Ask HN: Just curious, how prevalent is the use of nootropics among HN members? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Four months ago, 200+ comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9242379](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9242379)

<comment><USER3> Elaborating on one of the ideas there:

If there were a simple molecule that increases your brain function by a significant percentage without negative long-term consequences, evolution would have probably found it already.

<comment><USER4> That's not necessarily true. While I agree that the production of these chemicals takes a lot of energy/resources which may not be worth the tradeoff within the human body, there is no reason to believe such benefits cannot be achieved through externally produced drugs. Also, evolution is a game of chance, and the required mutations may not have occurred in humans yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Every once in a while the urge strikes me to order about 20 ampoules of an amazing nootropic from behind the iron curtain made from enzymatically refining growth factors from the brains of pigs, and then loading 5ml into a sterile syringe and stabbing it into the most muscular part of my thigh.

Pushing the plunger down, the elixir streams through the 20 gauge needle. I feel no pain, Ever Neuro Pharma, the maker, is wise enough to include some local anesthetic.

A serene state of heightened focus and recall is only 10 seconds away.

Cerebrolysin has a very real effect, and we know that from studies in rats and humans. Its approved for a variety of conditions in 44 countries, and confers an objective improvement in the capabilities of Parkinson's patients for example.

It's revitalizing and it raised my average jeopardy score (self-scored in my own style) by about 3 correct answers per game.

I have enjoyed a variety of nootropics, and am very happy to have gotten my hands on some NSI-189, a DARPA funded molecule that aimed to create the war fighter of the future.

It's currently undergoing clinical trials, but I have in my possession about 4.5 grams of the hippocampal stem cell promoting substance.

<comment><USER6> Have you considered writing short science fiction? Deadly serious, here: this is very well written.

<comment><USER5> Thank you for the kind words, they make me particularly happy because I felt completely mentally shot post-burnout from an awful consulting project, I'm glad I still have it, and I think NSI definitely helped my recovery.

My original goal post-college was to write, direct and self-fund microbudget movies. I got caught up in the self-funding part.

Here is my latest attempt at solving the money problem once and for all so I could focus on writing:

I called it the Winter Startup Challenge, and my goal is to defossilize one human activity.

[http://wsc.willholloway.net/index.html](http://wsc.willholloway.net/index.html)

Theres some more (and photos) about nootropics here:

[http://wsc.willholloway.net/nootropics.html](http://wsc.willholloway.net/nootropics.html)

<comment><USER6> "Best part to predict the future is to live it." There's great deal of science fiction about enhancement, but usually it discusses nanotechnology or compute- based augmentation; there's less out there that would cover the impact of actually understanding how the brain works ("the brain genome project") and developing more "natural" solutions.

Re: movies. Charles Stross ('cstross' on here) mentioned how television has effectively replaced the short story as commercial medium -- so youtube shorts could effectively have the same impact short stories (e.g., Flowers for Algernon -- _the_ original story about enhancement) once had.

tl;dr Please write a modernized "Flowers for Algernon", perhaps as a film short.

<comment><USER5> You and the other commenters piqued my interest in writing a sci-fi short story. I'm currently trying to raise a f&f funding round and then on to a crowd funding round, but I thought maybe I could justify the time if I put a little product placement for my invention in there.

I was thinking about it and since we have seen the drug induced super- intelligence story a few times, I was thinking of incorporating some of the ideas of David Pierce, from his seminal work The Hedonistic Imperative.

[http://hedweb.com](http://hedweb.com)

Can't promise anything but I'll let you know if I do!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any question about nootropics deserves at least one answer that points towards Gwern's nootropics notes[1]. Additionally, you can search (I suggest searching for both gwern and nootropics in comments to identify stories) as this topic has come up a few times before and a lot of people have chimed in with their own experiences.

1: [http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics](http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics)

</comment><comment><USER8> Tumbleweeds seems to indicate "not very".

My view, FWIW: silly fad. Non-scientific. Just sleep more and get a moderate amount of exercise and you'll probably be right.

<comment><USER9> Not a user, and never have myself, but calling it non-scientific seems to be quite a stretch.

<comment><USER10> People try some of these things based on studies with 12 people or just anecdotal evidence on forums. Then sometimes you're ordering research chemicals from the internet so who knows. We're not talking FDA stuff here.

<comment><USER9> perhaps, I was thinking stuff like provigil/modafinil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I tried Modafinil a while back, maybe a few years ago. It kept me awake, but that was it. No improved concentration, no boost in energy. YMMV

<comment><USER12> Exact experience here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Saw an interesting and relevant discussion in this thread earlier today: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9877773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9877773)

The user willholloway seems to have quite a bit of experience (using deprenyl/azilect as opposed to amphetamines to prevent neurodegeneration) and is touting a new "small-molecule drug", NSI-189, as a future major treatment for "depression, ptsd, and other neurodegenerative disorders."

Edit: whatdya know, he posted here as I was typing this.

<comment><USER5> I know how skeptical and cynical HN can be, so I thought I should add that while I've become an evangelist, it isn't me that is claiming NSI-189 as a treatment for depression and ptsd, its the maker Neuralstem, and it's backed up by autopsied rats whose hippocampus grew 20% in size after the drug was administered.

Here is an interesting blog post from the maker about NSI-189 and NZT from the movie limitless.

[http://www.neuralstem.com/neuralstem-ceo-blog/86-i-cant- give...](http://www.neuralstem.com/neuralstem-ceo-blog/86-i-cant-give-you- brains-but-i-can-give-you-a-diploma)

I think NSI is such a cool story because besides perhaps rescuing millions of people from the despair of PTSD, it is so similar to the concept of NZT in Limitless.

And just like in Limitless, it is not easy to procure at the moment.

<comment><USER14> Did you experience major depression prior to taking the drug, or have you talked to any major depressive people who also tried the drug? Have you experienced any negative side effects from the drug, or talked to anyone who experienced negative side effects? I am pretty cautious about trying new drugs, as some currently legal drugs can carry dangerous side effects (ie: viibryd causing brain shocks in active patients).

<comment><USER13> Note that a similar question was asked in the thread I linked:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9880661](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9880661)

Not that it would hurt to discuss it further here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You mean like coffee? Almost everyone, I bet you. Why? #1 drug in the world.

</comment><comment><USER16> You'll probably get anecdotal responses from members wo self select by having something interesting to say, which is correlated to using a nootropic.

A poll MAY work better!

</comment><comment><USER17> I should note that I am over 40 and overweight but am losing weight on a fairly regular basis. My goal is within another 2 years to drop down to a manageable weight and hopefully reduce my intake of metformin altogether. High-blood pressure runs in my family, so I think its unlikely if I lose a lot of weight, that my use of high-blood pressure control medications will abate.

I start every morning as follows: 1\. 2 800mg Nootropils 2\. 1.5 Wakalert Tablets 3\. My diet pills from the doctor here in Thailand 4\. 1 Herbessar for my high-blood pressure

Wash it down with a cup of coffee.

Then an hour or two later, I start drinking iced green tea with no sugar and eat a breakfast with carbs, then I take: 1\. 1 Hyzaar pill for my high-blood pressure 2\. 1 Prenolol for my highblood pressure 3\. 1 Metformin of my diabetes

Then, I have a yoghurt.

I sometimes have a snack of whole wheat crackers and hummus

Then, I eat dinner that is 2/3 veggies and 1/3 meat

My sleeping and work schedule are as follows: 1\. I wake up between 10am and Noon each day 2\. I go to sleep between 2am and 4 am every day 3\. My workday starts between 11am and Noon 4\. I take a break from 4pm/ 5pm to 8pm/9pm each day 5\. During my break, I hang out with my kid, watch TV, read books, write, do strategic thinking for my businesses/ jobs, eat dinner, and take a walk. 5\. My second shift starts 8pm/9pm to Midnight/1am 6\. Then I read, play games, watch tv, etc... until I go to sleep

Then before I sleep, I take the following: 1\. 1 Metformin 2\. My nighttime diet pills

I work 7 days a week between 6 and 10 hours a day, mostly around 7 hours.

Nootropics are just a small part, but I consider them a very important part. Since, I do lots of academic editing, I find the quality is much higher under the influence of nootropics then not. But, my use of nootropics integrates them into my lifestyle.

</comment><comment><USER18> Your brain is probably the most subtle instrument in the universe and you're plain stupid if you're going to blast it with synthetic drugs the long term effects of which are still unclear. And for what? Most of you people are already brilliant just like that.

</comment><comment><USER19> I used to take modafinil quite heavily. It was great for being able to get up at 4am before my day job and get work done. I did notice that although it made me more awake and made it easier to get into the zone I tended to be so driven to get things done that I wouldn't think deeply about problems. I often wrote scrappy code to get shit done then realize a few days later it could have been written far quicker and neater in some other way. Though this may have been due to lack of sleep as you can't really tell if you've been getting enough when taking modafinil.

