IQ And Peat

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Dhair

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It's possible that you feel less intelligent because over time you have been exposed to far more domains of knowledge and have gazed at the depth and complexity of domains of knowledge you were already acquainted. The material one encounters in high school is quite narrow compared to what one is capable of encountering "in the wild". Even subjects that have a lot of currency in everyday life like economics and psychology are usually not broached in any significant manner in high school.
Actually I never had particularly good grades in school. I was given an extensive IQ test by a psychologist and I scored high. I felt sharper then, even though I was still depressed. The psychologist told me that I could score higher if I wasn't depressed and she pointed out that the only portion of the test that didn't do well in was the one having to do with speed. It was a long time ago so I don't remember the details. I just find it more difficult to comprehend complex systems and theories than it used to be. it's even harder to construct sentences. This may be due to having been floxed earlier this year. Or maybe I'm just a lot less intelligent than I thought I could be.
 
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Energizer

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Q: How malleable is intelligence

RP in an email in 2012: "In 1962 Mark Rosenzweig showed that an enriched environment caused rats' brains to grow. A little later, someone found that the DNA content of human brains kept increasing until the age of 90, and about 10 years ago, studies started showing experience-related growth in human brains. Thyroid and thiamine can have great effects on mental ability, and the steroids can either shrink or expand the brain substance. The old Weissmanist-Hayflick doctrine has kept people from thinking about the adaptive nature of adult tissues, but more people are starting to realize that the principles of embryology keep functioning throughout life."

I can't find the original email unfortunately, he had citations as well, only the comment archived on Peatarian.
 

Koveras

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There are a few studies on using creatine supplementation in humans to boost IQ. The results were remarkable and beyond what simple statistical deviation would allow. Creatine serves as a buffer for ATP and creatine supplementation is presumed to raise ATP levels in the brain. Getting magnesium to the brain seems to have similar effects. Finally, since NAD and ATP are perfectly correlated I would venture a guess that niacinamide would increase IQ scores too. The company pushing the proprietary NR supplement is already jumping on that train and starting the PR mill.
Oral creatine monohydrate supplementation improves brain performance: a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over trial.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/08/030813070944.htm
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127121524.htm

Creatine and magnesium are relatively weak IQ boosters. Taking T3, especially in combination with thiamine and niacinamide can probably make enough of a difference on your SAT scores (which are modified IQ tests) to push you from a B to A-league school. Just thiamine and niacinamide are probably good enough for a sporadic IQ boost. Peat said in a few articles that taking some extra thiamine helped him learned new languages.
Deficits in discrimination after experimental frontal brain injury are mediated by motivation and can be improved by nicotinamide administration. - PubMed - NCBI

Creatine synthesis is also typically a large sink for methyl donors. Supplementing creatine may free up more methyl groups for use in neurotransmitter synthesis and detoxification - perhaps better vascular health as well with less homocysteine

From Chris Masterjohn

"Actually, strategy number four I should’ve mentioned that I didn’t get to. The other thing that you can do is try to reduce the demand for methylation in your body. And the simplest one thing that you can do to do that is to get a lot of creatine in your diet. 45% of your methylation demand is to synthesize creatine. Whole body creatine synthesis on average is about a gram and a half of creatine per day, and you can get that amount of creatine by eating 12 ounces of meat – of animal flesh per day. Now in the studies that quantified that, I think they were looking at people who were already eating maybe close to that amount of meat. So that might mean that you’re looking at a pound and a half of meat per day that you want to eat. There may be reasons that you don’t want to eat that much meat, in which case supplementation with creatine may make sense. In that case I would start with a gram or a gram and a half of creatine, but there is at least one case study suggesting that someone with MTHFR mutation and really high homocysteine was able to cut the homocysteine in half using 5 grams of creatine per day. "
 

Ideonaut

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Double n-back training and stuff like that for boosting IQ has badly failed replication. There have even been a bunch of lawsuits over these various "brain boosting" software programs that have been marketed for that purpose. They don't work.

I would bet that getting a difficult degree, like say a phd in philosophy or physics, would boost IQ test performance. But it just ain't gonna happen by doing puzzles, or whatever.
I agree with that. If I got a degree in biochemistry I'd have something. I'd be able to understand Peat's stuff. Crossword puzzles ain't gonna get ya nowhere--a little bit off your dime, but not far.
 

Drareg

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We have about 100 years of good data sets on population IQ. IQ seems to be pretty much constant over an individual's lifetime, at least among the general population.

