Armchair Experts

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I’ll add- while it’s a research based book, she’s a biochemist, and she cites everything, it’s firmly in the “emerging science” category, NOT the scientific consensus category. If we think nutrition is a young field, fertility treatment is… :woozy_face: oof. (Half of medicine seems barely out of the “blame her mean thoughts for her barren womb stage” LOL). Anyway, point being, this is one area you need to consider your own baseline for sure. Do you want to need to optimize? The majority of heterosexual couples will conceive within 6 months of trying without taking any of these steps, although some of the most basic (iron, folate) are very clearly a good idea for most people.

I will say, everything I’ve done re: fertility has at least some data. The question is abundance and quality. You can find a study for just about anything :sweat_smile:

To your specific questions: yes, whole fat dairy has a correlation with shorter time to conception than low fat. It is not a perfectly designed study from what I remember when I read it, but was compelling enough that I buy into it- it helps though that I only tolerate full fat dairy, and skim is too inflammatory for me- and again back to my baseline starting worldview on nutrition. That being said, dairy intolerance is more common than people realize and if you’re sensitive to it, it’ll be more damaging to include it in general. (Particularly unfermented dairy, ie, liquid milk)

Re the antacids, I’m assuming you mean PPIs and infertility? I think I’ve seen stuff on that. I don’t know quality of evidence there. We know there are some long term health concerns with ongoing PPI use in general, but more importantly is a ton of PPIs have been under recall because of the USs’ medication contamination issues. (Saying goodbye to ranitidine during my pregnancy legitimately made me cry). MDMA can be carcinogenic, and until we know what it does to a gestating fetus (which we can’t test) it’s recommended to avoid those meds with high contamination levels if you’re gestating or may become gestating. PPIs also reduce absorption of B12, so if you’re vegan, veg, had a gastric sleeve or bypass, or low intrinsic factor, or for some other reason know you’re prone to deficiency in B12, I would proceed with caution on PPIs (although, again, the big concern here is chronic use- the way our stomach acid production has a feedback loop, we become physiologically dependent on PPIs with regular use, and that’s when the problems seem to arise).

Ubiquinol studies are covered in the Fett book. Yes there’s some evidence. Yes it’s very commonly used in fertility clinics for egg quality concerns and recurrent miscarriage. With how expensive it is, I’m not sure I would take it before knowing I had a need if I was young and otherwise healthy. Ideally you could find a trusted healthcare provider to discuss the decisions with, but IME this falls well into the “naturopath or reproductive endocrinology, no in between” category. Again- emerging science, not yet consensus. A good option when you don’t have other options, but not really a necessary starting point.

Infertility affects 1 in 8 couples, yes. But that also means 7 of 8 opposite sex couples conceive within a year with no interventions. That being said, clinical picture always matters- egg quality concerns and PCOS and so on all have their own profile for considerations.

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42

I suspect I’m probably good on the conception front, given I had an oops, but I’m a little worried on the “maintaining pregnancy” bit in the following 9 months given I had a mc. But it was at something like 7 weeks, and I had an IUD which can maybe increase miscarriage chance, so it might be nothing.

Honestly I should probably start by eating more vegetables, drinking more water, and getting literally any exercise :grimacing: I’m pretty sure none of those things are gonna hurt.

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43

Things that feel borderline bio hacking can certainly feeling more exciting, but “grandmas advice” is often a really good place to start :slight_smile: and certainly, that desire to do SOMETHING to try and have control over the uncontrollable is a pretty normal urge! Especially loss, when there are no answers, and so often the answer is just “shit luck, reproduction is a crap shoot”. :confused:

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44

Here to follow along with general Qs, and also to offer expert advice on language shit if folks need or want it. Also information retrieval tbh.

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45

Well, since @diapasoun is here and offering, can I ask a language learning and children question :grin:?

Has there been studies about whether or not language immersion programs in the US are effective? Is it worth trying to apply to non-neighborhood schools for that opportunity? I’m thinking primarily of language in the elementary school years.

I have complicated feelings about my own native language and heritage that I’ll talk about some time in my journal, but there’s been lots of conversation in our local community and at work about immersion programs in our school district.

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46

Does anyone know how much my screentime before age 2 is destroying t child? We have in after spending his whole life in lockdown

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47

Emily Oster in Crib Sheets presents a pretty compelling case that it’s correlation vs causation*, and probably not that big a deal if it’s not displacing all their meaningful interaction and enrichment.