<comment><USER20> Probably lack of sleep. Modafinil itself only has slight nootropic effect if any, both in my experience and in studies. That said, I have noticed similar pattern when overdosing caffeine or amphetamine. Though nothing like it when talking large doses of piracetam.

Sleep is crucial, Anything damaging it hurts performance a lot. Modafinil is only a way to keep part of normal performance when undersleeping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nootropics aside, I've felt my best when I have:

1) Had a low carb, high protein medium fatty diet.

2) Worked out heavily for 40 minutes to an hour

3) Slept for atleast 6h 30m

I've experienced amazing focus and quick thinking on such days, not to say of the health benefits too!

</comment><comment><USER21> My main interest in nootropics is with microdosing LSD or Mushrooms. It gives the sharpening of senses and elevation of mood you get when coming down from a trip or the day after. Haven't done it yet, but I am very intrigued.

A redditor explains how he fared from 7 months of microdosing: [https://www.reddit.com/r/microdosing/comments/38sef1/7_month...](https://www.reddit.com/r/microdosing/comments/38sef1/7_months_microdosing_full_report_experiences_and/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm too scared of what could interact with my SSRI.

<comment><USER22> From my own experience, vyvanse (lisdexamfetamine) pairs quite well with my SSRI (lexapro). I'm not sure what most of the other substances in this thread are, or if vyvanse would even be considered a nootropic by any standard, but it has greatly enhanced certain cognitive abilities for me (most notably task saliency, but also multitasking and recall, among others).

Of course, my need (or desire) for the two drugs is probably linked to the same root cause since serotonin and dopamine are very much related in their uses by the brain, so it would probably be best to consult with your doctor to help ensure that the amphetamine doesn't interfere with your SSRI. The two are often prescribed together, from what I understand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm taking lots of Modafinil lately. I particularly appreciate its effects on concentration and long-term memmory.

<comment><USER12> How much have you been taking daily? For how long? Experienced any side effects?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I do have my fair share of Modafinil. Works on me as it should [1]. Though I do experience mouth sores by the 8th or 9th day onwards if I take them continually.

[1] - [http://www.gwern.net/Modafinil](http://www.gwern.net/Modafinil)

<comment><USER24> I've heard of similar things happening with drugs like Adderall or Vyvanse. Is/was it from your tongue darting around your mouth a lot?

<comment><USER12> Yeah my tongue did get the "restless tongue syndrome" ..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I was sent this document a while ago from an acquaintance who dabbles in nootropics; it may be of interest to those looking to try something new: [https://bit.ly/1CHzody](https://bit.ly/1CHzody)

</comment><comment><USER26> I recently started taking L-Theanine and caffeine (mostly via coffee, but I occasionally use caffeine powder). It seems to give me some solid focus for a few hours, but to be honest I'm not sure if it's a placebo effect.

<comment><USER27> Same here, I couldn't tell if the focus was from the L-Theanine or placebo. Unfortunately I'd also get a terrible headache many hours later and have my sleep disrupted (again, hard to tell if it was placebo or not).

I still have the majority of a bottle left, so maybe I'll skip the caffeine and give it another go at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I take Adderall at work whenever I can get my hands on it, which is rarely.

</comment><comment><USER29> I found that piracetam and oxiracetam did result in moderate improvements in cognition and ... _blanking on the word..._ ... _" verbal improvements"_. <= That type of stuff would happen less, in other words.

However, I discovered that their effectiveness would wear off over time, and worse, they'd cause me to be easily aggravated. I didn't realize how bad it actually was until I was making life really difficult for my partner and promised them I'd stop so that we could see if the agitation went away.

Well, it did, and I've chosen not to continue taking them. I've also found that this is a fairly common side effect among users, so watch out. (And yes, I was taking choline along with them.)

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if these are even safe to take? Some people seem to write praises about it but it's not known if it really does make you smarter or not.

Well, nothing really beats smoking sativa and drinking coffee. Vastly improved concentration, uptake of information, problem solving, writing & speaking. Constant hunger and desire to eat enormous amount of food is the only real downside.

</comment><comment><USER31> If you're a programmer and need to take this sh*t just to do your job, maybe you should think about changing professions. (Programmer here that only drinks coffee and drinks alcohol to get the balmer peak)

<comment><USER32> Alcohol is probably a harder drug than anything anyone else is recommending in this thread.

And this isn't about surviving our job. It's about reaching our full potential.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I have never tried Modafinil, but I have heard of it. He said they were very good.

<comment><USER33> Downvotes? He's pretty accomplished in the psychedelic arts.

<comment><USER34> Who? The question is who?

<comment><USER33> You want me to name names? I'm not talking about a licensed doctor or psychiatrist ^_^

<comment><USER7> No, they want you to stop being coy. If it's your family member, friend, dealer or whatever, nobody cares. Almost everyone using this site has a dealer of something, whether it be mundane and legal like coffee, alcohol and antidepressants, or less legal and through less reputable sources.

<comment><USER33> The submitter asked how prevalent is it for people in the community to use these drugs? I said I don't use it but I know someone who does.

He didn't ask for trip reports. How is that irrelevant or unhelpful? I don't see any reason to say my relation to this person, it is a hacker who I'm talking about.

<comment><USER7> I think I see what you were trying to say. You heard of modafinil, and _the person who mentioned it to you_ said they were very good. The way you originally worded it makes the clauses seem independent (you could have heard about it from some brochure, or a movie, or anything). I think people downvoted you because "He said they were very good." taken by itself doesn't identify the "he", and it sounds like you are trying to imply some secretive information you have but are unwilling to share.

Imagine your first sentence wasn't present, and what people implied from your post.

<comment><USER33> I can see how it wasn't totally clear now, I was a bit tipsy when I wrote this comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> These topics should be blocked in HN. As those retards do not know what they are doing at the moment, but there are some younger audience reading HN, which might get confused with the thinking that unlocking your potential, might be achieved just by taking unapproved chemical drugs.

<comment><USER36> Could you explain the downfalls of taking nootropics [that you are implying]?

<comment><USER35> Yes, if you have medical degree to understand it. If not, please consult to your GP first, then consult with fda.gov and their procedures. If that will be too much for your brain(either because of too much usage of nootropics, or because you were born with mental illness), you could just think of analogy that eating mammals shit isn't healthy and can cause serious damage for you.</comment></comment></comment>


California school district hires firm to monitor students' social media - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/14/us/california-schools-monitor-social-media/index.html?c=us <comment><USER3> First off, no matter how you do it, it's pretty much impossible to do a quality job of what this firm is promising for $2.89 per student per year. However, there are host of other problems here.

-A lot of bad jokes are going to create false positives, which will make teaching staff ignore the warnings they do receive.

-The odds are rather high that a kid will post an orgy of pre-meditations and then do something horrible, but this contractor will either miss it or his warning will be ignored.

-Kids don't like being spied on and will use social networks that aren't monitored. Some geeks might even try encryption or code-talk.

What would I do? Educate children about the importance of getting their friends help when they need it. The people who know kids best are their friends. Compared to this contractor, they won't fall for as many bad jokes nor ignore as many subtle danger signs. Teach children to be good citizens who care about each other rather than carefully tended and monitored potential threats.

<comment><USER4> I live in the area and I am friends with teachers within the school district.

I see this article as a fluff/pr/sales bit of writing. The article states nothing about the tech or who supplies the names of the children to be watched. Most of the people on HN can guess the tech. Who is giving the ID of the targets is the interesting bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "a larger portion" of contract workers across the globe who labor a maximum of four hours a day because "the content they read is so dark and heavy,"

Oh great, he is using Mechanical Turk to watch over students in LA.

</comment><comment><USER5> $40,500 is a lot of money for a public school district. This kind of spending really feels like a game of whack-a-mole to me. There were two suicides in your school district? Ignore the underlying factors and and go straight to "social media," because that's what all the buzz is about today, right?

It's a shame that given the serious shortage of public school funding in California that spending is done in such a myopic (and frankly, stupid) way. If you really want to build a better school, is adding excessive policing the first thing you should do?

<comment><USER6> > Glendale Unified School District is comprised of 31 Schools and over 2,620 > employees, serving 27,000 students in grades Kindergarten through 12th > grade.

You are very naive about budgets. You should change that if you want to freelance or do a startup. 40k is very little money for them.

<comment><USER7> If so, they should stop asking people to buy tissue paper for classrooms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's right, get them used to gov't surveillance while they are young.

/s

<comment><USER9> As a teacher (of older students than secondary) my first thought was this. And how they will develop work rounds and restricted language codes &c

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nobody has mentioned yet. I took a look at the geolistening website, and the pictures alone pointed to an entirely different problem.

I don't think the problem is lack of surveillance, I think it's teachers who are blind to what's happening at their schools, and parents who are doing a bad job at parenting (exporting it to education).

