> Todd’s philosophy of Hormetism is the result of years of personal investigation into the role of moderate stress in adaptation, as applied to health, nutrition, rehabilitation and psychology.
Hormetism is the idea that a low dose of a chemical can induce a response that's the opposite of the response seen at a high dose [1].
Hormetism is, to say the least, very controversial. It is at best a seldom observed, poorly understood phenomena that's important for the biological role of nitric oxide and a few other chemicals. At worst, it's like homeopathy: quacktacular pseudoscience. So take this article with a grain of salt.
I've looked into cold showers several times, but always end up on some quack's website or a blog post with no convincing evidence. I did a cold shower the other day and it was amazingly refreshing, but it was more of a mental, "Hell yeah, I'm tough!" feeling than probably any metabolic process. Thanks for kicking up some skeptical dirt, a lot of the commenters seem totally convinced.
This is the problem with "alternative therapies". I am sure at least some of them work (yoga for example must have health benefits) but they all get lumped in together with the quack ones as well.
Is this the same thing as regular exposure to small bits of a food keeping away catastrophic allergies, like with peanuts? Or is that a different thing?
No. The principle of hormesis is that the body's defensive response to a physiological insult is so sufficiently excessive that it produces a net positive to health. This would occur in response to something ordinarily harmful (and thus stimulating such a response), but at a dose low enough that its harm is insufficient to create a net negative. It's important to note that this is actually a characteristic of a dose-response relationship: anything more than a very slight dose is expected to still be harmful.
Most examples of hormesis, well, aren't examples of hormesis. e.g., a quick glance at Google shows "exercise" being given as an example. Exercise, traditionally, is not something considered harmful at all but the tiniest doses.
The peanut thing is just about ensuring that common antigens are presented while the body is still undergoing the creation of peripheral tolerance to foreign antigens. That is, while the body is still young and learning what is and isn't worth upsetting the immune system over, you should go ahead and introduce it to lots of things you don't want it to freak out on.
> Todd’s philosophy of Hormetism is the result of years of personal investigation into the role of moderate stress in adaptation, as applied to health, nutrition, rehabilitation and psychology.
Hormetism is the idea that a low dose of a chemical can induce a response that's the opposite of the response seen at a high dose [1].
Hormetism is, to say the least, very controversial. It is at best a seldom observed, poorly understood phenomena that's important for the biological role of nitric oxide and a few other chemicals. At worst, it's like homeopathy: quacktacular pseudoscience. So take this article with a grain of salt.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis