The evidence is extremely varied, and in my opinion unreliable for making serious claims. Commonly cited by those repeating these claims, which as others have pointed out is rife with issues pertaining to causality, is the 2004 study "Ejaculation Frequency and Subsequent Risk of Prostate Cancer" published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
Here is a section summarizing what came before:
> Previous investigations on reported ejaculation frequencies or sexual intercourse and prostate cancer are limited to studies of retrospective design and results are mixed. Nine studies observed a statistically significant or non-significant positive association; 3 studies reported no association; 7 studies found a statistically significant or non-significant inverse relationship; and 1 study found a U-shaped relationship.
Conclusions that come from the aforementioned article, as well as many/most/all others that I have encountered, are mixed and, as others have noted, have issues with determining causes.
My wife and I have been trying for a kid for a while, and though I’m healthy, over the past 9 months I’ve gone down a rabbit hole on the professional literature around men’s health.
I don’t know how it compares to anything else, but the variance of the data is what struck me the most. That, and the low-resolution around a lot of the studies that have been run. I get that science is hard, but I would expect a LOT more detail from publications than what is typically offered.
Hey man good luck! I know some people who have tried and tried before it finally all clicked. One person I can think of now has 4 kids! It can be tough. I'm sure you don't need any advice.
Kids are the best, most meaningful thing you will ever do. Its worth it to keep trying.
> Kids are the best, most meaningful thing you will ever do.
Just coming in from the other side, but this is not universally true.
Mine has been an absolute nightmare, and I’m in pretty intense therapy trying to keep it all together. My relationship with my wife has been wonderful before and after, so that wasn’t a factor.
I’m not trying to dissuade people from having children, but we were completely unprepared for how challenging ours is. Apparently this isn’t the case for everyone.
Thank you. I'm a gay man & I'm sick of being told that the most fulfilling and meaningful thing I'll ever do in life is have children; which I cannot do nor do I want to.
Really, our planet could do with fewer people. If people want something fulfilling, they should do whatever makes them happy. That's what fulfilment and contentment is.
My wife and I got married later in life, and we do not have kids, nor will we ever have kids.
I don't regret it. I think I would have been a horrible dad. Only now, as I am in my 50s, do I feel like I might become a person who could have been a good dad, if I had known then what I know now.
So, my kids who were never born, and society at large, are probably better off that my wife and I have never had kids.
Hell, given what's happening in the world today, I think maybe my non-existent kids may also be better off never having been born.
Your relationship with your wife has been wonderful before and after what? The birth?
I am in a challenging marriage. I have young kids. My kids are wonderful. I am trying to work things out with my wife for my children's sake. I would be careful with the language you use to frame the problems in your life. How you describe your problems may influence what you see as the solutions.
Are you sure it's a problem with your child? Maybe it is a problem with you and your relationships?
Anyways, good choice being in therapy. A competent therapist will help you unravel your problems better than some asshole on hn (that's me).
I'll try to keep this from becoming a therapy session to the best of my ability. I don't have all the answers yet ;)
> Your kid is a nightmare? Your kid is challenging?
This is hard to explain without a larger conversation, but I think one of the primary issues for us is the huge commitment a child can be. We are in a very rural community (close to nil childcare available), very little family support, and both work full-time (luckily from home).
Deciding to have a child can be a complex decision, and it seemed like a good idea at the time based on the information we had. Close friends in very similar situations have been successful and happy. There are also a small minority of friends that have similar feelings to us.
> Your relationship with your wife has been wonderful before and after what? The birth?
Correct.
> Are you sure it's a problem with your child? Maybe it is a problem with you and your relationships?
I believe the root issue here is a conflict between what we want out of life and the realities young children bring. The things that "fill us up" are generally unsafe for young children (eg. mountaineering in the dead of winter at high altitude).
I'm not looking for criticism (unless it's constructive), because the decision has been made. We're doing the best we can and trying to find new techniques/outside help; we're trying our best given what we have. (it's worth noting that I didn't take the parent comment negatively)
> Anyways, good choice being in therapy. A competent therapist will help you unravel your problems better than some asshole on hn (that's me).
I agree, and I've posted the unfiltered version here. It has helped me mentally reframe our situation in a more positive light, but it's still a journey. Hopefully insight into our specific situation can help someone else along the way.
*edit:
>I am in a challenging marriage. I have young kids. My kids are wonderful. I am trying to work things out with my wife for my children's sake. I would be careful with the language you use to frame the problems in your life. How you describe your problems may influence what you see as the solutions.
This is good advice, and I don't see my child as "the problem" so much as the general situation. The struggle now is recalibrating my world view.
I wish you the very best. Let’s set a timer for ten years and come back to this thread. I am curious what form our journeys will take and hope this is represented the low point of what is to be a great climb up.
> Am I supposed to take your statement as I'll never do anything meaningful?
No, you probably aren't to take that statement that way since the statement never said any such thing. He said "most meaningful" which necessarily implies that there are other meaningful things, just lower in a hierarchy of meaningfulness. Respectfully, you seem quite bitter by reading into what was said, perhaps some introspection about the reason for this reaction would be in order.
Actually it depends on what you think is "meaningful". It could be having children, but it also could be discovering a new vaccine, helping other people, or just living a happy life without annoying anyone.
In any case, even if one thinks so, I find it quite rude to say that having a kid is the most meaningful thing you can achieve to someone that may not have children ...
>perhaps some introspection about the reason for this reaction would be in order
Perhaps that reason is that many people gay or straight do not want children and being told that our alternative goals aren't the "most" fulfilling ones is pompous and haughty?
You ought to come to terms with and be content with the fact that your sexual lifestyle choices may prevent you from doing things which are more/most fulfilling.
I've known people who've dedicated their life to doing charitable work for low pay, it's extremely fulfilling in a way that I will never experience, but I don't get upset when they say that it's the most fulfilling thing they've done.
>You ought to come to terms with and be content with the fact that your sexual lifestyle choices may prevent you from doing things which are more/most fulfilling.
>but I don't get upset when they say that it's the most fulfilling thing they've done.
You _almost_ got it, there. The former point doesn't align with the latter; what I'm trying to say is that, sure, for you having a child may be the most fulfilling thing for your life, but for others the most fulfilling may be something else.
Remember, their original statement was "Kids are the best, most meaningful thing you will ever do. Its worth it to keep trying." whereas really they should have said something like "Kids are the best, most meaningful thing I have ever experienced. It's worth it to keep trying."
I have heard that having children expands the upper and lower bounds of happiness and suffering. There are joys pertaining to being a parent that bring you to heights unimaginable, but there are fears and problems that bring you lower. The range is greater.
Many people all over the world suffer because their parents give birth without proper thinking by their parents, for selfish reason (to have meaning themselves).
Do whatever people want with their own life. But when it involves bringing someone else to life without their consent and no going back, there should be some checks and bounds and should not be for selfish reasons.
As great as it is to have your own biological kids, please consider fostering and/or adopting as well. It can be challenging but also very rewarding, and there is a huge need for that sort of thing.
We have two biological kids, fostered for a little while, and ended up adopting a young boy. They are all awesome!
if I may give you a piece of advice, ask yourself whether you can guarantee that your kid will be happy to have been forced to come to life, or if you are selfishly taking a bet at someone else's expense.
People here are privileged, live in a better country, good income etc. Because they have better life, they expect others also to say it's great. Many children are born without proper thinking by their parents, for selfish reason and suffer every day.
I know you are not asking me. But, I would've refused to come to life.
Given that, when they ask me the question, I have the same knowledge that I have now or a short trailer about what is life (not specifically mine). Ahah.
So many opportunities for correlation not causation. One obvious correlation could be testosterone: higher testosterone leading to less prostate cancer. Of course higher testosterone has multiple causes. I knew a girlfriend of a guy taking roids, both in their twenties: she said he was insatiable in her opinion (I think she limited access to three times a day, because he just wanted more).
It is truly tiring to see all these "linked" articles. It might be interesting but without some more research it is useless and just messes up with 99.9% of population who will read it and wrongly assume sexual activity prevents cancer.
I am currently on a big spree trying to fix my diet and sift true information from all those wrong inferences. Turns out, almost everything I have been told and red is a lie based on wrong inferences. Lifetime of avoiding fat... exactly opposite of what I should have been doing...
What is the potential danger here? I’m not aware of any links to adverse heath for men ejaculate 21 times or more a month. Are you? Seems low risk for something that will potentially give you a 31% decreased chance to get prostate cancer.
>Lifetime of avoiding fat…
That’s too bad. Low fat diets have been debunked for at least 20 years. They were pushed by companies that produce high sugar foods. The thing we should actually avoid.
I don’t think anyone has the same interest with the topic in the article though.
People wasting other peoples time by giving advice that does nothing. Averting focus from things that are productive. Drowning useful information in information that may not necessarily be bad for you but isn't beneficial either.
As if this thread needed more already open doors kicked in. Lately feels like this place is turning into Reddit more and more for every day, I’m not only talking about this thread.
Do they not teach you about macronutrients in highschool?
I think nutrition is one of the earliest things you figure out that it depends and nobody really knows what their talking about. My mother and wife have a lot of opinions about nutrition that are obviously unscientific, situational and anecdotal.
