Yet Another Side Bar
A Biochemically-Based Hypothesis Potentially Explaining Part of the Origin of Chronic Human Discord
First of all, despite the continuous and enormous amount of serious and intense crosstalk (and sniping) going on between and within cognitive tribes these days (see Twitter, Substack, MSM, etc.), it is my opinion that modern human discourse is currently at least 80% uncoupled from reality. So, right now maybe 20% of what members of the human population think, say, and do is worth anything good and useful to anyone. 1
So, while immersing myself for the last month or so in reading about the human body’s diverse approaches to handling and using oxygen, a couple of ideas crossed my mind regarding the possible root causes of this reality uncoupling. Here I’m going to mention one of those ideas, an idea that is directly and mechanistically related to the material related in my most recent post.
I earlier gave my take on Wendell Berry’s remarks on part (50%?) of this current problem – that it is just a modern expression of a historically chronic problem. The original source of this idea as to the underlying cause of this historically chronic problem arose from a memory of my paternal grandfather when I was 15 or 16, and he was probably somewhere around 70. He was visiting us at our home in southeastern Missouri, either on his way down to Florida (for fishing and warm weather), or up to Minnesota (for more fishing), and constantly evidenced mean-spirited grouchiness, sniping snarkiness, and great self-centeredness. I asked my mother about it – why does he act this way? She said she didn’t know, we all just need to accept it, as that the way he was. Physically, he looked quite old, having lost a lot of muscle on his skeleton – the skin underneath his upper arms, for example, hung loose on the bone and wobbled freely. Ditto his facial skin. (Sarcopenia! His cells were busily conducting apoptosis!) Eventually my grandfather succumbed to a strong dementia of some kind and died in a Florida nursing home in the midst of great personal confusion and disarray (and would have, no doubt, been abjectly miserable if he had enough functional neurons remaining to perceive his own condition accurately).
The exact same physical, mental, and behavioral pathway was followed by my own father in his own turn, although he held out physically and mentally for a significantly longer time in his own life than his dad did. This, I think, was partly a result of my father’s continuous efforts to keep physically fit -- and partly the result of his equally religious efforts to keep his cholesterol low by daily niacin supplementation all through his middle age. He ran regularly all through the 1970s, 1980s, switched over to mountain-biking by the 1990s (wore out the cartilage in his knees by running), and ended up on a recumbent tricycle by 2015 (he broke his hip in 2014 or 2015 while riding his very fancy mountain bike). He took his daily 1000 to 1500+ mg of niacin every day until he was 65-70 or so, after which time his physician said he could quit worrying about his cholesterol and could ‘safely’ drop the niacin supplementation. After that, the old guy kept religiously moving himself by working around his 90-acre place and biking until he broke his hip. Despite these concerted efforts to keep aging at bay, all through his mid-70s and 80s I got to watch his once very strong legs, trunk, and arm muscles gradually melt away – right along with his cognitive competence.
Having finally completed the last month’s research reading on antioxidants and NAD precursors, I now suspect that my direct male forebears in their middle and latter years developed what may as well be called chronic sub-clinical pellagra. Further, I also hypothesize that this aging- and biochemically-based development is a major, if not the major, underlying cause of the chronic social problem Berry discussed. Here are the symptoms of clinically-identifiable (full-blown) cases of the disease caused by niacin (and NAD) deficit. In the list below, I’ve italicized the pellagra-like symptoms that my father exhibited. These symptoms were quite obvious in the last decade of his life, but the sleep problems and iniitially relatively mild symptoms of mental, behavioral, and emotional disturbance became evident at least a decade or so earlier:
The classic symptoms of pellagra are diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and death ("the four Ds"). A more comprehensive list of symptoms includes:
Sensitivity to sunlight
Dermatitis (characteristic "broad collar" rash known as casal collar)
Hair loss
Swelling
Smooth, beefy red glossitis (tongue inflammation)
Trouble sleeping
Weakness
Mental confusion or aggression
Ataxia (lack of coordination), paralysis of extremities, peripheral neuritis (nerve damage)
Diarrhea
Dilated cardiomyopathy (enlarged, weakened heart)
Eventually dementia
J. Frostigs and Tom Spies — according to Cleary and Cleary — described more specific psychological symptoms of pellagra as:
Psychosensory disturbances (impressions as being painful, annoying bright lights, odors intolerance causing nausea and vomiting, dizziness after sudden movements)
Psychomotor disturbances (restlessness, tense and a desire to quarrel, increased preparedness for motor action);As well as emotional disturbances
The take-home idea, then, is that much of the mental confusion, aggression, restlessness, desire to quarrel, heightened preparedness for motor action, as well as emotional disturbances, and (sub-clinical?) dementia that have chronically dogged human cultures might be caused by a simple vitamin shortage that becomes more and more evident in individuals as they enter middle age. The desire for increased social comity: just another possible reason to personally supplement with NAD precursors as you get older.
I’m guessing it usually averages 50%, but there seems to be something relatively new going on that accounts for the extra 30% of current reality uncoupling.