YouTube Is Removing Some Nootropics Channels (vice.com) 243
According to Wikipedia, nootropics are drugs, supplements, and other substances that improve cognitive function, particularly executive functions, memory, creativity, or motivation, in healthy individuals. Many of them are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, and some have reported addiction and harm, as well as uncomfortable side effects. These concerns may be behind YouTube's recent decision to delete at least three nootropics channels over the past three days. Motherboard reports: The nootropics YouTubers don't know why YouTube penalized them. YouTube's community guidelines prohibit harmful or dangerous content, including "hard drug use," which seems like the most likely reason. [Ryan Michael Ballow, a YouTuber whose channel "Cortex Labs Nootropics" was deleted] believes it's either "pharmaceutical industry influence" or some other elements within YouTube's leadership decided to target nootropics specifically. "It's all extremely fishy, and demonstrates a continued censorship trend with YouTube," he said in an email. [Jonathan Roseland, another YouTube that recently had their channel "Limitless Mindset" deleted] guessed his channel got flagged because he made videos about kratom, an opioid-like substance that has been linked to deaths and is coming under increased government regulation. Other kratom videos have apparently been removed. But Ballow said he's never posted a video about kratom, and a search for "kratom" on YouTube pulls up countless results, including reviews. Similarly, searching for nootropics, magnesium, aniracetam, oxiracetam, and Modafinil showed no shortage of videos, including reviews.
It's hard to know why the channels were removed since YouTube declined to clarify specifics with the creators and did not respond to a request for comment. YouTube allows creators to appeal enforcement decisions, but Ballow's appeal was rejected. The rejection notice did not clearly state which guidelines were violated, but it pointed to another potential violation. YouTube "included a paragraph that states that if the sole purpose of your YouTube videos is to drive people off of the platform, said videos break the rules," Ballow said. He interpreted this to mean the fact that his videos directed viewers to other websites to buy products.
It's hard to know why the channels were removed since YouTube declined to clarify specifics with the creators and did not respond to a request for comment. YouTube allows creators to appeal enforcement decisions, but Ballow's appeal was rejected. The rejection notice did not clearly state which guidelines were violated, but it pointed to another potential violation. YouTube "included a paragraph that states that if the sole purpose of your YouTube videos is to drive people off of the platform, said videos break the rules," Ballow said. He interpreted this to mean the fact that his videos directed viewers to other websites to buy products.
Nothing to see here (Score:5, Funny)
YouTube removes videos without an explanation aside from an implied "because fuck you, that's why". News at 11.
YouTube rejects the appeal for reason given above. News is still at 11.
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Informative)
We can probably guess why the channel was removed. Some of the videos seemed to be making medical claims about the drugs, and the descriptions had links where you could buy them... So basically a bunch of infomercials making claims not backed up by medical science.
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Insightful)
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I agree, they should be much more transparent about the reasons for bans.
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A big "yes!", and at the same time a huge resounding "no!"
Censorship is not just something of the government. Censorship occurs any time anyone chooses what to say and what not to say, or what can be said and what can't be said. Most of us practice self-censorship in our lives; we choose not to be brutally honest about everything with everyon
Re: Nothing to see here (Score:2)
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There are plenty of videos on youtube about psychics, ghosts, and ufo's, making claims not backed up by ANY kind of science. Youtube didn't remove those.
Those kinds of claims do not have the record of death and destruction that making (absurd) medical claims has. There might be some deaths that can be attributable to psychics (not counting psychic medicine), but...lots and lots of people have died because of snake oil peddling and quackery, sometimes quite horribly [orau.org]. (Link deals with Radithor, which was a patent medicine that was literally and openly radium-laced water, and the fate of a sports celebrity spokesperson had a three-bottle-a-day habit...)
$500 million Google drug advertisements settlement (Score:2)
We can probably guess why the channel was removed. Some of the videos seemed to be making medical claims about the drugs, and the descriptions had links where you could buy them...
