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US Gained a Decade of Flynn-Effect IQ Points After Adding Iodine To Salt
cold fjord writes "I wish it was always this easy. Business Insider reports, 'Iodized salt is so ubiquitous that we barely notice it. Few people know why it even exists. Iodine deficiency remains the world's leading cause of preventable mental retardation. According to a new study (abstract), its introduction in America in 1924 had an effect so profound that it raised the country's IQ. A new NBER working paper from James Feyrer, Dimitra Politi, and David N. Weil finds that the population in iodine-deficient areas saw IQs rise by a full standard deviation, which is 15 points, after iodized salt was introduced.... The mental impacts were unknown, the program was started to fight goiter, so these effects were an extremely fortunate, unintended side effect.'"
What is the Flynn Effect?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
And now we've got people in the US trying to avoid "iodized salt" because it's a "processed food" and they want "natural mineral salts". Of course they don't even know why salt is iodized -- they think it's a "preservative" (you know, cause salt goes bad) or somesuch -- and while they might be getting enough iodine elsewhere they certainly aren't regulating their intake to ensure as much. It's almost as bad as the folks who want "pectin-free" jam.
Simply meeting the basic needs of the general public brings huge gains.
There used to be a stereotype that all southerners were lazy and terrible workers. Turns out they were really just riddled with parasites (That train your energy and make you tired) Basic sanitation (Even things a simple as proper outhouses dug deep enough) solved that problem amazingly well. Many poor nations struggle with this problem today, however.
The Army started school lunch programs because malnourished children were growing up stunted and short (among other health problems), and made for awful soldiers.
Right, but salt is still vital to our bodies survival...even if you are diagnosed with high blood pressure the doctor will tell you not to cut salt out just cut it down.
Heart disease is so complex they may even tell you that you need to increase you salt intake some.
But I um... thought... um.. it was good for.me to um..... have a what's the.word Jenny? A diet low is salt. I may not be smart, but I know what high blood pressure is...
Just a note that, according to my doctor, and many articles I've read, excessive salt in the diet is NOT a problem for many/most people, but only those sensitive to it. Good explanations can be found:
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I try to avoid salt when possible because so much food is overloaded with it, so I'm a little over the daily recommended value instead of double of it.
Salt isn't just a preservative but a way to make lesser-quality food taste better, so the market gives a financial incentive to salt up everything.
So Gen. Jack Ripper wasn't so crazy after all, huh?
Germany was at the forefront of endocrinology during their 2nd industrial revolution that preceded similar industrialization in america.
Their endocrinologists knew that Hyperthyroidism could be treated with a bath with a very dilute amount of Hydrofluoric acid added. They eventually synthesised 3-Fluorotyrosine which was even more vectored to the thyroid gland. The reason this works is normal thyroid hormone is made from conjugated tyrosine with Iodine located at the meta potitions of both rings, no special enzyme positions the Iodine here it is simple thermodynamically favourable for halogens. Once at the target tissue the halogen is removed by the Deiodinase enzymes, Type II is the most important, it requires selenomethionine unlike the Type I and III, and selectively turns T4 into T3. Inside the target cell the Iodine is liberated where it performs an essential role in the nucleus. If Fluorine is located on the tyrosyl it poisons the Type II deiodinase and you result in a form of subtle hypothyroidism where your body loses the ability to move through the normal dynamic range of high and low energy states. To compensate for the inability to convent T4 to the more potent T3 you produce more T4 all the time. You end up unable to relax. An effect also produced by the ability of Fluoride to very selectively target Acetylcholineesterases, required for termination of muscle nerve signals, leading to increased agitation and an inability to properly wind down and relax. Finally Fluoride is potent against Aconitase modifying the Citric-Acid-Cycle in unfavourable ways.
Clearly these are all long evolved stress responses to the ubiquitous toxin that is Fluorine. Henry Mousian was the 10th person who tried to isolate it an succeeded, all the others died. He died a premature death. chlorine and bromine are not nearly so deadly.
Fluorine is very ubiquitous in the earth crust, generally over 200ppm it is more common in the earths crust than carbon! So this enemy has existed for all time, harvard has recently found RNA riboswitches in bacteria that have been shown to specifically sense fluorine to activate defences. Humans do not have these, instead we have G-protein coupled receptors, through which all our hormone and many neurotransmitters function. These are also very sensitive to compounds that form from Fluorine and another ubiquitous element, Aluminium. AlF3 actives g-protein coupled receptors and modulate our sensitivity to our own hormones. there is a theory that the GPCR evolved to sense Fluoride !
