Plastic. Its in your blood ffs
This may be true but I hate the practice of referring to “plastic” as if it’s a single substance. It’s a bunch of different materials that don’t really have that much in common with each other, especially from a health/toxicity standpoint.
For example, people treat it as common sense that “you shouldn’t burn plastic” because the smoke is “toxic”. For PVC this is totally true, it makes very nasty stuff like dioxin that will poison you. But on the other hand you can burn polyethylene (think milk jug) and it’s no more toxic than burning a candle. Definitely way healthier to breath than wood campfire smoke, for example.
There’s also such a silly pattern where people learn some chemical might have some effect on the body and suddenly everyone is up in arms about it. For example Bisphenol A in many applications was replaced by the very similar Bisphenol S just so things could be labeled “BPA Free”. BPS probably has similar estrogenic effects to BPA.
I’d say the moral of the story is be wary of received wisdom about chemical toxicity from people who aren’t chemists.
Are microplastics similarly diverse in their effects on the human body?
I would guess that chemical effects would be diverse while “physical” effects would not be so diverse. Keep in mind that things like mesothelioma from asbestos are kinda sorta “physical” effects because it’s from jagged roughness of the particles at the nanoscale rather than any specific chemistry.
So what you’re saying is instead of having a bonfire I should be have a milk jug fire?
Yes.
Also be wary of people that say they are chemists on the internet when oil, plastics, and guns have mostly only been researched by their manufacturers. All totally safe.
Not only BPAs but many chemicals like BPAs can cause birth defects because our bodies think they are estrogen.
If this worries you, read the books It Starts With the Egg and Grain Brain.
They both suggest that not only what you eat, but how it’s prepared can affect the health of a child.
For instance it’s a big no-no, according to It Starts With the Egg, to heat most plastics in the microwave. The heat breaks the plastic down, it can get in your blood, your body will think it’s estrogen, and they don’t even know the full effects of this yet.
So think about
- burritos in plastic wrapping,
- cling wrap on a bowl,
- reheating leftovers in Tupperware,
- disposable cutlery
These chemicals are not just in food:
- your car’s interior
- your cell phone case
- even the clothes on your back, unless they’re 100% pure, untreated, natural fabric, may have been made with these chemicals.
Yep, the long term affects are gonna be worse than we can imagine imo. These plastics are everywhere in the environment so it is literally unavoidable anywhere on this earth. They are in small concentrations for now, but they are increasing rapidly as more and more plastic is created/wasted every minute
Thinking about reducing plastic fucks me up and it’s been on my mind a lot lately. Noticing every single time we bring new plastic into the household, and how hard it is to avoid. Chicken comes in plastic wrap, and even if we got it at a butcher counter, they still toss it in a plastic bag before wrapping it in brown paper. Bags of potting soil, our toothpaste tubes, peanut butter jars… it’s endless.
At least the majority of my clothes are cotton or wool, but another source is carpet and there isn’t anything I can do about this apartment carpet.
Now I just want an accurate infographic of “safe” combustible plastics.
Yeah! I don’t want to accidentally throw a redneck bonfire with white smoke again.
Have you heard of Dihydrogen monoxide? It literally kills hundreds of thousands of people every single year all over the world, including young children.
You don’t hear about it in the news though do you…
I’m confused about how it kills hundreds of thousands of people per year. How, by drowning?
It’s an old (early-internet?) joke iirc. And yes, I think that’s the answer
Oh shit, I was thinking there was no way that hundreds of thousands of people did from drowning every year, but they actually do.
WHO estimates that every year over 200k people die from drowning
Yea I did my 10 seconds of research before I quoted my number! I could have said ‘200k’ but ‘hundreds of thousands’ sounds much more dramatic don’t you think? Which is the whole point of the Dihydrogen monoxide thing.
Wow, talk about preventable deaths…
According to its Wikipedia page, this joke was first published in 1983! I suspect most people know it from the early 2000’s when it made a resurgence again.
What I think it is, is that every single person who ever consumes it, will eventually die. We are also literally dependant on it. If you stop ingesting it for too long, it can also cause you to die… That’s how it went around here, at least.
That’s my understanding as well, it was a joke about correlation != causation.
Look at all of the related “risks” and add them up. I’m sure that drowning is a small number, but then add in all of the deaths from scalding, acid rain, poisons (that contain water), etc etc and it eventually gets to be a very big number. Probably in the millions
Acid rain has never killed anyone. It can kill plants and destroy farms, so I guess it can kill indirectly by causing famine, but that’s about it.