> Lifetime of avoiding fat... exactly opposite of what I should have been doing...
There is more nuance involved. What kind of fat? What kind of diet? Calorie surplus? What about salt? What kind of metabolism do you have?
It is just impossible to make blanket statements like eat fat, do not eat fat, eat sugar, do not eat sugar. It's your own responsibility to figure it out instead of being told what to do.
> Why bother having education system if you are supposed to figure everything out on your own? How is nutrition different from math or grammar?
1. To "educate" / program you on what to buy to sustain the rest of your life, eg, "breakfast is the most important meal of the day". Which is true if you are a cereal company:
2. People have arteries clogged with cholesterol. This is bad. Cholesterol is in eggs. Therefore eggs cause cholesterol build-up in the arteries and should be avoided. Eat cereal instead. This has been completely debunked.
Etc.
Does the education system teach kids about debt, why it's so bad, how to avoid it, ways it will sneak up and fuck you over (ARM, variable-rate credit card interest, ...)? Not when I went to school. There was no class on managing money in my entire 12 years of "education". Just another thing to figure out on your own, hopefully after many mistakes that enrich large corporations.
Agree. This is part of why we need educational reform.
Currently in North America, school is optimized to solve two main problems:
1. Create citizens who work well in companies (sadly these are industrial-era: show up on time, parrot back what is told to you, be the same as everyone else)
2. Babysitting parents who are currently working for companies (this was especially obvious in Ontario’s approach to the pandemic).
If we optimized for population health/wealth things would look a lot different (and from the outside it looks like some private schools in America are already there).
Because it raises the minimum level for everyone, and even if you're DaVinci, it's good for you that society is not full of cavemen trying to build everything from scratch.
Just remember: none of that matters unless you're taking measurements. Make sure to contrast and check whatever you do with regular blood tests that tell you whether you're doing the right thing or needs adjustments because if you continue down that path you're going to fuck yourself up.
Measurements are useful but stop this BS that whatever you do doesn't matter if you can't measure it.
There is a lot of things we can't measure that are worth doing. Like maybe improving your relationship with your wife and kids. Or reducing distraction and improving your focus while you are working.
If the only thing you did and mattered in your life was your diet then yes, you would have to keep measuring it obsessively.
But I don't want to spend my life focusing on my diet to exclusion of everything else. I have lots of other stuff I want to be doing. A healthy diet for me is one that allows me to not have to monitor and measure and weigh myself constantly.
Not measuring is the goal, not the fault of the method.
Basically all Mediterranean dishes are cooked on the olive oil, for which you can find many sources claiming that it is extraordinarily healthy.
However, I am starting to be wary of this claim because olive oil has a _lot_ of saturated fats when compared to other food, roughly around 15-16g per 100g.
To put this figure into the context: 20% cooking cream, which is usually considered unhealthy because of its high saturated fats ratio, has about the same amount of saturated fats as olive oil, 14-15g per 100g. Saturated fats in butter are exceptionally high, 51g per 100g.
What was surprising to me is that even the sunflower oil, an oil which is frowned upon because it's refined, has _less_ of the saturated fats than olive oil, roughly around 13g per 100g.
All the rest of the food which we normally consume is in the region of 1-5g per 100g, including the eggs which have 1g of saturated fats per 100g.
By knowing for the fact that saturated fats are unhealthy, these stats seem to suggest that olive oil is not as healthy as it is generally considered.
> By knowing for the fact that saturated fats are unhealthy
This is simply not true, much less a "fact". This myth most probably comes from the good old American Heart Association who base their opinion of a study way back in the 1960s which was since proven to have been of extremely low quality. There is a ton of info about this online (including scientific studies, not just blog posts), pro and contra, you can read them yourself and then decide who you believe.
And butter and olive oil are one of the most healthy foods you can consume in my opinion <= there you have another point of view on the internet :)
It very much is saturated fat when compared to other food that we take, and which is exactly why I wanted to convey in my original comment that it doesn't appear to be that healthy when you put things into perspective.
Right, as if the American Heart Association was the only organization in world to examine the effects of saturated fats to our health, and as if the last study on that topic has been done half a century ago.
Thanks for your advice but unless you're willing to share that "ton of info" to support your rather absurd claim, I'll stick to my common sense.
Someone just pointed you toward "a ton of info" that you could find if you only bothered. You chose to patently disregard with the audacity of suggesting it's up to them to hold your hand and spoon-feed you this info that you're intentionally choosing to ignore.
Do us a favor and re-read the guidelines regarding "good faith" and until then, get off this site.
I bothered and it's nonsense. Hence I asked for more information to share so that i can better understand the point being made. And now with that said, why don't you f off please? Thank you
No, I enjoy Mediterranean food and cousine every day. I almost exclusively use olive oil as well.
What I meant is what I tried to communicate in my last sentence: olive oil does not appear to be that healthy when put into the perspective with other food we use in kitchen.
With that in mind, I think that general recommendation and hype around the olive oil can be dangerous if not taken carefully.
I am currently "researching", learning all this stuff. So I guess take it with lots of caution?
Since you asked, this is headlines of most of what I figured out:
* Your main goals should be achieving metabolic flexibility, eliminating most of the "bad" stuff (sugars, processed oils, most carbs, etc.), supplying your body with mitochondrial decouplers daily and doing low level aerobic exercise, consistently.
* If you feel hungry at any time you are doing something wrong.
* If you feel cold due to lower basal metabolic rate at any time you are doing something wrong (most likely restricting calories in an improper way).
* Metabolic flexibility means you can can easily get into and out of fasting. You are not driven by hunger and can easily continue your life (work, exercise, etc.) with or without meals, without detriment. This is typically achieved by periods of ample food as well as periods of fasting (calorie restriction is not fasting). On a daily basis you can restrict your eating window to 4-6 hours. On longer scale it is useful to do periodic changes to your diet (for example intermittent fasting with restricted carbs and calories for 2 months, then follow with 2 weeks of higher calories and carbs).
* Bad stuff are sugars and almost everything that is highly processed, refined, enriched, etc. Meat from unhealthy, stressed animals. Getting rid of all or almost all carbs is desirable as long as some carbs are in the diet from time to time to exercise your insulin.
* Mitochondrial decouplers are substances that cause your mitochondria to waste energy. Wasted energy is heat. For example (I think...) by supplying myself with mitochondrial decouplers I have shifted my temperature comfort level by about 5C. I can now walk, run, sleep, work at about 5C lower that I did before at the same comfort level. What are mitochondrial decouplers -- polyphenols, medium chain triglycerides, caffeine, ketone bodies, etc.
* Low intensity training (I started running about 30 minutes daily at conversational pace) causes your body to develop more mitochondria. More mitochondria present better opportunity for the body to waste heat as well as host of other useful adaptations. You don't have to be running -- taking a brisk walk after your last meal of the day is a fantastic way of getting some activity as well as efficiently clearing blood sugar and improving effective insulin sensitivity (insulin sensitivity is your ability to clear blood sugars, exercise does not improve insulin sensitivity directly but helps clear the sugar making it as if insulin was more effective).
* Exposing body to cold. You don't need to start getting cold therapies -- if you live in colder climate like me it is enough to just not avoid cold at all cost. I am running daily regardless of weather and I am wearing clothes just enough to get mostly comfortable after say 15 minutes of running in -2C but maybe a little cold at the start.
* Consistently good night of sleep is a must.
* High stress can cause blood sugar and insulin resistance. Body reacts to stress by releasing sugar (to prepare you for effort). But chronic stress causes chronic blood sugar causes chronic insulin causes you getting fat and unhealthy.
* Carbs cause insulin (duh) which causes:
** fat in your fat stores being unavailable to your body as an energy resource,
** when the fat stored in your body is unavailable to your body you will be hungry even in the presence of hundreds of thousands of calories on you (which is crazy if you think about it),
** your brain is built to seek more carbs when you get hungry.
* Fats don't make you fat. People on keto diets quit keto when they finish losing weight because they find they are unable to eat so many calories as fats and they consistently undereat or change their diets unwittingly.
* If you have to eat carbs, make effort to reduce their impact. Never eat "naked" carbs -- preceding carbs with fats and/or protein can significantly lower glycemic index. Preceding fats with acids deactivates enzymes in your saliva that cause about 40% of carb digestion in your stomach -- effectively lowering glycemic index (sushi has only 40% of glycemic index of same portion of plain rice -- due to rice vinegar added to the sushi rice). Taking a walk right after carb meal helps body clear blood sugar faster (for example 20 minute brisk walk right after a meal can shorten aftereffects of the meal from 5 to 3 hours).
> (insulin sensitivity is your ability to clear blood sugars, exercise does not improve insulin sensitivity directly but helps clear the sugar making it as if insulin was more effective).
Can you elaborate? As far as I'm aware exercise (even moderate) does indeed increase insulin sensitivity. I was told so by my doctor and as type 1 diabetic with 24/7 glucose monitoring sensor I can "see" this. A day long hike (not intense, just long) does incredibly things to my required insulin dosage. It can go down to mere 10% the amount of insulin per carbs that I usually use. Now of course some of this is due to the exercise itself and the muscles taking in some of that energy. But some should be due to a reduced insulin sensitivity.