*reflecting SES and not the screen time itself

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48

Well it’s not the screen displacing normal…but I do drag him out in the snow to stare at children (and hopefully I’m interactive and enriching)

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49

The issue seems to be when a screen is used essentially in lieu of a baby sitter, so screen time displaces the bulk of interaction with the child for the bulk of their waking hours. If he’s still got eye contact time, verbal back and forth time, and physical interaction time, you’re probably golden. (As golden as any of us can be blundering through parenthood).

In current times especially, I would argue using a screen so you can perform self care straight up benefits the child. Short but quality interaction is what you want to aim for, it seems. Put on your own mask first, etc. It’s important to remember that child development is really a dyad- parent wellbeing matters too, or there is nothing to give.

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50

This reminds me of claims about TVs ruining kids. I definitely had a TV as babysitter as a kid, and look how i turned out!^ I don’t know if there was any final conclusion from that. Or the video game controversy.

^Oops. Shouldn’t scare you all like that.

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51

There are recommendations based on development on a number of fronts. I hope BJ is largely right, but I do hate breaking the re com of every vision therapist. I need to stop thinking about this because there is never good enough baby data

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52

Well, and “optimal” versus “actively harmful” are different questions though. And those change depending on a clinical picture, as you’re well aware too. And then of course quality of evidence questions.

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53

Haha the thing I’m worst at – language development. :rofl:

I’m not in this part of the field enough to be able to cite studies on language immersion programs. I’m happy to ask around for some, however; would that be helpful? I think we may also want to call @noitsbecky in here for insight she may have as a teacher and early intervention specialist, as I feel like this is up her alley.

Two points generally to make about language learning through immersion:

  1. Immersion-based learning is only effective up until roughly age 12. In the late tween/early teen years, our brains just stop being malleable in that way – we’re past what’s called “the critical period” for language learning. After we move past the critical period, language is really only acquired through dogged effort; any immersion program targetting middle school children and older will not be effective. Before that point, children do learn language immersively – the younger they are, the easier it is.

  2. The fact that young children learn language immersively doesn’t mean that an “immersion program” will do what you need it to do. There are a lot of factors at play – are the teachers native speakers? Is it full immersion or partial? Are there targeted language lessons for children who are new to the program or some other sort of ramp up, so that they’re not suddenly trying to learn math on day one in a language they don’t know at all? Whether or not a particular program is going to be effective for your needs and wishes – and therefore whether or not it’s worth participating it, let alone moving for – is a completely different beastie from the fact that your child does learn language immersively.

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54

Thanks! I appreciate you taking the time to write this out.

I’ve got a few years before I really need to think about this, and who knows what programs our local public schools will have at that time. I’m going to save your point #2 for later to think about whether or not the programs available are right for us.

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How close are we to replacing writers using AI?

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@AllHat may know more than I do but

It’s already happening in some places. I haven’t seen great results, but some of the click bait crap gets written by algorithms. What kind of writing are you thinking of?

I mean, most of those “We fed all of harry potter and 50 shades of dick into an AI and here’s what popped out” are very fake and written by people. At this point, if it makes a lot of sense and seems creative, there’s a person doing it still. Mostly…

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I’d be interested in hearing the spectrum of writing!

  1. nonfiction - specifically, blog and refence articles (when can people stop hiring writers to write their website content, for example)

  2. fiction - how long until fiction writers like myself have to compete with bots who have an algorithm that knows what everyone wants based on historical performance?

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I’ve done a fair bit with writing and AI (AI writing stuff and AI helping humans write). Neither is very good at all yet, but I expect that to look very different in 5-10 years. Maybe less with the actual writing stuff - it’s easier to build than to analyze and interact with builders, I think.

Edit: here’s a link where you can play with the OpenAI language generator (click through from the article that explains it a bit). https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2019/5/13/18617449/ai-text-generator-openai-gpt-2-small-model-talktotransformer

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OpenAI is so cool.

5-10 years, there’s going to be all kinds of cool stuff. But I agree, it’s going to be quite some time before human writers are displaced entirely (if ever). Even though some genres seem like they just do a quick search and replace on proper nouns, building a coherent story from scratch is still a ways out.

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60

You rang?

To answer: We’re many years away from writers being replaced by AI across the board. The areas in which AI is most successful at mimicking human writers is when there is a rigid format and specific data being divulged. Reporting the basic movement of stocks, without any insight, for example. If you just need an article that says “The C is up Z% while the D experienced a fall of a rate of B over L years.” you can pretty much plug and play the numbers. Early adopters will be fields like financial reporting, maybe reporting sports stats, weather, that kind of thing, but I’m not at all worried about job security.

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