The WHO estimates 236k deaths per year worldwide due to drowning. There’s other ways to die to Dihydrogen monoxide other than drowning, so my numbers hold up!
vapes
Social Media
Microplastics and PFAS
No, seriously, these two will kill Earth, and us
Forever chemicals
Social media. It wasn’t until very recently that people started to realize just how harmful it actually is.
Less social media IMO, more the weaponization of techniques first researched in the 60s-80s made real and pushed via automaton to all corners of the public internet.
The reason you become vulnerable is because you abdicate control (most had no idea) of your feed to providers that own domain names.
This was a co-option of how the internet worked previously.
What kind of techniques were researched? This sounds interesting to learn about. Do you have some terms I could search that will help me learn more?
Start with Cambridge Analytica for sure.
I always thought the Cambridge Analytical scandal was just the left trying to point fingers at how Trump could have possibly won, instead of blaming the Democratic party for their terrible handling of the Sanders campaign, and how Clinton was so utterly unlikable, they grasped at so many straws, we’re still reeling from it to this day.
The big ones being the Ukrainian war, the failure of the Afghanistan pull-out, and of course CA.
there were a number of university experiments on human choice often dealing with a disparity of information between the parties.
What was learned by the US government in its testing was also known. The reality is experiments like these were done very heavily up until the 60’s with the vast majority getting nixed by the early-to-late 70s
this coincides also with our release of mental patients which were as much experiment subjects as they were patients. We were mapping out people’s behavior to information stimulus for most of the 20th century.
the programs were all stopped but the information continued on and is used in many strata of our lives.
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0by2ybb/mk-ultra-the-cia-s-secret-pursuit-of-mind-control-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
Subliminal Marketing (one of many techniques) is banned however use of the technique in other mediums is not. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/laws-subliminal-marketing-69892.html
With regards to international actors and thier domestic collaborators, check into Foundations of Geopolitics. Its a playbook being followed.
I don’t think the SPE is that good a reference, and also not super meaningful to this sort of case of Internet manipulation anyway. Look at the amount of points showing it was basically not a normal experiment but predetermined to act out how the PI wanted - in that wikipedia link.
My understanding of MK Ultra was basically the government wasted a lot of money because of fear of missing out vs the Soviets. It didn’t accomplish anything.
And subliminal marketing has been widely debunked to my knowledge. People thought it might do something, but experimentally it didn’t.
I would have pointed to disinformation campaigns myself - there is research that implies it works.
SPE shows exactly how when you alter a worldview how that person changes. It was extreme and unintended but it showed how powerful it can be when the subjects willingly accept the game.
subliminal marketing in the form of showing single image frames was debuked, thats one of many techniques.
SPE shows that people being paid or encouraged to act a certain way will act a certain way, especially in deference to authority - which we already knew IMO. How does this translate to the Internet - people can be paid to spread info online that might be misleading or straight up disinformation? That doesn’t seem especially novel to me. PR and Propaganda existed long before SPE or the 60s.
Do you have any links to what sort of subliminal marketing you’re referencing that is shown to work?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6204644/
simple phrases and mnemonics are amazing too, those short insulting names have more of a role than people realize.
That geopolitics book is buy some Russian guy right? I’ve heard that it’s literally being played out even though it was written a long time ago
printed in the early 80s, written by the man who is considered the grandfather of the current Russian’ govt’s ideology and “plan”
he has the ear of putin, or did.
Is that the guy that Adam Curtis talked about in Hypernormalisation?
Abortion was a very well researched controversial topic to divide the feminist movement as much as possible.
Most propaganda boils down to fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) to promote division and conqueror the smaller groups
Well this might come as a shock but the techniques used to groom suicide bombers also work on white people too. Prey on their disillusionment, pump them full of hatred for “the enemy” then give them the means to carry out an attack.
But if you’re digging back through history, check out how once upon a time, everyone from the US government to Coca-Cola was awkwardly trying their hand at mind control.
Fortunately, they’ve pinky promised that’s all behind them now, despite having access to millions of people who voluntarily pin their own eyes open and spend the night scrolling through rapid flashes of sex, violence and extremism, in their own DIY Clockwork Orange therapy (only it’s trying to make them worse, not better)
What could go wrong except for everything that’s currently going wrong?
The damage done by giving neoliberals power and the far-right platform is going to take decades to undo, if we survive it at all.