Regardless of the type of diabetes you have, your body needs to clear sugar from bloodstream. It really does not matter how this happens, exactly. Insulin performs other functions in your body... but ability to clear sugar is the absolutely most vital concern.
If you can do things that either prevent or clear blood sugar levels from your bloodstream you can technically live without the need for insulin at all.
With a proper diet and discipline you can theoretically even dispense with continuous monitor. What this would require is observing yourself with a monitor while you test your lifestyle choices to validate you are not making mistakes and then stop using it when you trust what you are doing is effective.
Please, do not misconstrue this as an actual medical advice (I am a software developer and definitely no medical education). But if I was type 1 diabetic I would probably try to ensure correct levels of sugar without external insulin. The problem with external insulin is that the dosage is always delayed, it is a point in time and is never perfect. This is not perfect for your health, it is just the best we can.
Now, I would never recommend this to a person I don't know they can be responsible and disciplined enough not to endanger themselves this way. I think this is critical and I also think that unfortunately most people who have diabetes are not fit mentally to do this.
But lowering your blood sugar without insulin would lead to much better results because you would avoid the spikes altogether and you would not risk getting sensitive to insulin from overdosing it.
FYI when I am on keto diet my blood sugar levels are staying consistently low regardless of how much I eat. I have lower blood sugar levels right after a large meal than most people have before the meal(~85mg/dL or 4.7mmol/L after a meal with ~75mg/dL or around 3.9mmol/L before the meal).
I do not plan to stay on keto all the time, I am using it as a tool to build metabolic flexibility. But if I was diabetic I would probably consider keto very seriously to improve my prospects and break dependency on external insulin, constant blood sugar monitoring and every day decisions on what and how much to eat.
I'm afraid but this is a very simplistic view and not how it actually works.
You cannot keep your blood sugar stable by eliminating intake of carbohydrate. Something every diabetic who goes into weight lifting learns really quickly (and is well established in literature and known by doctors): protein will increase your blood sugar. It is a very delayed response (3-5h+) and its amplitude is low but it will happen. The process is called gluconeogenesis. Your body has multiple metabolic pathways to create glucose out of nearly any kind of protein found in your body (figuratively speaking) and will do so even in the presence of enough calories (i.e., this is not a response to malnutrition or under-eating).
And then there are all the hormone-based reactions. The classic obvious culprit for raising blood sugar out of nowhere is of course adrenaline but even many others can do so. Stress reactions and others will do this. The glucose in this case comes from your liver which stores it as glucagon. Note that your liver will store glucagon even when you have no carbohydrate intake. As mentioned above, your body will metabolize it eventually.
Your advice about keto is downright harmful. Type 1 diabetics should not go on a keto diet. This is actively advised against and will lead to coma and death. The reason keto works for healthy people is that they actually do not go 0 on carbohydrate and, therefore, still have some amount of insulin in their blood (also for other reasons). Even vegetables contain small amounts of digestible carbohydrates that will trigger trace amounts of insulin and protein, through the pathway illustrated above, will do so as well.
Please understand that diabetes is an old and very well researched condition. Modern medicine has a trove of long-term detailed data and statistics telling us what works well and will lead to a side-condition-free life in old age and what will lead to long term damage. This is well understood. Contrary to what you suggested, modern diabetes management does not advise to reduce insulin need as much as possible through dietary means for type 1 diabetics.
Edit:
Please note that blood sugar is not a "lower means better" metric. A low blood sugar has risks associated just as high blood sugar has. The "band" of good values is well understood and the headroom "upwards" (i.e., higher than normal values that still won't cause damage) is a lot larger than the headroom "downwards". In fact, standard therapy for diabetics keeps them a little higher than the normal person just for safety reasons. Personally, I stay in a "normal person" range but I also have the luxury of fewer trouble managing my values than others.
> Something every diabetic who goes into weight lifting learns really quickly (and is well established in literature and known by doctors): protein will increase your blood sugar.
It is true that EXCESS protein will be converted to sugars. As long as you limit your protein intake it will be used exclusively for housekeeping. That's why keto diet is not only carb elimination, it is carb elimination WHILE restricting protein to about 30% of your calorie intake.
It is exactly this reason why keto diet is so hard to maintain -- because you have to fill the rest with fat and this is a hard thing to do.
> Please understand that diabetes is an old and very well researched condition.
It is funny that you mention it, because do you know what was the actual first treatment for diabetes? Before they were able to produce insulin?
It was actually eliminating carbs from the diet. Yes, in the past, keto diet was the main (and the only) way to treat diabetes.
>It was actually eliminating carbs from the diet. Yes, in the past, keto diet was the main (and the only) way to treat diabetes.
Except it didn't work. People died. Meanwhile, today, we have a very good understanding about the secondary diseases, long-term damages, and how to prevent those with therapy. And a keto diet is no part of that.
Edit:
>It is true that EXCESS protein will be converted to sugars. As long as you limit your protein intake it will be used exclusively for housekeeping. That's why keto diet is not only carb elimination, it is carb elimination WHILE restricting protein to about 30% of your calorie intake.
While excess protein is indeed converted that way, it will also happen to small amounts of "non-excess" protein. Protein in your body is in a constant flux. Your muscles are not static but undergo constant breakdown and build-up.
While gluconeogenesis can be strongly reduced with dietary restrictions, it cannot be completely stopped. In fact, an important inhibitor to gluconeogenesis is insulin and thus, for a healthy person, consumption of carbohydrates.
This is an awesome list. I listened to an audiobook called "why we get sick" and every known health condition was linked to 'insulin resistance'. I knew eating carbs was bad but it blew my mind.
He even linked prostate cancer to insulin resistence. But unfortunately i checked the references the book and the linked papers didn't really support the case. Even after you get prostate cancer, IGF 1 inhibitors don't seem to do much to slow it down( some small sample studies seem inconclusive https://www.nature.com/articles/s41416-020-0774-1)
As far as I understand there is couple of ways cancers are linked to insulin. Not necessarily insulin resistance but think in terms of things that cause insulin resistance also help cancer grow.
For me the most compelling connection is that people who are likely to develop insulin resistance are also people who are very likely to have relatively little autophagy. Autophagy is a process where your body consumes protein that already exists in your organism. It will consume all sorts of stuff and what is really important is that it will break down abnormal protein like protein that got misfolded.
Autophagy is promoted when you fast for at least 14-18 hours -- but people who are constantly eating when they don't sleep don't ever reach fasting this long.
It is crazy to take a look at how different people look after losing a lot of weight depending on what kind of route they chose. People who lost weight due to intermittent fasting rather than calorie restriction tend too look much better and have much less loose skin. What happens is, due to IF regime their bodies were regularly undergoing autophagy while they were on IF and during autophay they were essentially "eating" their own protein like unnecessary connective tissue, skin, etc.
Without autophagy to periodically clean garbage from your body various unnecessary things just lie there and cause all sorts of mayhem and inflammation. Misfolded protein is potentially carcinogenic because defects in those protein are pretty much random and if a protein gets broken just right it might be causing damage to pretty much anything else. It increases your chance that a random damage can start cancer going somewhere.
Another way insulin might be linked to cancer is that insulin is a growth hormone and cancer is a tissue with abnormal growth. I don't know the details and I know enough to say that insulin does not necessarily cause growth of everything (how fun it would be to get your ABS just by overeating...) But it seems really possible that if cancer is sugar-loving tissue that needs lots of it to grow and insulin tells your cells to take as much sugar from bloodstream as they can then cancer might "be loving it". And also there are some cancer treatments that rely on starving or at least slowing cancer growth with a high ketone and low sugar levels.
Makes me wonder about cholesterol. It is used in the brain, but we have had a generation on anti-cholesterol drugs with rising rates of dementia and Alzheimer's
>So many opportunities for correlation not causation.
When people point this out (which they do on every single human-related study that makes the front page), it implies that the article is suggesting causation somewhere. I don't see this article suggesting that anywhere; what I find toward the end is this:
>The studies from the United States and Australia do little to answer these critical questions — but they do open a new avenue for research.
> Even so, the apparent protection extended to all age groups. In all, men who averaged 4.6–7 ejaculations a week were 36% less likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer before the age of 70 than men who ejaculated less than 2.3 times a week on average.
Sure, they use "apparent" as a weasel-word but "protection" is clearly suggesting causation.
Unless you've discovered some secret research that you're not sharing, a 31% decrease in incidence is certainly enough of an excuse to speculate about a possible protective effect.
That's not a weasel-word, that word is there precisely to point out that the protection isn't verified. Combined with their conclusion that I already pointed out, there really is no suggestion of causation here.
There is no ambiguity in the statement "The studies...do little to answer these critical questions," it means the studies are inconclusive and shouldn't be treated otherwise.
"The authors found that the fluctuations of testosterone levels from the 2nd to 5th day of abstinence were minimal. On the 7th day of abstinence, however, a clear peak of serum testosterone appeared, reaching 145.7% of the baseline"
There is a difference between treating prostate cancer and preventing it. Both of the following are true:
* Androgen suppression treats prostate cancer
* Low testosterone is associated with developing prostate cancer
This paper suggests there is a saturation model at work. Zero T does prevent prostate cancer, but above a certain very low level the risk does not grow.
