Atian_1
7mo ago
As far as I know, I've heard he's got a decent chunk of people willing to vote for him as an independent candidate, so if half or so switch to Trump and the other half don't vote, Trump gets an additional 1-2% in the vote, something like that. Haven't been following it too closely.
Atian_1
8mo ago
Guess I'm not a power user, I didn't know it supported vertical tabs! But agreed on the built-in adblocker.
Atian_1
8mo ago
Man I've only seen it once, but it was insane. Honestly a part of me legit thought it was the beginning of a UFO first contact, my parents came to the windows to check it out too, then I looked it up on Google and it turns out it was Starlink, for some reason it never occurred to me that you could see Starlink with the naked eye early in its launch, I never heard that they looked like a line of stars in the sky either.
Atian_1
8mo ago
Brave as a browser (exactly same feel as Chrome, it's built off Chrome) and still Google for search engine. As for result quality, I'm not sure I've noticed a decline too much, but I mix Google up with Yandex and Bing and Brave search if Google isn't turning up what I want.
Atian_1
8mo ago
I don't even bike regularly, but I always wished I could, I just don't feel safe with bicycle lanes. Physically separated bike lane is definitely the way to go. I live in a ~20,000-person town but if we had physically separated bike lanes (let alone normal bike lanes, which we still only have on a couple of roads), or even more sidewalks, it would be really cool and would raise the value of living here. There's enough to do for most people in this town within biking distance, but many roads are absolute crap for biking. There are roads where there is literally a 3-inch shoulder and then straight into forest or open water after that ends, I don't know how people have the courage to bike around here.
Atian_1
8mo ago
As a fellow legume pasta eater, there's chickpea pastas out there too, lentil pastas, green pea, etc, if you want variety in your legumes. I've never heard of ZENB funny enough but will check it out.
Oh and lentils cook in about 20 minutes if you boil them, quicker than beans. Basically just fill a pan with 2 cups water to 1 cup lentils, then bring the water to boil and dump in the lentils and cook for 20-30 minutes, can add dried spices to taste. That's how we do it in our house, it's simple but doesn't taste bad and you can add stuff like basil or bay leaves or curry etc.
Atian_1
9mo ago
If I had to guess I would say you are right that it stunts everything and that it does limit intelligence. Like ulyssessword said, funding probably limited how many studies have been done on this subject. Just hypothesizing, but maybe there are people that are more psychologically and physically resilient (genetically) so that they are not affected as much or at all by the stress of poverty, making the data messy. It could be there is no effect for certain people.
But I can't imagine why it wouldn't be true on average that, if you had twins where you had one live in poverty and had the other live a middle class life, the wealthier one should be bigger, stronger, and smarter. Unless they're both resilient, then I guess the outcomes could be the same.
But if you have many examples of such cases of twins and take an average, maybe you could see the overall effect poverty has, eliminating the effect of some pairs being resilient/robust to the effects of poverty. Not sure if this has been done, assessing IQ AND health markers of many pairs of twins living at opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. It would be interesting to see if pairs with larger differences in IQ had larger differences in health markers as well.
Atian_1
1yr ago
Gotcha, no worries man, I totally understand the hesitance, and I appreciate your answer. I just figured I'd ask here of all places because there's usually a lot of lesser-known but enlightening perspectives/info/discussion on here and this is something I've been pondering for a while now. I'll check with an endo I'm going to see soon, my family's opinion is I should just play the minimalist approach and see what nature does now that I'm eating right. But I will ask the endo though, and we'll see what happens from there.
Hey, sorry for the oddball question (I promise not to take this as medical advice, I have an endo and will ask them these questions but would much appreciate some info on this topic if possible): What if you have a 22-year old with growth plates that are still slightly open in proximal tibia, distal femur, proximal femur and proximal humerus, but that person is 3-4 inches shorter than the rest of their generation in their family, with noticeably narrower bones as well?
