the addiction debate

[Vaked420]

People are dehydrated because they are addicted to salt, the most addictive substance in the world in my opinion. And no, sodium chloride is NOT the sodium our bodies need. Just as carbon is not carbon dioxide.

Eh people's salt addiction would be manageable if they drank the water they should to begin with instead of soda, juice and whatever else they can get that isn't water.

And rozroz this loops back to my point on "the addiction debate". I am definitely addicted to weed, but in comparison to most people's addiction to coffee and other unhealthy habits like salt/sugar addiction and chronic dehydration, the negative side effects from weed are minimal at best, especially when micro dosing or at least maintaining a regimen of consumption that isn't blasted off into space 24/7. To me a weed addiction is the lesser of many evils of getting through life without being pissed all day. I use drugs, most use things much more mentally, emotionally and physically unhealthy than drugs. And I think I use the best drug haha(no disses on coffee, that shit is the bomb too in moderation)

 

[lwien]

...addiction to coffee and other unhealthy habits

God, I feel like the "Coffee Defender". Considering all of the positive aspects that coffee can have on your health, I think it is in error to state generally that coffee is an unhealthy habit. It may be for some people but for others, it could be a VERY healthy habit.

 

[syrupy]

It's hard to consider it a healthy habit when a person can't function or fully awake without coffee on a daily basis.

Seriously, have you ever seen a coffee addict go an entire day without their fix? Not pretty. I'd be totally pro-coffee if it didn't have such nasty withdrawal symptoms.

 

[invertedisdead]

Eh people's salt addiction would be manageable if they drank the water they should to begin with instead of soda, juice and whatever else they can get that isn't water.

You can't drink enough water to compensate for the amount of salt most people are consuming on a daily basis. The average person consumes 3500mg +
It creates the cycle for dehydration and an acidic body, the root of all disease.

It's hard to consider it a healthy habit when a person can't function or fully awake without coffee on a daily basis.

Seriously, have you ever seen a coffee addict go an entire day without their fix? Not pretty. I'd be totally pro-coffee if it didn't have such nasty withdrawal symptoms.

Got a few coffee addicts in my family, it honestly reminds me of an episode of Intervention when they can't brew a cup.

 

[lwien]

It's hard to consider it a healthy habit when a person can't function or fully awake without coffee on a daily basis.

Seriously, have you ever seen a coffee addict go an entire day without their fix? Not pretty. I'd be totally pro-coffee if it didn't have such nasty withdrawal symptoms.

I guess the next question that needs to be asked is, is there such a thing as a positive addiction, especially considering all of the health benefits of coffee that have been published by very well respected medical journals and publications.

And, btw, that question in regards to positive addictions is on topic here, eh?

 

[Enchantre]

So, once I got off the grains (caused interstitial swelling), I started putting a pinch of grey sea salt in my quart water bottle, every time I fill it.

Reduces dehydration AND swelling. DO NOT TRY THIS if you are heavily into grains/sugars. I damned near burst my ankle skin back then, giving it a go.

 

[rozroz]

i can only say that for me the most common and repulsive addicts nowadays,
at least here in Israel where not overly strict rules applied yet,
are the regular cigarette smokers.
i used to smoke a few a day and it always felt
i'm being poisoned and immediately feel down.
i only smoked because it went parallel with my bad moods..
now that i don't, i simply cannot fathom how everyone walks, drives etc,
while sucking their industrial Nicotine like common Heroine addicts.
amazing.

reminds me that a few months ago a friend gave me a splif mixed with Tobacco,
and i just went to bed feeling so sick. bbbaaaaaaaaa.

 

[grokit]

Not everyone has too much sodium in their system.

Since the onset of my current medical condition, if I don't supplement with salt pills I cramp up with activity and become miserable. These have other minerals too because you need K(+) when you supplement Na.

I tried other minerals and these are the only thing that helps. The only reason I knew about these is because we would take straight salt pills when I was a kid, to stay hydrated when working outside in hot weather.

 

[herbivore21]

Yup. See for me, that chocolate croissant would be my poison. I try really hard to stay away from stuff like that. Fucking ice-cream though. That is my drug of choice that I do battle with myself about once or twice a week. Literally, I go into a mental battle............I want some..........no, don't. But I really, really want some............don't do it you dumbass.........etc etc. Sometimes I win..........sometimes I lose. Classic sign of ice cream addiction with denial being the only component that's missing.