> Compared to men who reported 4–7 ejaculations per month across their lifetimes, men who ejaculated 21 or more times a month enjoyed a 31% lower risk of prostate cancer.
In my early 40s and have become a lot lazier/more lame than you in this department. It’s a need that needs to be fulfilled and it does but, it doesnt occupy my mind like when I was a teenager or in my early 20s and in a way i’m grateful for it. It seems I may be on the hook for prostate issues. A grandparent and uncle had prostate cancer so it’s up there in my history.
I wonder what things correlate with more frequent ejaculation in early adulthood? Having a girlfriend, being a "player"? Having a living situation that's amenable to regular self pleasure (posts are automatically dead if you use the m-word). Having more free time?
> posts are automatically dead if you use the m-word
Thanks for sharing. When I saw number of dead comments in there I expected to see some serious flame war going on. But actually most of them are quite constructive even if i dont agree with them.
Fortunately it possible to vouch for these comments if you have showdead enabled.
You're wrong. This was some time ago but I recall seeing a study that a 60 year old married woman has more sex on average than a single man in his 20s.
Is that actually true, or is it only true of drivers? I'm pretty sure that of people who don't drive, the ones who walk fewer than 5km a day are going to be involved in fewer road accidents than the ones who walk more.
I haven't got any data whatsoever, but probably most people who walk more than 5km a day live in places with relatively pedestrian-friendly roads and driving habits.
Yeah that was my joke/point. Walking alot means you are more likely to be doing that walking instead of using a car on average. City dwelling being the main scenario and I am sure there are other scenarios. By specifying car accidents (and not just accidents) I biased it further
People who drink 1.7 glass of water in the shade on Tuesdays are 53% more likely to win travel-related sweepstakes in odd-numbered years (this expands to 66% for carbonated water)
Someone could make the case that porn has actually devalued intimacy to a substantial number of men (for example) and harmed many people’s well being as a result.
low frequency ejaculators might be in poor overall health in any case and perhaps more at risk for prostate cancer. How would we test for this? A sample group might need to 'up the tempo' for a period and test again for the therapeutic effect
So YouPorn is a medical device now. Seriously: those are not the sole studies showing those evidences. There are older with the same results. Religion and movements that prevent masturbation are disturbing from the point of view of the sexual development of teenagers.
I thought I've read the opposite that porn should be avoided because it's just like the rest of social media (a hinderance overall). Bad from an "over stimulation" perspective. aka the whole "nofap" movement
So some behaviour is bad and social media is bad and you join a social media forum with one million... ahem, members to talk about it.
It doesn't seem like a good plan.
Edit, to clarify: traditional suppport groups must be helpful for serious addiction, but an online forum with a lot of traffic? It seems crazy. If you have a problem with doing something pasively and anonymously online, go outside and chat with people in the flesh. You need to do something that helps you forget the damn thing, not revolving around it more.
I mean I can find a million people believing a lot of things. If you want to avoid both social media and prostate cancer, the species has been making do with imagination for quite a few millennia.
To me it's more about what the current "narrative" is being pushed/what is a popular "mindset/viewpoint" in society.
A lot of TikTok users write comments like "stay strong bros" referring to "keep scrolling past this trending submission on the timeline" do not let these young women in skimpy clothing make you succumb to your goals of avoiding the pitfalls that come with being "addicted" to the stimulation of the porn itself and the "pleasure" of masturbating"
Wouldn’t be the first time a self-pleasuring tool was widely regarded as a wondrous medical device … there was one that treated a catch—all disease called “hysteria” in the other half of the human population:
Let’s not forget the kids before puberty. Today’s “hysteria” is alive and well — it’s called ADHD and it involves overdiagnosing rambunctiousness and prescribing amphetamines like Ritalin or Aderall to medicate the “problem” away instead of making the kind of changes to the school system that Finland made. A lot of societies have often chosen to use medical interventions on the individual instead of fixing the underlying problems. In the case of ADHD:
1) both parents work to afford the rent and “self-actualize” themselves 10 hours a day at corporations https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286
2) they stick their kids in public schools where administrators treat them as a number and they have to sit down and shut up for long periods
3) many kids (especially boys) have too much energy to just sit still for so long but the system needs to teach them how to be good corporate drones (even though by the time they graduate corps won’t need them to wirk that way due to AI)
Spoken like someone who doesn't know anyone who has ADHD, e.g., someone who has no idea what they're talking about. Also, your little rant is completely off topic.
Spoken like someone who would have said the same about hysteria for hundreds of years. (And would have been considered very wrong given what we know today). Societal factors upstream matter a great deal, and medical inteventions downstream are usually revealed to be a bandaid.
According to the CDC, roughly 9.5% of children in the USA have been diagnosed with ADHD, whereas research based in Europe shows that between 3.5% and 5.6% of children in France have been diagnosed with ADHD. Why do you think that is? There has to be a non-medical explanation, don’t you think?
Same goes with the massive rise in diabetes and obesity in the USA, they engineer high fructose corn syrup into many things, people eat lots of things that turn into sugars, insulin resistance is high, but funny that so little of the industry discusses prevention of diabetes and obesity, they simply treat it as a fait accompli — including in kids, once again a new phenomenon. (In fact it has been shown to have a lot of comorbidities with coronavirus complications — but one is a national emergency, the other is not).
I have seen the same kind of reponses on HN when it came to depression and skepticism that SSRIs are the solution. Until all the studies came out last year, any skepticism was met with “you have no idea what real clinical depression is like. It is primarily caused by a chemical imbalance, needs medical intervention and you know nothing! So please don’t participate in the conversation, let the dominant ideology be the only acceptable one.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/2022...
Don’t get me wrong — there are real medical cases in kids of ADHD, gender dysphoria, etc. Or depression in adults, or genetically based insultin resistance. But the fact that it is diagnosed now way more than before means that maybe - just maybe - societal and dietary factors play a huge role. This has to deal with human happiness after all. And that includes people on HN.
Whether self-pleasuring with a hand, or with a vibrating device, the societal factors (of hookup culture, or of cost of rent in cities to own your own place and delay marriage, or everyone getting married later because women now want to focus on their career, while gender age gaps remain similar) matter and should be systematically explored. This article or the nofap movement or women's tacit use of vibrating devices, are all quiet ways to cope with many societal structural changes.
The fact that you think it is off-topic to discuss major societal issues upstream of a phenomenon just goes to show how myopic our culture's approach is to these issues.
> Whether self-pleasuring with a hand, or with a vibrating device, the societal factors (of hookup culture, or of cost of rent in cities to own your own place and delay marriage, or everyone getting married later because women now want to focus on their career, while gender age gaps remain similar) matter and should be systematically explored. This article or the nofap movement or women's tacit use of vibrating devices, are all quiet ways to cope with many societal structural changes.
I am raising my eyebrow at this. You want to look upstream at hookups, declining marriage, women's financial independence and their use of vibrators? When that conversation turns to "traditional" gender roles in religion, I win a prize for calling it early.
Anyway, even if there is some tractable upstream problem we can eventually solve, we still have to deal with the people who are already downstream. For them, the diagnosis and treatment of diseases is valuable, even if we deal with the root cause so future generations don't suffer.
I think if you're looking for some cookie-cutter viewpoint, you'll be disappointed, and no you won't win a prize.
If you look at the rest of my comments on this branch of the tree, you'll find that I am identifying a pattern... whenever X vs Y start fighting (women vs men, vaxxers vs antivaxxers, vegans vs meat eaters, ) there is a bigger issue that involves government and corporations working together, while individuals are distracted and blaming each other.
(2021) https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362 Super-processed Foods and obesity, Factory farms and veganism, Plastic containers and recycling, Fossil fuels and climate change, Vaccines and mask mandates
Both Greta Thurnberg and George Carlin are right. The people in charge have not just failed us, but the entire system is pushing the individual around. What you perceive as a medication you have to take is a symptom of an underlying systemic issue.
Just in the last few decades we have had:
an opioid epidemic for men
one in four middle aged women uses antidepressants
elderly in nursing homes are medicated more than ever
a huge rise in diagnosis of ADHD, autism, gender dysphoria for kids
did I miss any demographic? adult men, women, elderly and children are given medication, and somehow people are more depressed than before. (Sometimes even more than countries with seasonal affective disorder.)
There are many societal reasons I could get into, but let's look at a few other ones:
attention spans of adults have steadily fallen
(not just ADD for kids) to that of a goldfish
stress levels are higher than they used to be
obesity and diabetes has risen tremendously in USA
(including in children)
Perhaps we should really look at upstream issues, like technology, economic system, social institutions, cultural influences / celebrities / TikTok / notifications / incentives.
Yes in some ways I am a social conservative. But it seems to me, just like "postmodernism", my views are more progressive than "progressives" LOL. I want the government and industry to stop dominating our lives, our time, making us work and telling us that "having no time" is a badge of honor. You're right that I want most women not to "lean in" at work, but I also say that exact thing to the men... if we had a UBI, we could all "lean out", and spend more time with our kids an elderly parents who took care of us, instead of sticking them in nursing homes, that would be a start.