If a parent listens to their child well, the child will tell them they are being bullied, or have problems. If the child is afraid to, or is ashamed, the parent should notice this. It's not normal behavior. The same goes for teachers. If a parent complains to the school that their child is being bullied, that shouldn't be ignored. If a teacher notices a child being bullied, that shouldn't be laughed off. Children try to seek help by nature.

This seems to be an all-round lack of awareness and care for the child. I don't think technology can do much good with that attitude.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can somebody explain to me why what students do outside the school is any of the school's business?

Oh well, I'm sure the students spend at least as much time cyberstalking the teachers as the schools do cyberstalking the students.

<comment><USER12> This has concerned me since a student in my high school was punished for making some mean comments on another students wall on Facebook. Facebook was fairly new at the time. I presumed this would stop happening as people got more used to social services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Social media monitoring is a huge industry at the moment, which I can say from first-hand experience. Lots of businesses, individuals, and organizations want to know what is being said about them or their field.

Even though no company providing these services can have perfect coverage (not even a perfect coverage of _public_ internet communications), or perfect accuracy (generally it boils down to what you can express with search facets and boolean expressions), they _can_ very aggressively sell the capability to people and organizations, because the 'idea' makes sense, and the fear/need is genuine - maybe there are relevant good/bad things happening out there that we need to know about.

I think this may be the real story here: there are private companies incentivized to sell surveillance of public communications, regardless of end- result quality for the customer, and education is just one of many places where that is relevant.

I don't think this is going to change - we now take for granted that search engines can see what is on the public web, and the same will become true of public social media -- although these tools are (generally) not yet as well known to the public as Google web search.

I'd personally really like to see distributed and private social communications technology to take off, so that this kind of legitimized spying becomes near-irrelevant, and I think there are big opportunities there - <USER2> we're not there yet and there'll be some interesting ground to navigate in the meantime.

</comment><comment><USER14> This will filter out and miss the really nasty children (who'll just use networks with privacy), and catch the stupid ones who need education rather than discipline.

<comment><USER15> >This will filter out and miss the really nasty children (who'll just use networks with privacy)

Well the obvious solution to that is to outlaw privacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Yet another example of how schools are more about incarceration and control than education. Right now with public schools in the US we're at the edge of spending less per student on teachers than on administrative staff and other expenses. So many forces keep telling us to increase spending on education. And we have. Whether at the K-12 level or at colleges and Universities total spending on education has more than doubled (per student, adjusted for inflation) since the 1970s, while education outcomes have generally been flat. What has increased at a pace with spending is non-teaching staff, which, not surprisingly, don't seem to accrue any benefit in learning to the students.

The only way to solve the problem is to wrest control of the system away from the powerful interests that dominate it today. Unfortunately, a lot of legitimate educators are part of the machine and don't see any other way to make things better other than to continue to feed the machine with the hope that maybe a little bit trickles down to them and the kids.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is this really new? I believe privacy issues have just gotten a spotlight now but I clearly remember a situation that happened involving my sister when she settled in the US more than 10 years ago.

I was running a small web host at the time and we just happened to host her website, for free of course. She had just moved to the US, gotten her green card and started a job as a teacher.

The school she was working for, or wanted to work for, had investigated her and found her personal website somehow. Even though she was posting under a pseudonym, and the website was hosted in Sweden. I don't remember if it was in Swedish though, maybe not.

They objected to certain things on that website, not sure if it was the BDSM links or something about linking to Amazon.

Either way, she didn't have a computer at the time so all she could do was ask me to take the website down for her.

As I remember it, a lawfirm hade made this discovery on behalf of the school where she wanted to work.

</comment><comment><USER18> " All of the individual posts we monitor on social media networks are already made public by the students themselves. Therefore, no privacy is violated."

Just use privacy settings on Twitter/Facebook then.</comment>


MongoDB adds atomic find and modify - <AUTHOR> http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Atomic+Operations#AtomicOperations-FindandModify%28orRemove%29 <comment><USER2> Interesting. In my most recent projects, I've been using MongoDB together with Redis. MongoDB for long term data (like records and reports) and Redis for near-realtime stuff (queuing, request limiters, analytics, and the like). I haven't come across the need for atomic record modification but that isn't to say there aren't useful usecases. I need to think on it a bit more.

<comment> old-gregg Isn't that defeating the purpose of MondoDB? We're considering switching to it _precisely_ because we're sick of two-tiered approach (MySQL+memcached) and MongoDB promises a built-in near-realtime caching.

Why would I want to lose the power of SQL if I'm not getting anything in return? I thought that "built-in memcached" was what I'd be getting. No?

<comment><USER3> mongodb doesn't do concurrency very well -- at least not as good as Redis.

<comment> old-gregg I looked up your profile but didn't find any contact info. I am dying to know more about MongoDB limitations and this page isn't helping:

<http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Concurrency>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I misread "The db.eval() statement provides a way to automically perform several operations at once; however, its use for this is not recommended as this eval() atomicity will not be supported for certain cases in sharded environments" as "...eval() atrocity..."

<comment><USER5> I thought db.eval was kind of like a BDL (Big Database Lock) - i.e. nothing will happen while the eval() is doing its thing?

<comment><USER6> That seems to be reliably true for the single-node case only.</comment></comment></comment>


Effects of short-term fasting on cancer treatment - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6530042/ <comment><USER2> Can I just throw a big dose of caution here? This is a review study, looking at the available literature of this technique on cancer. They found a total of FIVE studies with 88 total human participants across all 5 studies. We, the medical community, still has no idea whether this is effective or not. The only thing we can say is that initial trials don't show it to be particularly harmful. That could change with more data.

They review a lot of mice studies and theory, which is great.

But all this adds together to indicate that we should study this more before drawing any conclusions. With limited funding for cancer research, its not even clear to me from this what priority it should take

<comment><USER3> I really don't get the excessive warnings of caution for fasting. It's not hard to try. It's not very dangerous (unless doing prolonged fasts). In the case of prolonged fasts, if the patient is monitored by qualified people then there is little risk as well.

I'm battling a crippling illness. Fortunately I've found the cure and the recovery is nothing short of miraculous. But it's a huge HUGE uphill battle because the medical community works incredibly hard to throw road blocks in my way.

Why does the medical community work so hard to throw up as many road blocks as possible to experimental treatments that are low risk? Why do you insist on being the only group of people who can say what is and isn't tried? Why do doctors and public health officials ignore the work of biochemists? Why do you ignore millions of people battling crippling illness that say your treatments are ineffective, and that other approaches are more effective?

Seriously. I don't get it. I don't believe you're a bad person, but the only explanations I can come up with are arrogance, ego, cowardice, or greed.

<comment><USER4> Fasting is low risk in healthy populations.

Let's assume you're talking about fasting as a treatment for cancer patients for the sake of argument.

Let's say that studies have examined the effect in 100 patients and it seems moderately effective.

What's the problem? Why shouldn't everyone do it?

Well the very real concern is that when they do a more rigorous study with a much greater number of patients, maybe they find that fasting actually _increases_ the negative outcomes. The result that was found in the weaker study was only a statistical fluke.

So the thing they're trying to avoid is doing more harm than the status quo. This is a very real danger and it would be irresponsible for them to not do the due diligence.

Of course, that's not to say that there aren't valid criticisms of how medical treatments get validated and how quickly they can get to patients they can help.

<comment><USER5> These are all arguments against the medical community _advising_ people in cancer treatment to fast.

But what if the patient just fasts? Without asking the doctor's advice, and just politely saying "Yes, I hear you, but it's my decision and I think the risk is worth it" when the doctor explains the pros and cons.

<comment><USER6> Patients gonna do what patients gonna do; the doctor's role is to advise and treat, not control the patient's life. Doesn't mean patient has a good idea, though.

I take the context of these warning comments to be a hypothetical patient who may not have been planning to fast on their own, but having read this paper, now wants to try it--i.e. a patient who may be tempted to treat this paper as medical advice. I think it's valid to point out that a single research paper does not necessarily constitute sound medical advice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fasting was extensively researched in Soviet Russia as a potential cure for many ailments, from auto-immune diseases to mental illness. Tens of thousands of people were treated with 14-40 day water fasts (under constant supervision and testing), roughly 2/3rds reported various levels of success. I don't think much of the studies have ever been translated into English.

<comment><USER8> Do you maybe have a link to original russian sources?

<comment><USER7> There's an excellent documentary, "Science of Fasting", which covers some of the Russian studies about midway through - [https://youtu.be/t1b08X-GvRs](https://youtu.be/t1b08X-GvRs)

<comment><USER9> Watched 25 minutes of it so far and it's absolutely fascinating, thanks so much for sharing.

One key point so far for anyone who hasn't watched yet: the fasts involved here are long (multiple weeks) and treatment that you do under medical supervision, and it needs to happen properly, meaning _along with it_ you need proper exercise, getting your blood tested, and various other things, in some cases even including classical medication (possibly even larger doses)... so in general it's not merely "just don't eat for N days and you'll get cured".

