a few years back zinc acetate lozenges were doing the rounds and I love a good superstition so I went ahead and incorporated that into my belief system. been a while so I thought I’d check to see if the state of the science on the subject had shifted since then
afaict there hasn’t been much work on the subject in the intervening time, and nothing much to change your mind one way or the other. good work everyone, you may return to your superstition behavior.
some details:
one study¹ recently reported a null result, but based on the going theory for zinc lozenges that’s what you would expect (zinc acetate was administered by capsules). also the study was lacking in other ways.
another² has a good looking graph and is maybe positive for the concept. haven’t read the fully study yet
that’s maybe about it? my method for researching this research was to search pubmed for “(zinc) AND ((acetate) OR (gluconate)) lozenge” plus some other words instead of lozenge, as there were too many results without an additional keyword for filtering. I am sure there are other places results are published besides pubmed. feel free to catapult relevant studies into my inbox
yeah that sounds fucked up! had no idea that was the case for some people, I always thought of a cold as a 1-3 day kind of thing. but presumably if someone gets 20 day colds they’re probably very glad to cut a week off that
The third week of a cold sucks a lot less than the first week so, like, maybe only as much as a normal person’s cold, but yeah if there’s a pill for cutting that third week off, I’m interested regardless of whether it helps with the main brunt of the cold. Gonna have to look into this.
you want zinc acetate, or if that’s not available, zinc gluconate. it has to be a lozenge or otherwise dissolve in your mouth, since the theoretical method of action is coating some tissue or receptor or something with ionic zinc. preferably with as few additives as possible. if it doesn’t taste bad and feel astringent, it’s not working. in the US everyone buys the life extension ones. idk about elsewhere
it is ideal to start as soon as possible. preferably in the not-sure-if-im-actually-sick-yet phase. starting once the infection is well developed seems to be much less effective
tbh I will actually take one prophylactically if I feel like I was in a high exposure environment. this is a not the protocol the research was done on but it seems reasonable and as long I don’t do this every day it is at worst a bad tasting zinc supplement
iirc the studies mostly had a protocol along the lines of one lozenge (of varying size and type?) every 1.5-2 hours while awake until symptoms subside. that’s a lot. it seems to produce some effect in the studies. I do not know that anyone has done any real study on taking more or less to compare, so it’s unclear what the optimal amount is, or how long it is worthwhile to persist in taking them
…well, I tried a Life Extension zinc-acetate lozenge (not to be confused with a Life Extension zinc-oxide/gluconate + citric acid lozenge, which I previously got by accident and which are much wimpier), and, uh, that was kind of scary.
I *didn’t even get a full dose*! I ended up running out of time before bed and having to spit two-thirds of it out! And it *still* took about *17 hours* for my sense of taste to stop being blunted!
(my sense of smell still worked, FTR, so I’m *probably* not just leaving a proverbial bad Yankee Candle review)
…I’ll *consider* giving it one more try the next time I’m *confident* I’m sick, but I cannot do this at-first-sign-of-illness when my first-sign-of-illness has a 99%+ false-positive rate.
yeah that sounds like a bad reaction, don’t think I’d bother with that either
from a single lozenge I do notice astringency but the effects on taste are minor. I hardly notice them, I don’t mind them much when I do, and they last at most a few hours if that
For me, TheraZinc lozenges pretty consistently stop colds if I start using them as soon as I notice a sore throat (haven’t tried Life Extension, have tried Cold-Eeze and they were bullshit.) they do indeed fuck up my sense of taste for days, and that’s a decent tradeoff for me because my colds have a tendency to turn into bronchitis. but it’s hard for me to voluntarily inflict that much unpleasantness on myself >_< so sometimes I don’t.
Yeah, the “as soon as I notice a sore throat” aspect is probably the main hurdle here. This could maybe have been a very valuable antidepressant for, like, 2015!me, but these days…well, these were some of my tags on that recent reblog:
(the current ratio is *mostly* because I have other forms of throat irritation way more often now, but partly because I have fewer colds thanks to more other layers in my security I’m literally writing this while wearing a P100 because my sick housemate was recently puttering about in our kitchen completely bare-faced like an asshole)
I have a really hard time doing QALY analyses on myself because my brain’s response to being queried on how much lifespan it would give up in exchange for not experiencing X suffering is “we do not negotiate with terrorists”, but ‘hypogeusia is more than 1% as bad as severe depression’ seems like a very plausible statement to me.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #the power of science #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #illness tw #death tw? #venting cw? #he *has* at least been refraining from hanging out in the living room or in our parents’ room #and *sometimes* he wears a KF94 (unsealed‚ but he might not *know* how to seal a mask around facial hair) when he’s fetching food/water #I don’t know why he’s landed on ”sometimes” and I don’t dare ask
a few years back zinc acetate lozenges were doing the rounds and I love a good superstition so I went ahead and incorporated that into my belief system. been a while so I thought I’d check to see if the state of the science on the subject had shifted since then
afaict there hasn’t been much work on the subject in the intervening time, and nothing much to change your mind one way or the other. good work everyone, you may return to your superstition behavior.