As someone who suffers a lot from "lack of ability to focus" and fits the nail on the head for adhd diagnosis, I appreciate your passion on this topic a lot. I recently came to the realization a lot of my failures in my life are from adhd. From doing my own research I decided that I do not have a medical condition and do not need to get a diagnosis to get medication. Certain tasks in this modern world are very hard for people like me but that does not mean I have a "neurodevelopmental disorder"
I am who I am and have strengths and weaknesses. I genuinely believe my 'adhd' is a blessing because there are certain things I am exceptional at that other people are not yet things that many people can do well and easily I struggle a lot with. Every day is painful, it has been a hard journey but I can see the brightness at the end of the tunnel getting brighter and brighter as I mature and learn to use my strengths more effectively. :)
My friend it's a false dichotomy: you can keep your talents and maybe ease your struggle too.
Most stimulant medication is something you can try for a day, see immediately if it's effective or not, then never take again in your life if it isn't for you. Don't suffer needlessly because of misguided bigots like the one above.
I have tried ritalin, vyanse, and adderall in college before. Those drugs scare me because they are in my opinion the greatest drugs in the world. When I am on them I literally become the movie limitless in real life. I feel more amazing than ever and I want to take them all the time. I would like to solve my issues without becoming reliant on medication. It feels like a patch rather than a solution. Lately I have been trying meditation. If it cures my 'adhd' I will let you know
Were you prescribed those drugs, or did you take them recreationally? It's important to work with a doctor to find the dosage that works for you, and it may be much lower than what you would take recreationally. There are also non-amphetamine medications that can help if you aren't comfortable with adderall and friends. There are also behavioral approaches to ADHD that you could explore with a medical professional.
Since your username contains "420," I will add that marijuana is a bad idea if you are struggling with ADHD symptoms. It may make you feel more productive, but it will greatly exasperate your ADHD tendencies.
I am not a doctor, but can I suggest a non-medical intervention that probably doesn't have any adverse effects, but may help?
Under capitalism, the social networks compete for your attention, by sending you notifications. It's a "tragedy of the commons" where the commons is human attention: if Facebook doesn't get you to click during dinner, then Twitter will, and then it'll grow through those tactics. Thus the market forces these corporations to give you addictive newsfeeds, tell you when someone replied to your comment, etc. There are analyses comparing the brain to pavlov's dogs and the addiction to a slot machine.
1) Realize you are NOT alone or atypical. The human attention span has declined because of the system we live in. We now have shorter attention spans than goldfish. https://www.wyzowl.com/human-attention-span/
2) Notice how much of your ADHD is connected to anxiety and investigate the causes of that anxiety, maybe with a psychotherapist or other counsellor. Map out what kind of things you are afraid could happen if you don't react to them quickly. See if you can rearrange your life to diminish the need for quick responses (such as Slack or real-time chats). Consider worst-case scenarios and if you also have OCD, consider ERP therapy.
3) Learn to use "Focus" on your phone, to turn off distractions for long periods of "Flow". Set expectations with people (this may be hard if you work in capitalism for an employer) to schedule times to talk to you, and only allow calls for emergencies from friends and family. It will take you AT LEAST A WEEK after you remove your anxiety of missing something important, to start fully relaxing and not expecting a notification to jump out at you.
4) Watch the movie "the social dilemma" and try out its recommendations (taking 1 day a week off from all electronics completely -- live how people have lived throughout history) and spend it socializing with people, eating dinner, reading a book, etc.
5) Look at your sleep, diet, are you taking walks or exercising? What is your job? Anyway, there is so much you can investigate holistically and take control in your life, before you ever have to consider that ritalin is your only hope. (And if you do want to try a nootropic, you can try modafinil perhaps... it's not an amphetamine... but again, I think medications take away our agency and should be tried only if all else fails)
None of that requires medication, so try that first.
I would definitely appreciate it if at some point in the future (a month, 6 months, or whenever) you emailed me and told me whether what I said made any difference -- positive or negative. You can find my contact info in my profile.
Bigot [definition] a person who is obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, especially one who is prejudiced against or antagonistic towards a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.
I do not recall being antagonistic towards people with ADHD. On the contrary, the resources I have linked to (such as the book https://www.amazon.es/ADHD-Hunter-Farmers-Thom-Hartmann/dp/1...) are by people whose kids have ADHD and they opted to embrace them and accept them, rather than saying they have effectively a neurological disorder. You can make similar cases for autism spectrum, gender dysphoria and so on being zealously overdiagnosed and medicated (https://www.statnews.com/2022/02/10/theres-no-autism-epidemi...)
Medication is often a band-aid and the default way systems handle a cog in a machine. One in four middle-aged women is on antidepressants. Do you think they are ALL clinically depressed? And the opiates that men started to take have reached epidemic proportions too... surely, you wouldn't call everyone a bigot who wants to address the underlying societal reasons for this? Or you'd be the guy prescribing vodka to every USSR citizen as a way to deal with issues?
You are redefining the word "bigot" to mean its opposite, it seems. A system that systematically ignores meeting the basic needs of humans, and then dismisses their resulting behavior as "irrational" or "needing medication" is far worse than a bigot. It's like systemic racism or sexism, but directed against non-neurotypical kids, or adults or elderly.
Were people bigots who said "women have real needs that need to be addressed, stop delegitimizing their real issues by labeling them all as Hysterical Women (TM) and sending them to the doctor to get tittilated"? Because today, we agree with all those people, but in the past, we didn't. To borrow another politically loaded term, you could be on the "wrong side of history", just like people who defended lobotomies and medicating hysterical women.
Maybe you should look into the profit motive of doctors and pharma who stand to gain from more medications. And the school administrators who need to cover their own ass before actually caring about the kids and speaking to their parents. I happen to know about such school administrators and cases personally. The SYSTEM doesn't care about the parents, nor the kids, nor the grandparents which they also stick into nursing homes and medicate -- because again, they need to work 10 hour days to pay the rent. Just like under socialism, the capitalist system externalizes costs onto individuals, you should open your eyes. Try looking at some links I posted above. What you call bigotry, I call basic concern that society should have for human beings.
People who have ADHD are used to being told they just need to stop being lazy. They already have to overcome a huge stigma to seek diagnosis and accept treatment. So, yes you are being "antagonistic towards...people on the basis of their membership of a particular group." Your solution seems to be that instead of seeking scientifically validated treatment that has already helped millions of people, they change the socioeconomic system they exist in, in which they have to work a 9 to 5 to provide for themseleves and their families. This is not practical advice. So not only are you peddling medical quackery, but you don't even offer a snake oil alternative to the audience you're demoralizing.
You also create a false dichotomy in which either modern society fails in certain ways to meet all of our needs to the detriment of people diagnosed with ADHD, or ADHD is a legitimate mental illness that benefits from pharmaceutical and therapeutic treatments. Both things are true.
First of all, I appreciate your sharing of personal anecdotal experience (I mean that sincerely), and I am open to more infomation. But you should be also willing to educate yourself on what your country and system are doing. What I am about to share with you below — if you click the links, will probably shock you and make you question whether the issue is really your personal medical issue. At the very least, you have probably never seen it before.
First of all, no one is saying that it’s “all in your head” or you can snap yourself out of it. Any more than diabetes is in people’s heads. What I’ve been saying is that you are downstream of a fixable problem, that most of society doesn’t realize — or even have the desire to fix - with its current priorities.
I certainly understand how you feel you have a genetic disorder or clinical disease that can only be “managed” by medical intervention.
It’s not your fault. You are an individual who has been told by your country’s system that things are the way they are, because it is always easier to externalize the cost to the individual and make them believe a story than to fix the problems of industry. Here is just a sample list that goes well beyond ADHD or obesity, and into factory farms, plastic pollution, and more… it is always the same pattern:
When there is a huge disparity between the USA and other countries (eg on prevalencd ADHD, or on obesity and diabetes) or USA now and before, it is a sign that the problem is upstream — often having to do with corporations, diet, and societal changes.
But I will go even further. Even effective cures to major diseases that are not approved by the bureaucracy, are shut down by the USA. All the way up to and including cures for diseases that you would think you’d know about. You as an individual probably NEVER heard of this:
This is a video showing actual footage from all the congressional hearings, the actual results of multiple scientific inquiries at the highest level — the text of the actual letters from the CDC, and actual medical journal reportings that you have never heard about.
It is like “progress and poverty” by Henri George, a bestselling economic book totally forgotten today… similarly this kind of stuff has been systematically buried by your government.
I know I got really deep with this comment but who on HN has seen for example the video I linked to above, and how deep the rabbithole goes?
I got diagnosed in middle age after a very long assessment that cost me a lot of money, because I wanted accuracy. If it was depression, neglect or trauma I would've been fine with that assessment too. I had no idea going in that I was anything close to ADHD, just extremely frustrated at my career & life stagnation. If I known years ago I'd would've been about 7 or 8 years ahead in my career.
Yes ADHD is a different mind structure, it's also being called neurodiverse. But just watch a kiddo or a completely dysfunctional adult a with severe ADHD / autism and you quickly dissuade yourself that it isn't a problem and isn't a dysfunctional disability, and to expect a society to totally reconfigure itself beyond the equivalent of a few wheelchair ramps to match a forever minority with a lack of various mental abilities is economically naive.