<comment><USER10> It is fascinating, but around 18 mins 45 seconds "cancer" is noted as a contraindication for fasting! Unfortunately there was no mention of what the cancer type, metastatic status, etc..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to share my findings from a sample size of one...

I've been fasting for about 2 years now. I've done a couple of 5-days water fasts, and a few 7-days water fasts. The past 250 days I've been consistently following 16:8 and adding in a few 23:1's in there for good measure. I was healthy before I started, but have since then felt even better. My stomach feels calm, I sleep better, I feel stronger (even though I exercise less) and my overall focus has improved. This results in a better mental state, somehow calming my mind. I've been a practitioner of meditation before, but have not felt the need for it the past year. My body is calm and well-rested => my mind is mindful.

But the number 1 benefit of fasting (and all other non-conventional habits, such as cold showers in the morning), is mental resilience. Every time you realize that you perform well, if not even better, without food, you get a confidence boost. This effect compounds with time. I've found out that this in turn makes it easier to take on other habits as well, because your habit muscles are stronger now than before. Eating 5 meals a day is easy... eating 1 is hard => you grow a little if you manage to do it.

<comment><USER12> No offense but self-reported results aren't scientifically worth much. There are too many crackpots in health. Now, if you had some sort of external objective measure, like "I was able to stop taking X maintenance medicine after starting my fasting routine" that would be much more compelling.

<comment><USER13> Yea, counter-point: IF makes me more anxious and irritable, and no way it makes me stronger as someone who lifts regularly (5x week)...

IIRC some studies I've read say that IF increases cortisol levels which would explain the anxiety and which I believe is bad for muscle-building.

<comment><USER11> I haven't replaced exercise with fasting, I think you still need both! Of course you wouldn't be as strong as someone who lifts 5 times/week if you didn't. I'm speaking of strength relative to body weight here... I see no benefit in being able to bench press 200kg, I rather do 15-30 chins with no effort. Sleep, exercise, a good diet and relationships are all required for good long-term benefits in any endevour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article explains that fasting is often prohibited by malnutrition and low body weight. Obviously fasting cannot be undertaken long-term, as it results in starvation. I wonder whether there is any benefit to caloric restriction / fasting, versus maintenance calorie intake with a ketogenic diet. The crucial thing seems to be the elimination of insulin promoting carbohydrate, and depletion of glycogen which forces metabolism into ketogenesis, reduces growth factors, and promotes catabolism and autophagy.

<comment><USER15> There sure is according to Dr. Thomas Seyfried and Dominic D'Agostino -

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28250801](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28250801)

<comment><USER16> Personal note: when a family member was recently diagnosed with cancer, the ketogenic diet was the one promising idea I found to supplement her standard treatment. It's... depressing... how my suggestion just to _talk to her doctor about it_ probably wasn't followed even that far. Can anyone suggest a source to point to for non-nerds, such as a talk by a prestigious doctor? Considering the fate of my suggestion above, a paper or a book are not going to fly.

<comment><USER17> There's a documentary called "The Science of Fasting" that I found very interesting. Apparently, they've been studying it for health benefits going back decades in the former USSR. [https://www.amazon.com/Science-Fasting- Sylvie-Gilman/dp/B075...](https://www.amazon.com/Science-Fasting-Sylvie- Gilman/dp/B075824XCB)

<comment><USER18> This documentary is also available at Youtube:

[https://youtu.be/t1b08X-GvRs](https://youtu.be/t1b08X-GvRs)

<comment><USER16> Thank you both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I had a wake-up call when my Doctor said my Body Mass Index (BMI) was 29.7 (obese is 30). So I made a total lifestyle change to a 16/8 intermittent fast (16 hours water only, 8-hour feeding window), and a plant-based diet (basically vegan plus a fish once a week for Omegas).

It was life-changing. I lost 22kg in two months, with no exercise. I am now back to a healthy BMI, but I no longer use BMI as a measure, I use the Relative Fat Mass Index (RFM) because my research indicates that this is a more accurate measure for tall people (I'm 6'3").

Besides looking great after shedding all that weight, I never expected the mental benefits to be so pronounced. Indeed it is fair to say it has had a nootropic effect. I no longer 'need' coffee, and the persistent brain fog has lifted and my default state is calm mental clarity.

Of course, I can only speak from my own personal experience here... I haven't done extensive blood tests pre and post this lifestyle change, but the change has been so shocking that friends and family cannot believe it.

You might think going 16 hours with no food is going to be hard but if you get the timings right, it's easy (and you get used to it). I start my fast at 8 pm, and I break the fast at noon. This way I can have business lunches and early-ish business dinners (as long as I finish eating by 8 pm). Most restaurants cater for vegans or at least have a vegetarian option. If not, I go for a fish option.

When I break the fast I do it with an avocado/cucumber/kale/spinach smoothie which blasts my body with super nutrients. I avoid all processed carbs (no bread or pasta), I avoid all processed sugar (no cola or any refined sugar products), I avoid all dairy, and of course, avoid meat. Also, there is no calorie reduction... I eat as much as I like in my 8-hour feeding window (which controls Ghrelin and therefore doesn't mess up my metabolism).

Always consult a medical professional before you do any drastic changes like what I've done, and do your own research on this stuff so you have the confidence that it's the right choice for you, and that you'll stick with it.

<comment><USER20> Glad you lost weight but kale smoothies and fasting are not magic--it's just reduced caloric intake conferring most of the benefits you're seeing.

The biggest problem people have is overeating, bottom line. I honestly have several strict vegan friends who are obese -- at the end of the day a calorie is a calorie.

My only issue when people recount stories like yours, as inspiring as they are, is they associate non-scientifically-provable properties to their eating. As if fasting or kale give you more energy (they don't). Or carbs are automatically evil by themselves and cause weight gain (also wrong). There is no such thing as "super nutrients" \-- there are only nutrients. It's like when people talk about going on a "cleanse" from "toxins" in their body, it's just nonsense.

I wish high schools would teach everyone how to track their calories, it's a super useful skill that would help many in understanding how much a penalty there is in eating those Five Guys fries. But "I lost weight from [insert special diet here] wow now I have [amazing qualities]" just exaggerates the basic underlying process of reducing caloric intake.

And for the record I'm 6'2" & 168 lbs / 76 kg with 5% body fat (measured via calipers), training for multiple athletic events, so I'm not saying this as someone who struggles with following strict diets.

<comment><USER21> > at the end of the day a calorie is a calorie

No, calories vary massively. If someone ate 2000 calories of vegetables each day and someone else ate 2000 calories of sugar there would be a huge amount of difference between their nutrition.

> The biggest problem people have is overeating, bottom line

Sorry to say that I disagree with this too. The body does a great job of negating over-eating provided the food eaten is of the right types, it is just pushed back out as waste.

Going back to the vegetable example, you could eat several kg of green vegetables every day and continue to lose weight.

<comment><USER22> From all I've seen, the only scientific assumptions derived from current experimental data are:

1\. Calories in/out control weight

2\. Not everyone's digestive system is exactly the same, thus some small variance exists in how many calories we each absorb from various foods. This variance is very small, but maybe some exceptional outliers exist with very strange conditions here that could dramatically affect digestion. Don't justify your weight on this, you are most likely not the outlier and are just eating too much :p

3\. Insulin levels and other hormonal conditions could affect the ability to lose fat. Again, this assumes major imbalance, most likely due to medical conditions like diabetes or hashimoto, etc.

4\. The body needs what it needs. So a diet is more than just weight loss. You need a balanced diet, not necessarily balanced in foods, but you do in nutrients. It doesn't take much of anything though.

5\. Certain foods have extra curricular effects that can be good or bad. It really depends in the food and your body. Intolerance, allergies, carcinogens, antioxidants, and many others. You can think of food as medication that is micro dosed, and with possibly immeasurable long term effects.

Also, it does seem that trans fat affect heart disease, as well as sugars. And it is the interaction between both which creates a high risk scenario. That's why both diets work. Ideally, you even cut out both, which is what Keto often does, it favour healthy fats and cut out sugars.

P.S.: Sorry, I wish I could put down my sources, but I wasn't keeping track. This is the current synthesis from memory of the many studies I read over time for fun in the last 3/4 years.

<comment><USER23> Please take my upvote. I don't understand why some on HN keep trying to equate "a calorie is a calorie" with nutrition and satiety. The first is a unit of energy and the other two are not. It is that simple.

I do 16:8 Intermittent Fasting. Are there health benefits to it? Maybe. But I know for sure that if I want to drop a bit of weight, this style of eating makes it a lot easier for me for reasons of hunger more than anything: I'm not that hungry until I eat. I also know for sure that I like eating big. If I have a couple small meals early on, I can have a great big meal near the end of my window as if I were a lion taking down a zebra.

<comment><USER20> Who's equating caloric intake with nutrition and satiety?

