Comment by lovethevoid
18 hours ago
That's not what I meant. A solid answer as to why those conditions are happening, not the fact that they are happening at all.
We have research on what can affect heart health, like what things might be linked to it, such as smoking and alcohol. We also know genetics plays a huge role.
So we don't actually have solid answers, actionable answers as to the rise of heart health issues. Look at this analysis[1] regarding how dietary guidelines specifically for fats (saturated, trans) have very little substantial evidence supporting it. Yet this gets repeated by the average person, that fats are the ultimate evil you must avoid. In another study[2] we find that reducing your fat intake still resulted in the same rates of mortality as those who ate more. This is also why more in the space are shifting away from these sort of claims ("only eat x amount of saturated fat per day") and more to general food composition (eg who cares if a fish has saturated fats, eat the fish with vegetables).
It's quite challenging to figure out, everyone has their theories. All I'm saying is we don't actually have the answers yet.
[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9794145/ [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8092457/
Perhaps there are many causes of heart disease and diabetes. It is likely that actionable information would require a case-by-case assessment. That is exactly what doctors do, so getting people time with doctors seems pretty useful.
Regarding other factors, American culture is fairly similar to Canadian culture. However Canadians have free healthcare, meaning more Canadians see doctors than Americans. So I wonder if they have lower levels of obesity, heart disease and diabetes, and if their lifespans have also been decreasing.
I don't like this use of "free". It is paid for by taxes. That is no where near free. It is extremely hard in a highly advanced economy to provide quality healthcare at less than 10% of GDP. That is a huge number for any wealthy country.
Also, Canadians are pretty fat. It looks like 65% are overweight, which includes obese. Ref: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1317268/overweight-obesi...
Fair point, it isn’t “free” of course. But it is accessible to everyone. No copay/deductible/coinsurance bs.
> It is extremely hard in a highly advanced economy to provide quality healthcare at less than 10% of GDP.
In the US we pay 17% of GDP towards healthcare and tons of people still can’t afford it.
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> Yet this gets repeated by the average person, that fats are the ultimate evil you must avoid.
I've been hearing this complaint (that the guidelines claim fat are the worst) for way too long, when in (my) reality, all the guidelines I've seen in the last 25 years has put more emphasis on carbs than on fats (i.e. too many carbs is evil).
I know "low fat" diets were the craze a long time ago. And sure, advertisers still like to slap "low/no fat" labels. But I believe the actual recommendation has been to lower carbs since around the 90's.
This is ultimately a strawman.
To be fair the framing of “carbs are evil” is also lazy. The root cause of most cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes is obesity due to excess calories of any sort (although once you’re diabetic or prediabetic carbs are a HUGE problem no matter what).
The modern lifestyle is incredibly sedentary and every civilisation is built on staple foods that can feed hours of manual labour (with modern snacks thrown on top).
Calling a major food group evil is just a good scapegoat because it’s much more palatable than telling people that they don’t move enough and eat too much food.
One thing I think that we can be very specific about: Diets high in saturated fat surely increase your chances for cardiovascular disease.
Also, I agree with your general sentiment: Framing carbs are evil is lazy. First, calories matter. Second, if your calories are general under control, most people need fewer calories as they age. Many choose to restrict carbs to maintain weight.
All of this shit is stupid. Research has pretty conclusively shown at this point that a high proportion of calories coming from saturated fat specifically will raise LDL cholesterol levels, in people who have neither genetic predisposition toward low or high LDL. If you have one of those, it won't make a difference either way.
Whether that leads to actual heart disease is iffier, but not terribly controversial among cardiologists as far as I can tell. It's only doubted on the Internet where everyone wants to be a galaxy brain with some answer the doctors don't want you to know.
