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[dragdeler]

I looked that up because of an anecdote I heard once, sort of a thought exercise on what chaos it could have caused had prehistoric humans stumbled on food sources that are rich in hormones, so I just wanted to check how common that might have been.

[Maximum Spin]

Yeah, studies have shown that, at least for healthy people, those aren't even meaningfully absorbed. It's a non-thing.

[dragdeler]

I barely read it but the abstract does seem to mention that data on bioavailability is incomplete. In any case I doubt those animal hormones are exactly identical to human ones, I doubt they are all equally affected by stomach fluids, saliva etc, but maybe I'm stupid and it turns out they're all aminoacids or something like that, should it be that the stomach acid leaves nothing behind, then there is the question of precursors that might stimulate people with active relevant organs (as if I know where hormons come from) to produce more of the pertaining hormone.

With the complete shitshow that is knowledge about nutrition I really doubt that all of this has been settled.

I was just wondering how out of the norm it would be consume hormones. Aren't babypills just hormones?

[Frumple]

Testosterone as a supplement is common enough I get fucking snail mail spam about it, far as I'm aware estrogen or related stuff is bog standard use for a number of things, too. Hormone usage has been more or less completely uncontested as unusual or out of place except when it's used for gender affirming care, specifically.

[Maximum Spin]

I mean, I don't think taking any kind of pills can ever be called "normal", in that it's not part of the normal biology of a human body.

[MrRoboto75]

Half the stuff you ate for lunch probably wasn't very normal for human biology either.

[Frumple]

Eating stuff external to your body to make yourself feel better is so standard a behavior it's exhibited pervasively by non-humans, to the point a lot of our pharmacology got its start out of observing exactly that. It's part of normal biology for just about everything that has a biology.

Pills refine materials to (hopefully) maximize the benefits and minimize the detriments, but the basic behavior is incredibly standard among living things. If it ain't something you'd consider normal, your concept of normal is wildly out of whack.

[Maximum Spin]

Half the stuff you ate for lunch probably wasn't very normal for human biology either.

I mean, I don't really eat processed foods, but yeah, most things most people eat aren't. Not sure what your point is.

Eating stuff external to your body to make yourself feel better is so standard a behavior it's exhibited pervasively by non-humans, to the point a lot of our pharmacology got its start out of observing exactly that. It's part of normal biology for just about everything that has a biology.

Pills refine materials to (hopefully) maximize the benefits and minimize the detriments, but the basic behavior is incredibly standard among living things. If it ain't something you'd consider normal, your concept of normal is wildly out of whack.

You're just equivocating between "abnormal" and "there's something wrong with it". Pills that have to be manufactured in a factory halfway around the world and shipped to you at enormous energy expense are obviously abnormal, and qualitatively different from the prehistoric "eat some roots and grass and probably die anyway" correlate.

[dragdeler]

garble garble ninja slashes

I mean I have been thinking about diabetes recently that's why I even looked  stats about food at all, because I'm currently mildly more concerned about nutrition than usual.. If we're talking on a scale from pills to syringes to dialysis (again I think I understood insulin is actually a complex topic, and I know very little of it), pills are on the more "normal" end of the spectrum... ah whatever:

"has been more or less completely uncontested as unusual or out of place except when it's used for gender affirming care, specifically." seems to be a running theme

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

idk, if someone I know told me they'd be transitioning, and hard pressed me on my opinion, I might offend them beyond the pale... just because I have too little skin in the game gender vs sex vs identity vs what the hell do I know... it's like idgaf why do you?

But I'm also too much of a body autonomy absolutist to think anybody has a say over such a thing. So long people are not chugging liters of mercury or sniffing highly radioactive dust, or provoking mass accidents.. you know, so long as they remain safe to dispose of, people can fuck themselves up whichever way they want, I don't care. (edit: strike that out, then remove strikeout, then scribble the whole page until it's unreadable) We don't get to expect much of people in general. Some behaviours make the future unlivable, that's too bad but also fuck you because people aren't property, figure your shit out by yourself, and pray to god you remain unnoticed. It is too late for all of us anyway.

[Dostoevsky]

and qualitatively different from the prehistoric "eat some roots and grass and probably die anyway" correlate.

Setting aside everything else, it's not like it's a binary step between medicine 10,000+ years ago and 50 years ago. Plenty of cultures used wholly natural ingredients for cures for a long time (and even still!) and while there are plenty of placebos or problematic ones there are also lots of quite legitimate and good natural medicines. (And yes, there are a fair few modern medicines that are basically just placebos and have their own problems, hah.) They're often not as good as the modern synthetic and/or refined pills, but still good and a fair few modern pills were derived from X plant harvested by Y group.

(And no I'm not talking about Chinese herbal medicines, I don't really know that field too well.)

[Maximum Spin]

Setting aside everything else, it's not like it's a binary step between medicine 10,000+ years ago and 50 years ago. Plenty of cultures used wholly natural ingredients for cures for a long time (and even still!) and while there are plenty of placebos or problematic ones there are also lots of quite legitimate and good natural medicines. (And yes, there are a fair few modern medicines that are basically just placebos and have their own problems, hah.) They're often not as good as the modern synthetic and/or refined pills, but still good and a fair few modern pills were derived from X plant harvested by Y group.

(And no I'm not talking about Chinese herbal medicines, I don't really know that field too well.)

You're also not getting what I'm saying.

Zero of what you just said has anything to do with the point. The only point is that, from any biological or historical or cross-cultural perspective, chewing on roots or tree bark is the normal way to deal with problems, and popping pills, much less getting stabbed with a needle, is profoundly weird and unique.

Any statement about effect has nothing to do with anything, because "normal" is a totally separate axis from "good" and equivocating between the two is insane and fallacious.

[Dostoevsky]

Wait, you intended to say "eat some roots and grass and probably die anyway" in a good way? Edit: Actually I guess I see what you're saying, but in that case I'm not sure what point you're intending to make or maybe I wasn't following the conversation enough. Normal/abnormal is kind of an arbitrary distinction that doesn't mean much on its own.

Either way, they're all just chemistry. Plants have one sort, synthesis provides another sort. Some are naturally occurring, others aren't.

[Lord Shonus]

There's fundamentally no difference between chewing bark/eating the right plants and taking pills.

Except the pills are a lot more likely to work and a lot less likely to kill you - the ingredients that are actually useful are concentrated to a known amount instead of the natural variation (it is literally impossible to know if many natural remedies will be to weak to work or powerful enough to cause a fatal overdose), and the many extra chemicals that cause bad side effects are absent. There are no virtues to natural medicine.

[Starver]

...but they keep saying that Natural Remedies are at least as good as commercial medicines but without any chemcals!

I demand my atomless remedies!

[nenjin]

Eating bark or root to get one component of it in your body is a surefire way to die. Humans have been refining natural products for centuries, in ever increasing levels of effectiveness and purity. What you're selling is the naturalist fallacy. No one will disagree that modern refinement of anything introduces some bad with the good and has an environmental cost. But implying the good is negligible compared to doing something similar but radically unsafe is literally how people die following bad advice.