Holy shit man, you're lucky as I'm sure they have a for-profit rehab centre just waiting to take your money (instead of 'big ice cream' as per usual )

Do you get the DT's when you don't have ice cream? I find that sometimes, I get the shivers when I do have ice cream!

 

[Tranquility]

I guess the next question that needs to be asked is, is there such a thing as a positive addiction, especially considering all of the health benefits of coffee that have been published by very well respected medical journals and publications.

And, btw, that question in regards to positive addictions is on topic here, eh?

Exercise is often described as a positive addiction even though you can hurt yourself AND the fact the addictive properties has to do with the release of neurochemicals.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3282525/
Endogenous reward mechanisms and their importance in stress reduction, exercise and the brain

Exercise techniques clearly have an impact upon these systems. Thereby, physical activities have a potential to increase mood, i.e., decrease psychological distress by pleasure induction. For doing so, neurobiological signalling molecules such as endogenous morphine and coupled nitric oxide pathways get activated and finely tuned. Evolutionarily, the various activities and autoregulatory pathways are linked together, which can also be demonstrated by the fact that dopamine is endogenously converted into morphine which itself leads to enhanced nitric oxide release by activation of constitutive nitric oxide synthase enzymes. These molecules and mechanisms are clearly stress-reducing.​

 

[yogoshio]

I guess the next question that needs to be asked is, is there such a thing as a positive addiction,

Still trying to find the article, but at least one new study shows that full participation in religious lifestyles (as opposed to the Sunday bench warmer types or in name only) releases euphoric chemicals into the brain. As long as said religion is based on love rather than hate (and I really don't mean to start a religious discussion, merely commenting on the main subject), I'd argue that's a positive addiction.

 

[invertedisdead]

The well respected medical publications are the least accurate and trustworthy, in my experience. In bed with big pharma and the FDA. They tend to tell you what you want to hear and not the truth.

 

[yogoshio]

The well respected medical publications are the least accurate and trustworthy, in my experience. In bed with big pharma and the FDA. They tend to tell you what you want to hear and not the truth.

You mean the ones who used to promote Malboro with multiple full page adds?

Or the ones who let drugs get fast-tracked because of major political contributions?

Or the ones who don't let the general public sue vaccine manufacturer's for vaccine related injuries?

I don't know why you're so pessimistic

 

[herbivore21]

The well respected medical publications are the least accurate and trustworthy, in my experience. In bed with big pharma and the FDA. They tend to tell you what you want to hear and not the truth.

That's just not true man. Medical journals are the hands-down best source of medical information. Peer reviewed studies, conducted by scholars with expertise in relevant sub-disciplines. The open, independent scientific literature does not have the same conflicts of interest and such that we see so rife in privately funded research and the two must not be conflated!

There are problems in medical science, but to dismiss all medical science as being in bed with big pharma/fda is unwise in the extreme! After all, this very process of knowledge creation and verification may well save your life one day, if it hasn't already (and it certainly has saved the lives of people around you whether you know it or not)!

Todd McCormick is a good example of one who is very critical of big pharma and some practices in medicine without throwing the baby out with the bathwater - he'll tell you himself that medical science saved his life and was indispensable in his battle with potentially terminal illness.

I am not talking about government organizations or privately funded research here (where there can be problems with conflicts of interest and other issues of administrative interference), but about academic research carried out by independent scholars (usually college academics) and published in peer reviewed journals.

In independent academia, the level of scrutiny before you even start a research project is incredibly painstaking and the process very long. You have an entire ethics committee to get your ideas past and every single member of said committee is duty-bound to slap you with a billion questions about the implications and methodology of the research you propose and any issues with conflicts of interest or flawed methods.

It is less likely for these sorts of problems to make it into published medical journals than most any other kind of publication and honestly the standards for evidence elsewhere just cannot be compared.

There is no more reliable source of information out there IME than peer reviewed scientific journal publications, and I've got to say that this claim includes cannabis more and more these days. Most of my recent advances in knowledge re: cannabis and extraction have come from my time considering relevant academic research literature (not just in medicine either!) - not from the stoner community lol.

Not meaning to call you out man, but I had to save that screaming baby as you went to empty the tub!

EDIT: BTW, I can't remember a time that I ever looked at a medical journal and read 'what I wanted to hear' lol.