Climate change is progressing at an alarming rate while the oil and gas lobby teach AI how to astroturf, cheered on by every billionaire hoping they can fire their employees and pocket their wages.
If the far-right are given the power they need, they’ll decimate the population searching for whatever magic group they need to genocide that will make their parents love them, their mental illness evaporate and their dicks 14" long. When they finally realize no such group exists, we’ll get to see what happens when you give the nuclear launch codes to wife beaters ane school shooters.
Vote better.
Buckle up, you’re in for a wild ride Zersetzung
this guy
I agree, and I think it’s even more broader: Anxiety and stress. These are extremely dangerous and underrated, and even exploited by many (e.g. news, politicians, workplace, social media, marketing). It’s like sticking a cigarette into your mouth without you able to immediately take it out.
deleted by creator
- a number of nano-things
- everything monsanto has been spraying
- pfas
- micro-plastics
Blue light.
how is that harmful? ambient light is blue most of the day
It’s one of the markers that your brain uses to control its circadian rhythms. During half of your 24 hour cycle its fine. Our devices push that balance too far though, contributing to stress and insomnia by disrupting that regulatory mechanism.
Wouldn’t be too different from living in the artic circle during the summertime, except without blackout shades and we’re doing it to ourselves with tvs, computers and mobile devices.
RIP everyone who doesn’t live exactly on the ecliptic.
The amount of time which the sun shines has very little to do with half of 24 hours most of the year where I live.
Half was a rhetorical estimate to attempt to communicate a basic idea, not an attempt to use an accurate academic term. Look it up if you want to know more, quit arguing with me. What I am describing is not new or cutting edge. We have oodles of data you can look at.
Only when you’re trying to get to sleep
Not exclusively, the body’s systems are far more complex and interconnected than that. It’s really just the need to have some kind of nighttime for your overall well-being. It’s what we evolved around.
Is coffee dangerous because drinking it at 11pm each night keeps you awake too? I think that’s overstating your case, although I think there is a minor benefit to limiting blue light.
personally, I have all the lights set to turn red an hour after sunset and it has had a much larger effect than limiting screen time at bedtime, which is what most people seem to focus on.
Depends how sensitive you are to caffeine. I strongly suspect sensitivity to blue light is similarly varied between individuals. I am not a doctor, however, and I honestly don’t give enough fucks to try to convince you.
Sugar. People don’t realize how bad it is for you and how addictive it is.
I’d go with high fructose corn syrup
Look no further for the cause of the obesity problem in America. It’s an everything. I bought what I thought were raw sausages and it was even in there.
There’s no such thing as “raw” sausage. Uncooked maybe. But never raw, like carots or stake can be raw.
Sausage is ground meat mixed with all sorts of spices and things. Including yes almost always sugar and salt. Without the extra spices, it’s not sausage anymore. It’s just ground beef, pork, turkey, venison, whatever.
Fructose is typically fine when it’s paired with equal amounts of glucose, like in fruit. Your body has a really hard time processing high concentrations of fructose alone, which is how most sugary food is produced now a days since high fructose is a much cheaper method of sweetening food than a balanced mix of sugars.
Except “high fructose corn syrup” doesn’t really have that high of a concentration of fructose. Standard corn syrup and most fruits have glucose and fructose in a ratio that’s roughly 50:50. HFCS is about 55:45 in favor of fructose, mostly because both sugars are roughly the same stability from a chemical sense, so the enzyme that is used to convert one to the other (glucofructoisomerase, IIRC) can’t really get that far from that 50:50 ratio. There are lots of natural sources that are way higher in fructose (agave nectar is like 90:10 fructose, again IIRC).
And fructose isn’t added to everything because the sugar is cheaper than other sugars (although the government subsidies for corn farmers do make HFCS ridiculously cheap); it’s because our taste buds perceive fructose as sweeter than a similar amount of other simple sugars. So it’s actually cheaper to use HFCS than raw corn syrup or other sugar sources, because your actually need less sugar to get the same taste. It’s really similar to how artificial sweeteners work; a synthetic molecule can trick our taste buds into sending signals to the brain that say “this is sweet” at a rate that’s 80-300x more effective per molecule. A lot of artificial sweeteners do actually have calories when digested, but such a small amount of sweetener gets used that the caloric content gets rounded down to zero. But I digress.