some details:
one study¹ recently reported a null result, but based on the going theory for zinc lozenges that’s what you would expect (zinc acetate was administered by capsules). also the study was lacking in other ways.
another² has a good looking graph and is maybe positive for the concept. haven’t read the fully study yet
that’s maybe about it? my method for researching this research was to search pubmed for “(zinc) AND ((acetate) OR (gluconate)) lozenge” plus some other words instead of lozenge, as there were too many results without an additional keyword for filtering. I am sure there are other places results are published besides pubmed. feel free to catapult relevant studies into my inbox
yeah that sounds fucked up! had no idea that was the case for some people, I always thought of a cold as a 1-3 day kind of thing. but presumably if someone gets 20 day colds they’re probably very glad to cut a week off that
The third week of a cold sucks a lot less than the first week so, like, maybe only as much as a normal person’s cold, but yeah if there’s a pill for cutting that third week off, I’m interested regardless of whether it helps with the main brunt of the cold. Gonna have to look into this.
you want zinc acetate, or if that’s not available, zinc gluconate. it has to be a lozenge or otherwise dissolve in your mouth, since the theoretical method of action is coating some tissue or receptor or something with ionic zinc. preferably with as few additives as possible. if it doesn’t taste bad and feel astringent, it’s not working. in the US everyone buys the life extension ones. idk about elsewhere
it is ideal to start as soon as possible. preferably in the not-sure-if-im-actually-sick-yet phase. starting once the infection is well developed seems to be much less effective
tbh I will actually take one prophylactically if I feel like I was in a high exposure environment. this is a not the protocol the research was done on but it seems reasonable and as long I don’t do this every day it is at worst a bad tasting zinc supplement
iirc the studies mostly had a protocol along the lines of one lozenge (of varying size and type?) every 1.5-2 hours while awake until symptoms subside. that’s a lot. it seems to produce some effect in the studies. I do not know that anyone has done any real study on taking more or less to compare, so it’s unclear what the optimal amount is, or how long it is worthwhile to persist in taking them
…well, I tried a Life Extension zinc-acetate lozenge (not to be confused with a Life Extension zinc-oxide/gluconate + citric acid lozenge, which I previously got by accident and which are much wimpier), and, uh, that was kind of scary.
I *didn’t even get a full dose*! I ended up running out of time before bed and having to spit two-thirds of it out! And it *still* took about *17 hours* for my sense of taste to stop being blunted!
(my sense of smell still worked, FTR, so I’m *probably* not just leaving a proverbial bad Yankee Candle review)
…I’ll *consider* giving it one more try the next time I’m *confident* I’m sick, but I cannot do this at-first-sign-of-illness when my first-sign-of-illness has a 99%+ false-positive rate.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #oh look an update #illness tw #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #I cannot find the post but I saw someone recently saying that the Yankee Candle Index looks bad again for this winter #(that is to say‚ Yankee Candle is experiencing another flood of negative reviews from #people who actually have sudden-onset anosmia but are blaming the lack of scent on poor candle quality) #P.S. I started wondering whether my health-log data supported my 99%+ estimate #so I did some ctrl-F and wow‚ I have non-contagious sore throats *even more* often than I thought #I had a noticeable amount of non-contagious throat soreness on *86 days* out of 2023-so-far #plus one contagious sore throat spanning two days‚ slightly under 24 hours total (before moving on to different cold symptoms) #but bear in mind that in the period 2020 – 2022 inclusive‚ *every* sore throat was non-contagious #so yeah‚ lately I *have* had >100 sore throats that don’t lead anywhere for each one that develops into a cold
“Adult Canadian residents”, give or take, so maybe tens of millions of dollars.
I was going to say “and you have to live somewhere where food prices are low enough to make the math check out, so, like, not Nunavut”, but then I did some checking and…none of the grocery stores in Iqaluit seem to have online catalogues, but there’s a Real Canadian Superstore branch in Whitehorse, Yukon and it claims to be selling Cheez-Its for exactly the same price as the Superstore in Kitchener ($3.39 for one or 2/$5).
