What I learned gathering nootropic ratings (2022)

And yet, nobody mentions how supplements can't generally damage you, but a few days in a gym can fuck you up for an entire year, even with a lot of experience. I basically never met anybody who does regular resistance training without having some sort of pain somewhere, all the time.

Maybe if you are underdoing it its possible but if you follow the muscle building theory, you are certainly going to get fucked eventually. Even the slightest position issue can make your tendons hurt for months... No wonder all athletes are on BPC 157, TB 500 and friends...

I talked to exercise professors and random people alike, and they all tell the same story. Professor said that I should get used to pain.

Too bad exercise seems to be a must after you are 50+ and no amount of good nutrition and vitamin megadosing will suffice for optimal health and particularly insuline resistance. Prior to that age though, you can get away without it.

> I basically never met anybody who does regular resistance training without having some sort of pain somewhere, all the time.

That kind of pain quickly subsides after relaxing your routine though. It's not chronic.

The inflammation pathways aren't the same as disease state pathways.

As one of those random persons who has been weightlifting for 10+ years and is currently in their late 30s, I look great and I feel great. Yes, there is pain because you’re breaking down muscle fibers which repair and become stronger. Lots of people experience delayed onset muscle soreness, which is temporary. Some people don’t learn how to do things correctly and don’t listen to their body so they injure themselves.

What is the muscle building theory? Not everyone who does weightlifting is aiming for hypertrophy. Some are aiming for strength.

Honestly, it sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself not to do it. That’s okay. It’s difficult to know where to begin and avoid potential injury. It does take some time to learn. I like to recommend starting with a functional training class. This kind of class provides a guided session in building strength in everyday movements and provides a steady pace to really tune in to your body. It’s very difficult to injure yourself.

There's nuance here.

Soreness is not a bad thing. And it's true that people who regularly exercise will often be in a state where they feel some level of soreness somewhere. That's the kind of pain people say you should embrace.

It's also true that lots of folks injure themselves exercising. Sometimes this leads to having to take time off to recover.

But people who don't exercise are more at risk of injury in general. This is because their tendons, bones, and muscles are less able to deal with sudden stress.

> And yet, nobody mentions how supplements can't generally damage you

And last of all - this is plainly not true...

That’s just not true. I’ve been lifting heavy for many years and have had my share of injuries, sure. But they heal. My body feels great. I’m almost 50 and I have no back pain, or other pains I see people constantly complaining about that are near my age and don’t do any resistance training. The only reason I injured myself is because I overreached. So that’s in ones control. I tend to overdo it from time to time if I’m trying to hit a goal. But nobody needs to push that hard and there are many ways to avoid it.

The fact is resistance training is vital for able bodied folks to avoid feeling pain later. And of course it has many other benefits than that. Even just pulling on some resistance bands can save your back and shoulders and the chance of injury there is minuscule.

You should absolutely get a trainer, ideally one who has education in physiotherapy.

I got muscle problems from _not_ doing resistance training, my bad posture caught up with me finally. And I was doing quite a bit of cardio (treadmill walking), so my general health was OK.

It took months to build up muscles enough to avoid stressing the same overworked muscles, but eventually I had no pain whatsoever.

> a few days in a gym can fuck you up for an entire year, even with a lot of experience. I basically never met anybody who does regular resistance training without having some sort of pain somewhere, all the time

> Maybe if you are underdoing it its possible but if you follow the muscle building theory, you are certainly going to get fucked eventually. Even the slightest position issue can make your tendons hurt for months...

I think your definition of "underdoing it" is what's fucked. If your goal is to optimize your enjoyment of your body now and in the future, then do whatever works best to serve that goal in the gym. I have no idea what "muscle building theory" is, but if it causes constant injuries that require pain medication, then it probably isn't the best way to pursue your goals.

> Too bad exercise seems to be a must after you are 50+

This really varies from person to person. Judging by the people I know, the non-resistance-trainers are worse off at least by forty, earlier for many. Everybody has pain, but people doing resistance training have less pain while being able to enjoy more activities.

Personally, I started having occasional back pain in my mid-twenties, often when I woke up in the morning. My dad said it started at the same age for him and got slowly worse over time, and he just put up with it. A few years later I discovered weightlifting, and a year later I wasn't waking up with back pain anymore -- one of the many things about lifting weights that completely surprised me. (I got into it in the early 2000s, when 99% of the information online was meathead bullshit just drenched in testosterone, sexism, and homophobia, and I was lucky to stumble across a single web site that made a case for lifting weights without the off-putting machismo. I never had a bunch influencers promising that lifting weights would cure every problem in my life, so almost everything positive about lifting weights came as a surprise to me.)

A problem that both my parents started experiencing around forty, and which I encountered on the same schedule, was chronic knee pain. It took me a couple of years to figure out some contributing factors and fix them, but now I don't have knee pain, while still enjoying a lot of activities that my parents gave up long before my age.

My friends sometimes say things like, you hurt yourself playing soccer, isn't that dumb? Why are you doing things that hurt you? And my question back to them is, can you even play soccer? How many years has it been since you could play soccer for even five minutes without seriously hurting yourself? I'm going to take a few weeks off and then I'll be able to play soccer again, what's your plan? Late thirties and early forties is when sedentary people discover that attempting to join in on fun physical activities is not as pleasant for them as they remember, and/or likely to result in an injury that takes a long time to heal, so they start to opt out. When you see someone in their forties look particularly satisfied while they stand to one side at a gathering while others are playing a casual pickup game of soccer or Ultimate, it's because they're internally congratulating themselves on having the wisdom not to try.