 

[grokit]

Top result when searching for: "sugar addictive bad for health falsified research fda":

Sugar industry secretly paid for favorable Harvard research

"As nutrition debates raged in the 1960s, prominent Harvard nutritionists published two reviews in a top medical journal downplaying the role of sugar in coronary heart disease. Newly unearthed documents reveal what they didn’t say: A sugar industry trade group initiated and paid for the studies, examined drafts, and laid out a clear objective to protect sugar’s reputation in the public eye.

"Hegsted and Stare tore apart studies that implicated sugar and concluded that there was only one dietary modification — changing fat and cholesterol intake — that could prevent coronary heart disease. Their reviews were published in 1967 in the New England Journal of Medicine."

If you want to know about a whole bunch of falsified clinical pharmaceutical drug trials,
just remove the word "sugar" from the above search ...

 

[herbivore21]

Top result when searching for: "sugar addictive bad for health falsified research fda":

Sugar industry secretly paid for favorable Harvard research

"As nutrition debates raged in the 1960s, prominent Harvard nutritionists published two reviews in a top medical journal downplaying the role of sugar in coronary heart disease. Newly unearthed documents reveal what they didn’t say: A sugar industry trade group initiated and paid for the studies, examined drafts, and laid out a clear objective to protect sugar’s reputation in the public eye.

"Hegsted and Stare tore apart studies that implicated sugar and concluded that there was only one dietary modification — changing fat and cholesterol intake — that could prevent coronary heart disease. Their reviews were published in 1967 in the New England Journal of Medicine."

Holy shit bro, if you have to go back to the 60's to find a controversy like this, then the system is working pretty well these days

What I said still stands, the standards of evidence and scrutiny are higher in peer reviewed scientific publications than elsewhere. Also guess where the news article you pulled this from got this story from?

A medical journal:

http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2548255

Even when the odd case slips under the radar, independent medical researchers were the first to point it out - in medical journals. This illustrates my point.

 

[Baron23]

Top result when searching for: "sugar addictive bad for health falsified research fda":

Sugar industry secretly paid for favorable Harvard research

"As nutrition debates raged in the 1960s, prominent Harvard nutritionists published two reviews in a top medical journal downplaying the role of sugar in coronary heart disease. Newly unearthed documents reveal what they didn’t say: A sugar industry trade group initiated and paid for the studies, examined drafts, and laid out a clear objective to protect sugar’s reputation in the public eye.

"Hegsted and Stare tore apart studies that implicated sugar and concluded that there was only one dietary modification — changing fat and cholesterol intake — that could prevent coronary heart disease. Their reviews were published in 1967 in the New England Journal of Medicine."

If you want to know about a whole bunch of falsified clinical pharmaceutical drug trials,
just remove the word "sugar" from the above search ...

The open, independent scientific literature does not have the same conflicts of interest and such that we see so rife in privately funded research and the two must not be conflated!

@grokit - I think you just did...conflate them, that is.

 

[grokit]

Holy shit bro, if you have to go back to the 60's to find a controversy like this, then the system is working pretty well these days

What I said still stands, the standards of evidence and scrutiny are higher in peer reviewed scientific publications than elsewhere. Also guess where the news article you pulled this from got this story from?

A medical journal:

