Well, it’s not surprising that drugs can help with cognition. But we’ve to be very careful about two things : the effects it has on other parts of the body, and the long-term effects, both to the body and to the brain itself.
The human body is a very complex and delicate machinery, and the human brain the most delicate part of it… it’s very easy to create long term problems in it by trying to push it a bit too much. Just look at the professional sport players, and how badly they are damaged after a few years of taking drugs to enhance their performances.
That’s why I tend to be very careful about not taking drugs, unless I already have a disorder that needs fixing, and unless advised to take them by a doctor I trust. Taking drugs to increase performances sounds a bit like overclocking CPUs. Sure they’ll go faster… but at the risk of increasing bugs, and of a shorter lifespan due to increased heating.
Now if a drug is really efficient, with no side-effect, no long-term consequences, according to very strict peer-reviewed studies, then ok. But until then, my motto is “careful, your body is complex and delicate, we don’t fully understand it, so unless you really have a problem, don’t take drugs”.
That’s why I tend to be very careful about not taking drugs, unless I already have a disorder that needs fixing, and unless advised to take them by a doctor I trust. Taking drugs to increase performances sounds a bit like overclocking CPUs. Sure they’ll go faster… but at the risk of increasing bugs, and of a shorter lifespan due to increased heating.
The analogy works well when considering stimulants. However when considering drugs or supplements that are neuroprotective or that actively promote neurogenesis the analogy becomes fallacious. Cerebrolysin, for example is more analogous to opening up your computer and replacing the CPU and RAM with more powerful and more reliable components. Sure, it is invasive and requires caution and knowledge to do but the life expectancy of the core components is increased, not decreased.
I am of the impression that the reason for the health problems of professional athletes is the degree to which they push their bodies (which, perhaps, might not be possible/feasible without drugs and supplements) rather than a direct effect from the drugs themselves.
Further, while I share your caution regarding the risks of causing damage to the body or brain through some unknown mechanism or weakness, there is a point at which I believe people would be best advised to take supplemental drugs. Further, whether or not you have a problem depends on your reference point: as a young man of moderate resources in a developed country, I am not of below-average health for the human race, but I am also not optimizing my physical and mental faculties. (For the time being, anyway).
And there may be some drugs which might reasonably be expected to provide a health benefit which outweighs the probability of “increasing bugs”, which it would be rational to take given all but the most extremely loss-averse utility functions. I would say that a superior metaphor would be upgrading your CPU—the process may have unintended side effects, but it may not, and there is fair evidence that it will have some positive outcomes. The difficulty lies in weighing these expectations, which I think is inhibited by setting a hard limit.
I am of the impression that the reason for the health problems of professional athletes is the degree to which they push their bodies (which, perhaps, might not be possible/feasible without drugs and supplements) rather than a direct effect from the drugs themselves.
Your impression approximately matches my research.
That’s why I tend to be very careful about not taking drugs
“Drug” is a fuzzy concept.
Specifically, I don’t see a well-defined boundary between “drugs” and “food” (and/or drink). Obvious substances that straddle that boundary are psychoactives—coffee, alcohol, qat, etc. But if we think about human biochemistry, I can affect my metabolism—pretty radically, too—purely by varying my diet.
For example, I can switch my body into ketosis by not eating carbs. No drugs involved, and yet I am seriously messing with the “very complex and delicate machinery” of my body.
Add exercise. “Runners high” is well-known phenomenon. Is running a drug?
Add lifestyle, etc. Stress, sleep patterns, etc. all strongly affect your body.
So what’s so special about pills and capsules that you have to be so very careful about taking them, while the remaining multitude of way to affect your body and mind gets a free pass?
Because pills and capsules are things which have substantial effects on the human body in ways which bypass common natural pathways. Variations in diet (to an extent) and lifestyle changes (of certain kinds) were common in the ancestral environment, which means that they have been reliably and exhaustively tested on the human race over the course of our entire history as a species.
