#25If this is true... then I need to rethink a lot of my life choices... what is actually good for me? Would love to hear the opinion of doctors/scientists on this...
I would be very suspicious before exposing myself to some things considered harmful just after reading a random article on the web.
Re: What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Stronger
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Incidentally, anyone who's hiked will tell you that the best position for heavy weight is at the very top of the pack. The reason is that this puts most of the weight on your hips rather than your back.
Shouldn't it be at the bottom of the pack then ?
No, the bottom of the pack is completely outside (behind) the hips. If you put it at the top of the pack, you'll naturally bend forward slightly to an equilibrium between your torso and your backpack, the top of the pack will be roughly above the hips.
Re: What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Stronger
#27Hormesis as a general concept reeks of me of the "like cures like" of Homeopathy. This is mentioned in the article even. "A little snake venom is a cure to snake venom" is commonly used when explaining homeopathy. There may be some scenarios that exhibit this behavior but it still means your relaying on a fallacy of composition to turn it into something that can be sold as a life style. Why do we have to simplify thi…
Yeah but this concept isn't nearly as hard to stomach for me. "Fighting off disease makes you better at fighting off disease" is a little more believable than "these overpriced water molecules can learn the shape of toxins and help eliminate them in your body".
Re: What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Stronger
#28I'm very skeptical. Aging isn't there because our genes "need" it. It's there because our genes don't need long lifespans. The gain in reproductive viability that we'd get with a >60 year natural lifespan just isn't enough to justify the constraint that a much longer (or indefinite) lifespan would impose on our genetic "search space". We can live forever and be simple, or we can be complex and get a job done and die.…
Can you translate that for someone who skimmed to "weight on belly versus weight in backpack" ?
Natural selection only molds us up to the point where we procreate and ensure the survival of our offspring. After that (say age 50), we're winging it.
Mild stressors that would occur naturally - physical exertion, exposure, hunger; it is perfectly logical that natural selection would favour those who handle these circumstances well.
Re: What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Stronger
#29I'm not buying the Demographic Theory of Senescence.
> Aging is nature’s way of leveling out the death rate, assuring that we don’t all die at the same time. Aging puts our deaths on an individual schedule so we can die at different times; other causes of death tend to kill everyone or no one.
It's a magical "group selection" hand-wavy argument—it sounds nice and is kind of heart-warming, but when making an evolutionary argument, that's usually a bad sign. In this case, it doesn't provide an explanation of how purposeful aging could possibly increase an individual's probability of passing on their genes.
If not aging was an option, you would expect to see something more similar to the results of Michael J. Wade's 1976 experimental attempt to show group selection behavior in individuals of a species. He artificially induced resource constraints on a selected subpopulation of flour beetles to see if the beetles would restrain their reproduction for the benefit of the group. What happened? The adults started eating the young of the other adult beetles.
http://www.pnas.org/content/73/12/4604.full.pdf
I don't have an explanation for aging, but I seriously doubt that it's a way for Nature to regulate population size to avoid resource depletion for the group.
Re: What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Stronger
#30There are some questionable assertions in this article. eg, "Survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings had lower cancer rates later in life than people of similar age who had not been exposed to radiation " has the ref http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/095530006010859... which a) has nothing to do with Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and b) found that low dose radiation in fact increased cancer risk (shock!)…
Also: "Paraquat is the chemical name for the active ingredient in Agent Orange." In reality, paraquat is very different from the active ingredients in Agent Orange (2,4-D and 2,4,5-T). For instance, a molecule of paraquat contains 2 nitrogen atoms and no oxygen atoms whereas a molecule of 2,4-D or 2,4,5-T contains no nitrogen and 3 oxygen atoms. The only similarity between them that I know of is that they are both us…
The author seems to be confusing the US government's use of agent orange in Vietnamese jungles, with their use of paraquat on marijuana farms in Mexico in the 70s.