My point is people who have successfully adopted a particular technique for reducing their caloric intake (fasting, kale, smoothies, veganism, omega 3 acids, etc) are disguising the underlying process that's conferring most of the health benefits they're seeing: which is weight loss.

How many stories have you read out there about Secret Diet X that does all sorts of allegedly amazing things for you? Paleo diet. Veganism. Atkins diet. The Zone diet. The Dukan diet. And on and on.

There are many strategies for reducing caloric intake and if 16:8 fasting works for you: fantastic. But at the end of the day most people will improve their health through weight loss, not some special ritual or ingredient, and I think we should be cautious before crowning specific calorie reduction techniques as having special or more beneficial properties unless there is clear scientific evidence for them.

<comment><USER23> > Who's equating caloric intake with nutrition and satiety?

Well, jonwinstanley above, for one. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

> No, calories vary massively. If someone ate 2000 calories of vegetables each > day and someone else ate 2000 calories of sugar there would be a huge amount > of difference between their nutrition.

<comment><USER21> I think one thing we can take from this discussion is that people's opinions on diet, calories, fat, carbs, health etc varies wildly!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I really like practical, simple solutions like this.

Older generations/civilizations have practiced fasting for general health.

Based on modern advances in science, I would love to see more research done on the applications efficacy of old cultural practices to modern problems.

Who know, maybe we'll start flash mobs to dance for rain in 10 years.

<comment><USER25> >Who know, maybe we'll start flash mobs to dance for rain in 10 years.

I don't know the feasibility of it, but if we could predict with enough accuracy some local weather patterns, it would be a total awesome app. Get a notification to gather round to summon a tornado. Or chanting together for an unusual fall of evening tropical rain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I didn't see it mentioned in the study but it's interesting that from what I know, the current clinical approach is the exact opposite - many patients on chemo are given appetite-inducing drugs and Ensure shakes as the oncologists are very concerned that the patient not lose any weight

<comment><USER27> I just finished chemo eight months ago. I lost 35 pounds. I'm 6' and went from 140 pounds to 105. So yeah, my nutritionist gave me shit for putting water in my feeding tube because it doesn't have any calories. Ensure, juice, gatorade, anything was better than water. I had neck/mouth cancer and for about month I wasn't able to swallow anything (including water).

I was doing about 3K calories of formula a day and still dropping weight. Everything hurt. My joints were a wreck and getting out of bed was a chore. I started doing 8oz of formula (TwoCal HN) and mixing that with 8oz of vitamin D milk. In a few days my joint pain went away.

But yes, infusion rooms have little cafeterias and are stocked with soda, ice cream, juice, candy, and so on. Anything to get calories in people.

<comment><USER26> Thanks for sharing your personal experience and best of luck with your continued recovery. Hopefully I didn't come across as being critical of the doctors in my comment - clearly there are reasons to cram calories as your personal experience attests - I just find it an interesting juxtaposition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Reading through these comments is scary. And I'm lucky. I've never put on weight in my life but always been active. 50 now and still snowboard, scuba dive and martial arts three times a week. Only ever ate two meals a day (lunch and dinner) and have never paid attention to sugar. Drink fewer sodas than I used to but still average about one a day. I eat a lot of meat but also a lot of vegetables and bananas. Maybe 50/50 meat/veg. Guessing metabolism has a lot to do with it. Nobody in my family ever got obese either.

The upshot is that what works for Peter may not work for Paul. And somehow I fell into a healthy lifestyle...

<comment><USER29> Most people don't realize just how small a lifestyle change it takes to affect weight into middle age. When habits are amplified by the fulcrum of consistency over decades it makes a huge difference.

Just consider that all it takes to become 100 lbs overweight by age 50 is an extra 38 calories a day starting at age 25. The difference between morbid obesity and healthy weight can literally come down to one donut a week or walking an extra quarter mile a day.

<comment><USER30> It's way more complicated that that. The body is not a stupid mechanical device where you make a change in one place and then the rest of the system reacts in a straightforward and predictable way. There is a brain in the middle of everything. And that brain affects motivation. Good luck doing something when you're not feeling motivated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I know there are certain countries/religions (Turkey comes to mind) where fasting is practiced...sometimes to the extreme. Did anyone thought of doing a research for cancer numbers in those countries vs others?

<comment><USER32> This study follows your line of thinking.

(Ramadan Fasting and Patients with Cancer: State-of-the-Art and Future Prospects)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4748028/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4748028/)

Unfortunately this is in the abstract.

"Our main findings are that (1) very few studies have been carried out, addressing this issue, (2) evidence concerning quality of life and compliance to treatment is contrasting and scarce, and (3) generally speaking, few patients ask their physicians whether they can safely fast or not. For these reasons, further research should be performed, given the relevance and importance of this topic."

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Short Term Fasting helps the treatment of cancer, but what is the official definition of STF? 1 day? 2? Or is it in hours?

<comment><USER34> The text says 24-60 hours, but then in the table where they talk about the other studies being considered, a lot of them did 48 hour minimum and as much as 96 hours for some. When I saw the headline I was excited because a 16-18 hour fast really isn't very hard for most people, but 48 hours sounds a little rough. I guess if it's just a one-off event while you're doing chemo it's not that bad, but I'm not about to fast 48 hours once a week for the rest of my life.

<comment><USER35> > _but I 'm not about to fast 48 hours once a week for the rest of my life_

Why not? I mean why reject it a priori?

Who said it will be difficult after the first few months? And what if it has beneficial properties?

<comment><USER36> Most people have trouble even taking a pill regularly. And that's painless. Regularly self-inflicting pain like hunger for 40+ hours at a time has absolutely no hope of becoming a standard therapy in medicine. The percentage of patient compliance would be in the single digits.

<comment><USER37> I don't even know how people fast for that long. I start getting head-aches and feel awful long before that. So just deciding to fast for 48 hours/week seems untenable to me.

<comment><USER35> > _I start getting head-aches and feel awful long before that._

Well, people often also get cramps when they first start working out. After keeping at it though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> From what I understand cancer grows based on what it feeds on. It can eat sugar, hormones, and maybe other stuff. Some types of cancer can be killed by simply removing it's source of food.

I've had a lot of friends/relatives with cancer lately. Most recently I had a friend diagnosed with breast cancer and the treatment was simply to reduce the amount of estrogen in her system. She's doing well. They've done some preventative radiation but other than that not much of anything else.

<comment><USER39> A lot of psuedo medicine talks about eliminating sugar to kill cancer.

I always felt that they were on the right track somehow.

Thanks for the tidbit

<comment><USER40> You might want to check out this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_hypothesis)

<comment><USER41> A med student on reddit was part of a research team on various strategies around WH. He said something in the lines of "cancer has a few layered tricks in its bag to stay alive even when starved, and these tricks make cancerous cells the last to die if you starve a population of healthy/sick cells"

Made me realize how odd cancer was.. how oddly efficient it is in its chaos.

<comment><USER42> May you please provide the link to the thread?

<comment><USER41> I may try to dig but it was a few years ago and I have no precise recollection of which sub nor which user answered me.

Unless you know a quick tool to fetch my comment history so I can grep it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I am not a doctor so I don't have the skills to evaluate this paper.

But it strikes me that this area must be very hard to scientifically evaluate. There are number of 'big' ideas out there on health and each person seem to have their own preference. Cold showers, hot baths, meditation, that food should be vegetarian, organic, mostly meat and high on protein, vitamin c, extreme exercise and so on. These are very cultural and some times even religious.

This "culturalness" affects the authors too. We want certain things to be true because it agrees with our values. For example that organic farmed food is healthier than non-organic.

This is a meta study that cites a lot of other studies. Some of them have very small sample size; in particular the ones dealing with humans. And I wonder how was the control done? People cannot help noticing that they do not get food. What was the effect size? Were subjects excluded from the experiment because they were too weak not to eat (or just didn't want to)? Would the study be published had it not shown an effect? And so on ...

Just because you sum up accross multiple studies; it does not necessary give better a signal because the noise may not be random.

<comment><USER36> Agreed. I think the purpose of papers like this is not to advocate for the therapy today, but to encourage scientists and research funding figures to more seriously investigate the phenomenon.

As others here have noted, the past studies have been quite small, and because the treated study participants experience hunger, adding a blinded control group is difficult. These faults will have to be addressed before results are actionable clinically. But if they appear promising, there may be creative ways to address them, if the researchers do get sufficient motivation and funding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Having recently lost an aunt to cancer, statements like this in medical literature, disappoint:

"However, chronic caloric restriction is not a feasible clinical intervention. Evident difficulties, such as the long period required to be effective, and unacceptable weight loss [10, 11], hamper clinical application in cancer patients."

Doctors will fail to offer fasting as a partial solution because it's assumed that patients will reject this option.

It would be great for fasting to be presented to the patient as a partial solution.

Many would absolutely fast to help survival chances.

Generally the lay advice to one who is sick is: "eat, so you can maintain your strength".