http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2548255

Please check my edit:
If you want to know about a whole bunch of falsified clinical pharmaceutical drug trials,
just remove the word "sugar" from the above search ...
https://www.google.com/search?q=addictive+bad+for+health+falsified+research+fda
FDA Let Drugs Approved on Fraudulent Research Stay on the Market ...
https://www.propublica.org/.../fda-let-drugs-approved-on-fraudulent-research-stay-on...
Apr 15, 2013 - FDA Let Drugs Approved on Fraudulent Research Stay on the Market ... The health threat was potentially serious: About 100 drugs, including ... compounds and addictive prescription painkillers, had been approved for sale in the ..... reporting that "many of the chemists were manipulating and falsifying data.
Big Pharma Clinical Trials - The Cover Ups & Hidden Data
https://www.drugwatch.com/manufacturer/clinical-trials-and-hidden-data/
Oct 14, 2016 - Clinical trials rely on Big Pharma funding, but drug manufacturers rely on profits. ... Health Info · Drug Addiction · News · About Us · Weitz & Luxenberg · More ... community giving advice to patients with false or incomplete data. ... rarely uncover results in time to prevent harmful consequences from occurring.
Fraudulent clinical trials known to FDA 'hidden from journals and public'
www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/289167.php
Rating: 4.6 - ‎9 votes
Feb 10, 2015 - Some 40% of the 57 clinical trials receiving official FDA action up to 2013 involved ... The bad practices ranged from falsification of results to poor ... They write: "Given the FDA's missions to protect research subjects and the public health, .... Addiction · Addison's Disease (Primary Adrenal Insufficiency) ...
Health Fraud | FDA Voice
blogs.fda.gov/fdavoice/index.php/category/health-fraud-2/
Jul 12, 2016 - FDA is monitoring for fraudulent products and false product claims related ... Alerting consumers of the dangers of imported tainted products falsely .... opioid abuse and addiction and its devastating impact on public health. .... in research aimed at transforming food safety and medical product development.
FDA inspections: Fraud, fabrication, and scientific misconduct are ...
www.slate.com/.../health.../fda_inspections_fraud_fabrication_and_scientific_miscond...
Feb 9, 2015 - The FDA buries evidence of fraud in medical trials. ... Agents of the Food and Drug Administration know better than anyone else just how bad scientific misbehavior can get. ... and which drugs might be on the market under false pretenses. ..... the misconduct doesn't pose an immediate risk to public health.

(top five results)

 

[herbivore21]

@grokit - I think you just did...conflate them, that is.

It is somewhat a case of both, in this case the original authors could be argued to have presented their privately funded research as if it were independently funded in the first instance. It is definitely on those researchers and you can bet all of our asses that those guys are out of the job now

 

[grokit]

So where's the list of what 'official research' is real, and what's manipulated by industry and ideology?

It may be better served to check the bank balances of the researchers, and their administrators.

It's all about who funds the research grants; money usually comes with strings attached.

 

[herbivore21]

Please check my edit:
If you want to know about a whole bunch of falsified clinical pharmaceutical drug trials,
just remove the word "sugar" from the above search ...

FDA Let Drugs Approved on Fraudulent Research Stay on the Market ...
https://www.propublica.org/.../fda-let-drugs-approved-on-fraudulent-research-stay-on...
Apr 15, 2013 - FDA Let Drugs Approved on Fraudulent Research Stay on the Market ... The health threat was potentially serious: About 100 drugs, including ... compounds and addictive prescription painkillers, had been approved for sale in the ..... reporting that "many of the chemists were manipulating and falsifying data.
Big Pharma Clinical Trials - The Cover Ups & Hidden Data
https://www.drugwatch.com/manufacturer/clinical-trials-and-hidden-data/
Oct 14, 2016 - Clinical trials rely on Big Pharma funding, but drug manufacturers rely on profits. ... Health Info · Drug Addiction · News · About Us · Weitz & Luxenberg · More ... community giving advice to patients with false or incomplete data. ... rarely uncover results in time to prevent harmful consequences from occurring.
Fraudulent clinical trials known to FDA 'hidden from journals and public'
www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/289167.php
Rating: 4.6 - ‎9 votes
Feb 10, 2015 - Some 40% of the 57 clinical trials receiving official FDA action up to 2013 involved ... The bad practices ranged from falsification of results to poor ... They write: "Given the FDA's missions to protect research subjects and the public health, .... Addiction · Addison's Disease (Primary Adrenal Insufficiency) ...
Health Fraud | FDA Voice
blogs.fda.gov/fdavoice/index.php/category/health-fraud-2/
Jul 12, 2016 - FDA is monitoring for fraudulent products and false product claims related ... Alerting consumers of the dangers of imported tainted products falsely .... opioid abuse and addiction and its devastating impact on public health. .... in research aimed at transforming food safety and medical product development.
FDA inspections: Fraud, fabrication, and scientific misconduct are ...
www.slate.com/.../health.../fda_inspections_fraud_fabrication_and_scientific_miscond...
Feb 9, 2015 - The FDA buries evidence of fraud in medical trials. ... Agents of the Food and Drug Administration know better than anyone else just how bad scientific misbehavior can get. ... and which drugs might be on the market under false pretenses. ..... the misconduct doesn't pose an immediate risk to public health.