It might also have something to do with what happened to Google back in 2011 , where they settled a case with the US Department of Justice [justice.gov] regarding advertisements for rogue online pharmacies, for $500m.
Followed by a shareholder lawsuit regarding the same issue, which they settled for something like $250m.
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To be fair you are mixing up Google and Facebook there, and Google is still far more liberal in terms of what it allows on YouTube. There are a lot of channels far more extreme than Diamond and Silk. It has to be said that SoundCloud is quite good too with hosting far right podcasts, although maybe because they get less attention.
But yes, commercial realities hit YouTube. They make money from ads, and advertisers are more discerning than they had hoped.
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>and advertisers are more capricious than they had hoped
Like when a C-level sees the latest shiny and buys 1000 of them. All it takes is one email in the right place.
The hawkers know this well. For either of these topics. But I don't have enough inklings to guess if censorcreep around nootropic vids would be financially or politically driven.
Same problem as shopping malls (Score:4, Interesting)
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That doesn't apply to this situation. Literally anybody on the world can post videos on the Internet. Actually, I think that people NOT on the world can also post videos to the Internet (ISS).
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There are plenty of sites they can post to. They can even decide to put them online and *gasp* host the videos themselves!
Granted, the latter requires spending real money to buy service, but since these guys probably have a website anyways. Of course, I suppose the real danger is if they are promoting something with medical claims and the FDA goes after them..
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The value youtube provides isn't just hosting - it's promotion too. If you want your video to attract a lot of views, you put it on youtube. Where people browsing or searching may easily find it.
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They are like a club with an open mic. They might allow most people but can certainly ban anyone they want to as well.
The "public space" argument is mostly coming from the freeze peach crowd, but they have little credibility. Guys like Carl Benjamin, aka Sargon, complain about being silenced while raking in nearly $8000/month from Patreon and having nearly 800,000 subscribers on YouTube alone. Sure, he was banned from Twitter, but simply moved to Gab and is now more popular then ever.
So given that he clearl
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YouTube rejects the appeal for reason given above. News is still at 11.
So YouTube is known for this, BUT this again raises the question: How can we enable small publishers to produce and make available for watching: video for people to see on the internet, and connect with audiences, in a manner in which the videos cannot be taken down or censored by a third party?
Publishing to Youtube used to be the answer, but now Youtube is increasingly unreasonable and taking down more and more less-objectionab
Replicating recommendation and ad sales (Score:2)
So let's say someone does go the IndieWeb route [indieweb.org] to replace YouTube. What means would you recommend for a small-time video producer to sell preroll ad time and promote the videos to people who have watched videos with similar subject matter?
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That depends. Do you expect to get this service for free?
And how does anybody sell advertising on a website? You contact advertisers. You show them how your content will reach their customers.
I think the question you are really asking is, "How can I get somebody else to do all this work for me, and provide it to me for free?"
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Do you expect to get this service for free?
No, but I expect a ballpark estimate of the cost of this service.
And how does anybody sell advertising on a website? You contact advertisers. You show them how your content will reach their customers.
I am indeed asking for a guide to help people who are switching away from YouTube learn how to efficiently "contact advertisers" and "show them how your content will reach their customers."
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OK, what would you be willing to pay for this guide? Or do you expect that work to be done for you for free too?
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How much do you plan to charge for this guide, both per copy and and as a license to syndicate it?
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You can view it for free at my ad-supported website, but you'll need to pass a background check to get the URL. The background check costs $4000.
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News has been deeded in violation of the TOS and will not be viewed at 11 or at any other time!
Drug company advertising (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why ad-supported media can never address the harms caused by the pharmaceutical industry and the very powerful pharmaceutical lobby in the US. All those advertising dollars influence the stories covered, the news promoted, and the videos allowed to be distributed on platforms.
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It's easy to cry "Muh corporations!"
I have a better explanation. Nutropics is a dangerous quack scam patterned after similar quack scams that have plagued the public since recorded history.