When in fact, the rule of thumb, "eat to maintain your strength" isn't always true.

Sometimes, NOT eating is better for certain diseases, such as cancer.

But few doctors will ever explain this because statements like the above cause doctors to conclude, "telling the patient to fast is not practical.."

<comment><USER45> I think you're inaccurately conflating "chronic caloric restriction" with any and all forms of fasting, when it refers only to rather severe long-term fasting/starvation of the sort that has been tested in mice but is borderline unethical to test on humans even if they aren't being ravaged by cancer and chemotherapy. That's why short-term fasting is worth investigating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The progress in nutrition is very encouraging.

30 years ago, when I brought up concerns about nutrition, my doctors dismissed such questions out of hand. Like I was advocating homeopathy or something. Much has changed since then. FHCRC (& SCCA) now includes diet and nutrition as part of their LTFU care plans.

Calorie restriction and eliminating HFCS seem now seem like slam dunks to me, even if we don't yet have the science to substantiate these strategies. Even if fructose isn't linked to cancer, I feel better without it. (Sadly, anything touching on diet still triggers some people.)

My latest self experimentation is soluble fiber. (Beans, lentils, wild rices, oatmeal, seeds. It all goes into the Instapot.)

Definitely has improved my gut (which has been touchy since the chemo). We'll see in a few months if it helps lower my high LDL.

Edit: Oops. Pre coffee. Changed glucose (good) to fructose (bad). Also, witness insta downvote. Someone out there is personally offended by my rejection of HFCS.

<comment><USER47> I actually find the progress in nutrition surprising. The benefits of fasting have been known for a very long time.

But I perceive because fasting can't be sold that the current medical industry has not valued sharing it's true benefits. My personal experience with friends/family in the medical field is that is quackery if it's not taught at in medical school.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Have a look at: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEE- oU8_NSU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEE-oU8_NSU)

</comment><comment><USER49> A few thoughts:

1\. Fasting may be a problem if you are so sick that you have insufficient fat reserves.

2\. If you are seriously underfat, dropping to about 20% of your usual consumption gets a similar reaction from the body while being easier to take.

3\. About 75-80% of your immune cells can be found in the gut. Hypothesis: One thing fasting may do is free up immune cells from coping with food so they can be redirected elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER50> Interesting research. Also important to remember that many cancer patients may also be surgical candidates. If preparing for most surgical procedures you would want to ensure excellent protein intake, adequate Vit D and possible immunonutrition (in drink or other form) and fast minimally. A really complex disease with so many stages

</comment><comment><USER51> I keep seeing these studies on the value of fasting. Fascinating and intriguing. I haven't eaten all day.

That said, I'd be interested in knowing the role of diet. That is, how much of the benefit is from fasting, and how much is from the relief the body (and gut) gets not ingesting additives, chemical reside, etc.?

</comment><comment><USER52> Wish some health magazine or something re-write this article for the non- technical people so that I could share with others.

</comment><comment><USER53> Hy geng aim. From indonesia. Ai skides for yuo geng. Ar you choming for miey. Cemmen likdinsen hend

</comment><comment><USER54> TLDR Nutrient restriction causes healthy cells to invest in maintenance and preservation operations (protecting against chemotherapy) while slowing tumor growth.

Can any clinicians chime in if this is making its way into clinical protocols?

<comment><USER55> You should have read slightly further:

 _Preliminary data show that STF_ [i.e. short term fasting] _is safe, but challenging in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. Ongoing clinical trials need to unravel if STF can also diminish toxicity and increase efficacy of chemotherapeutic regimes in daily practice._

<comment><USER54> I do fasting myself, so I understand the challenges of doing it (although not while also having cancer and undergoing chemo). Have to have the physical and emotional fortitude to handle being hungry all the time.

<comment><USER56> This seems near trivial compared to the physical and emotional fortitude to handle having cancer and undergoing chemotherapy (taking low-dose poison in the hope it kills the cancer before you.)

<comment><USER57> My experience was the nausea was far worse than any hunger. It didn't help that at the time I was encouraged to eat. I intentionally chose foods I didn't like so that I wouldn't associate favorite foods with nausea in the future. In retrospect I would have appreciated the option not to eat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> fast for 24-60 hours when i get cancer, got it

</comment><comment><USER59> [https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/6-reasons-why-a- calorie...](https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/6-reasons-why-a-calorie-is- not-a-calorie)

It just isn't true "that a calorie is just a calorie". A simple search show ample evidence.</comment>


What developers should know about Unicode and character sets in 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://the-pastry-box-project.net/oli-studholme/2013-october-8/ <comment><USER2> > Never assume that the data you're dealing with is UTF-8 — ASCII appears > identical unless you view the hex to see if each character is taking one > byte (ASCII) or three (UTF-8).

Um, what? This is just wrong. ascii-equivalent characters only take one byte in UTF-8. Other characters may take two, or three, bytes.

If the author actually viewed text in ascii that, when in UTF-8, had three- bytes per character.... I don't know what they were looking at, but it wasn't UTF-8.

<comment><USER2> Also, if the data is ASCII, and includes only legal 7-bit ASCII characters -- it is simultaneously ALSO valid and legal UTF-8. UTF-8 is a superset of ASCII.

I'm not sure this guy understands what he's talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The concluding statement is a bit wierd: "ASCII appears identical unless you view the hex to see if each character is taking one byte (ASCII) or three (UTF-8)"

That isn't accurate, ASCII text would appear identical even if 'you view the hex', because it is identical in UTF-8, that's the whole point of UTF-8. You'd have to look at non-ASCII characters to see how they're encoded.

<comment><USER4> Notepad also doesn't save as ASCII by default but »ANSI«, the default legacy codepage configured for your Windows installation.

<comment><USER5> Yes, the default Windows code page -- many pieces of software don't realize that registry keys, file paths, etc. are all encoded in a different code page if you are running, for example, Japanese Windows. (Also, it isn't _exactly_ Shift-JIS...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some background not covered in an otherwise pretty good article:

"In general, don't save a Byte Order Mark (BOM) — it's not needed for UTF-8, and historically could cause problems."

This attitude comes from agony in processing from UTF-16 files. I interface with a group that finds it hilarious to send me textual data in UTF-16 format and the first hard won lesson you learn with UTF-16 is superficially the default order should be correct 50% of the time if guessed randomly but somehow its always wrong. So say you read one line of a UTF-16 text file and process it accordingly after passing it thru a UTF-16 decoder. OK no problemo, it had a BOM as the first glyph/byte/character/whatever and was converted and interpreted correctly. Then you read another line, just like you'd read a line process a line with ASCII or UTF-8. However they only give me a BOM at the start of a file not a start of line, so invariably I translate that to garbage because the bytes are swapped.

Now there are program methods to analyze the BOM and memorize it. Or read the whole blasted multi-gig file into memory all at once and then de-UTF-16 it all at once and then line by line the file. But fundamentally its a simple one liner sysadmin type job to just shove the file thru a UTF-16 to UTF-8 translator program before it hits my processing system. I already had to unencrypt it, and unzip it, and verify its hash so I know they sent the whole file to me (and correctly), so adding a conversion stage is no big deal.

And this kind of UTF-16 experience is what leads people to do things like say "oh, its unicode? That means I should squirt out BOMs as often as possible" even though that technically only applies to unicode UTF-16 and is not helpful for UTF-8.

</comment><comment><USER7> I hate to be "that SEO guy", but the OP needs to do some SEO. The submitted title here is nowhere to be seen, which is too bad because it's a great title and one that I would try to Google after forgetting to bookmark this page.

Luckily I do use Pinboard, which auto-grabs the title, if it existed. But this is a helpful reference to many devs who don't read HN, and it's all but obscured.

</comment><comment><USER8> Oh, one more fun fact: some emoji characters occupy more than one _Unicode_ character, and can be encoded in different ways depending on the device that uses them. (Before they were introduced into Unicode, they used character codes designated for custom platform-specific stuff).

Debugging a text input field where user can enter emoji & RTL text is FUN.

<comment><USER9> Are there really multi-character emoji? Or is it that they are single characters on an astral plane which are encoded as two code units in UTF-16, and therefore behave rather like two characters if your language uses 16-bit chars?

<comment><USER8> Several characters, yes. And those characters, in turn, can be presented as low and hi surrogate pairs in UTF-16.

[http://apps.timwhitlock.info/emoji/tables/unicode](http://apps.timwhitlock.info/emoji/tables/unicode)

Look for flags and numbers. Here's German flag in ASCII: \xF0\x9F\x87\xA9\xF0\x9F\x87\xAA 8 bytes, 2 unicode symbols, 4 UTF-16 symbols.

<comment><USER10> Are these handled in the font as ligatures?