Just like how we don't mandate zero-flicker lightbulbs for autstic people with sensory issues for the entire country because they consume more power with a higher power factor.
But it doesn't matter much either way in the end, and seeing how conspiratorial you are, I don't think I'd get much of anywhere trying to convince you otherwise. Sadly or happily, reality is way more mundane than you think it is.
Also many freak out about stimulants, but they really are not that big of a deal IMO. If ADHD didn't involve stimulants, one of the most effective mental health medications for any mental condition out there BTW, I don't think you'd get this denial of treatment for the condition so much.
1) He shows how an actual physiological cause of some cases of severe ADHD have persistent behavioral implications, such as a split between the knowledge and executive parts of the brain illustrated (crudely) in his diagram.
2) Around 2:211 "now you might be able to train up some of these executive functions, we don't know that yet." Indeed, even for many actually problematic cases, we don't know yet how far non-medical interventions can go.
3) My main question is this: What is the proportion of people diagnosed with ADHD that actually have such a pronounced physiological divergence? My point is that it is small, and the DSM-5 criteria are applied by simply choosing M of N symptoms to be present. The same is true for autism spectrum, and for gender dysphoria, and all have been on a tear in terms of diagnoses, in countries around the world where governments and schools specifically instituted related top-down policies about it:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/ss/ss7011a1.htm to quote the Introduction:
ASD prevalence estimates have increased from 6.7 (one in 150) per 1,000 children aged 8 years at ADDM Network sites in surveillance years 2000 and 2002 to 18.5 (one in 54) in surveillance year 2016 (3–10). Over time, the proportion of children with ASD who also have intellectual disability has decreased from approximately one half in 2000 and 2002 to one third in 2016 (3,4,10).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-95421-9 (Sweden) to quote the abstract:
The incidence of GD, defined as ≥ 4 diagnoses increased significantly during the study period and mostly in the age categories 10–17 and 18–30 years, even after adjusting for register coverage. We concluded that the validity of a single ICD code denoting clinical GD in the Swedish NPR can be questioned.
and so on.
4) Even in cases of e.g. gender dysphoria, we simply don't know enough about how many cases are due to social media and peer groups, and there are many activists who are looking to silence inconvenient studies such as the 2018 study of "Rapid-Onset-Gender-Dysphoria" for teens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid-onset_gender_dysphoria_c...
Humans are social animals. If we were as diligent in looking at the social and dietary causes for children, as we are for adults, we would probably find a lot better solutions than just medicating people. For example:
As for conspiracies, look, how crazy do you want to get? What if you knew that the FDA tried for 40 years to bury certain effective treatments that cure cancer. Even though tons of people were getting cured, they tried harder than they ever have to shut it down for years. It sounds like some hyperbolic nonsense, but tell me after you look this video (flip through it): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmxUsAI29fw ... it has all the studies, texts results from medical journals, double-blind studies, TV footage of multiple congressional inquiries, repeated admissions from the CDC directors themselves on video, etc.
Once you start looking for this stuff, it is hard not to come to the conclusion that our society isn't exactly set up for anything other than "medication".
Reading many different viewpoints is not a virtue if it is done with such credulity as to buy into such nonsense as this:
> The Burzynski Clinic is a clinic offering an unproven cancer treatment, which has been characterized as harmful quackery. It was founded in 1976 and is located in Houston, Texas, in the United States. It offers a form of chemotherapy called "antineoplaston therapy" devised by the clinic's founder Stanislaw Burzynski in the 1970s. Antineoplaston is Burzynski's term for a group of urine-derived peptides, peptide derivatives, and mixtures. There is no accepted scientific evidence of benefit from antineoplaston combinations for various diseases.
> The clinic has been the focus of criticism primarily due to the way its antineoplaston therapy is promoted, the costs for people with cancer participating in trials of antineoplastons and problems with the way these trials are run. Legal cases have been brought as a result of the sale of the therapy without regulatory approval.
> Burzynski is also the president and founder of a pharmaceutical company, the Burzynski Research Institute, which manufacturers his antineoplaston drugs.
> When there is a huge disparity between the USA and other countries (eg on prevalencd ADHD, or on obesity and diabetes) or USA now and before, it is a sign that the problem is upstream — often having to do with corporations, diet, and societal changes.
That is only one possible explanation.
For example an underdeveloped country might appear to have lower prevalence of dementia than a more developed country. Perhaps because the former lacks effective nationwide medical diagnostic abilities, or perhaps because fewer in their population make it to old age where the disease shows up, or perhaps because they have a religious belief that conflates it with devilry so it goes unreported. In all of those situations the ground truth prevalence could be exactly the same in both countries, yet the developed country would report higher rates of the disease than the underdeveloped country.
If your society has you working on a small farm as a child instead of going to school and doing knowledge work, of course ADHD will be underreported. That doesn't mean it's not present.
There may be some causation from ADHD to obesity, I can't say, but otherwise they are categorically different issues.
Well, there can be various explanations, but France is not an underdeveloped country, neither is Finland. Their medical systems do report ADHD, although they might not so zealously overdiagnose it. French parents are more involved with their children, have far lower divorce rates, and work shorter hours than USA. Having "no time" is a point of national pride in the USA and there are even crass commercials that dial up the capitalism memes to an 11: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8
Here are possible reasons why kids have ADHD:
1) The world is far more fast-paced. ADULTS haven't fared much better, and you'd hardly argue that everyone is genetically predisposed to having the attention span of a goldfish... it's clearly a societal thing: https://www.wyzowl.com/human-attention-span
2) Technology affects society. Corporations are incentivized to put ever more ads in front of you, and now we all have cell phones in our pocket, connected to the internet at all times. Being distracted at dinner, notifications you have to check to make sure it's not important, etc.
3) Now that people can be reached anytime by their phone, any SMS or email causes anxiety that maybe it's from your boss, etc.
4) Even the tools that HN loves so much are often detrimental. Real-time is a gimmick, and studies show that Slack, etc. is actually worse for mental well-being and productivity overall. Here is a recent NYTimes article: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/01/23/magazine/cal-...
Again, ALL THESE THINGS are related to how capitalism and technology affects society and all of us. The very things that we are Hacker News are involved in, and we can do something to make a better world. Instead of saying that people deserve to be medicated. 1 in 4 middle aged women is on antidepressants ... what's more compassionate -- finding out the underlying reasons and building a better dating site for instance, or just assuming that's the new norm and selling as many pills as they will buy?
Your position is both medically disproved and demeaning. Correct it please before you do more harm.
I made it to middle age without any ADHD diagnosis or stimulants, including coffee. My symptoms were present from early childhood and remain to this day, I expect I'll carry them to my grave. The entire time it's been an agonizing struggle, in ways I learned over decades were not normal compared to my friends and family.
I avoided diagnosis and medication due in part to stigma perpetuated by attitudes like yours. I suffered in silence for years that could have been avoided if only my condition were better understood and supported.
When I finally got a professional diagnosis, the stimulant didn't make me high the way it would do for you, it just made my brain act more like your brain on a normal day. My stresses and struggles became simply normal challenges, with the smothering layer of ADHD failings on top removed.
So at least in my adult experience, properly dosed stimulant medication given to people who need it can be life-alteringly effective, as close to a cure as a neurodivergent brain thinking today can hope for.
Yikes! You can't break the site guidelines like you did in this thread, regardless of how wrong others are or you feel they are. I know other commenters in this thread were also breaking the site guidelines, but you went way beyond them.
You've unfortunately been doing this in other places too:
These are unquestionably bannable offenses on HN. I'm not going to ban you because you've also posted good comments and it doesn't look like we've warned you before. But if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on—that means making your substantive points thoughtfully and respectfully, and using HN for curious conversation, not battle—we'd be grateful.
> In 1807 William Wordsworth wrote, "The child is father of the man." With respect to prostate cancer, though, sexual activity in adolescence may be a predictor of risk in adulthood.
Wouldn't adolescent sexual activity be the form-determining-factor (aka "father") of the prostate cancer risk statistical profile in adulthood?
How is this different from the last sentence being analogous to the quote?
Strong correlation vs. causation vibes here. It could well be that ejaculation helps prevent prostate cancer, but it could just as well be that men who are by nature more likely to get prostate cancer also need less frequent ejaculation and that ejaculation has nothing to do with causing the cancer.
Most of that community appears to be based on woo and bad analysis of science/biology, so I imagine they'd likely dismiss this study out of hand regardless.
But also, we shouldn't forget this:
> The studies from the United States and Australia do little to answer these critical questions — but they do open a new avenue for research
This isn't a fully understood area of research yet.
I don’t need research to listen to my own body and notice that I have a lot more energy, confidence, and enthusiasm for life with nofap. The difference is night and day. I noticed this on my own before ever hearing about nofap, and so have numerous cultures and religions. The dismissive attitude you have is one I have seen a lot, and only makes sense to me if your body works differently from mine.
Is there is some slightly increased cancer risk necessary to enjoy life, so be it.