Although the role of iodine in the thyroid was to continue to be understood upto WWII as together with Niacin it was one of the two most significant factors that determined mortality from Nuclear weapons.
Yeah. Don't forget to stop vaccinating children also, while you are at that.
morcego
Missed it. Of course I've been first and marked redundant before, so - meh.
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The standardized weighted mean difference in IQ score between exposed and reference populations was -0.45...
...The estimated decrease in average IQ associated with fluoride exposure based on our analysis may seem small and may be within the measurement error of IQ testing.
Your loss looks like it might be a rounding error.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Maybe not.
Does Fluoride Make Your Kids Dumb?
Dr. Mercola: Visionary or Quack?
FDA Orders Dr. Joseph Mercola to Stop Illegal Claims
Inspections, Compliance, Enforcement, and Criminal Investigations - 2011
Inspections, Compliance, Enforcement, and Criminal Investigations - 2006
Joe Mercola: 15 years of promoting quackery
The New PuritansWhen did liberals become so uptight?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Great!
Any way we can distribute extra iodine to /. trolls and flamers?
As much as possible, please!
I'm wondering about the internet in general as a symptom of a larger problem. So these people got a little better at figuring out hos things tick or how to solve a puzzle. Know what they did with it? They tied themselves up in knots with conspiracy theories and bollox like that. Perhaps the answer is to cut out some of that Iodine.
There are days when I just don't want to see the crap that's going on on the interwebs.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Cutting salt out of a diet that includes non-synthetic substances is probably impossible. If it lived on earth, it probably has salt in it.
You've obviously never been to Texas.
-.45 is well within the margin of error for IQ testing. And really, any differences of IQ under 3% is not worth even considering. A person who cares can easily gain 10 IQ points just based upon environment alone.
What's more IQ itself is a narrow measure of aptitude primarily focused upon success rates at school. Even if the drop in IQ were more meaningful, it would still not necessarily mean that people were getting less intelligent, it could mean that their aptitudes were changing to focus on other things.
excessive salt in the diet is NOT a problem for many/most people, but only those sensitive to it.
People with West African ancestory (as most African-Americans are) tend to be the most sensitive. East Asians tend to be the least sensitive. People of European descent tend to be in the middle. This correlates well with areas where salt was historically rare/common. In West Africa, salt was often brought in caravans across the Sahara, and was very expensive, and thus unavailable to common people. In China, for centuries, even peasants could afford to drench their food in salt-laden soy sauce.
It's a representational government.
A lot of people in the US live in the so-called Goiter Belt, which is a band of the northernmost state (or two) of the US. Roughly speaking, the other states were once a vast inland ocean swamp, so the soil become infused with Iodine form the ocean. This gets into the water supply, with the result that Northern residents have far less Iodine in their diet than southern states.
Another source of Iodine used to be bread - Iodine was used as a dough conditioner in bread, so a little bit got into the food chain that way. Some of the effect we're seeing might also be due to the rise of manufactured bread in the US.
More recently, however, bread makers have started using Bromine instead of Iodine. Bromine binds to Iodine receptors so not only are we no longer getting Iodine from bread, we're less able to process the Iodine we do get.
There's also the question of how much Iodine we need to be healthy. There's good evidence for the minimum amount to prevent disease, but that may (and for those of you in the medical community, note that I'm saying "may") be lower than the optimum amount.
Note that doctors will tell you that 150ug is the maximum Iodine you should ever take (more would be toxic!) and yet occasionally use Iodine to enhance contrast in radiological studies, which puts as much as 20 mg in the blood stream. The RDA value is 100x less than used by doctors in some studies studies to treat disease.
There's also disagreement as to what the minimum daily intake should be.
We really should be studying these things. Unfortunately, a supplement that anyone could buy which will clear a patient's symptoms is incompatible with an expensive FDA-tested drug that requires office visits to administer. The medical community won't make money on supplements, so they aren't studied very well. There's enormous economic pressure against research into health (as opposed to research into disease).
No, not really, most places don't. Even "sea salt" isn't from the sea in most cases. (They can call it sea salt based on theories that the mines were once, long ago, part of a sea.)