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Yet, they allow some quack scams to continue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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It's easy to cry "Muh corporations!"
I have a better explanation. Nutropics is a dangerous quack scam patterned after similar quack scams that have plagued the public since recorded history.
But they aren't banning all the videos, only some. Why? Well, maybe because some pharmaceutical companies would like to get in on the scam with their patents [google.com] for them.
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It's easy to cry "Muh corporations!"
I have a better explanation. Nutropics is a dangerous quack scam patterned after similar quack scams that have plagued the public since recorded history.
But they aren't banning all the videos, only some. Why? Well, maybe because some pharmaceutical companies would like to get in on the scam with their patents [google.com] for them.
Actually, YouTube only taking down a random portion of the offending channels is normal. There is no need for conspiracy theories; normal incompetence explains it just fine.
Seriously, it'll be news when YouTube manages to take down the worst offenders and only them, because it will mean that they've finally gotten their bots properly trained and monitored.
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Nutropics is a dangerous quack scam
But if you drink my New Snake Oil, you'll be immune from all of those scams!
And look -- I'm even holding a festival! [snakeoilfestival.com]
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Most of them are scams. A few do actually work though (Adderall being a popular choice), but they are all prescription only and have quite a few side effects.
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Its funny you post this in support of the supplement industry who more than pharmaceutical companies fund & lobby politicians to maintain their ability to peddle snake oil with no evidence of efficacy. On the other hand actual medicine is subject to rigorous testing to both ensure safety and efficacy.
If you want to complain about the pharmaceutical you should be complaining about the trend lately for predatory pricing and massive price increases.
The pharmaceutical industry is guilty on all counts. But that's off-topic for this discussion, which is the pharmaceutical industry's stranglehold on advertiser-supported media.
But since you went there, let's point out that it's so disingenuous of you to claim that I'm supporting the supplement industry (I did not), that they lobby more than pharmaceutical companies (laughably wrong), AND defend the pharmaceutical company's supposedly "rigorous testing" that I can only conclude you are employed by or shill
Private company (Score:2, Insightful)
It can decide who it wants on its platform.
They don't owe you anything.
Re: Private company (Score:5, Insightful)
Definitely. And we can discuss their practices, loudly, wherever we wish.
Re: Private company (Score:4, Insightful)
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What guarantee? (Score:2)
You should discuss why all these people rely on a service for income without any contractual guarantee.
The vast majority of people in any job are "at will" employees which means they have no contractual guarantee of continued employment. Ever give a tip to the waitstaff at a restaurant? There is no contractual guarantee there. Why should people using YouTube have guarantees? They knew what the deal was when they signed up. If the deal changes they can't pretend that they didn't know that was a possibility.
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Why is this a story? (Score:2, Informative)
Maybe because YouTube has too much power, and not enough competition?
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Not enough competition?!?
Install Apache. There. Now you're able to compete with Youtube. Hosting videos is easy. Even hosting snake oil scam videos is easy.
You think Youtube does what it does with a single Apache instance? I have installed Apache many times, and yet I still don't have a site that competes with Youtube. Maybe there is more to creating a viable video hosting site than installing Apache.
Re: Why is this a story? (Score:2)
This probably seems reasonable to someone with no experience delivering video over the Internet. The real world is way more complicated.
Maybe (Score:5, Interesting)
They were giving out medical advice without a license?
Where's the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just buy a domain (which I presume most of these people already have) and publish the videos there.
Those who are interested in that topic will certainly find them. Monetarization will be more difficult, but I'm sure the channels were made solely in the interest of science anyway. So nothing changed.
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Google wanted to make money.
I presumed, those Nootropics guys are in it for the science and the general welfare of mankind ;-)
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You won't have millions of concurrent viewers. If you do you can spend some money on any of the numerous technologies that will support that with the revenue you can hopefully work out how to generate from those viewers.
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You upload the video files to an amazon/google/etc cloud storage server and set it to be publically accessible. And then link to them (or embed them even) from there.