I would bet years of effort can raise an individual IQ some, but in the grand scheme it's probably better thought of as fixed at birth, if not conception. The idea that poverty lowers IQ or a particularly good gestation and childhood raises IQ is discredited by quite a bit of data from war orphans, for one example.

Your data sets are riddled with fallacies,post them.

Studies done in westernised countries,Korea like Japan were westernised politically.
 

Drareg

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Following the Korean war a lot of orphans gestated and born into terrible poverty and stress were adopted by rich people. The "stressed" orphans on average scored higher on IQ tests than the rich adoptive typically western families. Exactly consistent with widespread population tests today.

There is repeatedly powerful evidence that by far the most important factors in IQ test performance happen at the moment of conception.

IQ has heritability of over 0.7, more than most features like height.

Please post these studies,you sound like another racial intelligence apologist.
 

Drareg

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Heritability also INCREASES with age. Twins separated at birth are more similar at 18 years old than 6 months. I've yet to see an mostly environmental view of IQ explain that fact away. Something people seem to misunderstand is that not all gene expression is purely environmental. Some genes are programmed to switch on later in life. Like hair color, puberty, etc. Of course environment is always a factor.

http://puu.sh/sOSUY/86e663e5b1.jpg

Oh look our resident neo nazi chiming in on a racial IQ debate with a random chart not linked to entire study,would this be because they were seperated in the same country by chance,didn't we go over this before?
I understand you can't let go of your pathology so please go ahead with your propaganda.

Can you define the word "gene" and your understanding of it,what is expression relative to the environment?
Programmed to be switched on? By who exactly? Who or what is this magical force that just switches them on?

Oh wait you state in your last sentence environment is a factor,so it's just kinda envolved but no so when it comes to expressing xenophobia/racism toward black people or any race that isn't Asian/white.

It's the rise intellectual racist and xenohobe,they use big boy research papers now.
 

Drareg

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My interpretation of that finding is that confounding factors slough off over time. In other words, anything that might have given you a slow or head start when you were a child falls away as your natural potential reveals itself.

Natural potential or lowered biological energy from environments that Ray Peat would mention in his articles?
 

Constatine

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Oh look our resident neo nazi chiming in on a racial IQ debate with a random chart not linked to entire study,would this be because they were seperated in the same country by chance,didn't we go over this before?
I understand you can't let go of your pathology so please go ahead with your propaganda.

Can you define the word "gene" and your understanding of it,what is expression relative to the environment?
Programmed to be switched on? By who exactly? Who or what is this magical force that just switches them on?

Oh wait you state in your last sentence environment is a factor,so it's just kinda envolved but no so when it comes to expressing xenophobia/racism toward black people or any race that isn't Asian/white.

It's the rise intellectual racist and xenohobe,they use big boy research papers now.
You are being a little hard on the guy but I do agree with you that he and the majority of people hardly understand genes at all. They see it as some biological fate rather than very adaptable instructions. Genes are regulated by many things and any change in one's biology (like taking a vitamin or eating differently) will result in many gene alterations and difference in expression.
 

michael94

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You are being a little hard on the guy but I do agree with you that he and the majority of people hardly understand genes at all. They see it as some biological fate rather than very adaptable instructions. Genes are regulated by many things and any change in one's biology (like taking a vitamin or eating differently) will result in many gene alterations and difference in expression.
As I mentioned above, the environments we expose ourselves to is in large part genetic. But even under controlled circumstances, the way we respond to these different environments is genetic also! Nutrition affecting phenotype does not mean that genes don't matter. Actually quite the contrary. I could take a wiener dog puppy and give him the best nutrition/excercise possible but it will never resemble a german shepherd.
 

haidut

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As I mentioned above, the environments we expose ourselves to is in large part genetic. But even under controlled circumstances, the way we respond to these different environments is genetic also! Nutrition affecting phenotype does not mean that genes don't matter. Actually quite the contrary. I could take a wiener dog puppy and give him the best nutrition/excercise possible but it will never resemble a german shepherd.