There are some artificial things which have been well-tested. Alcohol, for example, has effects which are well-known; enough people make use of it that there have been substantial incentives to research it exhaustively, at least to the point where we feel fairly comfortable imbibing it in moderation without fear of catastrophic side effects. The same goes for a lot of other substances, some of which are natural (I would assume that natural psychoactive substances were more likely to be discovered before societies grew very picky about what they put in their bodies, i.e. before the introduction of many regulatory bodies).
The issues with the remaining substances is that we don’t have enough knowledge about (some of) them to justify what could be existential risk. There have been enough drug recalls over the years that it has become apparent that a successful clinical trial, possibly funded by the same company which has an incentive to bring the drug to market quickly, is not sufficient evidence to dismiss the possibility. As a result, it is not irrational to take extra care—acquiring extra information and erring on the side of the status quo (which happens to include one self, currently still alive and well).
Variations in diet (to an extent) and lifestyle changes (of certain kinds) were common in the ancestral environment, which means that they have been reliably and exhaustively tested on the human race over the course of our entire history as a species.
That is not true with respect to a large part of contemporary Western diet. Things like refined sugar, hydrogenated oils, a wide variety of food preservatives, flavourings and colorings are new and appeared an instant ago on the evolutionary time scale.
To give a basic example, take a look at the ingredients of Coke: high-fructose corn syrup, phosphoric acid, caramel color, caffeine—I don’t think you can make an argument that humans evolved to drink this.
That’s not true with respect to lifestyle, too. Sitting pretty motionless on a chair for 10+ hours per day is not something evolution prepared our bodies for.
The issues with the remaining substances is that we don’t have enough knowledge about (some of) them to justify what could be existential risk.
My point is precisely that people in the Western world routinely consume large amounts of these “remaining substances” without a second thought. Why eating hydrogenated soybean oil, for example, is not risky?
By the way, do you consider over-the-counter supplements drugs? do your arguments apply to them?
That is why I included these qualifiers. Things such as alcohol and relatively sedentary lifestyles are either common enough to be well-studied, or pervasive enough to be unavoidable.
There are some risks that come with our environment that we do not evaluate in the same way as we evaluate the choice to start a new medication, because the costs of disentangling ourselves from these incredibly common things are higher (in what I estimate to be a typical human utility function with normal time-discounting; your results may vary) than the opportunity costs of declining to try a new supplement.
Further, there is a sort of natural experimentation occurring with these substances which a large number of people consume; if there are substantial negative side effects to them, odds are good that they will become obvious in others before they become a problem for some given person. We reassure ourselves that, since this has not happened, we have some fairly decent evidence that these popular substances are not terrible. New, rare, and unpopular drugs do not have this “natural experiment” advantage.
You’re basically making an argument against anything “new, rare, and unpopular”, but that argument applies equally well to drugs, food, and lifestyle.
Remember the original issue? “Drugs are risky”, but what is a drug? If I decide that ketosis is great and convert my diet to 80% saturated fat, is that less risky than starting to take a baby aspirin per day just because the first is “food” and the second one is a “drug”?
If I decide to take doses of naringin that’s dangerous because naringin is a drug, right? But if I eat a lot of grapefruits to get an equivalent dose, that’s OK because grapefruits are food?
I wouldn’t argue against taking an asprin a a day any more than I would argue against converting your diet to 80% saturated fats; both asprin and saturated fats are commonly ingested substances.
If you decide to take a supplement which is found in natural foods, I would not assign that any more risk than eating the equivalent amount of food. Either way, the issue would seem to be in the dosage, provided that the food has been proven safe. If it takes 100 grapefruits to equal a single dose of naringin, however, I would be worried—because you are consuming it in excess of what would ordinarily be expected.
The reason I am less worried about things such as dietary changes is that individuals experience dietary variation fairly frequently, and even from personal experience we know that we have mechanisms which alert us when our diet is lacking (sometimes). However, I do not believe that they are without risk, or that one should simply try out an extreme dietary change without prior research.
It is substances which have been relatively untested, but are in fact designed to subvert our body’s mechanisms, which I have reason to worry about. Not to disavow, but to worry about, and to examine more intensely than substances which are probably, as a class, less harmful.
