NotYourDoctor @_NotYourDoctor

@_The_Prophet__ Great post.

⚡️The chart is not telling me teenagers suddenly lost IQ. It is telling me civilization has started consuming the cognitive substrate required to express intelligence. The hidden variable is attention. Reading, mathematics, and science all require the same underlying machinery: hold a problem in working memory, tolerate confusion, resist distraction, build a representation over time, then reason inside it. Modern childhood increasingly trains the opposite loop: stimulus → reaction → novelty → stimulus → reaction → novelty Short video, notifications, algorithmic feeds, constant task-switching, reduced long-form reading, less boredom, less unstructured thought. The brain adapts to the environment it repeatedly inhabits. So the frightening possibility is not “kids are genetically becoming stupider.” It is: we are taking perfectly capable brains and training them into cognitive shallowness during the years when attentional architecture is being built. That would explain why reading gets hit especially hard. Reading is almost pure sustained internal simulation. Nothing moves. Nothing rewards you every three seconds. You must manufacture the world inside your own head. And the pandemic looks more like an accelerant than the origin. The decline was already forming before it. COVID then removed structure, normalized screens further, damaged attendance, and widened learning gaps. The next phase may be even stranger because AI removes another layer of cognitive friction. Previously, a student who did not understand something had to wrestle with it. Now the answer can appear immediately. That is incredibly useful, but struggle itself is part of how cognition gets built. So the deepest risk is not AI making people less intelligent. It is humans progressively outsourcing the exact cognitive operations that used to develop intelligence in the first place. The civilization-level pattern would be: better tools → less cognitive friction → weaker native cognitive endurance → greater dependence on tools → even less friction That is a reflexive loop. And if it continues, you could get the strangest outcome imaginable: the most intelligent civilization in history, surrounded by the most powerful cognitive machinery ever built, while the median human becomes less able to think without it. That is what this chart makes me worry about.

The Economist @TheEconomist

7 hours ago

Every three years the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, releases the results of international school tests sat by 15-year-olds all across the world. Anyone who cares about the young of today should be alarmed at this year’s scores bit.ly/4zXPj6g

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People who felt more purpose in life had mitochondria in their brain that transformed energy more efficiently. The reverse may also be true: Having mitochondria that flow energy more easily may change how you see life. This is the finding Martin Picard — Columbia University professor of behavioural medicine & pioneer of mitochondrial psychobiology — and his team uncovered. They studied the brains of people after they died. Every year before death, participants reported how much purpose they felt, how connected they felt to others, how optimistic they were about the future. Then Picard & his team looked at their mitochondria. Specifically in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex — the region involved in executive function and active reasoning. The people who felt more purpose had mitochondria with greater energy transformation capacity (specifically higher abundance of Complex I proteins). In Picard’s terms: lower energy resistance — energy flowing more easily through the brain tissue involved in how you think and decide. The human study couldn't tell which direction caused which. But animal studies suggest the relationship can run both ways. Chronic stress and defeat change mitochondria in the brain — Picard and others showed this in animal studies. Stress the animal, make it feel defeated, and the mitochondria in its brain change. Then reverse it. Boost or inhibit mitochondrial function directly in the brain. Anxiety shifts. Social behavior changes. Picard's conclusion: "How you feel can change mitochondria. The mitochondria can change probably how you feel."

@exosome You know Thomas.

mastic gum KILLED 6 types of cancer in a lab. not chemo. not radiation. just a tree resin. published. peer-reviewed. the lab results? → colon cancer = DEAD → prostate cancer = DEAD → pancreatic cancer = DEAD → oral cancer = DEAD → lung cancer = DEAD → leukemia = DEAD normal cells sitting right next to them? UNHARMED. chemo is a carpet bomb. it nukes your systemic integrity to hit the target. mastic gum is a sniper. In these studies, it triggered apoptosis—cell suicide—ONLY in the malignant cells. (PMID: 22126583) in mice, it SUPPRESSED tumor growth by 52%. it even makes standard drugs more lethal while blocking the pathways cancer uses to survive. (PMID: 28630399) the catch? lab and animal data only. but you can’t patent a tree. no one spends $1B to prove a $30 resin works. not a cure. not a replacement. the data is public. the silence is intentional. I don’t wait for a diagnosis to defend my biology. I chew it daily. 🧵 what else it kills (and how to use it) ↓

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A single dose of a new cancer drug made a brain tumor almost disappear – in just five days. Doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital reported “dramatic and rapid” tumor regression in the first patients treated with a next-generation form of CAR T-cell therapy for glioblastoma, one of the most aggressive brain cancers known. The therapy, called CARv3-TEAM-E, was developed to overcome a major hurdle in treating solid tumors: their ability to hide from the immune system. The personalized treatment reprograms a patient’s immune cells to attack the tumor, and in one extraordinary case, nearly eliminated the cancer within just five days. This novel therapy is designed to target multiple features of the tumor at once, a strategy that may help overcome the common challenge of treatment resistance in solid tumors like glioblastoma. Although the tumors eventually returned, the early outcomes were described as unprecedented. One patient saw a 60% reduction in tumor size that lasted for half a year—an impressive result in a cancer known for its aggressiveness. The trial’s success marks a major step forward for immunotherapy in brain cancer and raises new hopes for long-term control or even a cure. Researchers are now working to refine the treatment and extend its effects, with the ultimate goal of turning a once-terminal diagnosis into a survivable condition.