For background, I was born a bit premature with borderline low birth weight, grew normally up to age 9, and then developed anorexia nervosa at age 9 which lasted right up until age 20, at times mildly underweight and at times significantly underweight, maybe briefly normal weight for a 1-year period around age 12. I have osteoporosis as a result, which I suppose is a sign of how bad the malnutrition was, but I've recovered since, and have not been underweight for 1 year and reached an optimal BMI of 20 now at age 22 (completing recovery from the eating disorder). I take this recovery as a win, but at the same time I am insecure about my frame size, mainly height but also things like hand/foot size, shoulder width, arm length, overall ribcage diameter, and seeming lack of appositional growth of my bones too, although I'm not sure when most of the appositional growth is supposed to happen so I'm not sure if it was the anorexia or lower birth weight that did that.
I have heard of catch-up growth; I've read about cases of hypothyroid men in their mid 20s growing inches after HGH treatment, but I'm not sure if the level of delay in growth maturation is less significant for anorexia than for hypothyroidism, making me wonder whether I have as much potential to "catch-up" as the hypothyroid men due to our having different etiologies of growth retardation. Apparently hypothyroidism is one of the hormonal effects of anorexia so perhaps they're not as different as I currently believe but I'm not informed enough to know whether this is the case.
Would HGH make any sense at all in this situation? If there is any growth potential left, would it just happen naturally now that I'm at a normal weight, without the need for HGH? I'm thinking the minimalist approach would be to let nature take its course now, and if my body can indeed grow more, it will do so, without the risk of hormone treatment. But another side of me wonders whether, due to my age, some sort of kick-start is needed for the growth process to commence?
Also, regardless of etiology of growth retardation, if plates are still technically open but nearly closed in someone's 20s, is HGH worth it or just too risky?
Thank you.
Atian_1
1yr ago
I've been a lurker for a long time but wanted to post with a question about getting the maximum amount of skeletal growth (wingspan, height, bone thickness, anything) possible after a long period of malnourishment as a 22-year old male.
BACKGROUND ----
If background is important, here it is: I had moderate, to at times quite serious, restrictive eating disorder from age 9-20, and was already a picky eater before then, never eating dairy because I hated the taste of it. I was even doing compulsive over-exercising from ages 15-18, very sedentary after that, and have significant osteoporosis to this day despite weight gain.
At age 20, I recovered in the course of a few months to a bmi of 18.5, and many joint pains, feeling of constant coldness, constant finger/nail infections, lightheadness/weakness between meals, and dry skin that I was dealing with gradually went away when I gained weight.
I'm now at a bmi of 19, and last week I suddenly discovered that my growth plates are not completely closed when perusing over my recent imaging for hip impingement and scoliosis. I'm not sure how much growth can be squeezed out of nearly-fused/post-peak-growth-rate-stage plates, but I have read about "Type 2 catch-up growth" (see: https://academic.oup.com/edrv/article/18/5/646/2530771?login=false), and I speculate about whether the expected amount of growth based on the degree of ossification of growth plates could vary depending on your nutritional history.
Anyway, this has inspired me to gain more weight, up to a bmi of 21, as due to my scoliosis that shortens my height significantly, it is arguable that I may still be slightly underweight according to my corrected height. A BMI of 21 ensures that I will not be underweight even at that "corrected" height. Now coming to the point of this post:
I want to use this period of gaining weight to at least try to get bigger skeletally in some way. I will accept if I do not get bigger in any way. I just don't want to have any regrets that I didn't do everything I could to maximize my skeletal health and size. In part, I want to get bigger because my frame size/transverse size of bones is literally off-the-percentile-charts small by my calculations, and height and limb lengths are somewhat below average, and well below average in comparison to other people of my generation in my family. I know I have to get over that insecurity (which ironically is the fricking opposite of the disorder I struggled with for 10 years!) but I still want to try and get measurable, even if not outwardly noticeable, skeletal growth, either in thickness/transverse growth, or length/longitudinal growth. I understand it may not happen, and that catch-up growth is not guaranteed, and I am trying to keep my expectations in check.
I'm going to see a doctor about all this stuff anyway to see what they have to say. I already see an endo for my osteoporosis but at the time, I thought I was done growing so I didn't ask them any of this stuff. Plus, I'm now a bit scared of being laughed at for trying to grow more at age 22, although my rational mind tells me that it is not totally impossible that I could still grow some measurable amount.