It's what 3 cents per GB per month storage and 10-20c per GB outgoing data?
Re: If only it were that easy (Score:2)
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What other options? And why do nootropics ads need to be 10 minute long HD videos?
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Plus, if we want to support YouTube's "right" to remove perfectly legal content from their servi
Nootropic Sourcing (Score:2)
More than "the internet", "my web site" (Score:2)
> likely leads viewers to buy it on the internet.
Not just "the internet", but the videos had links to the publishers site, and instructed viewers to buy there. So plain old illegal drug advertising.
The person on YouTube may have been an advertising affiliate for the site, or may have owned it outright. I don't see much difference.
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Officially supporting cognitive enhancement is one of my smaller policy goals.
Right now, "nootropics" businesses slap the name on any unregulated drug they can manage. That includes extremely-addictive b-GABA receptor agonists like Phenibut. Bromantane might be fantastic; it also might increase risk of alzheimers. There's a drug from the 60s that was studied heavily by pharmaceutical researchers and determined to have pretty much no toxicity, no addictive nature, and a significant hypermnesic effect:
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Phenibut is not nearly as addictive as you describe and it works far more often than once a month. The tolerance to it builds up very quickly, though.
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It's been described to me as that a 250mg dose before bed will make you sleep like nothing else; and it'll work again 20-30 days later. You can do it twice in a row by taking 500mg the second time. People seem to get up to 5g/day to maintain the effects after only a few weeks of usage.
The withdrawal has been invariably described as a terrifying experience of feeling horrible and contemplating suicide.
A few people have been put on baclofen for medical detox. This hasn't happened very often, as you can
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Phenibut is one of the mildest and safest tranquiliizers out there and the withdrawal is only possible when abusing the stuff (like taking several grams a day for a month or so), but that will happen with any tranquilizer abuse. It creates no craving since it is not addictive, but it is chemically close to a neurotransmitter and if taken for too long, the body will stop producing its own, hence withdrawal.
Personally, I don't take it for more than two days in a row simply because there is no need, but I took
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People are different and people can have idiosyncratic reactions to some medicine. Also interactions might cause problems - phenibut shall not be mixed with alcohol, barbiturates or benzodiazepines, it can lead to all kinds of problems. I don't drink, maybe that's the reason the stuff works so well for me.
It is also not quite a sleeping aid, it relaxes, removes anxiety and makes sleep more effective. This is why I normally take it when I know that my sleep is going to be short - the next day I feel like I'
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I don't use it all the time, just once every few months -
about as often as ibuprofen for a headache. No reason to take medicine if nothing hurts.
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That line of argument actually doesn't hold very well. I could shoot myself in the head whenever I want; why would I, and how would I prove I would?
I've seen people go on and off things like alcohol and marijuana for years, and then get antagonized by the same reasoning when they drink socially or whatnot, as if you're addicted to something if you ever do it at any time in your life. "How would I prove I would?" is an interesting question in that frame.
Argument by misdirection (Score:5, Interesting)
There's tremendous liability here. Telling people to try drug X without a medical license [...]
This is argument by misdirection.
1) Google should bear no liability for what it's users say, and
2) Google should not be making legal decisions.
Once you go down the path of "it's the carriers' responsibility", it's really very easy to suppress all kinds of speech. Make one flashy arrest very public, and watch how the "chilling effect" causes all the carriers to clamp down on everything even remotely related, out of fear.
It's very, *very* clear that the current situation is untenable and unfair to the population.
The situation is now so bad that there is a grassroots movement calling for the breakup of the big players (google, facebook, twitter, and so on) on monopoly/antitrust grounds.
Google could be smart, recognize the growing trend, and go back to a "public commons" mode before that happens.
Or, they could continue to try to adjust public thought, try to "bring home" the election for their preferred candidates, and then get chopped up like so much cordwood.
(OTOH, that would probably be good for the users. Google has turned decidedly evil over the past few years, and "not being evil" is a competitive advantage that the smaller pieces could use to compete against each other.)