I wouldn’t argue against taking an asprin a a day any more than I would argue against converting your diet to 80% saturated fats; both asprin and saturated fats are commonly ingested substances.
I think you should worry about a diet consisting of 80% fat, however, you should worry about it on different grounds to worrying about untested substances.
Things like refined sugar, hydrogenated oils, a wide variety of food preservatives, flavourings and colorings are new and appeared an instant ago on the evolutionary time scale.
And the same logic applies to them as well.
My point is precisely that people in the Western world routinely consume large amounts of these “remaining substances” without a second thought.
There’s this think called the organic food movement, you may have heard of it.
Why eating hydrogenated soybean oil, for example, is not risky?
Well, it’s not surprising that drugs can help with cognition. But we’ve to be very careful about two things : the effects it has on other parts of the body, and the long-term effects, both to the body and to the brain itself.
The human body is a very complex and delicate machinery, and the human brain the most delicate part of it… it’s very easy to create long term problems in it by trying to push it a bit too much. Just look at the professional sport players, and how badly they are damaged after a few years of taking drugs to enhance their performances.
That’s why I tend to be very careful about not taking drugs, unless I already have a disorder that needs fixing, and unless advised to take them by a doctor I trust. Taking drugs to increase performances sounds a bit like overclocking CPUs. Sure they’ll go faster… but at the risk of increasing bugs, and of a shorter lifespan due to increased heating.
Now if a drug is really efficient, with no side-effect, no long-term consequences, according to very strict peer-reviewed studies, then ok. But until then, my motto is “careful, your body is complex and delicate, we don’t fully understand it, so unless you really have a problem, don’t take drugs”.
The analogy works well when considering stimulants. However when considering drugs or supplements that are neuroprotective or that actively promote neurogenesis the analogy becomes fallacious. Cerebrolysin, for example is more analogous to opening up your computer and replacing the CPU and RAM with more powerful and more reliable components. Sure, it is invasive and requires caution and knowledge to do but the life expectancy of the core components is increased, not decreased.
I am of the impression that the reason for the health problems of professional athletes is the degree to which they push their bodies (which, perhaps, might not be possible/feasible without drugs and supplements) rather than a direct effect from the drugs themselves.
Further, while I share your caution regarding the risks of causing damage to the body or brain through some unknown mechanism or weakness, there is a point at which I believe people would be best advised to take supplemental drugs. Further, whether or not you have a problem depends on your reference point: as a young man of moderate resources in a developed country, I am not of below-average health for the human race, but I am also not optimizing my physical and mental faculties. (For the time being, anyway).
And there may be some drugs which might reasonably be expected to provide a health benefit which outweighs the probability of “increasing bugs”, which it would be rational to take given all but the most extremely loss-averse utility functions. I would say that a superior metaphor would be upgrading your CPU—the process may have unintended side effects, but it may not, and there is fair evidence that it will have some positive outcomes. The difficulty lies in weighing these expectations, which I think is inhibited by setting a hard limit.
Your impression approximately matches my research.
“Drug” is a fuzzy concept.
Specifically, I don’t see a well-defined boundary between “drugs” and “food” (and/or drink). Obvious substances that straddle that boundary are psychoactives—coffee, alcohol, qat, etc. But if we think about human biochemistry, I can affect my metabolism—pretty radically, too—purely by varying my diet.
For example, I can switch my body into ketosis by not eating carbs. No drugs involved, and yet I am seriously messing with the “very complex and delicate machinery” of my body.
Add exercise. “Runners high” is well-known phenomenon. Is running a drug?
Add lifestyle, etc. Stress, sleep patterns, etc. all strongly affect your body.
So what’s so special about pills and capsules that you have to be so very careful about taking them, while the remaining multitude of way to affect your body and mind gets a free pass?
Because pills and capsules are things which have substantial effects on the human body in ways which bypass common natural pathways. Variations in diet (to an extent) and lifestyle changes (of certain kinds) were common in the ancestral environment, which means that they have been reliably and exhaustively tested on the human race over the course of our entire history as a species.