I figured that there may be lifestyle, exercise, diet, or supplement modifications that I have not heard of, and that are at least sufficiently plausible from a mechanistic perspective, to optimize skeletal growth after malnourishment, as well as potential critiques of my current system and places where I might be going wrong that I don't even realize. I thought that this would be the place to find that out or at least to point me in the right direction to where I can find that out. I am also aware that I may very well grow a tiny bit even if I don't do anything special, heck I probably should not be stressing out over it as much as I am, that's probably already a major change I can make. At the same time, I do want to be proactive about my health and optimize this.
I know this website is full of very insightful people, and in-depth discussions that I don't see elsewhere, so I figured if anyone has any ideas for trying to get even marginally better conditions for skeletal growth in someone who is almost done growing but probably has stunted their growth, I might find them here, and I am all ears.
BACKGROUND (ABOVE) IS FINISHED -----
What I'm currently doing: -3 cups of milk per day (Started last week, this is up from 1 cup per day that I have been drinking since age 20 and 0 cups before then) -Full body weightlifting 3x/week (have been doing since age 20 but 6x/week at a volume that was my maximum recoverable volume, and probably became a bit of an obsession as well) -Very hot bath to replicate a sauna, 1x/week after watching a video on some experimental sauna protocol for HGH (started last week) -Trying to destress -10g Collagen supplement to get more nonessential but possibly under-synthesized (not an expert, so this may be false?) amino acids like glycine -High protein diet -Surplus of about 300 cal/day
What I'm not doing but maybe should be doing: -Cardio -High-impact exercise (I was under the impression weights are just as good, but not certain about this) -Earlier bedtime, more time sleeping when it is fully dark outside, getting off screens earlier -Weighted hanging/exercising with high tensile forces on your bones? -Avoiding compressive exercises? -More relaxation
Concern regarding exercise: -I'm not sure if weightlifting and the resulting compression of bones would be bad for getting the most growth out of growth plates, and if I should instead just do high-impact exercise like jumps, and stick to lighter weights until I'm certain that I won't grow any more, or if this line of reasoning is misguided and I should just keep doing weights. I could argue that I should be weight training because it can boost HGH and other hormones more than other types of exercise, and that it might be more important to boost anabolic hormones considering my history than trying to avoid the slight fusing effect of compression on growth plates?
Things I am considering taking soon but not sure how effective they are: -Creatine and L-Arginine for HGH -L-Ornithine for sleep and possibly HGH? -Wondering if any other supplements can reliably, or at least theoretically, boost growth-related hormones (not just HGH, but I suppose testosterone too?)
I probably do not want to take exogenous hormones in case there are side effects and I end up with no growth anyway. I'm trying to just do my best from the exercise, diet, lifestyle, and supplementation side of things.
Any advice is much appreciated and sorry for the super long post!
Anyone have advice on tendon recovery from exercise? Something's clearly wrong with me but I don't know what. I'm a male, ever since I was 15 or so (I'm 22 now) when I push any set of any exercise to failure, I get tendinitis from it. I assume that's not normal? For example, my muscles are not tired at the end of a set of max rep pushups, it's one of my tendons (tricep, or sometimes pec) that hurts instead, I feel like my muscles could keep going. This is the same for all exercises, been this way for years, and briefly by course of good luck and planning and pushing almost to failure but not quite, I have managed to do things like weighted dips, weighted pullups, etc. before developing tendinopathy from those and having to scale back.
If I workout even further away from failure, like legitimately easy intensity, I'm fine painwise but don't make any progress in muscle or strength. I've tried dialing back volume, I just regress to being able to handle less volume and the same problems pop up.
At age 15, when this started, I did have a bunch of weird issues pop up: I had a growth spurt where my scoliosis went from mild to severe, then I got a really bad flu, then I went from sleeping 8+ hours a night every night at age 14 and prior, to sleeping 5 hours in broken intervals at age 15.5, unable to sleep more no matter what I do (I'd just keep waking up too frequently). Ever since then, I have slept the exact same way, once a year I sleep 7 hours and feel a difference, but I don't know what I did to sleep that long so I go right back to the pattern.
When this started, I felt very unrefreshed with a lot of brain fog at age 15.5, this is also when I had a relapse of anorexia (which was on/off from ages 9-20, mostly on from age 9-12 and 15.5-20 however). Then somehow my brain adapted to this amount of sleep, the brain fog and tiredness went away, and I actually started doing better in school than I had before all this despite no sleep improvement. But I was left with these exercise issues. Part of me thinks I am sleeping enough for my brain, but not enough for my body, yet the brain is what has a drive to sleep, so if my brain has figured out how to get it done on less, it just isn't going to have the sleep drive to match my body's needs. So I need a way to force deep sleep.