Not true. Actually those exact small animal experiments have been done and after about 20 generations they do start to resemble the equivalent of the "German shepherds" of their species, especially if they cohabitate with them. Mainstream genetic dogma actually explains this with "horizontal gene transfer" as there was no interbreeding between the species used in the tests.
The dichotomy of genes/environment is false. Genes are simply memory of past environments - the so-called "nature" is just a collection of many "nurtures". But what is "nurture"? It is the current "nature" you live in affecting you. The current "nature", and the ones to which the last 3 generations of your ancestors were exposed matters most. More importantly, genetic mutations are NOT random, they are driven by purposeful existence and adaptation to the environment, and capacity to adapt to environment is determined by metabolic rate (thyroid function). If mutations were more or less random you'd expect to see codons in the nucleus to be mostly random but they are not.
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/the-cancer-matrix.shtml
"...The gene mutation theory of cancer is sustained by a broader mystique of "genetics" in our culture. Over 100 years ago, an ideology of chance and random changes in organisms was superimposed onto the theory of evolution. After 1944, when Avery, MacLeod and McCarty showed that strands of DNA carry hereditary information, the doctrine of random change took on a specific chemical meaning--changes in the sequence of bases in the DNA molecule. This made it easier to disregard the evidence of the inheritance of acquired changes, since chemical, even biochemical, reactions are usually interpreted statistically, with an assumption of randomness. If the changes in the DNA code are random, and not influenced by the organism's physiology and biochemistry, then the four nucleotides that make up DNA (abbreviated G, C, A, and T) should show a random composition, but in fact the ratio of GC pairs to AT pairs varies in different types of organism, and in mitochondrial DNA, the GC (guanine-cytosine) content corresponds closely to the rate of oxidative metabolism and longevity (Lehmann, et al., 2008)."
 

Constatine

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Not true. Actually those exact small animal experiments have been done and after about 20 generations they do start to resemble the equivalent of the "German shepherds" of their species, especially if they cohabitate with them. Mainstream genetic dogma actually explains this with "horizontal gene transfer" as there was no interbreeding between the species used in the tests.
The dichotomy of genes/environment is false. Genes are simply memory of past environments - the so-called "nature" is just a collection of many "nurtures". But what is "nurture"? It is the current "nature" you live in affecting you. The current "nature", and the ones to which the last 3 generations of your ancestors were exposed matters most. More importantly, genetic mutations are NOT random, they are driven by purposeful existence and adaptation to the environment, and capacity to adapt to environment is determined by metabolic rate (thyroid function). If mutations were more or less random you'd expect to see codons in the nucleus to be mostly random but they are not.
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/the-cancer-matrix.shtml
"...The gene mutation theory of cancer is sustained by a broader mystique of "genetics" in our culture. Over 100 years ago, an ideology of chance and random changes in organisms was superimposed onto the theory of evolution. After 1944, when Avery, MacLeod and McCarty showed that strands of DNA carry hereditary information, the doctrine of random change took on a specific chemical meaning--changes in the sequence of bases in the DNA molecule. This made it easier to disregard the evidence of the inheritance of acquired changes, since chemical, even biochemical, reactions are usually interpreted statistically, with an assumption of randomness. If the changes in the DNA code are random, and not influenced by the organism's physiology and biochemistry, then the four nucleotides that make up DNA (abbreviated G, C, A, and T) should show a random composition, but in fact the ratio of GC pairs to AT pairs varies in different types of organism, and in mitochondrial DNA, the GC (guanine-cytosine) content corresponds closely to the rate of oxidative metabolism and longevity (Lehmann, et al., 2008)."
Much respect.
 

JCastro

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Not true. Actually those exact small animal experiments have been done and after about 20 generations they do start to resemble the equivalent of the "German shepherds" of their species, especially if they cohabitate with them. Mainstream genetic dogma actually explains this with "horizontal gene transfer" as there was no interbreeding between the species used in the tests.
The dichotomy of genes/environment is false. Genes are simply memory of past environments - the so-called "nature" is just a collection of many "nurtures". But what is "nurture"? It is the current "nature" you live in affecting you. The current "nature", and the ones to which the last 3 generations of your ancestors were exposed matters most. More importantly, genetic mutations are NOT random, they are driven by purposeful existence and adaptation to the environment, and capacity to adapt to environment is determined by metabolic rate (thyroid function). If mutations were more or less random you'd expect to see codons in the nucleus to be mostly random but they are not.
The Cancer Matrix
"...The gene mutation theory of cancer is sustained by a broader mystique of "genetics" in our culture. Over 100 years ago, an ideology of chance and random changes in organisms was superimposed onto the theory of evolution. After 1944, when Avery, MacLeod and McCarty showed that strands of DNA carry hereditary information, the doctrine of random change took on a specific chemical meaning--changes in the sequence of bases in the DNA molecule. This made it easier to disregard the evidence of the inheritance of acquired changes, since chemical, even biochemical, reactions are usually interpreted statistically, with an assumption of randomness. If the changes in the DNA code are random, and not influenced by the organism's physiology and biochemistry, then the four nucleotides that make up DNA (abbreviated G, C, A, and T) should show a random composition, but in fact the ratio of GC pairs to AT pairs varies in different types of organism, and in mitochondrial DNA, the GC (guanine-cytosine) content corresponds closely to the rate of oxidative metabolism and longevity (Lehmann, et al., 2008)."
This is very inspiring and I think it's why there are many cheerful people in the Ray Peat communities. Figures like Ray, Danny Roddy, Haidut, Karen Mcc, and Matt Stone all give off vibes of optimism and ease. Years ago, when I spent time in the raw fruit community, there was a surprising amount of neuroticism, bullying, and fear-mongering, and to a lesser extent in the paleo community, I notice that advice is given in the form of "do this; take this" as opposed to "I think this can work" or "this worked for me, maybe you should try it". Phoenixrising.me and methylation "doctors", who focus heavily on 23andme gene polymorphisms, never really produce results and all I really read is people getting hurt over there. I feel like looking at genes as a static foundation and basing your treatment off of that can get you nowhere or worse, hurt you.