I'll go through these one by one and this will be my last post on this topic - after all, I'm usually paid to write this kind of critique and it is the holidays

1. https://www.propublica.org/article/fda-let-drugs-approved-on-fraudulent-research-stay-on-the-market - this refers to a private research company used by drug companies to conduct research for the purpose of getting their drugs approved by the FDA. See my original comment a few posts back about conflating privately funded and independent research output.

2. https://www.propublica.org/article/fda-let-drugs-approved-on-fraudulent-research-stay-on-the-market - this clearly refers only to cases of direct, private funded research by pharma companies as above. The mention of publication bias is very important indeed, and I have mentioned that this is a problem in scholarly research (independent research too)! However, publication bias again was first identified in the independent scholarly literature. My above point about scientific journals being the first to identify problems with scientific research again is being exemplified.

3. Again this relates to issues relating to drug trials, which are generally funded by pharma and cannot be considered independent research.

4. This link seems to take me to something about misleading advertising claims about medicines said to treat Zika. As I go through it, the only comments I can find of relevance relate to the above scenarios.

5. Again as above. Describes a regulator doing its job trying to reign in privately funded studies being used to try to get drugs approved (drugs that were manufactured by said private funders). This does not relate to independent scholarly research. It identifies clear problems with regulation and approval of medicines in the United States and the difficulty in identifying conflicts of interest like the funding arrangements described in each of my above points - but is far from an indictment of all medical scientific research/all medical journals.

Independent research is by definition not funded by those with any kind of interest in the thing being researched. The above links describe cases of private funding and conflicts of interest leading to fraud. This is a very compelling argument for more independent research of the kind I describe

 

[lwien]

Great stuff here guys. I'm learning a lot but......... http://fuckcombustion.com/threads/p...re-they-real-or-are-they-funded-frauds.23436/

 

[grokit]

Again the difference between what is credible, and what is compromised research is hard to suss. It seems that this type of fraud is endemic, reflecting our intentional ignorance of the causes of human disease.

"As of 2015, the U.S. ranks 29th out of 43 countries for life expectancy, lagging behind countries like Chile, Costa Rica, Slovenia, Korea and the Czech Republic. In 2014, the U.S. ranked 28th.

Moreover, according to Dr. Peter Muennig, a professor of health policy and management at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, this decline in life expectancy is a "uniquely American phenomenon." No other developed countries experienced this decline.

Dr. Jiaquan Xu, the report's lead author, noted that the decline in life expectancy is "primarily caused by a rise in several categories of preventable deaths, again highlighting the failure of the American health care system to properly address the root causes of chronic disease."

https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/life-expectancy-at-birth.htm
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/a...-opioid-role-american-declining-lifespan.aspx

This last article touches upon the opioid crisis, getting back to addiction.

 

[CarolKing]

Life is stressful with all the wonderful, there's a lot of stress thrown in. Whether it be from school or a job we just never can get a way from it. With some personalities and brains some people just can't handle it and need an outlet. So many self medicating with worse than cannabis.

A thing or an activity can fill a place where the overwhelming feelings can be lessened. A little bit of a deversion. A person could have many different types of addictions and many people do. It can be something as simple as playing a video game or drinking energy drinks. If it becomes something that you can't stop doing and that's all you do, then it becomes a problem.

Or if it's something that costs too much money and you cant afford what you are buying but you do it any way. That will create problems in your life. If the addiction is in control and isn't hurting anybody, go for it. You don't want to use your money on weed instead of food and rent for the family, if you do you need help. You may need to take a T break. If you are drinking alcohol and can't stop that, it can develope into a problem. Whatever it is if it's interfering in your life it's a problem.

Edit
@herbivore21 Agreed many addictions happen beyond a person's control, such as a severe illness or injury and the need for opiates take over control.
I'm medicated sorry if I'm full of BS. Cannabis can be a godsend for some folks. It should be free to those that can't afford it and that really need it.
It should be legal worldwide. People should be able to grow as much as they want - it's a plant!

Some drugs are so expensive regular folks can't afford them. Pain killers are cheap if perscribed. Maybe that's why they were dolling them out like candy 5 -10 years ago. Then after all these people became addicted they decided to change the rules. What happened then?

I had a lot of editing to do.

 

[herbivore21]

Or if it's something that costs too much money and you cant afford what you are buying but you do it any way.

This is not strictly true. Remember that many require unreasonably expensive medications to sustain their very lives! That it sets them back more than they can afford cannot be said to be addiction in these cases.