IQ And Peat

Dhair

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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 feel that I'm much less intelligent than I was a few years ago. I would have thought that having a high IQ as a teenager would mean that I was only going to get significantly more intelligent as my brain continued to grow, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
I have been poisoned by SSRIs since I was a preteen, so I'm sure that didn't do me any favors.
I was watching an interview with Thomas Sowell on William F Buckey's show Firing Line years ago and he made the point that an individual's IQ test results can vary greatly over time. in a way, this seems like common sense but I know that many people say just the opposite.
Can cognitive function advance and evolve as one removes stressors from one's life? Would dopaminergic drugs be an effective way to help this process along?
 

DaveFoster

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That's the million dollar question. I say yes; if anything, dopaminergic drugs combined with a stimulating environment filled with creativity, love, passion, and purpose (probably spirituality as well as a result) would maximize human intelligence.

Use Dr. Peat as an example; he paints, maximizes thyroid function, minimizes stress, helps others, engages in philosophical dialogue, writes, etc.

Intelligence and metabolism
 

Constatine

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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 feel that I'm much less intelligent than I was a few years ago. I would have thought that having a high IQ as a teenager would mean that I was only going to get significantly more intelligent as my brain continued to grow, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
I have been poisoned by SSRIs since I was a preteen, so I'm sure that didn't do me any favors.
I was watching an interview with Thomas Sowell on William F Buckey's show Firing Line years ago and he made the point that an individual's IQ test results can vary greatly over time. in a way, this seems like common sense but I know that many people say just the opposite.
Can cognitive function advance and evolve as one removes stressors from one's life? Would dopaminergic drugs be an effective way to help this process along?
Yes IQ changes all the time, even throughout the day. Even major, more permanent changes in IQ can happen quite rapidly. The human brain is an ever changing system and is almost entirely dependent on its environment. Unless you are absolutely overwhelmed with stressors I doubt removing stressors will benefit IQ much. As long as your system is healthy many stressors can have a positive effect on your body, but if your system is already having problems then stressors should be avoided until recovery. Also what dopaminergic drugs are we talking about? After regular use dopaminergic drugs can downregulate dopamine receptors which would further reduce brain health. However the effect of a general dopamine agonist will outshine receptor downregulation as it only takes about a week for receptors to upregulate and when all is said and done the net effect will be dopaminergic. For cognitive function I think it is better to focus on energy function (atp, mitochondria health, etc).
 
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Dhair

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Yes IQ changes all the time, even throughout the day. Even major, more permanent changes in IQ can happen quite rapidly
Could you elaborate on this? Are you saying that IQ could dramatically lower and then never rebound? How would this occur?
Also, to clarify, I was thinking that IQ could be significantly lower if someone is hypothyroid , suffering from mitochondrial damage, chronic inflammation, chemotherapy or anything else that causes long lasting negative effects in the organism
 
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Constatine

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Could you elaborate on this? Are you saying that IQ could dramatically lower and then never rebound? How would this occur?
Also, I was thinking that IQ could be significantly lower if someone is hypothyroid , suffering from mitochondrial damage, chronic inflammation, chemotherapy or anything else that causes long lasting negative effects in the organism
IQ can lower dramatically but it can always rebound. This can occur with a sudden and dramatic lifestyle change. For an example if a man lived his entire life expressing novelty, being outdoorsy, and eating generally healthy suddenly gets an extremely demanding job where he is forced to stay indoors sedentary all day, perform repetitive tasks, and is overworked thus he does not have time to eat good food (maybe even under eats) his IQ is bound to plummet. Also almost any alteration in diet will result in cognitive changes, though most of the time the change is minuscule. Changing one's pattern of thoughts will also change IQ dramatically but it will not change true intelligence significantly. By that I mean if one is trained to become a digital thinker (like an engineer) their scores will likely differ from when they were an analog thinker. But the brain health (or what I mean by true intelligence) will not likely be changed significantly. And yes IQ will lower due to hypothyroidism, inflammation, etc.
 

lvysaur

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Could you elaborate on this? Are you saying that IQ could dramatically lower and then never rebound? How would this occur?

Well, one of the things that IQ measures is your willingness to take a test for no reason.

People do better quality work when their performance is linked to real consequences.
 
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haidut

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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 feel that I'm much less intelligent than I was a few years ago. I would have thought that having a high IQ as a teenager would mean that I was only going to get significantly more intelligent as my brain continued to grow, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
I have been poisoned by SSRIs since I was a preteen, so I'm sure that didn't do me any favors.
I was watching an interview with Thomas Sowell on William F Buckey's show Firing Line years ago and he made the point that an individual's IQ test results can vary greatly over time. in a way, this seems like common sense but I know that many people say just the opposite.
Can cognitive function advance and evolve as one removes stressors from one's life? Would dopaminergic drugs be an effective way to help this process along?

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.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1691485/
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
 

passivity

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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
:thankyoublue
 

zztr

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IQ is fixed from birth or if it can change over time.

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.
 

zztr

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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.
 

Constatine

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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.
I would guess this is because people's lifestyles don't change to often.
 

zztr

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I would guess this is because people's lifestyles don't change to often.

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.
 

michael94

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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.

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
 
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I feel that I'm much less intelligent than I was a few years ago. I would have thought that having a high IQ as a teenager would mean that I was only going to get significantly more intelligent as my brain continued to grow, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

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.
 
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michael94

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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.
Right. And the type of environments we expose ourselves to has a genetic component. Even if the genetic differences in decision making are incredibly small ( I don't think they always are ), consider all of the decisions one makes over the years. Easy to see how it adds up.
 
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Dhair

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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.
Thomas Sowell analyzed IQ scores of Polish immigrants and their children, second generation polish Americans, and found that their IQ was significantly higher than their parents'. Same goes for some other ethnic groups.
 

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