Exactly, research has its place, but sometimes people put way too much importance on it. The research that matters the most is your own personal experience and trial and error. Do it for a few months and see what it's like. That's all there is to it, and this applies to a lot of things too: a new workout regimen, a diet, cold showers, productivity hacks, biohacking, etc. Stop arguing over whether there's scientific evidence for something, and just try it yourself
Absolutely, this “scientism” attitude that elevates peer reviewed research as the only way of learning anything, and calls everything else “woo” is silly. I mostly see it among non scientists that have made science a sort of religion. As an academic PI, I see how the sausage is made and don’t have so much faith. Moreover, direct observation, personal experimentation, and hunches are how good scientists come up with the ideas for studies in the first place.
With human sexuality in particular there are so many cultural taboos that very little research has been done. Limiting your understanding of your own sexuality to peer reviewed research is just silly, you will miss millions of obvious things, and also miss the fact that people are individuals and experience and respond differently to the same things.
Except “nofap” itself uses a core misunderstanding of biology and neuroscience to justify itself to prospective new recruits to the “community”. It’s only when that is called out that your group then retreats into “science doesn’t matter”.
I just find it really weird that a kink I had was made into something mainstream. Now every time I want to talk about my favorite activities with dominant women I am going to come across as some weirdo who browses reddit.
Nofap is just secular Puritanism with its canon replaced with biotruths, poor interpretations of evolutionary biology and the ramblings of people driven insane by celibacy.
I haven't been there in a while so unless something recently changed, I don't know where you're getting this from. Care to link any such material being posted and supported by others in the community?
I don't have a desire to go through that community again. I'm basing this off of what I saw ~5 years ago and on the people in my life who were part of that community. Your experience could be different.
> Yet it would be naive to ignore that there’s significant overlap between the general ideology behind NoFap — and, to a degree, No Nut November — and that of the far right, which has increasingly coopted the principles of masturbation abstinence. Because the challenge is associated with abstaining from porn, some people associated with the movement have taken the extra step of harassing adult performers on social media, giving it an additional layer of troubling implications. “In the past [No Nut November] has always been like, ‘Oh, look at this ridiculous thing some people are participating in,'” says adult performer and director Casey Calvert. “This year, people [in the industry] are talking about, ‘Oh, actually this is connected to the far right and maybe we shouldn’t just be saying hahaha, No Nut November.'”
> Like the incel groups, online discussions of ways to stop masturbating or cease watching pornography have also been identified as groups filled with hatred towards women, homophobia, antisemitism, and threats of violence. In 2019, I appeared on The Daily Show, describing how these groups radicalize young men by teaching them to fear masturbation.
> Since that appearance, I've regularly received threats, death threats, and intimidating emails, including troubling messages from Gavin McInnes, founder of The Proud Boys. Recent research examining the discussions in these anti-porn and anti-masturbation groups has repeatedly documented that they thrive on the rejection of science and embrace extremely conservative, highly religious themes. These groups promote abstinence from pornography and masturbation as ways for men to become more masculine and successfully attract mates. As you might imagine, there is a significant overlap between the incel and these anti-porn/anti-masturbation groups.
...and oil companies were among the first to predict global warming and might have coined CO2 budgets. Who came up with something doesn't really matter for the thing's merit, especially when it lives a life of its own. People fill in nonutnovember as they want, not per whatever extremist views. I don't really see the point of sidetracking the conversation into a political corner.
The one point they have is that internet porn can be a problem for some people, but there's a difference between having to use your imagination and abstaining entirely.
When I'm in the mood of reading a bunch of smug nerds pontificating and preaching, I click on any popsci or diet-related article on HN. Never fails to entertain.
Nofap like many things has been turned into a brand, and even politicised to the point some idiots attack it saying it's far right ideology. On the other hand there are teenagers with serious porn-related issues that think nofap will turn them into superhumans. But the smug nerd on the internet doesn't stop to consider the nofap movement that's become a caricature of its former self, still is a major indicator of the emotional and physical problems porn is causing to many men and women. It's an epidemic.
Go crank all you want because a popsci article said so, but if you haven't seen how widespread and destructive porn addiction is, this must be your first day on the Internet. I already imagine the retort "well, just don't watch porn then." Because only idiots and weak-willed people get addicted.
Sorry, I'm in a cranky mood because I've struggled with porn addiction myself, I have had someone confess they suffer from it just a few hours ago, and I'm bitter how what was a porn addiction support group like nofap managed to turn itself into a joke—and they have themselves to blame, yet porn still is something people laugh about for internet karma.
Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN, please don't fulminate, and please don't post sneers at the rest of the community. If you're posting here, you're as much "HN" as anyone else is.
All of this is in the site guidelines, so if you'd please review them and stick to them in the future, we'd appreciate it.
Yeah I agree, the frustration is real. You can't really joke about "serious" addictions like heroin or binge eating like you can with porn, and it results in your concerns being taken less seriously. Sexual humor is validated everywhere and it entraps those with less self control
And one thing I haven't seen mentioned a whole lot, the release of Stable Diffusion has made my problem way, way worse. I've been magnetized to the screen for weeks on end reading up on machine learning concepts and training on dozens of datasets, just to fuel my addiction and the inner weaknesses that prop it up
I sometimes wonder if this is the future, if this kind of irresistible, infinite ultra-personalization is here to stay, and the paper writers will continue to keep their "Ethics" sections to a maximum of five sentences each buried in the back
It's not far-right, it's just religious folks. I grew up in the church, and while I didn't take it seriously, many of my friends in our religious school did. We were made to believe that masturbation was really not good for you, and neither was pornography, which might seem reasonable to some folks. However, when you step back and see humans as just some primates that learned math, well it seems kind of ridiculous to expect adolescent boys full of testosterone to not masturbate regularly, and consume pornography.
Dealing with that cognitive dissonance is extremely difficult for some, and seeking a place where not engaging in it is "cool." It's a place for the group to exist with in-group loyalty and mutual reassurance. I feel bad for the folks in nofap, but religious folks will always be with us.
whenever groups of young men engage in sexual self-repression that almost always has a political component. And pay attention to the "men" part, because nofap is almost exclusively a male phenomenon. Religious sexual repression is not, if anything the opposite. Also religious sexual repression is compliance with religious law, not necessarily an act of voluntary discipline.
"nofap" in contrast is essentially an extremely online version of Fight Club, and the political undertones are pretty obvious. It's mostly disaffected guys deciding to undertake some Yukio Mishima-esque training to combat their low self-esteem.
I'm atheist from birth. My family is atheist and I live in Europe. You'd have a hard time finding someone so far removed from religion.
Yet I believe porn is one of the worst addictions, and masturbation, even without porn, should be moderated, but these days the two things work in concert.
It's not a religious book that told me that, it's real life experience.
I understand that you may have a different perspective, but being passive-aggressive in your comments doesn't help communicate your thoughts effectively. It's better to be direct and clear in your statements so that everyone can understand your perspective.
It's also bc having a high libido/being horny all the time is still very stigmatised. As a gay man this is one of the many major differences I see between the gay & hetero communities; in the gay community we generally celebrate libido & sexual freedom.
If you Google it you will find there is. There are some people who cannot get an erection no matter what, they need to get a "bionic penis" implant.
It has nothing to do with porn consumption and is physiological.
I read somewhere some people have "performance anxiety" after watching a lot of porn and lose their boner before penetration, but that's completely different to "never getting a boner".
I only ever heard cult used in the sense of an organised group that is lead to believe harmful and untrue things, but checking the dictionary, it can also just be "great devotion to [e.g., an] idea" (merriam webster) which could be said of nearly any subreddit. In what way do you mean it? Besides the correlation in this study, is there anything particularly harmful in the same way that a more stereotypical cult (KKK is the first that comes to mind, probably a relatively extreme example but I don't know that many) is typically considered harmful?
People in the nofap community claim that abstaining from masturbation gives them "super powers".
From Google, a cult is "a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object."
They venerate non-masturbation as if it were a deity able to grant them divine powers if they worship it enough. Or at least that's how it sounds like when you hear them talk about it.
That's not at all the impression I got. Never masturbating ever might be seen as good by some there, but for most it's a temporary means to an end than the end goal. Helping get past porn addictions (by stopping cold turkey for a while), improving the relationship with your partner (by reducing or stopping to masturbate and see how that affects it), and being supportive of whatever people's goals are is what the community seemed like to me (but that's admittedly going off years-old memories). Hence I'm quite confused by all the outright hate here.
Hate to weird niche communities is pretty much like hate to Linkedin: because it full of cringe, poor quality marketing and just pure BS. Even if you registered on there you won't be using it 99% of time until you need to find a new job. Or unless Linkedin is part of your actual job because you're HR / sales person.
It's great that it might help someone, but it doesn't mean we all should accept everything this community produce is something good and normal.
They only believe it gives them “super powers” in the same way getting free from a heroin addiction would feel like gaining super powers. Normal health feels super when you previously lacked it.
> in the same way getting free from a heroin addiction would feel like gaining super powers
As someone who has done exactly that and is involved heavily in recovery communities, no one would describe sobriety as "gaining super powers", and I'm sick of people conflating porn addiction and heroin addiction as if they have anything in common. They really do not, and anyone who does has obviously never experienced opioid dependence. "But but but dopamine pathways" -- if you don't understand the difference in orders of magnitude between exogenous chemicals that directly operate on those pathways, and that which your body and brain can create on their own, I don't know what to tell you.