The real issue is that simple sugars are being added in large amounts to EVERYTHING (because they taste good), and processed and prepackaged foods are cheaper to buy and easier than preparing food yourself. HFCS ships easily, has a long shelf life, and puts money in the pockets of corporate farms that prefer to grow one (maybe two) crops over vast swathes of land in the US, which is why it’s everywhere. Not that corn is anything special! You can make a high fructose syrup from nearly any starchy crop. Corn was just in the right place at the right time.
Like with most problems in the US, the real underlying cause is the corporations and government subsidies that ignore sustainability (economic and environmental), as well as the health of the population in favor of profit. Unfortunately, that’s a tougher problem to solve and political and economic reform is a tougher sell for Middle America than making one specific ingredient into a Boogeyman.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
Edit: cleaned up autocorrect typos and grammar
HFCS is the #1 reason by far that sugar is added to products. It is cheap and the precursor (corn) is maybe the most heavily subsidized product except oil. Those subsidies also have an additive effect to the US beef (and other meat) subsidies through feed corn.
Fructose is a type of sugar. High fructose corn syrup is almost pure sugar, like honey.
High Fructose Corn Syrup is nothing like Honey.
This will be the next big class action suit similar to tobacco. Big sugar has been operating just like tobacco, denying negative side effects and lobbying at state and federal levels to stifle bans and regulatory actions.
America is on the verge of a sytemeic failure when it comes to health care, and a lot of that is due to the prevalence of diabetes in our aging population.
Right now one in every three medicare dollars goes towards treating diabetes, a perfectly preventable disease. It’s not sustainable, and it’s literally siphoning off our ability to treat other ailments.
I get withdrawal symptoms on a regular basis. Cold sweat, ravenous appetite, weak limbs, shaky hands. It’s horrible, really.
Totally. Sugar should be seen similarly like alcohol or cigarettes regarding the addictiveness. But we are consuming it everyday and feed our children with it.
Soda specifically - is something we should be looking closer at in relation to sugar abuse. The number of kids and young adults I see quaffing giant plastic cups of fountain drinks is alarming.
Even worse when they use it to replace water.
Carbonated water doesn’t kill people.
Can you breathe the bubbles when drowning?
Juice isn’t any better. You’re drinking much more fruit than you would eat normally.
I agree especially with concentrates or “juice drinks” that have less than 10% juice. All of those things are just sugar drinks.
Juice isn’t any better
yeah because it’s high sugar. i think that’s absolutely common knowledge by now.
Sugar is not bad. Abuse of sugar is bad. Sugar is absolutely fine, as long as one doesn’t exceed. Problem is that in American-inspired diets sugar is everywhere at gigantic doses
Do basic groceries abuse sugar? And I’m not talking about the “organic” ones
Sorry I don’t understand what you mean. Could you please rephrase? Thanks
Depends on what you mean by “basic groceries.” Produce and generally anything that is not processed or prepackaged is ok, but most anything ready to eat, including any baked goods is likely to be pretty high in sugar.
And just FYI, since glucose, fructose, and sucrose are all naturally occurring, they (and HFCS) are considered organic legally
Glucose (a sugar) is also literally the main fuel of human cells and the only one for brain cells…
Correct. However, there are many ways to get glucose into the brain that are not dependent on eating glucose directly. For example, starch and cellulose are both big long chains of glucose molecules linked together, although no multicellular organisms have the necessary enzymes to break down cellulose into glucose (at least none of which I’m aware, anyway).
For the most part, getting your glucose by breaking down starch is healthier than eating it directly, because it slows down the introduction of starch into the bloodstream which keeps your blood sugar levels more stable, since the enzymes that break down starch (α and β amylase, IIRC) don’t do it instantly. Plus, other simple sugars can easily be converted by the buddy into glucose by a variety of enzymes find naturally in the body.
But even without eating any carbohydrates, the human body had the ability to create its own glucose via a process called gluconeogenesis, which occurs mainly in the liver. So, it’s not generally advisable to eat too much sugar directly, as there are plenty of other avenues through which the body can get its glucose, and eating the glucose directly leads to a much higher chance of developing diabetes later in life, even if you remain at a healthy weight.
Source: I’m a chemist who teaches college-level biochemistry and nutrition. If you want a source with more details, LMK your educational background and I’d be happy to provide some reading material.
This is exactly my point: glucose, fructose and sucrose are not unhealthy. They are just fine. Unless one exceeds. Glycemic index is relevant. Eating a bit of sugar sometimes or an apple is just fine (fruit is a great source of sugars, but it is also very healthy).