Obviously I'm going to hit limitations that exercise can't fix. But in the meantime, I'm hitting one problem after another that exercise can fix, and seeing my sedentary friends hit the same eminently fixable problems like brick walls.

Not talking about soreness. Soreness is trivial. I currently have 2 tendons hurting and everybody in my gym who exercise constantly.

But I agree with you, people who don't exercise are more at risk of injury in general.

> > And yet, nobody mentions how supplements can't generally damage you

> And last of all - this is plainly not true...

It's true, its just that pharma wants to sell you drugs. No wonder Pauling called it orthomolecular medicine, claiming that "right" molecules are basically non toxic.

Unless you are a complete retard and take millions IU of vitamin D or you are a special case. There are no reported deaths with supplements in the last 30 years.

> Honestly, it sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself not to do it.

I am still doing it, and I do feel good in general. However, I have constant pain in one part of the body or other which is something I can manage (if its too strong, ibuprofen or friends). The entire gym is full of NSAIDs.

It's just that nobody underlines this aspect of exercise. I know its good for metabolism, brain health, cardiovascular health, looking good etc so you trade serious disease for more or less pain.

You just said its true. Yes, most of the things heal, but one day they don't.

I am 50, take 0 drugs, and look better than in 20. Back doesn't hurt.

Metformin did help more than exercise, though.

Note that I didn't exercise at all until 45.

> If your goal is to optimize your enjoyment of your body now and in the future, then do whatever works best to serve that goal in the gym

Why would my goal be enjoyment? I follow the science and do what must be done. I don't enjoy broccoli or fish too, but still eat them. I enjoy sugar, but I totally do not eat it.

> A problem that both my parents started experiencing around forty, and which I encountered on the same schedule, was chronic knee pain.

I never had a knee pain until I started exercising. Taking turmeric now for it.

> My friends sometimes say things like, you hurt yourself playing soccer, isn't that dumb?

Your friends are right. I played basketball entire life, and now I stopped it, because if somebody hits me I am in pain for days. You have to aknowledge your age and that you are more fragile and heal very slow, even with optimal nutrition and supplementation and gadgets like red light.

That is simply not true. Any tendon/ligament issue will take at least 6 months.

> I basically never met anybody who does regular resistance training without having some sort of pain somewhere, all the time.

As a counterpoint, since you seem to like anecdata: I am around 50 and have been doing weightlifting for the last 8 years. No pain. No injury. Extreme positive effects on my entire life.

I would respectfully suggest that you need to a) know what you are doing, e.g. start with a trainer, and b) not try to be an olympic athlete, e.g. reach reasonable benchmarks and not try to be a weightlifting champ.

I don't know what "exercise professors" are, but you might want to talk to different people.

Ive been doing 3x weekly calisthenics for about 3 years and apart from occasional overuse-tendon-soreness that clears up in about a week, ive never had any problems. In fact im way less prone to injury and an ongoing shoulder issue I had cleared up after getting better at pullups

So, I disagree with you. If you take it slow and listen to your body and maintain good form youre golden.

Exercise professors are guys teaching exercise science on universities.

Your experience is extraordinary, you seem to be protected for some reason or have high pain threshold or simply do not exercise hard enough. "Extreme positive effects on your entire life", that's so unbelievable, there is no such thing apart from acute drugs. I would respectfully suggest you to not deceive others, if you are deceiving yourself.

I am not trying to be an athlete, I am just observing the world around me. I also recommend exercise, its just not a silver bullet the guys like you are promoting. Its also almost totally useless for weight control, the thing that most people exercise for.

Isn't that just crazy, you have "ongoing shoulder issue" and claim to never had any problems?

It seems that people just widely overhype their lifestyle or simply get accustomed to everyday pains.

You just focused on what you wanted to and ignored the rest.

Yes, because that is the point I am making. That exercise hurts, sometimes quite a lot. I never said its not beneficial, quite contrary.

This isn't an all or nothing. Not everyone is damaging their body.

No im saying before ever doing any excercise of any kind I had shoulder problems. They resolved within like 2 months of doing a calisthenics routine.

Reading your comments you seem to have a really immature attitude about excercise and you seem to be hell bent on making your point so, whatever

It sounds like they were saying the shoulder issue resolved after they started exercising it.

> I basically never met anybody who does regular resistance training without having some sort of pain somewhere, all the time.

Hahahahahahahahaha

Been doing ~daily resistance training for > 10 years, have a hell of a build, and do not experience anything like this. I have had a couple of injuries, but never anything that caused me pain outside of the gym.

Ditto for many of my friends/colleagues.

Sounds like you may just be in a bubble of fatties

I guess my response would be that yes, you will develop lots of random little aches and pains and small injuries, but the counterpoints are:

- Before I exercised regularly, I developed aches and pains in upper and lower back, also a shoulder for some reason. These all went away thanks to pull-ups and pushups. Lack of exercise will also wreck your body—if you have not experienced this I have to assume you are very young.

- Exercise also causes lots of random little injuries. For example basketball gave me an ankle and a knee that have never been quite the same. But, I find that exercise itself helps dampen the pain response and makes them more bearable. I have ankle and knee warmup routines that help a lot.

Among people I have met, exercisers with injuries have full lives who are able to live around their injuries. Non-exercisers also develop little pains over time of being sedentary, and end up being much more constrained in what they can do.