We were having a good time till you showed up.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
'Cretinism', the sufficiently-severe-to-be-clinically-obvious manifestation of iodine deficiency has been known for a considerable length of time, in places without sufficient soil iodine. I would imagine that smaller gains would only be a surprise if you thought that everybody not obviously diseased was fully healthy, rather than frequently mildly subnormal.
They tied themselves up in knots with conspiracy theories and bollox like that. Perhaps the answer is to cut out some of that Iodine.
That's what the lizard men want you to think.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If this is the case, why is it that the container of Mortons Sea Salt I have in my cabinet state that it "does not contain iodine (a necessary part of a healthy diet)" or words to that effect?
Shut up brain or I'll stab you with a Q-Tip. - Homer Simpson
It's been offset by the introduction of fluoride in the water supply, which is simply Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and an international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids. Hence, Dancing with the Stars.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I think it is probably more about balance, especially between sodium and potassium. I know I started feeling a LOT better, and my blood pressure fell when I started using KCl instead of table salt.
As I recall, there is a tribe in South America that gets practically all of their electrolytes through KCl, and they have something like zero incidence of heart disease.
My cardiologist told me to add a little salt to my diet.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Because you can only do one or the other, apparently.
I'm unconvinced.
The enemy of my enemy is quite possibly also my enemy. I've made a lot of enemies.
Clearly you have never had the pleasure of visiting Lake Woebegone.
But with fluoride added to the water supply, we can reverse those gains..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mercola/fluoride_b_2479833.html
It all traces back to this guy: http://www.quackwatch.com/11Ind/yiamouyiannis.html
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It's also interesting that IQ scores tend to be spread that way as well.
Salt is the spice we are looking for!
It's also interesting that IQ scores tend to be spread that way as well.
IQ scores tend to be correlated with a history of urbanization and economic specialization. In a primitive society, innovation and original thinking are unlikely to lead to any benefit, and might lead to a disaster such as a crop failure or empty snares. But in an urbanized society with specialized jobs, successful ideas can be leveraged for disproportionate benefit. East Asia had large urban populations long before the West. In Europe, Jews were urbanized during the middle ages when almost everyone else was a rural serf. East Asians have average IQ scores about 5 points higher than Europeans, and Ashkenazi Jews are higher still.
They had no clue what was going on. They ate some salt, then figured it out.
rewriting history since 2109
IQ tests are meaningless.
Baloney. IQ tests may not precisely measure "intelligence", but they are clearly measuring something. IQ scores are strongly correlated with economic success (higher salaries and lower unemployment), reduction in criminal behavior, and better health. Things that lead to higher IQ scores tend to raise these correlated factors as well, whether it is better nutrition, less lead exposure, or even coaching on the thinking skills required for the test (which seems to indicate that good "test taking skills" are actually broadly useful critical thinking skills).
Recall that DC voters re-elected Marion Barry.
DC voters don't like to get pushed around by the federal government, and they get pushed a lot. Marion Barry was a scoundrel, but he was sent to prison in what was a clear case of entrapment by federal agents. They were almost certainly targeting him because of his politics. How many other citizens have been handed free unsolicited cocaine by the US government? His reelection was just DC voters giving congress the finger.
Jeez, most everybody knows that it was lead from gasoline that lowered the quality of the IQ test and thus raised the IQ test results.
Cutting salt out of a diet that includes non-synthetic substances is probably impossible. If it lived on earth, it probably has salt in it.
Salt is actually pretty important nutritionally and for osmoregulation. Way too much/little is bad for you, but some salt is required. It's so important that part of our taste mechanism is dedicated to salt. Alton Brown summed it up nicely saying (okay, I'm paraphrasing) that while many things taste sweet (good eats), sour (bad eats) or bitter (poisonous eats), only one thing tastes salty - salt.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I use a potassium / sodium / iodine blend, like Morton Lite Salt, in everything I cook or bake, and one of those sea salt grinders at the table. This keeps everyone at the table happy, and heathly.
Don't forget the "salt will kill you" campaign. I remember that as far back as the 80s.
Can anyone explain why my Morton's Popcorn Salt isn't iodized?
Technically lack of iodine cause mental retardation, or a lowering of IQ, so using iodized salt in a population wouldn't actually increase IQ the IQ of the population, it would simply protect against the degredation caused by iodine insufficiency.
Feed them crabby-patties, they're topped in iodine rich kelp.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Err... by your argument adding stupid members to a group or deleting smart ones would shift the IQ scale so that the 50th percentile (IQ=100) would move to a new, lower test score.