Problem is that in America and UK they manage to put additional sugar even in the pasta sauce… Everything is so sweet that it tastes bad for many foreigners (it tastes bad for me for instance)
Source: we have a similar background but mine is more theoretical (modelling, hpc, biophysics, theoretical biophysical chemistry and theoretical chemistry), I have a PhD as well and I used to work in academia (on both biological mechanisms and materials for renewable energy) before moving to AI in industry (different sectors). We are saying the same :D
Sugar does nothing good and its 100% konessential for the human body. You dont need to eat a single carb.
And that includes fiber, which is also a carb.
Good luck with your digestion if you don’t eat fibers… Your gut flora must live a miserable life :(
Coffee, I think. People think coffee help you stay awake and boost your productivity.
But I think, coffee put you into unnecessary stress (stress while sitting still ? Is it natural ?), Disruption sleep pattern,…
Will cause lot of issues if you keep consume few cup daily
Microplastics
Javascript
Please, please, please, don’t be caffeine! 🤞
Coffee has been around for thousands of years but I’m pretty sure %100 pure caffeine could kill if you ingested enough at once
This mystery can be resolved by googling ‘ld50 caffeine.’ ~750mg is toxic and 10,000mg can kill people
The median lethal dose (LD50) of caffeine is estimated between 150 to 200 mg per kilogram but reports of lethal intoxications have been made with doses as low as 57 mg per kilogram. Personally, 300mg is pretty much as far as I want to go.
It’s not the purity, it’s the dose, like any chemical the dose makes the poison.
The FDA recommends staying under 5 cups (400 mg) a day to avoid negative effects with an average person.
It says toxic effects can be observed with rapid consumption of 12 cups, or 0.15 tablespoons of pure caffeine. https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/spilling-beans-how-much-caffeine-too-muchSame as cocaine
Yes, caffeine can kill. https://www.livescience.com/caffeine-overdose-200-cups-of-coffee
Caffeine isn’t terrible for you in moderate amounts, and coffee is actually a decent source or antioxidants especially if you don’t get them elsewhere in your diet, but this is independent of caffeine itself (decaf has antioxidants). Daily high doses of caffeine is definitely bad for your health, and can negatively impact other health issues you may have such as anxiety, depression, etc. Do your research, talk to your doctor, and consider decreasing your daily intake.
What’s the threshold for “high doses”?
According to Google, 400 mg (~4 cups of coffee or 10 cans of soda) per day is when you run into health risks, while 1200 mg in a short time span is overdose territory.
Too bad they don’t list caffeine on the nutrition facts. Who knows how much you get.
For what, soda? Looking at a Mountain Dew right now and it says 54mg caffeine. It’s next to the nutrition facts but not in the box itself
Cool, I’ll look for it. I haven’t bought soda in many years. More interested in coffee. I still don’t know if “breakfast coffee” has more or less than “half caff”.
Breakfast blend is unspecific, but it’s a mix of normal, not decaf coffee, aimed at being smooth, not too bold or acidic etc. Half caff is a blend of decaf and normal beans, so breakfast will have approximately twice as much caffeine. Light/dark roast and specific coffee bean type used will vary the caffeine levels.
Caffeine content has been listed for years on drinks, just not in the nutrition box.
If you’re drinking 10 cans of soda a day you got much bigger problems than caffeine.
True. But I could see some people reaching 400 mg with like two coffees, an energy drink, and a couple cans of soda.
I’m no scientist, but I’ve been in the coffee industry for a long time. I would say more than 500mg per day is a lot. 200-300mg per day seems to be a nice sweet spot. That’s about 12-16oz of brewed specialty coffee.
Once again, I’m not a food scientist, but I believe other ingredients you find in energy drinks can compound the effects of caffeine. Similar to how alcohol mixed with certain medications with fuck up your liver really fast.
What’s the threshold for “high doses”?
That whole thing turned out to be a nothingburger. The report said that if you drink like 9 cans of diet soda it could possibly cause cancer. If you’re drinking 9 cans of diet soda a day aspartame is the least of your problems.
It was more like 26 cans I believe. Stupidly high.
The state your kidneys would be in
My wife has been telling me for years that research was still ongoing about aspartame being potentially carcinogenic, so I should be careful with my at most one diet soda a day. When the news first came up that the WHO was about to classify it as such, I was like “oh shit, it’s happening?”
And then the details came a few days later, and I couldn’t stop laughing about it. 😆
*possibly
singularity
