Smoking is associated with a lot of things, and in many cases, such as depression, the causation is very confused. It’s possible people were self-medicating for these problems with cigarettes. Personally, I’ve switched from nicotine-and-flavoring-only e-cig juice to WTA juice following a comment in a Slate Star thread talking about the MAOI in tobacco, and the slow decline I’ve experienced with the effectiveness of vitamin D in correcting my emotional deadness seems to have largely, although not entirely, reverted. I hesitate to declare it a success, placebo effect and everything, but I certainly started smoking in a particularly deep depression, and my recovery, in retrospect, stalled out when I switched to e-cigs. (Which I was entirely not expecting, since I moved at the same time from a Northern state to a Southern one, explicitly for the increased hours of sunlight.)
Gwern might have data on peak iodine consumption somewhere on his site. I feel like the sodium scare happened later, but that’s hard to pin down.
ETA: I’m also on absurd doses of iodine (usually used by paranoid people to flush out radiation or something), personally, because with a normal consumption level, iodine (which I have long used as a general-purpose antiseptic) would -visibly- absorb into my skin, which is apparently a sign that my levels are low.
Why do you think your levels are low if iodine absorbs into your skin? Biologically necessary doses have little relation to somewhat arbitrarily concentrated solutions! Or there have been studies on it, and I don’t know something less obvious?
Smoking is associated with a lot of things, and in many cases, such as depression, the causation is very confused. It’s possible people were self-medicating for these problems with cigarettes. Personally, I’ve switched from nicotine-and-flavoring-only e-cig juice to WTA juice following a comment in a Slate Star thread talking about the MAOI in tobacco, and the slow decline I’ve experienced with the effectiveness of vitamin D in correcting my emotional deadness seems to have largely, although not entirely, reverted. I hesitate to declare it a success, placebo effect and everything, but I certainly started smoking in a particularly deep depression, and my recovery, in retrospect, stalled out when I switched to e-cigs. (Which I was entirely not expecting, since I moved at the same time from a Northern state to a Southern one, explicitly for the increased hours of sunlight.)
Gwern might have data on peak iodine consumption somewhere on his site. I feel like the sodium scare happened later, but that’s hard to pin down.
ETA: I’m also on absurd doses of iodine (usually used by paranoid people to flush out radiation or something), personally, because with a normal consumption level, iodine (which I have long used as a general-purpose antiseptic) would -visibly- absorb into my skin, which is apparently a sign that my levels are low.
Why do you think your levels are low if iodine absorbs into your skin? Biologically necessary doses have little relation to somewhat arbitrarily concentrated solutions! Or there have been studies on it, and I don’t know something less obvious?