We have the power to change ourselves and our lives if given the right information, and it's actually so simple and easy and can be done quickly or instantly. After being conditioned into victim-thinking your worldview can become so dark and hopeless (learned helplessness) Even the popular Stoic philosophy, that you can't change things, you can only change your reactions to them, I think is a lie. After previously subscribing to it, and in light of this thread, stoicism now looks to me like a philosophy of hibernation and pseudo-helplessness. We actually can change things, and doing so will profoundly change our reactions as a downstream effect instead of the excruciating cognitive behavioral modification crap.

As for IQ, genes, and the brain, it seems unclear but Ray/Haidut's proposition makes more sense. I seem to have inherited the manic tendencies of my father, but I wonder if things would be different had I never met him (never learning that behavior), if it would have manifested differently or not at all. But of course there are few geniuses in my family, my father and his side are not bright but I somehow acquired substantial curiosity and freedom of thought which allowed me to seek this fringe information without resistance, but with craving. My mother has the fringe-seeking trait, so I wonder if I learned it through perception or through some physiological inheritance in the womb? And the environment of the internet exposing me to deep thinkers enhanced my IQ. Icecreamlover (cute nazi girl pic) says that genes will predispose what your preferences are...but idk. My preferences have profoundly changed throughout my life solely due to experiences, learning, and consequences. I'm only interested in science because at first I had to be, to tackle my own health problems. Not a gene switching on or off, 5 and 10 years ago I was a completely different personality. Perhaps the very decision to fix my health instead of giving up is genetic according to icecreamlover, but then again I was exposed to ideas of strength and perseverance in my environment...so it just goes round and round in a circle of speculation. For maybe several more decades there will be conjecture and debate until a concrete consensus is made.

Since everything is so subtle, one side can say "oh that's genes" and the other side "oh that's environment/metabolism", but no one can currently be an arbiter and map out the exact timeline in someone's coding and see exactly what's causing everything.

As a rule of thumb, the slim or underweight people I know are more likely to be neurotic and really care what people think, while the burly or overweight ones are less likely to care what people think, are more outgoing and jolly, and less neurotic. In fact, I know two "developmentally disabled" kids at my job, same age, the very slim one is far more neurotic, jittery, and anxious, while the overweight one is indifferent, steadfast, and calm. The slim one is very immature in his tastes, and the big one is extremely insightful and scientific, when he does talk. Of course there are exceptions, but the correlation is heavy in EVERYONE I've met.

As for my "IQ", since eating more and warming myself up, my adrenaline has turned down, and has improved my thinking, and I'm now able to go about things better, I would guess my IQ is increasing. I've gained about 20 pounds, I'm more grounded in myself, and care less about my social perception by others. Before, I had to read things like 5 times to process them, and my thinking was stunted. In 2014, while malnourished, I watched the entirety of The Sopranos while practicing mindfulness and to this day I forget most, if not all, of that show. Just 2 or so months after finishing it, I couldn't even remember Carmela Soprano's first name. Whereas in my childhood, I could replay an entire episode of a cartoon in my head by memory.
 
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Ideonaut

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Icecreamlover:"I could take a wiener dog puppy and give him the best nutrition/excercise possible but it will never resemble a german shepherd."

Haidut: "Not true. Actually those exact small animal experiments have been done and after about 20 generations they do start to resemble the equivalent of the "German shepherds" of their species . . . .