<comment><USER8> In what UI framework? When I worked on that, I decided to render them from a different texture that doesn't depend on the current font, but scales to it's size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Site appears to be down; Google cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:A8oNdl-...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:A8oNdl- pbKIJ:the-pastry-box-project.net/oli- studholme/2013-october-8/+&cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de)

</comment><comment><USER11> Note that some browser do use the <meta charset="UTF-8"> even if the content- type header already sent the charset.

Another thing to add: always open a database connection in the charset of choice. And if you are a PHP user (like I am): there are still functions that don't support multibyte so be careful.

<comment><USER12> This is the biggest current driver towards me trying to muster the effort to move off of PHP. Also, I had no end of trouble working with filenames that contained UTF-8 characters using PHP, and had to give up in the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > While there are a ton of encodings you could use, for the web use UTF-8. You > want to use UTF-8 for your entire stack. So how do we get that?

You should use your language's internal unicode representation, and decode from/encode to UTF-8 on I/O.</comment>


Polynom - solves math exercises by providing simple step-by-step solutions - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9A6mmsDwsE

<comment><AUTHOR> Releasing Polynom took us two years, and we hope you like it! Our algorithm is based on algorithms also used in intelligent tutoring systems and aims to produce steps that feel as human as possible.

I'm here if you have questions or requests.

Here's the app store link: <http://appstore.com/polynom> Our Homepage: <http://polynomapp.com> Support Mail: email@example.com</comment>


Show HN: We just launched the redesigned Quantified Mind - <AUTHOR> http://quantified-mind.com

<comment><USER2> The design looks nice, and conveys the purpose of the site really well. Well done!

Some of the copy on the front page could probably do with a revision. The use of capitals when describing the focus of a test seems odd and is a little inconsistent (coffee, Meditation, breakfast, Sex). There is a typo in the 'Create your own' section.

Most of the copy reads really well, but the overall feel of it distracted me for some reason. Perhaps I just need another coffee! Love to see what metrics you pull out - do you intend to publish the data and analysis, and if so in what formats?

After some digging I was able to find this quote:

 _"Quantified Mind is a volunteer project, and we'd love extra help with development, web design, test design, and gathering participants for Quantified-Self-style studies."_

It's not 100% clear to me what is the driving force behind Quantified Mind, and that is something I would love to know. Is it just interested hackers building tools? Who is funding it?

In any case, it's a very interesting concept, congrats on the launch.

ps: I can't navigate to the home page from the bottom navigation bar. On a long page (eg 'Science') this meant I had to scroll to the top to get back.

pps: If you have a public repository of your code base you should add a link to it so people can start helping more easily.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the detailed feedback. Typos and the links definitely need fixing - we'll get on that after the traffic dies down.

We definitely plan on publishing the metrics, and there's some cool discoveries that have already been made. Check out Nick Winter's talk here for some examples of some of the interesting things he figured out with just an n=1 experiment: <http://blog.quantified-mind.com/2012/08/05/21/>

The driving force is a bit mixed. Nobodies funding it, we all just help out because we really think there needs to be something like this out there. The real core science behind the testing is Yoni Donner's thesis at Stanford, and he's the founder and lead developer ... the rest of us are just helping get it out on the web.

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

Actually, this has nothing to do right now with my Stanford research. I do computational biology for my PhD, not psychology. I built Quantified Mind because I want to discover effective ways to boost cognitive abilities and slow down age-related cognitive decline, and I did not find any existing tools that are sufficiently precise and give me the kind of access I want to the data. It's all about doing science and making discoveries about the associations between our actions and our cognition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just completed one session, and I came across a bug.

Screenshot: <http://i.imgur.com/luLCk.png>

This is with Chrome 22.0.1229.94 on OSX 10.7.5

Great site by the way, seems interesting.

</comment><comment><USER5> My feedback, for what it's worth, is that I clicked "try it out" and got 2 minutes into the white dot test before closing the tab. I really didn't feel engaged with it and even missed one of them because my eyes were wandering around the room thinking about other things. I suppose this is exactly the kind of thing that the tests can pick up, controlled for the various variables, but not if it's so tedious that I don't even finish the test. I'd be interested if you have the data on when people are closing tabs and to what extent I am an outlier. I felt like I was being patient lasting two (out of three) minutes, but perhaps I'm unusually low-attention spanned in this kind of task.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps you would enjoy one of our super-quick batteries: try creating your own experiment and choose "Telepath" under "Special". It has three tests in two minutes total time and doesn't give you much time to relax.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, this was a good recommendation - I did enjoy Telepath a lot more!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting concept and I like the design. My only suggestion is to consider drawing in users a little more before prompting them to give personal info via the Google sign in. Maybe this could be accomplished by connecting some kind of interactive demo of an experiment to the "Try it now" button. In any case, I was interested in the site when I clicked "Try it now;" I just wasn't quite hooked enough to give up my info at that point.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the suggestion, and I agree - it's definitely something I'd like to improve, but since I do this for fun in my free time I have limited time and try to focus on the science / data-analysis side. Thankfully Sina was kind enough to make it look much better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have been working on games to track and improve cognitive performance <http://brainturk.com>

</comment><comment><USER8> "Phone rang in the middle.. Don't save this result!" <\-- very clear and good explaining without explaining. Good job!

</comment><comment><USER9> I hate to be "that guy", but you have a minor typo on the home page.

"How does coffee affects your reaction time..."

<comment><AUTHOR> No worries - thanks for pointing it out. We'll correct that as soon as the traffic dies down a bit ...

<comment><USER10> Looks awesome. I found 'experiemnt'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like the idea. While I understand you need a decent sample size but I am not sure I will patient enough to login 29 times. Some feedback 1.it is not possible to cancel test execution 2.it is not clear if I need to complete all tests each time to get a result at the end

<comment><USER3> If you are impatient you can try designing your own experiment that will use a shorter battery. The answers: 1. To stop a test in the middle, just click on the Quantified Mind logo and it will take you out of the test with no negative consequences. 2. That actually depends on the experiment - for most experiments we need complete data so you should complete all tests, but for some, you will see an "end session" button show up after you complete the first test, allowing you to save a partial result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [http://www.quantified- mind.com/tests/sorting/practice/practi...](http://www.quantified- mind.com/tests/sorting/practice/practice) \- input via numeric keys doesn't work here, but asdf keys does.

</comment><comment><USER13> Beautifully done!

You should set the viewport width to 960px so that mobile phones see the whole page on page load rather than a zoomed in corner.

</comment><comment><USER14> You need to update your tutorial page to reflect the new design.

Other than that, this looks really cool.

Good work, guys.

</comment><comment><USER15> I like the basic idea; but don't quite understand what the Google Connect is needed for... ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah it's not great that it's the only option- we'll hopefully add other logins soon.</comment></comment>


Skype does a clever trick when bandwidth is scarce - <AUTHOR> On a Skype video conference this morning, I noticed the software did something very interesting. Instead of pixelating video when my crappy broadband internet connection slowed down briefly, it zoomed.
It was accomplished so smoothly I wouldn't even have noticed except that I was talking with a room full of people on the other end and suddenly I couldn't see the people on the sides any more.
Instead of reducing the full-frame video resolution when bandwidth grew scarce, as it usually does, instead this time Skype selected the middle portion of the frame and showed it clearly. It was very subtle. It was done completely smoothly. The effect was aesthetically pleasing, not disruptive at all, and an elegant solution.
Well done, Skype. <comment><USER2> I think this behavior comes from the webcam, and not Skype. I have actually seen this exact behavior with the Microsoft LifeCam, which often auto-changes the width of the video stream. The larger width will show "people on the sides," and the more narrow width does not.

I believe that the LifeCam looks for movement in the peripheral area. If there is no movement there, the LifeCam will truncate the sides of the image. I have sometimes been able to force the sides to appear by waving my arms off to the side.

When I first noticed this happening, I was surprised that many "people on the side" don't move or talk at all, thus triggering a truncation. But I started looking for this, and most "people on the side" barely move at all.

In my experience, Skype video quality tends to degrade by simply freezing the screen. I have also noticed this behavior when Skype was off entirely, when recording a video of myself. So I'm pretty sure it's the webcam itself auto- controlling the width, and not Skype.

<comment><USER3> How does the webcam driver know how much bandwidth your socket has? The request to reduce quality in some fashion would have to come from Skype.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't. That's the point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pretty sure you saw a resolution drop from "HD" which is 16:9 to "Regular" which is 4:3. It didn't zoom, it just went into a 640x480 mode instead of whatever mode it calls HD. It does it all the time to me. Personally, I find it annoying. The video is framed a way for a reason (so long staff on the sides!). Instead I'd rather see pixelization than a random change in aspect ratio.

<comment><USER6> This is the explanation. I use skype video pretty extensively and what you describe happens all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If i understand you correctly it does not show the full picture in degraded quality (more compression artifacts, framedrops), but it takes the center part of the image (so perhaps the center 70%) and upscales it to full size. With proper upscaling algorithms this would result in a slightly blurry picture, but with (as it uses only 70% of the image) no compression artifacts or framedrops.