Free speech. (Score:2, Troll)
Maybe you should actually read (Score:2, Insightful)
what the first amendment says
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Since when is YouTube the same as congress?
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Honest Questions:
1. Since Businesses get their license from the Government, then why are Businesses allowed to limit who they serve?
2. Is is legal for a business to exclude a certain group of people based upon:
* Gender
* Race
* Religion
* Clothing
* Speech
Why is the last one (speech) OK for a business like YouTube to remove but not the others?
3. Are "Private Clubs For Men" a business? Is excluding 50% of the population legal?
I guess I've never understand why Free Speech is protected by the government but not b
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Oh noo! Boohooo!! Youtube is becoming more like NBC and HBO, who also didn't give me an automatic yes to my "let me be the executive producer of a new tv show" idea that I pitched them.
Here, I found a magic brain pill video that youtube hasn't "censored" yet. So don't worry, nootropics is still cool [youtube.com] on youtube.
Union/association (Score:2)
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All this bullshit YouTube is doing to building towards their demise.
It certainly opens a door to competition.
While Youtube as a free service has every right to decide what they allow or don't allow, every person kicked off for whatever reason, every channel punished by demonetization becomes a potential customer of another or new service.
Eventually Youtube loses it's flagship status.
Implied paradox (Score:2)
When will we get a distributed youtube? (Score:2)
I don't quite understand why no one in the open source world has built a distributed youtube already.
We have the perfect peer to peer technology to distribute the videos.
Youtube comments is a feature no one really wants.
The indexing bits looks a bit more complicated, but that is what DHTs are for.
Recommendation, subscription can be built as an overlay service.
I am surprised we haven't seen that happen already.
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The golden age of youtube is over. (Score:3)
More than likely we need to move over to a torrent style video system and nas boxes with quick erase functions in case of raids. We will undoubtedly be labeled terrorists for wanting to watch non approved content.
I'm still waiting for the next gen torrents with anonymous cloud storage and with soloman tech and xor pieces such there is no content unless you have all the pieces. And pieces are shared among torrents of different content. It's all split across opaque cloud storage. (Imagine you xor a video of barney the dinosaur with a video on hacking an xbox.) In exchange for you donating storage and bandwidth you get to upvote content.
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Are you wanting to host child porn on Youtube?
Just say no! (Score:2)
There is a narcotic drug that has been out there awhile and it is plaguing our society, often used most by STEM types, and it causes; tremors, anxiety, irritability, sleep deprivation, over active bladder and racing thoughts among other things. It is so addictive that many cannot function without it and withdrawal symptoms are severe. We need to do something about trimethylxanthine [nih.gov] before it is too late! Someone please think of the children!
Re:It's an Open Secret (Score:5, Interesting)
The use of nootropics by engineering types reminds me very much of the use of "supplements" by body builders. There actually are things that work -- in fact there's a remarkable amount of overlap in the things mental and physical jocks need to do to maximize performance. Get plenty of high quality sleep. Good diet. Daily exercise. Caffeine. In fact if you include coffee and tea, the use of nootropics is nearly universal among desk workers.
The marketing of nootropic products to mental jocks looking for an edge is remarkably similar to the snake oil marketing aimed at athletes. Take a substance where an (typically very minor) effect has been seen in a couple of studies and conflate evidence with proof. Now if you think about what the brain is, the idea that there is a single non-food molecule that will make it work better is pretty-far fetched. What exactly is this magical formula supposed to be doing in the brain? And by "exact", I mean which specific brain structures are being changed and how? The answer is, usually, nobody knows, but they have some promising studies, or sometimes just a single promising study.
Here's the thing about complex systems like the brain, or the troposphere for that matter: they are rich sources of contradictory evidence and statistical outliers. A single study or even a handful of studies is evidence, but it's not proof.
