Talk:Hormesis

This page needs to be updated

This page is outdated, and all references are quite old.

Made some modifications for updating this page with newer information.

Incorrect description of the graph

The description of the hormesis graph says, "A low dose of a chemical agent may trigger from an organism the opposite response to a very high dose," but that's clearly not what the graph depicts.

Right? What the graph does show is a low dose and a very high dose both producing inhibition--the same response, not the opposite.

I'm making the correction. Bcapetta (talk) 13:08, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

I undid this correction. The caption is in line with the article's text about claimed hormetic zone. If you like to pick nits, a word relatively might be added there. --J. Sketter (talk) 15:30, 13 September 2022 (UTC)

Please edit the first definition

Hello, I'd like to ask the contributors and editors to this page to consider simplifying the opening paragraph of the definition.

Miriam Webster dictionary provides a valuable plain-language definition, which is:

"...a theoretical phenomenon of dose-response relationships in which something (as a heavy metal or ionizing radiation) that produces harmful biological effects at moderate to high doses may produce beneficial effects at low doses."

( https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/hormesis )

I feel starting off with this kind of language would be a lot more accessible than what's currently the opening paragraph .

By the way of explanation, I did not feel it was appropriate to edit a page which is clearly important for students of science / medicine as I'm in Humanities. I'm a peer-reviewed author of translations from some extinct languages who's trying to help my teenage nephew with a nuclear / Cold War project for grade 9 science, but I still found the opening paragraph of the definition to verge on overwhelming and my nephew took one look at it and said perhaps he had picked the wrong topic for his project. Thus the general readership - that would include people who have not been to college, and high school students - might easily give up trying to understand at all because of the complexity presented in the opening paragraph here presently.

While I didn't want to edit the page directly (because clearly several people have worked very hard on it) yet I did want to provide feedback along with a more general definition by way of asking to please simplify the opening paragraph of this entry. Thank you all for your time and consideration! 2607:F2C0:EC94:38C0:C00B:AF7D:40D3:CCA9 (talk) 20:51, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining. With this edit, I changed the definition to be succinct, using the Mattson and Calabrese (2014) reviews which had clear definitions. Feel free to edit further.

It's always useful to rewrite text in the encyclopedia for the common user, with high school students as a good gauge. Next time you come across an unclear statement, your career expertise doesn't matter as much as your ability to assess the source and write good prose - WP:JUSTFIXIT. Good luck. Zefr (talk) 02:51, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Alcohol hormesis

"Alcohol is believed to be hormetic in preventing heart disease and stroke," does not align with more recent scientific research finding harm at all levels of alcohol consumption. Reference is also from 2006, I believe medical guidelines and meta-analyses have reached consensus by now as well. 174.58.20.74 (talk) 22:48, 12 August 2025 (UTC)