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>The body has plenty of functions that are best left on their default settings or minimized. We're arguing what the 'default' is. I'm arguing the default state

>The body has plenty of functions that are best left on their default settings or minimized. We're arguing what the 'default' is. I'm arguing the default state is with lead. It would be strange for a protein to evolve to get so easily activated by a toxin. >To show it's healthy you'd need studies showing better health of exposed people, or at least some theoretical reason you'd want lead to make it even plausible. I thing it's completely uncontroversial that the current typical human health is at the historic rock bottom. There is no reason theoretical or not to believe it is toxic in the first place, except for the strange claim that the body uses it in error. >The neanderthals probably ate stuff from lead rich soil or something, that doesn't prove it wasn't harmful. That's an absurd claim, and really grasping at straws, don't you think? Mote that the remains aren't many. It isn't that they sieved through thousands of teeth to find a couple that were poisoned.

kevviiinn 4y ago
You're absolutely wrong, why don't we start consuming things like poneratoxin? Proteins evolved to be activated by it right?
eternityforest 4y ago
I don't think it's uncontroversial at all. People's health is better for lots of reasons unrelated to lead, so it's very hard to compare. We no longer die of pathogens and injuries as much, even COVID is not as bad as some historical plagues. There's new hazards that didn't exist then, but a some of them are exactly due to the body doing harmful things with surplus nutrition, that's what obesity is. Toxins activate things all the time. Just because it can be activated doesn't prove it should be activated at any more than the baseline level, and some things might be better off activated less. There's various papers on "ultratrace elements" and a few old ones on "lead deficiency" talking about impaired lipid absorption, and reduced Hct and Hb(Isn't lower but still normal hemoglobin a good thing?) but people are likely already getting more lead than 100 years ago. Even if there's some role for lead and the papers aren't getting it wrong, everyone's probably getting more than the optimal point. Unless they study that optimal point it could be above, the same as, or well below what our ancestors got. Or perhaps the optimal point has even changed. Maybe lead helped them have Moe Hb, which helped them persistence hunt or something, but now we don't need any boosts like that to meet typical or even optimal levels of excercise, and it just puts unneeded stress on the heart. We do have studies like this showing detrimental effects to people with increased lead, even within the typical range(https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.106.628321 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.106.6...)
- Weneedlead 4y ago
  >any more than the baseline level Again. Can't you see it's a circular argument? How did you determine that it's the 'baseline'? >people are likely getting more lead than 100 years ago. People used to get much more. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305440310002682 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03054...
  - eternityforest 4y ago
    "baseline" meaning "the minimal level of activation one gets without any currently-uncommon exogenous thing that activates it.". There are lots of experiments where they give mice a gene for reduced function of something, or knock something out entirely and they actually live longer. To me that shows that some functions might exist for increased performance or endurance, to a degree no longer needed in civilized society, at the cost of more disease risk, and we might not necessarily want everything firing on all cylinders. Without further study, I don't see why we'd assume that activating proteins indicates it's a good thing. That lead thing is from one specific study in Japan. They(Like most places) did not have a long life expectancy before modernization, and they mentioned they probably got it from white lead used by their mothers, which would not be a global universal thing. Their life expectancy was also rather short back then in seems, probably for reasons unrelated to lead, but that still means it's close to impossible to say whether they had good nutrition or not, since even absolutely terrible diets might not have effects for a decade, unless there's enough total food for obesity to happen.
    - Weneedlead 4y ago
      [dead]

kevviiinn 4y ago

You're absolutely wrong, why don't we start consuming things like poneratoxin? Proteins evolved to be activated by it right?

eternityforest 4y ago

I don't think it's uncontroversial at all. People's health is better for lots of reasons unrelated to lead, so it's very hard to compare. We no longer die of pathogens and injuries as much, even COVID is not as bad as some historical plagues. There's new hazards that didn't exist then, but a some of them are exactly due to the body doing harmful things with surplus nutrition, that's what obesity is. Toxins activate things all the time. Just because it can be activated doesn't prove it should be activated at any more than the baseline level, and some things might be better off activated less. There's various papers on "ultratrace elements" and a few old ones on "lead deficiency" talking about impaired lipid absorption, and reduced Hct and Hb(Isn't lower but still normal hemoglobin a good thing?) but people are likely already getting more lead than 100 years ago. Even if there's some role for lead and the papers aren't getting it wrong, everyone's probably getting more than the optimal point. Unless they study that optimal point it could be above, the same as, or well below what our ancestors got. Or perhaps the optimal point has even changed. Maybe lead helped them have Moe Hb, which helped them persistence hunt or something, but now we don't need any boosts like that to meet typical or even optimal levels of excercise, and it just puts unneeded stress on the heart. We do have studies like this showing detrimental effects to people with increased lead, even within the typical range(https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.106.628321 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.106.6...)

Weneedlead 4y ago
>any more than the baseline level Again. Can't you see it's a circular argument? How did you determine that it's the 'baseline'? >people are likely getting more lead than 100 years ago. People used to get much more. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305440310002682 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03054...
- eternityforest 4y ago
  "baseline" meaning "the minimal level of activation one gets without any currently-uncommon exogenous thing that activates it.". There are lots of experiments where they give mice a gene for reduced function of something, or knock something out entirely and they actually live longer. To me that shows that some functions might exist for increased performance or endurance, to a degree no longer needed in civilized society, at the cost of more disease risk, and we might not necessarily want everything firing on all cylinders. Without further study, I don't see why we'd assume that activating proteins indicates it's a good thing. That lead thing is from one specific study in Japan. They(Like most places) did not have a long life expectancy before modernization, and they mentioned they probably got it from white lead used by their mothers, which would not be a global universal thing. Their life expectancy was also rather short back then in seems, probably for reasons unrelated to lead, but that still means it's close to impossible to say whether they had good nutrition or not, since even absolutely terrible diets might not have effects for a decade, unless there's enough total food for obesity to happen.
  - Weneedlead 4y ago
    [dead]