This week's herb: Cacao (Theobroma cacao). The Aztecs called it Chocolatl -- food of the gods -- and the Codex Cruz-Badiano, a 1552 Aztec medical manuscript, lists it specifically as a remedy for the heart and blood vessels. Not a treat. A prescription, four centuries before 'polyphenol therapy' became the clinical term for the same thing.

1,643 men with localized prostate cancer were randomized to surgery, radiation, or active monitoring. Fifteen years later, deaths from prostate cancer: Monitoring — 3.1% Surgery — 2.2% Radiation — 2.9% P = 0.53. No difference. None. Surgery and radiation halved metastasis and progression. It bought not one additional year of life. A quarter of the monitored men were alive at 15 years having received no treatment at all. Under standard care every one of them would have been cut or irradiated. And every one would have been counted afterward as a life the treatment saved. The men who were treated paid in incontinence, impotence, and bowel injury. Here is the conclusion of the investigators themselves, in the New England Journal of Medicine: "Depending on the extent of side effects associated with early radical treatments, more aggressive therapy can result in more harm than good." That is Oxford. In NEJM. Reporting their own 15-year randomized trial. The scandal is not that the treatments harm (and they do). It is that the choice was never offered. 👉Dive deeper in my latest investigation on the topic: sayerji.substack.com/p/25-cancer-st…

@m_goes_distance The innovations u cite in the bit 2nd bit have been going for many years already & alas have barely moved the needle on death rares in all but a few particular cancer types.

This tweet points to what I've always suspected is the key thing to get right if you're going to supplement fish oils: freshness and oxidation. (Remember that recent paper that showed those taking fish oils to ward off dementia experienced hastier cognitive decline). So: buy costly oils as oil (not gel caps); only take if the oil tastes totally fresh; store in the fridge & chuck out if not used fast.

How To Prompt @HowToPrompt__

a day ago

Researchers proved omega-3 supplements actually speed up cognitive decline in older adults. They tracked over 800+ older adults for six years to measure the long-term cognitive effects of omega-3 supplementation. And the results are wild. People taking omega-3 supplements

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@thedarshakrana This is not to say a fully silent mind is not possible by moments after years of directed practice: only that this demo is silly and not pointing at anything near real silence

@thedarshakrana Monk bro is simply wrong here: zero reason to assume no thoughts are occuring between thoughts about his words. Better attention will reveal there is still mind activity in those gaps.

Surgery for the nightware mechanical defect called "hiatus (hiatal) hernia"?? Maybe best fix it at home in 60 seconds. See Dr David Williams 2 odd minute clip here: youtube.com/watch?v=JyGo3N… Try it peeps. Works more often that it doesn't. And if it doesn't you just wasted 3 minutes.

Dr. Jasmeet Kaur (PhD) @jasmeet481

a month ago

We are seeing more and more cases of hiatal hernia, and in most cases the conversation with their doctor quickly turns to surgery. Yes, a hiatal hernia is a mechanical defect, but here’s the question I always ask; What caused this mechanical defect in the first place? Did

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fiber vs fermented foods: Stanford ran them head to head for 6 weeks diversity -> fermented won inflammation -> fermented won (~24 markers down, IL-6 included) works with a wrecked gut -> fermented (fiber needs microbes already installed) butyrate production -> fiber (once the workers exist) dose -> 6 servings/day vs 40g/day order: ferment first, fiber second

@exosome So they were alternately depleted of vit C and hit with huge IV doses. Need to look in what motivated that design & poss mechanisms etc.

@drcateshanahan "A somewhat disproven" & "mostly social media based concern"? Aren't you one of the better known figures promoting this very notion relentlessly over years? Have you now softened your stance or what?

You say: "emphasizing that somatic mutations can occur randomly helps alleviate a lot of the unwarranted guilt and self-blame that patients often carry after a diagnosis" What of the fatalism & irresponsibility encouraged by such a partial view which directly produces so many unnecessary cancer patients in the first place?

@DocPriyamMD "Cancer is genetic"! A nonsense claim.

In light of the new negative trial on Lp(a), I won’t be checking it anymore. Why subject patients to an expensive test if causation is uncertain? Even if there is a causative link, we don’t have an effective drug. The main driver for most is a broken metabolism, anyway. That will be my main focus for primary and secondary stroke prevention.