Sounds like a smart idea.

However, i just skyped and noticed nothing of the sort. framedrops and compression artifacts galore. :-/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've never seen it do it before today. I wish Skype published release notes with their software updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've seen this on my Mac with its inbuilt webcam. It annoys me intensely because when it switches it usually results in unwatchable video for a period of time before it stabilises, then it suddenly realises it has enough bandwidth and switches _back_ , and that is followed by another period of disruption. Good idea in principle but needs refinement.

Since someone reading this might know, does anyone have any recommendations for webcams for OS X? The Logitech C920 seems to be the most modern HD webcam out there, but the Internet is conflicted on whether Mac's in-built UVC drivers will properly take advantage of it in FaceTime or not or if it will just be seen as an SD camera. So if anyone has any personal experiences with good HD webcams on OS X I'd be very interested to hear...

Edit: Actually, a "weekend project" I never got around to was to use OpenCV to detect faces and automatically encode just those regions with a higher bitrate, and sacrifice the rest. So that the areas we actually care about are encoded better and we can get an objectively better image for the same average bitrate. I'm sure someone must have done this already, though I couldn't find anything when I looked.

<comment><USER9> Interesting idea with face detection, though I'm not sure if there would be any wins over what the video codec already does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't think this is necessarily a good idea. For one thing, automatically cutting off the edges of a frame is undesirable, exactly for the reason mentioned (in a conference call, it cuts the people on the edges off).

Secondly, zooming is not as effective as real compression. What I mean by this is: assume you have a high resolution image. One way to save bandwidth is to use a well-designed compression algorithm optimized for the human visual system. The second way is to just shrink the image, and then "stretch" it back to the original size, which -- in a sense -- is what Skype is doing here. Which is going to be more effective?

<comment><USER11> _One way to save bandwidth is to use a well-designed compression algorithm optimized for the human visual system. The second way is to just shrink the image, and then "stretch" it back to the original size, which -- in a sense -- is what Skype is doing here. Which is going to be more effective?_

It really depends on how much data you need to shave off. Beyond a certain point, you'll get better visual results by reducing image size rather than increasing compression. As an example, an SD movie encoded with H.264 to a file size of 300MB would look a lot better than an HD movie encoded to the same file size, even when played back at the same on-screen dimensions.

<comment><USER12> This made me think... Is that a misfeature or bug in the compression algorithm? Why wouldn't the video codec adapt appropriately? If lower res causes a more even and smooth image, why shouldn't it scale down?

<comment><USER11> I had typed a lengthy introduction to an explanation, but realized I don't know exactly where all the bits are going in a high-res low-bitrate image. All I can say with confidence is that if you squeeze a high-resolution image into the same size as a low resolution image, the low resolution image will look better. The high resolution image will basically be reduced to storing DC coefficients, so you'll see these giant 16x16/8x8/4x4/etc. pixel blocks of solid color, with maybe a bit of pattern on them that barely correlates with what the original looked like.

Maybe it comes down to the per-macroblock overhead; maybe fewer blocks total in the lower resolution image allows more bits to be allocated to frequency coefficients instead of DC offsets.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I've observed the effect, but it never occured to me that it doesn't (or shouldn't) have to be that way :) We should be able to demand codecs that are smarter and more adaptive :)

It's hard to imagine why anyone would _want_ a blocky highres lowbitrate stream if the lowres variants are always better, for a given timespan of video

<comment><USER13> Though this isn't implemented by the reference encoder yet, the VP9 bitstream supports this (encoding a downscaled frame and signaling to the decoder to upscale it before displaying it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I know from personal experience that LYNQ speeds up the audio stream when the connection gets bad for a short time. It is using time stretching (changing the speed without changing the pitch). I can tell the difference, because I did a lot of audio editing in the past and know how time stretching sounds. I would say that the speed factor is up to 2-3x.

This makes people "speak" incredibly fast occasionally.

<comment><USER15> I've noticed this with Skype. It's pretty funny: you'll not hear much for a few seconds, and then hear the other party speak really quickly, with all the pauses between words dropped out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm confused about why this would be a good way to save bandwidth. The same number of pixels are still required to give you a smooth picture. So unless Skype adds more pixels to the zoomed-in area (which would presumably negate the bandwidth savings), you're still getting reduced resolution. Why not forget the zooming and just reduce resolution?

<comment><USER17> I assume the heuristic they're using is that single faces are the primary use case, and will tend to be in the center of the frame. If I'm right, their solution would use more of the available bandwidth resolving the user's face rather than anything which may be in the background.

<comment><USER18> OTOH, things in the background are unlikely to move much which is ideal for frame-to-frame compression, so getting rid of those areas is unlikely to really buy you much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Really cool idea. The next step is to use basic face detection to focus towards the largest face in the stream.

</comment><comment><USER20> Are you sure this wasn't someone twisting the zoom ring on a camera the other end?

<comment><AUTHOR> _Are you sure this wasn 't someone twisting the zoom ring on a camera the other end?_

I'm sure. I was watching when it happened, twice. Shortly before it happened, I did see some pixelisation, so I know the bandwidth was flaky. It seems to have started doing this after the most recent software update.

I thought about sending a nice note of thanks to Skype's support address, but it was just so _neatly_ done that I wanted to give them more public praise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if this effect could be made less noticeable by layering & blending the cropped image on the last full-size frame. The centre of the feed would continue to move, but the edges of the image would remain stationary.

</comment><comment><USER22> Anyone having luck talking to people through XMPP Audio/Video with an opensource client?

It's ironic that Twitter, Facebook, Skype, Yahoo, AOL, Google et al. use XMPP in one or the other proprietary form.

It's opensource, many awesome clients are available and yet people still choose possibly backdoored and definitely monitored and text-mined closed- source solutions. I don't understand why the usage of the open solutions is so low. Can someone explain?

<comment><USER23> I tried switching to Jit.si last month. After a week or so, I went back to Skype. Very poor audio and dropped calls.

Get someone in there to completely strip the UI, increase the audio quality, and I'm there. Paid user.

<comment><USER22> Good to know, I'm not alone with that experience then. All of my clients already have XMPP, but there is no good CrossPlatform Client, that JustWorks™. Which is sad. But maybe something new will replace this, for example WebRTC is on the way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Google Hangout HD mode is a wider view. If you ratchet down the quality, one notch down from HD (the original view) is a narrower view.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if video input could be reduced to textures and geometry/transforms for low-bandwidth videoconferencing scenarios.

<comment><USER26> Sounds a lot like how video quality degraded gracefully in Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep". Transcendent beautiful 3d video with all kinds of other extras degrades seamlessly to janky paper cut -like actors in the book iirc.

<comment><USER25> Ha! That was actually my first thought after submitting my comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Skype is also among the NSA partner companies.

<comment><USER28> before they partnered with the NSA, it used to be P2P to save server bandwidth... But I don't think the problem is with the company being a partner with the NSA, the problem is that the powers of the NSA are too broad (they can force companies to participate in these mass-surveillance programs, or throw them in jail).

<comment><USER27> > they can force companies to participate in these mass-surveillance programs, > or throw them in jail

Or those companies could band together and give the NSA the collective finger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Zooming will not reduce bandwidth requirement, unless the zoomed image is also pixilated.

<comment><USER30> OP probably meant the image was cropped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> You must have the paid version. When bandwidth is scarce for me, it just drops the call.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is definitely not Skype.

</comment><comment><USER33> Doesn't let NSA spy on it anymore? That should save some bandwidth.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let's make "Langford's parrot" basilisk for NSA that everyone can transmit around when circuits are idle. Make sure it's not compressible; fill up their disk space right quick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Good one! Might be a good suggestion for WebRTC spec as well!

<comment><USER35> Wouldn't this get implemented in the client code rather than the API itself?

<comment><AUTHOR> To achieve the goal of saving bandwidth, it must have been done coöperatively between the remote machine and mine. Their end had to understand that _my_ end was short of bandwidth (remember, this is cheap ADSL, and my broadband speeds are r-e-a-l-l-y asymmetric) and send fewer pixels, followed by which my end had to upsample those pixels to keep the picture the same size.

<comment><USER35> I don't really understand why at all. You send less pixels and the destination machine just displays those as is. What would giving it more information about /why/ really accomplish? What can it do? Wouldn't it make re-sampling decisions based on the content with or without low bandwidth?

<comment><USER34> Only when the quality degrades, the remote bitrate estimator tells the other side to reduce the bitrate if the decoder isn't keeping up. that's the spec. Otherwise it is on default resolution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is a behavior of webcam. My Dell laptop does all this.

</comment><comment><USER37> It's the Web cam, not Skype.

</comment><comment><USER38> i don't want to say anything

</comment><comment><USER39> WOW! Skype is sooooo cooool. Now, if they could stop spying on me that'd be great.

<comment><USER40> Subtle.</comment></comment>