(I do kind of wonder if maybe it was too clever for its own good and ignored me asking for Whitehorse data, but OTOH I guess if any food *were* going to be the same price in Yukon it’d be a lightweight non-perishable like crackers. Hmm…okay, a 3L jug of store-brand apple cider is $3.99 in Kitchener and $7 in Whitehorse, so it looks like this is real price data. (Although I was honestly expecting the apple-cider prices in Yukon to be even worse.))
Maybe the main issue is *how many* grocery chains are in your area: the more options you have, the more likely one of them has a good sale on a given week. And since the receipt has to be from a (fairly long, but still) whitelist of specific chains to count, looks like the folks in Iqaluit are out of luck no matter how good a Cheez-It price they get.
I *am* wondering now if Brother is obtaining a larger fraction of his own food than I’d realised. But even if 0% of my food spending were for him (*definitely* not true), that would still only be USD$8.21.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #oh look an update #food #fun with loopholes #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #adventures in human capitalism #our home and cherished land
“Adult Canadian residents”, give or take, so maybe tens of millions of dollars.
I was going to say “and you have to live somewhere where food prices are low enough to make the math check out, so, like, not Nunavut”, but then I did some checking and…none of the grocery stores in Iqaluit seem to have online catalogues, but there’s a Real Canadian Superstore branch in Whitehorse, Yukon and it claims to be selling Cheez-Its for exactly the same price as the Superstore in Kitchener ($3.39 for one or 2/$5).
(I do kind of wonder if maybe it was too clever for its own good and ignored me asking for Whitehorse data, but OTOH I guess if any food *were* going to be the same price in Yukon it’d be a lightweight non-perishable like crackers. Hmm…okay, a 3L jug of store-brand apple cider is $3.99 in Kitchener and $7 in Whitehorse, so it looks like this is real price data. (Although I was honestly expecting the apple-cider prices in Yukon to be even worse.))
Maybe the main issue is *how many* grocery chains are in your area: the more options you have, the more likely one of them has a good sale on a given week. And since the receipt has to be from a (fairly long, but still) whitelist of specific chains to count, looks like the folks in Iqaluit are out of luck no matter how good a Cheez-It price they get.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #food #adventures in human capitalism #fun with loopholes #our home and cherished land #tag rambles #fun fact: I did the math after seeing a discussion of U.S. food stamps recently #and in 2022 we spent USD$6.16/person/day on food + soda #(I normally categorise soda under ”recreational drugs – caffeine” rather than ”groceries” #~~in order to (not-so-)subtly express my disapproval~~ #but it does in fact contain sustenance) #((it’s USD$6.02 without the soda‚ and yes these two figures *do* count restaurant spending)) #apparently this is substantially less than a food-stamp budget #but it requires more ability to exploit-sales-to-maintain-stockpiles than someone living paycheque-to-paycheque would have #some fortnights I spend $350 at the grocery store and others I spend $100: depends on what’s cheap enough to resupply on this week #(and how many loyalty points I had piled up from previous trips) #(I got over $800 of loyalty points last year‚ which I treat as a discount) #I still feel like we have a lot of room for improvement in our food spending #(indeed‚ I’ve *made* improvements since 2022: things are shaping up to be cheaper this year) #((and not entirely because I’ve been getting more food as ~gifts‚ though that is also happening)) #but Vimes Boot Theory is nevertheless a hell of a thing #as are the plans of a sublimated accountant
a few years back zinc acetate lozenges were doing the rounds and I love a good superstition so I went ahead and incorporated that into my belief system. been a while so I thought I’d check to see if the state of the science on the subject had shifted since then
afaict there hasn’t been much work on the subject in the intervening time, and nothing much to change your mind one way or the other. good work everyone, you may return to your superstition behavior.
some details:
one study¹ recently reported a null result, but based on the going theory for zinc lozenges that’s what you would expect (zinc acetate was administered by capsules). also the study was lacking in other ways.
another² has a good looking graph and is maybe positive for the concept. haven’t read the fully study yet
that’s maybe about it? my method for researching this research was to search pubmed for “(zinc) AND ((acetate) OR (gluconate)) lozenge” plus some other words instead of lozenge, as there were too many results without an additional keyword for filtering. I am sure there are other places results are published besides pubmed. feel free to catapult relevant studies into my inbox
i assume this is the promising-looking graph in question
you know, i don’t love the idea that colds get dragged out that long. 19 days? some poor assholes get colds for 19 days?
yeah that sounds fucked up! had no idea that was the case for some people, I always thought of a cold as a 1-3 day kind of thing. but presumably if someone gets 20 day colds they’re probably very glad to cut a week off that
The third week of a cold sucks a lot less than the first week so, like, maybe only as much as a normal person’s cold, but yeah if there’s a pill for cutting that third week off, I’m interested regardless of whether it helps with the main brunt of the cold. Gonna have to look into this.