In any case, everyone understands what the summary actually means. Any given version of test is calibrated with a certain sample at a certain point in time. Over time, if the underlying population's score on the test changes, their IQ *score* as reported by tests calibrated by old sample populations changes as well.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Are you kidding me? That first letter is dealing with the toxicity of uranium hexafluoride, not fluoridated drinking water or salt!
The concern there is almost certainly due to industrial exposure of workers trying to purify uranium on the Manhattan Project.
I think that is as far as I need to look. You're following a quack, and in danger of becoming a crank. "Wakey Wakey"
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
I think it is interesting that the generation affected by the iodized salt brain boost would have just been coming of age when WW2 struck. The US would have entered the war with quite a few soldiers that would have been noticeably more intelligent than their fathers in WW1. I expect it must have helped given the increasing technical sophistication of warfare at the time. Smarter soldiers also tend to do better on the battlefield in general.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
and we took the lead out, and yet it seems in the US, people on the whole are stupider then ever. There must be some sort of reverse Flynn effect compensating for all this. I'd like to blame reality TV, but that's likely just a system.
Did you see what they were wearing back then? I'm not surprised we're superior to those knuckle draggers, lol. Plus, they practically ate lead paint chips and drank water from lead pipes.
Most sensitive to what? A high fat, high calorie diet maybe. Salt, however, is NOT causative agent of heart disease. Your body naturally regulates sodium levels and readily excretes what it doesn't need. It's what we've been doing since our ancestors were swimming in the sea. The anti-salt movement is all about scaremongering and not about rational science.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
"The estimated decrease in average IQ associated with fluoride exposure based on our analysis may seem small and may be within the measurement error of IQ testing." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3491930/
You can try salting their passwords.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I live in the desert. Here, if you don't eat more salty snacks, then you end up in hospital if you drink too much water on a hot day.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The way I heard it was that it was the use of untreated fertilizer in the fields and gardens that was the primary cause of the infections.
I suppose, sitting barefoot in an outhouse with no floor, that the hookworms working their way up from the pit could be a contributive factor.
But, shoes, yes. One of the reasons for the tradition of wooden geta in Japan was the general use of untreated (human) fertilizer in the rice paddies. The tradition of taking the shoes off on entering the house was also in no small part derived from the problems with the dirt.
And most parasites have a debilitating effect on the host, which is going to effect IQ and behavior in general.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
nazi Jews are higher still
They'd have to be higher than a kite to want to be nazis.
Sorry, I know I'm selectively editing and taking phrases out of context, but it really stood out.
"Could someone come out with a Tron-related joke please ?"
/\ ,
.
< >
' \/ `
No
Please don't depend on Dr. Mercola (or the Huffington Post, for that matter). Mercola either don't know the difference between, or deliberately and dishonestly equates, insecticides and insect repellants. He is very careless about a number of other faddish issues.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
This was 1986, well before his arrest. Whether he was entrapped is moot, he was clearly guilty of egregious illegal drug use.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I like to eat seaweed, especially when it first turns hot and I'm exercising. Seaweed (usually dulse in my case) has the advantage of a good ratio of sodium and potassium along with other salts and lots of iodine as a bonus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Now now....
If you look at the chart in the article the worst of the goiter zone was running from Michigan to Alaska, along the Canadian border. The Southern states were relatively little effected. The North West (Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho) were badly affected. I'm sure you wouldn't want to do without the progressives from that region.
There must be some parts of the South that are agreeable to you. After all, they did send James Eons Clyburn, John Lewis, Cynthia McKinney and Alan Grayson to Congress.
And for pure political entertainment it is hard to beat this: Alvin Greene Wins South Carolina Primary
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Apparently my boss has had an iodine deficiency for some time...
Says a member of the fucking SALT CARTEL. Perhaps you have some financial motive... work in the salt industry?
(Sarcasm... but actually, as I have high blood pressure, when my doctor says cut back on salt, I do.)
... and using AC electricity (the radiation!!).
Actually, it'd be good if the chemtrail/fluoride/anti-vax people did stop using electricity. They'd be too busy doing their laundry to bother rational people.
Spock: He's intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two dimensional thinking.
Add the time dimension.
Spock: Perhaps his childhood lacked iodized salt.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Did you just call a six-digit UID that begins with a 9 a "low /. UID" and an "old timer"?
