The appeal of eating raw fish took time to become widespread, as per The Breakfast Club. My father was an early adopter of any ethnic food.
I renember going to an earlier sushi restaurant. Most people there, myself included, needed the waitress to guide us through what we were eating and how to eat it. (To this day, I am surprised most do not know the fat ends if the chopsticks are for serving food).
An eldetly couple looked at their meal. The old man yelled out - “Great! They’re giving us guacamole! I love this stuff!” and naively proceeded to eat a huge mouthful of horseradish. I found it very amusing.
Just to continue the hijack, I ate at a restaurant that offered among other things a “scoop of ice cream” on the dessert menu. When I asked the waitress what flavors they had she named off several, finishing with pistachio. “Oh, I love pistachio ice cream. I’ll take that!”
In due time I got this green sphere in a dish and it looked a bit odd. I took a cautious sample and it was lime sherbet. I shrugged and ate it anyway but when the waitress came with the check I pointed to the remains and told her it was sherbet, not pistachio ice cream.
“Huh! I’ve been pushing that as pistachio all week and you’re the first to tell me.”
I saw some just today - at an orthopedist’s office, taped to the side of one of the cabinets. A little googling confirmed that this was exactly what the thing was (I’ve seen them before).
I assume the concern is that at an ortho’s office, people are often in pain bad enough that a loss of consciousness is not unusual - and this is something that can be grabbed quickly to help revive them.
You ever been in a store that just sells hot sauce? They have a thousand bottles, each with a garish label - Horatio’s Habanero Heat!
It’s like that on the weightlifting website on a smaller scale. A dozen bottles with Ammonia LiquidEnergy Maelstrom! Or similar. Really breeds medical confidence.
It sounds like they’re saying the same thing you are. They say that the item does actually wake people up, but that the idea that they help with athletic performance is bunk, and they have no medical use. You say they the item does actually wake people up, but the idea that they help with athletic performance is off base, and they have no medical use.
Those seem like the same statements to me. The only difference is the word “bunk.”
Throughout the thread the medical use of smelling salts has been presented. And I have specifically shown that the use of smelling salts will cause an adrenaline surge. How athletes interpret that is irrelevant. It is not ‘bunk;’ or ‘bullshit’ as claimed. Smelling salts do exactly what even the deniers say it does. Some advertising may be “bunk”, some people’s incorrect concept of what smelling salts are may be “bunk”, but smelling salts are not. If you judge things on how anyone might advertise them then everything is “bunk”, and it’s not.
It is highly speculative whether athletes are snorting enough smelling salts to cause enough pain to create any measurable boost in focus. There’s a reason they were historically used on unconscious people, because conscious people will recoil from it before it actually causes pain or injury.
Again, just because a theory of performance exists doesn’t mean this is actually what is going on.
Here’s an article that delves into fact and myth around how athletes use them, and why. A highlight:
It just overwhelmingly looks like athletes misinterpreted smelling salts to be some sort of stimulant and others are retroactively coming up with an explanation that it must be related to adrenaline and pain. But it’s not, it’s just gym-rat cargo-cult silliness that athletes are famous for.
Have you ever smelled those things. I guarantee you will get an adrenaline rush sufficient to improve your focus when you are exhausted. We have also seen that smelling salts are used by medical providers. People’s misinterpretation of the facts or believe in gym lore doesn’t make smelling salts ‘bunk’. It makes those bad ideas ‘bunk’. Using your standard Covid vaccines are ‘bunk’ because some people believe the folklore about them.