But nobody ever demonized fat in general, and demonizing carbs is just as stupid. Eating enormous amounts of carbs is fine as long as you actually use them. My daily calories right now are around 3,900 with carbs at 650 grams a day, a fair amount being syrups I eat early in the morning while running. If you listened to the Internet, you'd believe I was diabetic already, yet basically every remotely serious endurance athlete eats like this and is fine. Glucose that is continuously and immediately shuttled into muscle cells to power mitochondria and provide energy for movement does no harm whatsoever. It's roughly the entire point of animal metabolism. Glucose that sits around in your blood forever because you're sitting around staring at a screen for 16 hours a day while stuffing your face is what causes problems because of all the oxidizing effects of glucose when it isn't taken apart quickly and turned into ATP.
My BMI is 21.6 for what it's worth. As far as I can tell, the whole "mystery" behind why no diets work is because no diet can magically make people eat less when they spend the overwhelming majority of their time not moving and hunger decouples from energy expenditure. If you're sufficiently active as a lifelong athlete, every diet works. I ate super sized McFlurries, entire boxes of Entenmann's donuts, and Little Debbie's treats as a teenager as staples of my diet. As an adult, I've tried paleo, zone, mediterranean. Right now, I pretty much just eat the standard American food pyramid. None of these has managed to magically poison my brain or destroy my metabolism because metabolic function can be trained just like any other bodily function and it is trained by doing regular athletic activity with a high energy demand. Just like your muscles atrophy if you never do any resistance training, your metabolism atrophies if you never do any aerobic exercise.
I can't claim to know the secret to weight loss but I know how to never get fat in the first place. On every team I was ever on from middle school to college to my time in the Army, whether that be cross country, track, volleyball, basketball, tennis, or general outdoor adventurism and long-haul hiking with a weighted pack, the overweight rate was never 0 but it sure as shit wasn't 70%. And we were all eating the same "poisons" and manufactured foods from evil Nestle that the rest of you were eating.
I recommend studies about stain medication in increasing life expectancy.
We're talking years of increased life expectancy.
Sadly statin is not without its downsides.
We're talking years of increased life expectancy.
Huh? Statins are a medication type in which increases in life expectancy are extremely hard to point to all. I think they're almost a "poster child" for medications that correct a problem to an extent but whose overall benefit is quite dubious.
(and given that these medications were highly prescribed before any long term studies were finish - creating considerable incentive for people to find benefit - I'd personally wager they are overall harmful but that's me guessing - the main point is they definitely aren't boost-life-expectancy-by-years drugs but probably aren't reduce-life-expectancy-by-years drugs either, given the studies)
Link from google: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3531501/
Every few years, the lobby inserts op-eds insisting that statins are of such indisputable benefit and zero side effects that they should go into the water supply. I understand this from the companies themselves, but I have no idea which studies are convincing normal people that this is sane.
There is no lobbying like the lobbying for massively selling classes of drugs of dubious effect.
> That's not what I meant. A solid answer as to why those conditions are happening, not the fact that they are happening at all.
Nestle ? McDonalds ? Burger King ?
Portion sizes. The average plate is larger than it was, say, in the 60's.
Portion Sizes and the No/Low Fat craze from the 90s mentioned in another post are related.
This is all my THEORY, a speculation that I would like someone to study or to find a study about.
Theory / speculation:
Humans evolved with natural sugars, fats, proteins/meats; primitive cooking, probably some grains (more recently). That's what our bodies know how to process, to react to.
All the fake sugars, modified foods that lack the components our bodies use to regulate internal processes; highly processed foods which also lack those components we need to feel satiated and to produce the messengers to digest correctly: those are likely the causes of obesity (not feeling full, so more eating) and bodies behaving poorly.
'Food Deserts' and corporations that are geared around selling large portions of tasty but unsatisfying food, or only offering huge sizes rather than also offering adults a tasty portion that's not intended for take home leftovers also contribute.
Also: my main vice for this topic. Can I _please_ have lightly caffeinated + carbonated water that isn't outrageously expensive?
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Insane prices for insulin?
edit: you really think insulin prices don't have an effect on the lifespans of diabetics?
Are they insane, though? How many hours average man should work to pay for average monthly dose of the average quality insulin? May be even more affordable than in other countries.
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People putting off healthcare because it costs money?