I think you're doing some fuzzy thinking, Haidut. Instead of addressing the assertion about "a wiener dog puppy" you talk about an experiment with 20 generations. And "the equivalent of the 'German shepherds' of their species" (I suppose you meant "breed") does not mean that the wiener dogs actually resembled German shepherds in a meaningful sense. Perhaps if you had gorillas hang out with pigs for 20 generations a little pigness would rub off onto the gorillas, but so what?

As for "Genes are simply memory of past environments . . . " it seems to me that remembering past environments is a lot to expect of little old genes. Biologist Rupert Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields seem like a more likely hypothesis. I know Ray has written in a sympathetic vein about biological field theory.
 

Ideonaut

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I'm wondering if Peat would believe that IQ is fixed from birth or if it can change over time.
I read Win Wenger's How to Increase Your Intelligence in the mid 70s. I think Peat would generally agree with its general approach and of course have much to add. It is a program of nutrition, exercise, and stimulation, aimed especially at the deep bottleneck regions of the brain. I don't think its claim of being able to add 10 points (or whatever it ws) to a person's IQ are unreasonable. Interestingly Wenger recommends "masking" throughout the program, which is just bag-breathing--says that increased co2 in the blood opens the carotid arteries and supplies more blood to the brain. Wenger wrote another book, The Einstein Factor, in which he recommended "image streaming"--which amounts to training yourself to be more synaesthetic.
 

Peater Piper

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Creatine synthesis is also typically a large sink for methyl donors. Supplementing creatine may free up more methyl groups for use in neurotransmitter synthesis and detoxification - perhaps better vascular health as well with less homocysteine

From Chris Masterjohn

"Actually, strategy number four I should’ve mentioned that I didn’t get to. The other thing that you can do is try to reduce the demand for methylation in your body. And the simplest one thing that you can do to do that is to get a lot of creatine in your diet. 45% of your methylation demand is to synthesize creatine. Whole body creatine synthesis on average is about a gram and a half of creatine per day, and you can get that amount of creatine by eating 12 ounces of meat – of animal flesh per day. Now in the studies that quantified that, I think they were looking at people who were already eating maybe close to that amount of meat. So that might mean that you’re looking at a pound and a half of meat per day that you want to eat. There may be reasons that you don’t want to eat that much meat, in which case supplementation with creatine may make sense. In that case I would start with a gram or a gram and a half of creatine, but there is at least one case study suggesting that someone with MTHFR mutation and really high homocysteine was able to cut the homocysteine in half using 5 grams of creatine per day. "
This is a really cool bit of information, and a gram of creatine a day would be dirt cheap to supplement.
 

DaveFoster

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Not true. Actually those exact small animal experiments have been done and after about 20 generations they do start to resemble the equivalent of the "German shepherds" of their species, especially if they cohabitate with them. Mainstream genetic dogma actually explains this with "horizontal gene transfer" as there was no interbreeding between the species used in the tests.
The dichotomy of genes/environment is false. Genes are simply memory of past environments - the so-called "nature" is just a collection of many "nurtures". But what is "nurture"? It is the current "nature" you live in affecting you. The current "nature", and the ones to which the last 3 generations of your ancestors were exposed matters most. More importantly, genetic mutations are NOT random, they are driven by purposeful existence and adaptation to the environment, and capacity to adapt to environment is determined by metabolic rate (thyroid function). If mutations were more or less random you'd expect to see codons in the nucleus to be mostly random but they are not.
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/the-cancer-matrix.shtml
"...The gene mutation theory of cancer is sustained by a broader mystique of "genetics" in our culture. Over 100 years ago, an ideology of chance and random changes in organisms was superimposed onto the theory of evolution. After 1944, when Avery, MacLeod and McCarty showed that strands of DNA carry hereditary information, the doctrine of random change took on a specific chemical meaning--changes in the sequence of bases in the DNA molecule. This made it easier to disregard the evidence of the inheritance of acquired changes, since chemical, even biochemical, reactions are usually interpreted statistically, with an assumption of randomness. If the changes in the DNA code are random, and not influenced by the organism's physiology and biochemistry, then the four nucleotides that make up DNA (abbreviated G, C, A, and T) should show a random composition, but in fact the ratio of GC pairs to AT pairs varies in different types of organism, and in mitochondrial DNA, the GC (guanine-cytosine) content corresponds closely to the rate of oxidative metabolism and longevity (Lehmann, et al., 2008)."
That's incredibly interesting. Do you have a source, and were the changes physical or behavioral?
 

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