[majkinetor]

This thing is something people observed for a long time and its totally contextual - In "How to make stress your friend" TED talk, Kelly McGonigal showed that people who believe that stress is damaging will actually get it that way and vice versa.

I wonder how much of it actually boils down to chronically high cortisol levels. People that perceive stress as harmfull are more prone to its damage and we know that positive thoughts and meditation can negate that effect to some degree or even produce benefits.

Knowing that effect exists is one thing, but how do we protect ourselves ?

In chronic making of cortisol adrenal gland becomes deficient in Vitamin C which is used in the process [1]. This has direct effect on immunity (all animals produce more vitmin C in stresfull times to protect from it). Chronic insufficiency will not lead to scurvy (you only need tiny amount of C to prevent that) but will produce ill health particularly combined with smoking and bad eating habits which is typical for lower socioeconomic class (talking about it, blacks, the most affected, are regularly deficient in vitamin D too, another potent immunity booster).

The effect is multifactorial from that point - for example Vitamin C insufficiency changes cholesterol transformation to bile acids which leads to high cholesterol levels [2] which can provide some explanation for cardiovascular events.

Insufficiency is the level that will not result in terminal disease but in suboptimal health and shorter lifespan (i.e. RDA sux) because body will start to utilize triage [3].

Hence, I suggest everybody to forget about 60mg bullshit and use couple of grams of Vitamin C as few daily doses to protect from John Henryism effect. Afterall, that is what our closest relatives who have the same disfunctinal GULO gene - primates - do: they eat grams of C in the wild.

[1] http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/1/145.long

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4685043

[3] http://www.bruceames.org/Triage.pdf

[chillacy]

> ‘They started asking people, “how much stress have you experienced in the last year?”’ The doctors also probed whether participants believed that stress was bad for their health – and then looked at the records to see who died. ‘People who experienced a lot of stress in the previous year had a 43 per cent increased risk of dying. But,’ McGonigal continues, ‘that was ONLY true for the people who also believed stress was also harmful for your health. People who experienced a lot of stress but did not view stress as harmful were no more likely to die – in fact, they had the lowest risk of dying of anyone in the study, including people who had very little stress.’

I'm not sure the causation goes in that direction. Couldn't it also be that those who take damage from stress feel that stress is bad for them, and those who aren't affected by stress negatively feel that it's good for them? To throw a silly example... Vampires believe that sun is harmful, humans believe a bit of sun is good for them. But believing won't make a difference for the vampire.

[slitaz]

I think it is so straightforward. Chronic stress is bad for the health in general due to the effects of cortisol to the body.

Some people may deal with stress (as Sapolsky describes), so the effects of cortisol are not pronounced.

Those that cannot deal with the stressors, are those most affected and they are those that will admit they are stressed.

It is an issue of people tending to admit something, in a qualitative study.

[coldtea]

I thinks there's a similar, simpler, explanation:

1) People who say they don't stress 2) People who say they stress but don't believe it's harmful 3) People who say they stress and believe it's harmful

I find the (3) group is the one actually stressing, feeling all the anxiety etc.

The (2) group just talks about feeling stressed, but they just mean that they had lots of responsibilities etc, they didn't suffer actual stress (the mental issues associated with it) like the (3) group.

[majkinetor]

What do you mean 'I find' ? How do you find ? By observation ?

Stress has unique biochemical pattern that can be measured.

[coldtea]

>What do you mean 'I find' ? How do you find ? By observation ?

By the power of thinking. That is, by considering the provided data, and coming up with what looks to be more plausible.

Sure, it might be wrong.

But without that ability, even the best data are useless, because data are nothing without the interpretation part.

>Stress has unique biochemical pattern that can be measured.

That's irrelevant, though, in this case, because they didn't measure those. As the grandparent quotes: "They started asking people, “how much stress have you experienced in the last year?" -- so it's based on self-reporting.

[umberway]

And now CRISPR technologies are being developed I trust that in addition to eliminating Huntington's disease, Tay-Sachs, Fragile X, and what have you, we will fix the GULO gene so that our bodies can recommence Vitamin C production.

[majkinetor]

Yeah, that is already done in animals few times and even in human cells in vitro, see here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-gulonolactone_oxidase#Animal...

> There were number of successful attempts to activate lost enzymatic function in different animal species

This is not trival change however given the amount of time that passed and that some level of adaptation to loss ocured. It would however probably be milestone in human achievements.

Even if GULO is activated it might not be enough: The process of evolution does not necessarily result in the normal provision of optimum molecular concentrations:

http://www.cellmedsoc.org/research_archive/NHC/studien_pdf/o...

Found a paper on primate micronutrient patterns too:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1095643303...

[SnappyT]

While you didn't suggest where you source your Vitamin C, it may be helpful to point out that the "grams of C in the wild" that are generally eaten by primates are probably from natural sources. You may find this article interesting to read, as there are questions as to have safe and effective certain vitamins and supplements are: <a href="http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161208-why-vitamin-supplem... vitamin pills don't work, and may be bad for you</a>.

[majkinetor]

Please, that is nothing but propaganda. If you have a title 'vitamins are bad for you', its a marker that you shouldn't read any more. That is meaningless the same as would be 'cars are bad for you', 'vacciness are bad for you' etc. You can't condemn entire technology but particular instances of it.

Anyway, there is no such thing as 'natural vitamin C'. Its just vitamin C. I take several grams of ascorbic acid (AA) powder either pure or mixed with sodium bicarbonate (natrium ascorbate). AA is the same thing that my liver would produce if GULO gene wasn't disfunctional, something that back in time maybe made sense in evolutional context but now most certainly doesn't as context changed dramatically.

What people actually descibe unknowingly when talking about 'natural vitamin C' is plant based molecular complex of myriad of substances (form of low dose multivitamin) and that is entirelly different topic.