... the consumption of leaded gasoline skyrocketed, dropping the average IQ by another 20 points and causing more people to become violent criminals.
only one thing tastes salty - salt.
There's more than one salt. NaCl just tastes the saltiest.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Modern employers all give people something like an IQ test, so it stands to reason that people who score highly on those types of tests will be more "successfully" employed.
Dr. Mercola is listed on Quackwatch and is under close scrutiny by the FDA. He also keeps dodgy company:
http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/mercola.html
20 minutes into the future
I always thought the first cause of mental retardation was religion.
How many citizens would smoke the unsolicited crack, free or not?
Way too much/little is bad for you, but some salt is required.
OTOH, if you eat processed food you probably get sufficient without adding any.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
There's more than one salt. NaCl just tastes the saltiest.
You think? I've always thought that doppelzout Dropje was saltier than any NaCl snack because it used ammonium chloride (NH4Cl). That stuff is proper salty.
Hey - I own my comments coward.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Looks like I was totally wrong, and the replies help me clear my preconception. Thanks to mods for modding the wrong info down.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Wake up, sheeple!!! http://xkcd.com/1013/
I notice that A LOT of people in IT are heavily into conspiracy theories, even outside of the US, where there's no culture of pathological distrust of government adding fuel to the fire. I think it's what happens when a person's skepticism and reasoning ability are decently good, but much better than their knowledge of history and science.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Hey man my UID might not indicate it, but I've been on Slashdot since 1999!
I don't think it'll help. For a long time my office had a water cooler that fed from bottles and the water had a heavy taste of iodine.
Didn't gain superpowers :-(
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
as I have high blood pressure, when my doctor says cut back on salt, I do
Even though salt does not lead to high blood pressure, high blood pressure does make excessive salt intake bad for the body. It is basically the cause / effect link that the US public has backwards.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
And for those who don't get the joke.
Time to offend someone
..that too much salt is bad for you.
Iodine in salt, like fluoride in water, is simply a convenient, low cost method of disposing of an industrial waste product! We are being deliberately poisoned!
Maybe you should try lithium in your food instead.
My cardiologist told me to add a little salt to my diet.
But maybe he just wanted you to come in for checkups more often ;-)
The trolls actually _are_ the smart ones. Y'all just can't figure it out being in your uniodinized state ;-)
Iodine in salt, like fluoride in water, is simply a convenient, low cost method of disposing of an industrial waste product! We are being deliberately poisoned!
And if you weren't being deliberately poisoned with stuff that makes you smarter, you'd be too stupid to catch on to the massive interstellar conspiracy that is _really_ controlling Elvis. Thank God for aliens.
'Informative'.
Right.
Maybe we should dispense a couple of iodine tablets with each set of mod points. Then, the mods will be smarter and protected against the effects of runaway nuclear reactors.
Bwahahaha! Moderators Rule the World!!!!!
(oops. Lithium deficiency again. This salt thing is really complicated.)
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Perchance were you working in or near a nuclear power generating facility?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Nowhere near any. I think the iodine was in the water bottles for the same reason it's used in camping.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Dulse is from the east coast of Canada, shouldn't be too radioactive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
For taking performance enhancing drugs?
Yeah, some of us lost our first accounts you know.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Put out salt blocks....at the next "Occupy" protest. They are cattle, they will probably like it.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
What if adding iodine to salt to cure one problem had *lowered* the average IQ? How would we know? Was anyone keeping track of *anything*?
What if some other "generally recognized as safe" food/packaging/thing has been lowering the average IQ? Or raising the rates of autism? Or doing some other harm? In the name of making a food package a fraction of a penny cheaper, have we been poisoning ourselves and our children? Again, how would we know?
We regularly perform random experiments on major segments of our own population with NO tracking, NO experimental protocols, and NO analysis. If someone were doing this to animals, there would be an uproar; if aliens were doing it to us, we'd attempt to revolt; but we allow the "invisible hand of the market" to do it to OURSELVES without a thought.
Oh, it was already tried back in the 1860s, and y'all got your hats handed to you and Atlanta burned down to boot.
I think we've learned our lesson though. If the South tried to secede now, I'm not sure you'd hear much argument from us, though we might helpfully suggest you mind the door on the way out.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I know what IQ is, I take it you don't. The definition of IQ hasn't changed, it's just that it gets misapplied greatly in the modern era. It's every bit as goofy as the French's obsession with graphology.
As any fule kno, they were keen flute players who lived in Arizona & New Mexico.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."