3 ms·

Your comment reminds me of a thread I read in the Primal Diet's forum. http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/forum/the-primal-blueprint-forum-discussion/primal-b

Your comment reminds me of a thread I read in the Primal Diet's forum. http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/forum/the-primal-blueprint-forum-discussion/primal-blueprint-nutrition/103039-had-heart-attack-on-sunday-22nd?t=117283 http://www.marksdailyapple.com/forum/forum/the-primal-bluepr... Quite a few of them are having heart attacks: "So my first heart attack, 8 years after a stroke, was unexpected. My heart is determined to kill me. I've had at least 4 attacks, the last one keeping me in hospital 6 days" Yet they still all stay on that diet, because of some convincing bloggers with no credentials as doctors or researchers and some conspiracy theories.

tekromancr 10y ago
That thread is fucking scary.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  It's about equal to doctors telling me to eat low sat fat and low cholesterol in 2016. The difference is doctors went to school for this and still are wrong.
  - evidence_first 10y ago
    Except it's not. The reason we have these publications is that medicine is continually reevaluating its recommendations. Your statement is about as unreasonable as saying 'we don't need computers since sometimes computers stop working'. Also, if you've ever spoken to a doctor about this, few would disagree that nutrition is an area where we still need more research. Finally, ask yourself: in the absence of evidence, is a diet that avoids fats/cholesterol (which, a priori, are associated with heart vessel disease[1]) such a silly idea? Now, we know more, and are changing recommendations accordingly. 1. https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/atherosclerosis https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/athero... 1b. (in case you don't trust a governmental source) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atherosclerosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atherosclerosis
    - pessimizer 10y ago
      > The reason we have these publications is that medicine is continually reevaluating its recommendations. The problem with nutrition is that for a very long period of time it wasn't, at all. It was citing ancient half-assed studies and anecdotes, never bothering to reassess or confirm them, and recommendations for low-salt and low-cholesterol are remnants of that time. I have no doubt that since a lot of that stuff has been called out, there will be money available for scientists to improve our understanding in the near future. My only irritation is that there are massive financial interests in maintaining the common wisdom, and that as a consequence, good findings will be ignored or suppressed. As it is, the latest findings on salt and cholesterol are still not general knowledge, and the old common wisdom (as exemplified by popular science articles sparked by industry press releases, advice from primary care doctors) is nearly as dominant as it was before. A large part of that is that there's not been a lot of new advice to replace the old bad advice, leaving a hole, but the fact that statins and "diet" food are such a huge category creates a very dominant voice. That the loudest advocates for new findings come from faddish diets whose rationales reek of crank is also depressing. > Finally, ask yourself: in the absence of evidence, is a diet that avoids fats/cholesterol (which, a priori, are associated with heart vessel disease[1]) such a silly idea? We don't need science if we are just going to rely on easy, intuitive explanations of everything. Anybody can decide that eating fat makes you fat and fills your arteries with fat; you don't need any particular expertise for that.
      - neutralid 10y ago
        > We don't need science if we are just going to rely on easy, intuitive explanations of everything. Anybody can decide that eating fat makes you fat and fills your arteries with fat; you don't need any particular expertise for that. Science comes in when you want to know how plaque consisting of macrophages containing fats/cholesterol on arterial walls are embedded, and how macrophage uptake of fats/cholesterol is increased/decreased. There's current work in trying to understand the role of TMAO (primarily from animal foods) in increasing macrophage uptake of fats/cholesterol: http://journals.lww.com/co-lipidology/Abstract/2016/04000/Trimethylamine_N_oxide___a_link_between_the_gut.8.aspx http://journals.lww.com/co-lipidology/Abstract/2016/04000/Tr... The research in this area is promising enough that insurance may derive TMAO-based measures of heart health: https://www.thepermanentejournal.org/files/Winter2015/ArteryDisease.pdf https://www.thepermanentejournal.org/files/Winter2015/Artery...
  - mjlangiii 10y ago
    doctors do NOT go to school for nutrition. I assumed they knew about it, but turns out they don't. Most med schools don't teach any classes about nutrition or at most 1 or 2.

tekromancr 10y ago

That thread is fucking scary.

brianwawok 10y ago
It's about equal to doctors telling me to eat low sat fat and low cholesterol in 2016. The difference is doctors went to school for this and still are wrong.
- evidence_first 10y ago
  Except it's not. The reason we have these publications is that medicine is continually reevaluating its recommendations. Your statement is about as unreasonable as saying 'we don't need computers since sometimes computers stop working'. Also, if you've ever spoken to a doctor about this, few would disagree that nutrition is an area where we still need more research. Finally, ask yourself: in the absence of evidence, is a diet that avoids fats/cholesterol (which, a priori, are associated with heart vessel disease[1]) such a silly idea? Now, we know more, and are changing recommendations accordingly. 1. https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/atherosclerosis https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/athero... 1b. (in case you don't trust a governmental source) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atherosclerosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atherosclerosis
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    > The reason we have these publications is that medicine is continually reevaluating its recommendations. The problem with nutrition is that for a very long period of time it wasn't, at all. It was citing ancient half-assed studies and anecdotes, never bothering to reassess or confirm them, and recommendations for low-salt and low-cholesterol are remnants of that time. I have no doubt that since a lot of that stuff has been called out, there will be money available for scientists to improve our understanding in the near future. My only irritation is that there are massive financial interests in maintaining the common wisdom, and that as a consequence, good findings will be ignored or suppressed. As it is, the latest findings on salt and cholesterol are still not general knowledge, and the old common wisdom (as exemplified by popular science articles sparked by industry press releases, advice from primary care doctors) is nearly as dominant as it was before. A large part of that is that there's not been a lot of new advice to replace the old bad advice, leaving a hole, but the fact that statins and "diet" food are such a huge category creates a very dominant voice. That the loudest advocates for new findings come from faddish diets whose rationales reek of crank is also depressing. > Finally, ask yourself: in the absence of evidence, is a diet that avoids fats/cholesterol (which, a priori, are associated with heart vessel disease[1]) such a silly idea? We don't need science if we are just going to rely on easy, intuitive explanations of everything. Anybody can decide that eating fat makes you fat and fills your arteries with fat; you don't need any particular expertise for that.
    - neutralid 10y ago
      > We don't need science if we are just going to rely on easy, intuitive explanations of everything. Anybody can decide that eating fat makes you fat and fills your arteries with fat; you don't need any particular expertise for that. Science comes in when you want to know how plaque consisting of macrophages containing fats/cholesterol on arterial walls are embedded, and how macrophage uptake of fats/cholesterol is increased/decreased. There's current work in trying to understand the role of TMAO (primarily from animal foods) in increasing macrophage uptake of fats/cholesterol: http://journals.lww.com/co-lipidology/Abstract/2016/04000/Trimethylamine_N_oxide___a_link_between_the_gut.8.aspx http://journals.lww.com/co-lipidology/Abstract/2016/04000/Tr... The research in this area is promising enough that insurance may derive TMAO-based measures of heart health: https://www.thepermanentejournal.org/files/Winter2015/ArteryDisease.pdf https://www.thepermanentejournal.org/files/Winter2015/Artery...
- mjlangiii 10y ago
  doctors do NOT go to school for nutrition. I assumed they knew about it, but turns out they don't. Most med schools don't teach any classes about nutrition or at most 1 or 2.