Tags:
#I am very big on Simply Not Getting Sick in the First Place but it’s always good to have more layers in the Swiss cheese #especially when one of your housemates is a line cook #reply via reblog #the power of science #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #illness tw
(Update: it looks like ArchiveTeam was using grab-site or some other form of wpull, not wget.)
Tags:
#reply via reblog #oh look an update #Tumblr: a User’s Guide #amnesia cw? #…aaand lizardywizard isn’t following me on Tumblr and will not be notified that I reblogged this post #I guess I’d better PM them on Dreamwidth or something and let them know
A couple days ago, I saw a post going around about how one should be careful to not post on tumblr from behind a VPN, because apparently this is Distinctive Spambot Behavior which will get one’s blog shadowbanned.
This afternoon, I discovered that the replies I’d made on two different posts in the last ~week hadn’t actually gone through. On further examination, this happened because I made them from behind my usual VPN; when I disabled the VPN and pasted the replies back in (having, fortunately, backed up their text at the original times-of-posting, thanks @brin-bellway for getting me into that habit), they went through without issue that time.
So, apparently, it’s advisable to turn off one’s VPN on tumblr even when not posting, if one is replying, for fear that the replies might otherwise not go through. In retrospect I suppose this makes sense and my failure to read it into the post-a-couple-days-ago was probably a mistake on my end; but I hereby declare it explicitly, for the benefit of those who share my not-having-made-that-connection.
Hmmm. *whitelists Tumblr in VPN, grudgingly*
Other notes that seem like they might be relevant:
(1) I have received no notification of any kind that you pinged me on this post.
(2) I have been unable to DM anyone on Tumblr for several months. (In the “share” popup, no usernames come up in the list of people I might message; in the message tab, only my sideblogs appear in the list of blogs I might message *from*. Admittedly I haven’t actually tried messaging someone from the username-camping “brinbellway” sideblog…and apparently that works, huh.)
A couple days ago, I saw a post going around about how one should be careful to not post on tumblr from behind a VPN, because apparently this is Distinctive Spambot Behavior which will get one’s blog shadowbanned.
This afternoon, I discovered that the replies I’d made on two different posts in the last ~week hadn’t actually gone through. On further examination, this happened because I made them from behind my usual VPN; when I disabled the VPN and pasted the replies back in (having, fortunately, backed up their text at the original times-of-posting, thanks @brin-bellway for getting me into that habit), they went through without issue that time.
So, apparently, it’s advisable to turn off one’s VPN on tumblr even when not posting, if one is replying, for fear that the replies might otherwise not go through. In retrospect I suppose this makes sense and my failure to read it into the post-a-couple-days-ago was probably a mistake on my end; but I hereby declare it explicitly, for the benefit of those who share my not-having-made-that-connection.
Hmmm. *whitelists Tumblr in VPN, grudgingly*
Other notes that seem like they might be relevant:
(1) I have received no notification of any kind that you pinged me on this post.
(2) I have been unable to DM anyone on Tumblr for several months. (In the “share” popup, no usernames come up in the list of people I might message; in the message tab, only my sideblogs appear in the list of blogs I might message *from*. Admittedly I haven’t actually tried messaging someone from the username-camping “brinbellway” sideblog…and apparently that works, huh.)
Tags:
#Tumblr: a User’s Guide #PSA #reply via reblog #I have been wavering on whether I should bother trying to file a complaint
The word “soul” is so semantically overloaded that *all* of the first four options are correct.
Tags:
#I voted for option 3 because I have an unusually stable personality #I am constantly running into people who are‚ like‚ completely different people than they were two years ago #there’s no *core* to them: everything is in flux #those of them I’ve heard discussing it say they like it better that way #(some of them have gone so far as to say it’s morally obligatory) #but it’s really not my style‚ personally #(you’re probably wondering in what sense do I not have a soul but other people do) #(ideally I would answer with a link to that one post by…was it aspire-to-the-light?) #(in which they describe their quale of having a conscience in a thoroughly alien manner) #(but I cannot find it) #reply via reblog #tag rambles #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #surveys #language
Brinens and Things 