Now for bodybuilding there are two, or maybe three supplements that are safe and have evidence for useful effect, but I'd argue that there are unlikely to be any true nootropic compounds. That include caffeine. People use caffeine to offset the effects of inadequate sleep and meals heavy on refined carbohydrates that trigger insulin brain fogs. They also use caffeine to interfere with a natural brain function that promotes our survival: boredom. Boredom evolved so you don't waste too much time on things that aren't going to get you fed or laid in the near future -- a category of tasks that includes most desk work. So in a way, caffeine is actually an anti-nootropic.
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If you are bored at work you should be trying to find a new job. There is nothing worse that hating your job because it makes you bored or is work you dislike.
If you continue in a job you dislike you will inevitably have an awful midlife crisis when you finally realize life is far to short to spend 80% of it doing a job you hate.
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I'm not really against the concept of nootropics, I'm just against trusting marketers to solve your problems for you.
Mechanism of action (Score:2)
I'm always astonished that our current medical field requires knowledge of the mechanism of action before allowing a drug on the market.
First off your statement is factually false. There is NO requirement that we understand the mechanism of action of a drug before bringing it to market. But there is a HUGE benefit [nature.com] to understanding the mechanism of action first. If you don't know how a drug works then you are basically doing science by guess and check which is usually stupid, slow, and frequently counterproductive. If you don't know how it works then you can't predict what sort of effects and side effects it might have on the body. You
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Well, the man more right than his neighbors is a majority of one. :)
I'll take your points one by one.
(1) Taurine and Tyrosine are both stimulants, and stimulants are the one class of substances that have strong evidence supporting them. However my point is that it's debatable whether they actually make your brain better. They unquestionably are useful in forcing your brain to do things it doesn't want to do.
(2) The notion that nootropics are far-fetched is simply an evaluation of plausibility -- similar
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It's difficult to define better. Evolution is slow, and our thinking choices might be better (which is why we evolved the big brains.) If need to get somewhere in my car, but I'm tired, the smart move is to take a good stimulant. We haven't evolved enough in the last 100 years to "know" it's bad to fall asleep at the wheel.
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"(1) Taurine and Tyrosine are both stimulants, and stimulants are the one class of substances that have strong evidence supporting them. However my point is that it's debatable whether they actually make your brain better. They unquestionably are useful in forcing your brain to do things it doesn't want to do."
Sorry, I don't know the tags for quotes and the lack of an edit function means I don't know if this
worked so forgive me if this looks weird...
Here's my personal experience with Taurine and Tyrosine. Take it for what you will.. I've been doing heavy cardio for around 1.5 years now and I've experimented with different supplements to see the impact they have. Here's my experience:
All exercise is done on a revolving stair climber, at speed level '12' (out of 18) for 60 minutes 1. (Control test). No supplements, only drinking regular iced water.
Start off OK. After about 10 minutes, fatigue sets in and becomes progressively worse. Heart rate is ~130. Maintaining speed is a real chore and I find myself alternating between staying upright and resting on my elbows. Around the 40 minute mark, am able to maintain speed easier and stay upright. Heart rate is ~145. At the 50 minute mark, feel like I can go another 30 minutes relatively easily. Heart rate is ~150.
2. Drinking a can of Monster Zero (no sugar, no calories) that is high in Taurine and Caffeine
Take a big gulp of Monster around 2 minutes before starting the work out. After around 20 minutes, fatigue is starting to set in but I don't feel the need to rest on my elbows. Heart is rate is around ~135. At the 50 minute mark, I feel like I can keeping going easily. Heart rate is ~150. Continually sipping Monster throughout the workout.
3. Taking 2 Magnum Rocket Science pills with a gulp of iced water 20 minutes before workout. (Google it, available at Popeyes supplement stores). Contains caffeine and tyrosine.
Fatigue sets in around the 5 minutes mark. Heart rate at ~130. At 10 minutes, fatigue is all but gone. Heart rate at ~145. At the 50 minute mark, feel like I could probably go another hour. Heart rate at ~155. Continually sipping iced water throughout.