Nobody has been able to tell me exactly what caused these issues; was it the sleep? Was it the anorexia? I will say since recovering from anorexia, I was able to get way stronger than before recovery. But "way stronger" is still weak by human male standards. I had a brief period when I first recovered weight quickly at age 19.5-20 or so, that all my joints actually felt amazing, and I was sleeping 5.5-6 hours. But after that it went away (maybe in part due to a legit episode of bad insomnia at age 20.5, happened to coincide with onset of some GI issues that have only recently resolved) and now I'm stuck feeling almost the same way I did before recovery, but just at a much higher strength level than before and more overall capacity for exercise than before, but still the same feelings now of not being able to push to failure without pain, anywhere in the body. Somehow, at age 21.5-22, I pushed heavy weight for the first time with really low reps and low intensity (reps in reserve), and made a ton of progress again despite not feeling like I could recover from a serious workout with less reps in reserve. But then I got pain from it and had to regress again, I think I got up to a 100lb split squat, 50 lb weighted pullup, and what's probably the equivalent of 160-180 lb bench press (dips at 125 lbs bodyweight with 70 added pounds) for low reps before needing to regress.
I know my wrist size is only 5.2"/1st percentile for men, ankle size is only 7"/1st percentile for men, and limb lengths are 1st percentile for men despite 10-15th percentile height, and despite 50th percentile height parents and everyone in my generation of the family is at the 75th percentile in height. I also have osteoporosis from the anoreixa.
The one thing that grew normally is my shoulder width and pelvic width and that's largely post-recovery from anorexia that it started growing again from below average to average/even 60th percentile. I have a feeling all of this points to growth stunting from anorexia; is a 1st percentile frame size somehow mean I already reached my genetic natty limit at 100 lb split squats and 180 lb bench press? Can't be right, there are people who are much shorter than me who can build more muscle than I have so far, right?
Some question I have too that could help others with my problems (and myself obviously):
Are there any binaural beat or breathwork techniques for inducing delta wave states consciously, to mimic deep sleep and release HGH? Does anorexia stunt your tendon development as much as it stunts bone development? Does HGH help you build up your tendon tissue? Does this sound like anything you've heard of? How much does psychological stress affect your tendon recovery independent of other bodily systems?
How much does mindset matter in this? I feel like when I was making progress last time at age 21.5-22.0, I really believed I could get stronger, and then I saw some videos of people hurting their tendons and got kind of scared, and at this same time was when I seemed to get tendinopathy again. Could be a coincidence, but it was kind of spooky how that happened. Now I'm falling back into some old beliefs I had about something being fundamentally wrong with my body (part of why I justified my eating disorder to myself, after the joint pain started at age 15, my eating disorder worsened because I justified it to myself as I was genetically inferior, which ended up not being very true because I had some really good periods of strenthening post-anorexia as I described above, and I'm still way stronger than I ever imagined I would be at age 15, but it's still a beginner strength level and I want more if at all possible).
I wonder, if as a result of that limited mindset, I'm not making much progress? Even though I'm equally motivated to exercise, something about the mindset must be changing the fundamental quality of my muscular contractions (more apprehension perhaps) and this develops tendinopathy in those places? See a video of someone hurting themselves, get apprehensive, area gets strained due to less-coordinated contractions, you get hurt? Is that even a thing?
I know my testosterone level is at 500 on the nose. I have osteoporosis from the anorexia too, but it seems largely due to small bone diameter (stunted appositional growth) and only slightly due to low volumetric bone density, that is the bone quality itself seems to be good now (post-recovery) but the bones are small enough that the 2-dimensional "areal" density is very low. I still am about 0.5 to 1 standard deviation less in "true 3-D density" than normal, but not as bad as my DXA scan makes it look. Actually, if someone knows of a way to boost appositional growth of bones at this age, that'd be interesting to hear. I assume HGH could do it? And I assume I should keep gaining to BMI of 21 or 22 just to see if that would help (I'm at BMI 20 now).
Sorry for the long rambling post, thanks if anyone read through it or has any advice.
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