My Theory Of Stress - Which Is A Response To Peat's Critique Of Hormesis

yerrag

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Haha! Maybe people should respond to Haidut's lab suggestions as "I've tested supplement x on my pond of Koi" instead of talking about their rats.
Yup, but I also test on my cats. You seem to have quite a number of them as well. They double as pets and as willing test subjects.

They also have a hormetic effect on us. Their dander and their bacteria give us low stresses that make us deal better with bacteria and with allergies.
 

Xemnoraq

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Hormesis is useful in unstressed organisms, that is, with a baseline of non-stress so that recovery is possible. Organisms under chronic stress will eventually lose their capacity for adaptation and at that point even hormetic stressors, i.e. those that could benefit a healthy organism, are bad. The problem with applying antifragility/hormesis to modern life is most of us are stressed, metabolically deranged, and damaged. Cold showers can be beneficial for a person with robust health and thyroid function but when I was at my least healthy, even a few minutes of icy water would ruin me for the whole day.
This is a perfect representation in my opinion on the idea of hormesis, and to be fair i think it was Peat or Georgi that said this i cant remember unfortunately but i remember hearing one of them say something along the lines of hormesis is a thing relating to evolving and adapting to your environment, however adaptation requires energy and PUFA in every way diminshes the ability to adapt because of its chronic stress effect diminishing the hormetic effect,

Now that i think back i think it was Peat that said this and basically i think a simple way to put it is that adaptations can happen if an organism is in a fight prepped state if the cells are energized because an adaptation requires an energetic response similar to working out,

However if an organism is chronically drained and overstressed, the excess of stress interferes with the ability to actually adapt and overcome challenges,

To me i take this as anything that accumulates in the body like PUFA, makes stress chronic as opposed to acute, where as you can see a hormetic effect from things like exercise, caffeine and some drugs.

To me that makes perfect sense think of something psycologically stressful to you that you’ve never been able to get over your fear of but others around you seem to have no issues of it, it seems like too much stress from that can completely steer you away and that teaches the organism as a survival instinct (to preserve itself) for harm avoidance etc.

But if one has enough energetic reserves and the stress can be in small doses to the point where its not debilitating,

Well, if its not debilitating then it doesnt completely shut the organism off from it or put the organism into turtle mode and based on how the brain works if you can teach your brain that a situation was a win rather than a loss or change the expected outcome for next time or percieved outcome then that i think rewires the way the brain views a stressful event and i think this relates to overcoming ptsd by turning your loses into wins with having the energetic reserves to recover and adapt,

So thats just my opinion,

If you look at alot of people who had a hard life growing up, i noticed that allthough they seem to have problems of their own, however they do seem to be more resilient and have higher androgens in life compared to the pampered kids who were shielded from the horrible world.

One of my friends is like this and he always seems to be extremely androgenic compared to everyone else despite doing alot of the same things he seems to have no psycological stress response to things that other people do, could be partially sociopathic but i view it as an adaptation to thrive in a harsh environment by having energetic reserves to facilitate adaptations. Because for him he had no choice growing up kicked out on his own it was either adapt and become stronger, or die out and breakdown right, im guessing if the body has energetic reserves it can overcome things like this.

So in my opinion what doesnt kill you does make you stronger but only in the sense if we can describe as having a sort of hormetic effect.

Bottom line i think is chronic and debilitating stress inhibits hormesis, however acute (non cumulative stress) can be hormetic and adaptive,

Things that come to mind on hormesis is he idea of poison hormesis like how people use to dose themselves with small amounts of poison to become resistant if they were poisoned,

Similar effects are seen in drug use today,

Marijuana facilitates a massive increase in pregnenolone in the brain but this is aparently not cause by the marijuana, its actually the body’s response to aparently combat marijuana intoxication, in alcohol, you can see some people who can drink excessive amounts while others get very sick easily, the idea of tolerance and being a tough system i think is interesting,

It would be a topic of interest to explore these ideas more in relation to when an organism has the proper energetic reserves
 
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Peat has said that if you have good levels of T, pregnenolone, progesterone, thyroid, you can handle a great deal of stress without a problem.
 

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