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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.
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.
Yeah. Don't forget to stop vaccinating children also, while you are at that.
morcego
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.
-.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.
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).
'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
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
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.
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).
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. . . .
Can anyone explain why my Morton's Popcorn Salt isn't iodized?
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
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.
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
... 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.
only one thing tastes salty - salt.
There's more than one salt. NaCl just tastes the saltiest.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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
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'!"
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 ;-)
'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!