There are some artificial things which have been well-tested. Alcohol, for example, has effects which are well-known; enough people make use of it that there have been substantial incentives to research it exhaustively, at least to the point where we feel fairly comfortable imbibing it in moderation without fear of catastrophic side effects. The same goes for a lot of other substances, some of which are natural (I would assume that natural psychoactive substances were more likely to be discovered before societies grew very picky about what they put in their bodies, i.e. before the introduction of many regulatory bodies).
The issues with the remaining substances is that we don’t have enough knowledge about (some of) them to justify what could be existential risk. There have been enough drug recalls over the years that it has become apparent that a successful clinical trial, possibly funded by the same company which has an incentive to bring the drug to market quickly, is not sufficient evidence to dismiss the possibility. As a result, it is not irrational to take extra care—acquiring extra information and erring on the side of the status quo (which happens to include one self, currently still alive and well).
That is not true with respect to a large part of contemporary Western diet. Things like refined sugar, hydrogenated oils, a wide variety of food preservatives, flavourings and colorings are new and appeared an instant ago on the evolutionary time scale.
To give a basic example, take a look at the ingredients of Coke: high-fructose corn syrup, phosphoric acid, caramel color, caffeine—I don’t think you can make an argument that humans evolved to drink this.
That’s not true with respect to lifestyle, too. Sitting pretty motionless on a chair for 10+ hours per day is not something evolution prepared our bodies for.
My point is precisely that people in the Western world routinely consume large amounts of these “remaining substances” without a second thought. Why eating hydrogenated soybean oil, for example, is not risky?
By the way, do you consider over-the-counter supplements drugs? do your arguments apply to them?
That is why I included these qualifiers. Things such as alcohol and relatively sedentary lifestyles are either common enough to be well-studied, or pervasive enough to be unavoidable.
There are some risks that come with our environment that we do not evaluate in the same way as we evaluate the choice to start a new medication, because the costs of disentangling ourselves from these incredibly common things are higher (in what I estimate to be a typical human utility function with normal time-discounting; your results may vary) than the opportunity costs of declining to try a new supplement.
Further, there is a sort of natural experimentation occurring with these substances which a large number of people consume; if there are substantial negative side effects to them, odds are good that they will become obvious in others before they become a problem for some given person. We reassure ourselves that, since this has not happened, we have some fairly decent evidence that these popular substances are not terrible. New, rare, and unpopular drugs do not have this “natural experiment” advantage.
You’re basically making an argument against anything “new, rare, and unpopular”, but that argument applies equally well to drugs, food, and lifestyle.
Remember the original issue? “Drugs are risky”, but what is a drug? If I decide that ketosis is great and convert my diet to 80% saturated fat, is that less risky than starting to take a baby aspirin per day just because the first is “food” and the second one is a “drug”?
If I decide to take doses of naringin that’s dangerous because naringin is a drug, right? But if I eat a lot of grapefruits to get an equivalent dose, that’s OK because grapefruits are food?
I wouldn’t argue against taking an asprin a a day any more than I would argue against converting your diet to 80% saturated fats; both asprin and saturated fats are commonly ingested substances.
If you decide to take a supplement which is found in natural foods, I would not assign that any more risk than eating the equivalent amount of food. Either way, the issue would seem to be in the dosage, provided that the food has been proven safe. If it takes 100 grapefruits to equal a single dose of naringin, however, I would be worried—because you are consuming it in excess of what would ordinarily be expected.
The reason I am less worried about things such as dietary changes is that individuals experience dietary variation fairly frequently, and even from personal experience we know that we have mechanisms which alert us when our diet is lacking (sometimes). However, I do not believe that they are without risk, or that one should simply try out an extreme dietary change without prior research.
It is substances which have been relatively untested, but are in fact designed to subvert our body’s mechanisms, which I have reason to worry about. Not to disavow, but to worry about, and to examine more intensely than substances which are probably, as a class, less harmful.
I think you should worry about a diet consisting of 80% fat, however, you should worry about it on different grounds to worrying about untested substances.
Why?
Fair. I neglected to include 80% fat as having a standing similar to 100 grapefruits’ worth of naringin.
And the same logic applies to them as well.
There’s this think called the organic food movement, you may have heard of it.
It is.