Bear in mind this is over the course of 1.5 years and I do cardio 5 days a week so the results are repeatable for me. Drinking plain water is definitely the hardest on the body, the fatigue hits hard and stays for longer. Monster is second best but if I want to burn maximum calories (according to my fitbit), the Rocket Science pills give the best result.
I have yet to feel any negative affects of the Rocket Science pills but I don't use them more than once a week. They do boost my heart rate a little higher and it takes maybe 30 minutes longer for my heart rate to get back to resting levels after a workout. My regular drink is a can of Monster during the workout.
I haven't tried any of these during a workday but I generally don't feel tired or bored so I don't need them. I don't even really need them for the workout but they do help in burning off calories.
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Let me share a story to illustrate the dangers of these supplemental companies. A cousin of mine is a seller of essential oils. One day she noticed a mole on her husband that looked like it could be melanoma. Instead of taking him to a doctor she treated him with frankincense oil. After about 6 weeks the mole was gone and she called it a success.
When I told this to my dermatologists he explained that even when there is a suspicious mole, there's only about a 10% chance that it's melanoma. I think we can all
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I bet that it was a seborrheic keratosis. Younger people can them, but it's mostly something you'll become familiar after you get into your 60's. https://www.mayoclinic.org/dis... [mayoclinic.org]
Often they just fall off on their own, and there won't be a scar.
Wanna see pics of mine?
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It may be that many of the claims made about nootropic dietary supplements are fraudulent because the doses of the active ingredients in popular commercial brands are too small to have any effect: https://www.japha.org/article/... [japha.org]
My guess is that if anything has the effects that they claim, it'd be classified as a pharmaceutical and require extensive research and clinical trials to determine appropriate dosage levels, side-effects, longer-term health effects, etc..
Apparently, the evidence from preliminary
Re:Actually works? (Score:5, Informative)
The difference between medicine and alternative medicine, is that medicine actually works.
Just sayin'
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That is only one of the many problems that drive people to supplements. As you elude to there are the promises from their marketing department that the supplement works. They can almost claim anything, literally snake oil. Meanwhile pharmaceuticals that are regulated to by the FDA must disclose side-effects and must have scientific data the supports their claims. This ends with a perception of supplements working when in reality its more deception.
But that's not the only issue, cost is another huge issue. R
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Try this and see if the symptoms go away is the best choice in many cases. The doctor *could* treat a minor injury that will heal itself with steroids, but it's not worth the risk.
Most things people complain are best left to get better on their own. Or they require interventions that people don't want to go along with. People don't want to restrict calories, they want a magic pill that makes the pounds melt away. There are drug treatments that will do that, but they're dangerous enough that gastric bypa
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When homeopathy et al troll intentionally confuses "actually works" with "just works".
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If traditional medicine "actually worked", as you put it, people wouldn't need to desperately search for alternatives.
Just 'sayin...
If you find a lump on your testicle, I highly recommend you show it to an oncologist rather than a witch-doctor. Even metastasized testicular cancer has a survival rate of 73% with modern treatments; early stage cancer survival rates are close to 100%.
On the other hand, if you have stage IV pancreatic cancer, by all means consult the witch doctor. At the very least he's got as good a shot as anyone at treating the existential dimension of what you're going through.
The fact that medicine acknowledges that i
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There are 4 possible combination :
1- both medicine and alternative medicine work
2- only medicine works
3- only alternative medicine works
4- nothing work
"3" is extremely rare, and in the case of "1", doing nothing at all and letting your body recover may be all that's needed. The reason it simple: when alternative medicine work, it is studied and soon enough, if the risks aren't too great, it becomes medicine. Medicine is just alternative medicine that work.
The advantage alternative medicine has is that quite
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You really think big Pharma has a hotline to YouTube to remove channels they don't like?
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The Youtube whiners don't want a decentralized platform without gatekeepers. They want a centralized ad service that pays them for the ad impressions their videos can get.
Take away the ads, and you've taken away all the reasons anyone gives the slightest fuck about Youtube or their "censorship."
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