You're correct, but that doesn't take anything away from the fact that porn addiction can be serious enough to cause massive damage to a persons well being, causing them to lose jobs, relationships, or even kill themselves. Porn addiction can be incredibly powerful, it fully hijacks our strongest instinctual drive.
If someone was shot in the head with a 22 would you dismiss this as insignificant, because some people get their heads blown off with rocket launchers? That seems like the same logic you're applying here.
Also seems possible that married men, who are at a lower risk for almost every negative health outcome there is, are also at a lower risk for prostate cancer due to what is outlined in the paper.
Married men seem more likely to have frequent (ahem) both due to literally living with their partner, as well as having a lower likelihood of depression, higher testosterone (the higher test generally would lead to the marriage) etc.
Married men have something more powerful and consistent than frequent sex. They live with at least one person who cares about them and looks out for their welfare. In general, women are wired to detect and act on less acute problems.
There’s a bell curve for frequency of sex among couples, but far more consistent is a spouse encouraging her husband to go to the doctor.
I worked on a project years ago that was pretty disturbingly accurate at predicting health outcomes by looking at behavior. The most at risk for anything were divorced males, even more than alcohol or drug abuse. Basically that event makes a wide variety of bad outcomes more likely. They are also east to spot and market to with destructive products ranging from alcohol to gambling, you name it.
For women it was different, the caretaking trap was a major risk factor for health issues - the catalyst was often a sick parent.
I would actually expect most married men to have less frequent ejaculations. I'm not married myself, but my impression is that most couples don't keep up a daily sexual routine for several decades, and finding time and space to self-stimulate is awkward if your live-in partner is not in the mood.
One thing I actually prefer (ironically) about the single life is that the schedule of your sexual release, which has a big influence on mood, energy, and sleep, is totally under your control.
> finding time and space to self-stimulate is awkward
I still believe that the main reason for the iPad's success (ahead of letting it babysit your kids) was married men taking it into the bathroom to masturbate.
"The scientists found no evidence that frequent ejaculations mark an increased risk of prostate cancer. In fact, the reverse was true: High ejaculation frequency was linked to a decreased risk"
I want to point out that it's long been HN filter policy to "kill" posts that use a word beginning with m for self stimulation they is very relevant to this discussion. If you turn on showdead you'll see a few dead posts by people that aren't otherwise shadowbanned, because they used that word. Seems like a good argument against censorship, especially as it relates to normal activity.
True, but HN also has "showdead" and "vouch" which can overcome both automatic filters and user flags.
If that's not enough or you're seeing an especially egregious case, you can also email mods. I'll do that occasionally, though usually simply vouch dead comments if I feel that's warranted. It apparently takes a few vouches to overcome a kill.
I’m all for pushing back against the mods. Lord knows I’ve done it more than I probably should have. But one thing I came to understand after my long slugging match with them is that they have a lot of concerns that are very hard to balance. In this case, here’s the calculus: how many valuable comments do you think were lost as a result of killing that word? The kinds of comments you’d read and think “I really want to come back here.”
I agree it’s more than zero. But it’s likely several orders of magnitude fewer than the number of comments that were filtered by it — which is to say, if those comments had no effect on readers, or didn’t make them want to come back, then by definition it was a net positive for the site, and thus the community.
Their duty is to the community. The decisions they make are for that goal alone: to collect as many smart people together under one virtual roof as possible, without us tearing each other to shreds. This is as hard as it sounds. The grim reality is that no other community has ever pulled that off.
I believe HN will hit the 100 year mark in longevity. It’s already been around for something like 17. But to get there requires manual intervention at a scale not previously seen. Reddit is on autopilot compared to HN, and although it’s popular, few of us want to stay there.
So when you rally people to fight them for censoring a word, what you’re really doing is claiming to know how to do their jobs more effectively than they do. And they’ve been doing it for many, many years. I once tried to launch an HN clone that for a time achieved small-scale popularity, and it took everything I had in me — all day, every day, mostly curating stories. I could do it, but it’s not fun (though it’s fascinating).
So, try to cut them a little slack and look at the big picture. Are you sure that this is worth rousing everyone up in arms about? Then think it over for awhile, and ask yourself a few more times. If you really try to put yourself in their shoes, as if it was your full time job, then I think you’ll be forced to conclude “It’s complicated.” Or at least that’s the reality that I eventually accepted.
There’s another word that was banned long ago, involving a circle of men. But as pg himself once said (paraphrasing), “I doubt we lost many valuable comments from it.” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6825942
The coolest part of HN is that you can have an effect. If you see a dead comment that you think will make readers want to return to the site tomorrow, click on its timestamp and then click “vouch.” It only takes one to unkill a comment. But use it sparingly, since it’s a privilege. It was a feature designed for just this sort of situation.
Still seems odd to me. M___ is a comparatively formal term, and it appears a lot of slang is still allowed (in any event, that term is trivially easy to make up new words for).
And even the circle word you mentioned, especially in the VC tech world is a pretty legit metaphor for a lot of stuff.
Throwing out comments because they use a specific word is really low effort imo, on the same level as banning the f-word. I'd be surprised if it isn't mostly generating false positives.
You're right that it probably is. My main frustration was with the "Posting too fast; please slow down" throwing away comments that you spent a half hour writing. I felt strongly that the user should get an override button, similar to vouch, which lets you post your comment anyway. Obviously, it'd be revokable if abused.
But it's so easy for us to sit here and say all that when they're the ones in the field doing the work. If they added masterbation to the list, it's likely because they saw a lot of comments correlated with it -- comments that, again, would drive the average user away from HN over time, rather than keeping us together as a community. The false positives are "for the greater good" in that sense, i.e. the cost of doing business.
It took me a long time to accept this, but there's honestly nothing wrong with that. I used to feel strongly that they were treating users immorally by taking such a callous attitude with them.
What changed my mind was seeing how moderation is done on all the other websites. It made me appreciate that Dan is consistent – and especially that he's consistently clear with his expectations.
The mod team has undoubtedly grown beyond himself by now (he's said as much), so it's also impressive that he's trained his team so well. All of the other mods enforce his same rules, which is no small feat. Just look at how hard it is for Facebook or Twitter or (heaven forbid) Twitch to get their mod team to be consistent. Dan's crew is so good that the moderation is almost invisible, which is as it should be.
I guess all I'm saying is, similar to a canary in a coal mine, I'm highly sensitive to whether the mods seem to be overstepping and suppressing people or ideas. And if I had to point to a specific case of that happening since 2018, I don't think I'd be able to.
Offtopic from moderation, but Dan's a talented hacker too. https://github.com/gruseom/numen/blob/master/numen.el seems to be his only public-facing work, and it wasn't till I studied it that I saw just how capable he is at designing large systems. There are very few unnecessary parts in that codebase.
Anyway, it just makes me feel a bit sad to see people saying he's low-effort. His efforts are concentrated in specific high-impact areas, which is as it should be. And most of it tends to be mostly invisible -- when he writes code to fight upvote rings or fend off DoS attacks, we don't see it at all, because he was successful.
Time spent reconsidering whether "masterbation" should be banned is time not spent doing those other things. Or spent with his family, and having a life outside of work.
My main frustration was with the "Posting too fast; please slow down" throwing away comments that you spent a half hour writing.
It's somewhat expected when you're commenting a lot and your recent comments have been being downvoted or flagged. It's rather infuriating, however, when neither of those are the case but one of your comments happened to trod on a mod's personal fixation.
Pragmatically if it stops a spam burden, I don't much care. Beaver college sports and The UK town of Scunthorpe are well used to this kind of regex filter, and neither have ceased to exist online.
I don't think this is a good argument against censorship at all.
There are porn bots in the comments section of my personal website that like 5 people have ever read. HN is a big website, I'm sure spam is a major problem.
I browse with showdead turned on. I never see porn spam. You could say maybe those comments are completely removed, but then that wouldn’t explain the graying out of comments with “masturbation” in them.
If an option to see something exists and is published I don't personally think you can call it censorship. This is a curated space. Dang and others get to make choices, it's part of the implicit social contract here.
I'm not a free speech reductionist, it should be clear. I think pragmatically speaking that if the filters were made, there was a reason and if the filters can be turned off, there's very little of substance here to comment on.
And how is he benefiting from particularly saying that? What he says is based on studies and talks with experts in the field. You may not like many things he says, but this doesn't automatically make them wrong.
Its like the people who write all sorts of software engineering processes and procedures books. If you look at them their entire career is writing and selling books. They don’t actually have any industry experience. Tim ferris sells you the idea you can become a superhuman so he can make money on supplements and books. He doesn’t and hasn’t done anything of merit in the first place. Hes like a salesman of adhd. One of his books is ‘the 4 hour work week’. Just absolute garbage.
Here is a section summarizing what came before:
> Previous investigations on reported ejaculation frequencies or sexual intercourse and prostate cancer are limited to studies of retrospective design and results are mixed. Nine studies observed a statistically significant or non-significant positive association; 3 studies reported no association; 7 studies found a statistically significant or non-significant inverse relationship; and 1 study found a U-shaped relationship.
Conclusions that come from the aforementioned article, as well as many/most/all others that I have encountered, are mixed and, as others have noted, have issues with determining causes.