10 ms·

'Healthiest hearts in the world' found

129 points by known 8y ago

tpush 8y ago
"It means: 72% of calories come from carbohydrates compared with 52% in the US 14% from fat compared with 34% in the US, Tsimane also consume much less saturated fat Both Americans and Tsimane have 14% of calories from protein, but Tsimane have more lean meat" That really does seem counter to the low-carb diets that seem to be all the rage among internet communities (also HN). But, maybe it's just the constant exercise the Tsimane people are getting: "They are also far more physically active with the men averaging 17,000 steps a day and the women 16,000."
- dfischer 8y ago
  I’d say 8 miles a day has a lot to do with it.
  - 4ntonius8lock 8y ago
    I love the title in the article: "Is it only diet and exercise?" Lol. So... they are telling the 'news' that people who eat well, are very physically active, live in close communities with little individual isolation... and they are healthy? Hold the presses! Seems like BBC had a day where they needed to put in some filler news articles.
    - txcwpalpha 8y ago
      One of the main intriguing things about this group of people is that they do not eat particularly well. > That heart health is in spite of the fact that they consume between 2,433 to 2,738 calories per day ... strangely, their diets aren’t incredibly healthy, though we can still learn a thing or two from their lifestyle. https://www.inverse.com/article/50572-tsimane-amazon-healthy-heart-high-calorie-diet https://www.inverse.com/article/50572-tsimane-amazon-healthy...
      - 4ntonius8lock 8y ago
        > One of the main intriguing things about this group of people is that they do not eat particularly well. That is only if you take for a fact we know what a healthy diet is and there is a single clear definition. For me, Healthy eating is a diverse diet that leads to good health. Particularly eating foods where caloric density is offset by nutritional value. Based on my own definition and the facts of the article, these people do eat healthy. I think the surprise comes from people who think they know what a 'healthy diet' is. As the article states, 'this is definitively not keto diet' - for me this means about zero to me. If that point is surprising to you or to a group of people, I think you are right, it is a surprising study from that point of view. Thanks for helping me understand the newsworthy part of this.
- will_brown 8y ago
  >That really does seem counter to the low-carb diets that seem to be all the rage among internet communities (also HN). Generally people discussing “low carb diets” really mean managing blood glucose/insulin spikes. So high glycemic carbs, refined sugars, refined carbs. Not all carbs are created equal when we talk about impacts on blood glucose and/or the liver.
  - 52-6F-62 8y ago
    This is true. It's likely that beside the rice and maize, most of their carbs come from vegetables. It's one of the reasons why high-performance diets are usually heavy on the broccoli!
    - munk-a 8y ago
      Another absolutely killer carb in western diets comes out of refined flour which makes it into a ton of stuff. My wife is gluten-free currently for health reasons and we've experimented with using more raw starch sources to great success. Most of these flour based foods don't need to be super-refined bleached flour.
      - mcbits 8y ago
        Most "whole wheat" flour is literally the same refined flour from the same vat, but with some bran (fiber) and germ (nutrients) mixed back in. This could happen at the refinery shortly after refining, or weeks to months later using bran and germ sourced from a warehouse somewhere. Very unpredictable and not indicated anywhere on the label. What seems consistent is that both diets high in whole grains and high-fiber diets in general have some heart health benefits. My guess is that refined+enriched flour in a high-fiber meal is not much, if any, worse than whole flour in a medium- or low-fiber meal. Those pastries and chips between meals, on the other hand...
  - bigDICK 8y ago
    Healthy people who are normal weight generally don't need to worry about blood glucose, insulin, liver, or anything else on the molecular level.
- phil248 8y ago
  Carbs are great if you're actually going to use the energy! The best even! The problem with Western habits is we tend to carb load until we have a tremendous excess of energy which we then use to... sit down for several hours while our body gets busy turning all that unused energy in to fat.
  - rcombine 8y ago
    Exactly. Humans are meant to move, and not moving makes us fat. Now that we're extremely sedentary, we literally have no use for the amounts of rice and pasta we consume. We're victims of our own success.
    - bigDICK 8y ago
      Anecdotally I've seen plenty of fat people that move a lot. When one can have a 2,000 calorie pizza delivered on a whim there isn't much that exercise can do to prevent weight gain.
  - cageface 8y ago
    Converting carbs into fat is fairly inefficient. It comes at about a 40% calorie loss. So you can put on fat eating carbs alone but it’s not easy. More often than not we eat carbs together with fat so your body will very happily just directly store the fat and burn the carbs for energy. This is why things like french fries or pizza are so fattening.
    - amelius 8y ago
      But if you eat just proteins and fat, the fat is not stored (see e.g. keto diet) How can this be explained?
      - mrfusion 8y ago
        I’d guess it’s because in that case you don’t produce much insulin which is starting to be called the fat storage hormone.
- kup0 8y ago
  Seems like exercise is probably a big factor here. Exercise can help curb insulin spikes caused by high carb intake, among its other benefits
AimForTheBushes 8y ago
"The Tsimane get 72% of their energy from carbohydrates. The fact that they have the best indicators of cardiovascular health ever reported is the exact opposite to many recent suggestions that carbohydrates are unhealthy." Refined carbs ARE unhealthy and it's a bit disheartening that they didn't make that distinction in the article.
- bpicolo 8y ago
  > Non-processed carbohydrates are grown in the form of rice, plantain, manioc, and corn via slash-and-burn horticulture, and the Tsimane also gather wild nuts and fruits. Big difference between this and HFCS and table sugar.
  - pkaye 8y ago
    What is the difference?
    - drdrey 8y ago
      They have different impact on blood glucose and insulin
      - pkaye 8y ago
        According the the following, sucrose has a glycemic index of 65. Plantain has 55. Brown rice has 68. Does the glycemic index say anything about impact on blood glucose and insulin levels? https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glycemic-index-and-glycemic-load-for-100-foods https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glyce...
        mikekchar 8y ago
        Keep in mind that food does not act in isolation. The actual glycemic index of the food you eat depends on the combination of food. So if you eat a combination of carbohydrates, fats and proteins it lowers the glycemic index. Famously, a Snicker's bar has a dramatically lower glycemic index than a slice of bread (though exactly what it is depends on what study you look at :-P ). Another way to look at this is that refined sugar is the sugar with all the other things that would have lowered the glycemic index taken away. If you add it back, the index will be lowered again. If I eat refined sugar from sugar beets and accompany it with the fiber, etc from the processing, the glycemic index will be the same as eating sugar beets. So it doesn't matter where the carbs are coming from, it only matters if you are mixing it with fibre, fat and protein.
throwaway55554 8y ago
Tsimane diet fad coming soon.
- rcombine 8y ago
  Tsimane _exercise_ regimen, really.
  - 52-6F-62 8y ago
    Don't forget the intestinal worms
Scaevolus 8y ago
> At the age of 45, almost no Tsimane had CAC in their arteries while 25% of Americans do. > By the time they reach age 75, two-thirds of Tsimane are CAC-free compared with the overwhelming majority of Americans (80%) having signs of CAC. The article doesn't mention obesity at all. 40% of Americans over 40 are obese[1]. Tsimane obesity rates of adults (>20 years) are 5.6% for women and 1.6% for men[2]. Journalists love writing about dietary composition as if increasing your fish (or whatever) consumption is a magic bullet, but merely changing composition without losing weight is only a moderate improvement (maybe 30% fewer heart attacks, based on that retracted NEJM dietary study[3]). [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3392307/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3392307/ [3]: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1200303 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1200303
- 4ntonius8lock 8y ago
  It's almost as if human experiences don't fit into the carefully curated categories we have in modern society where individual aspects are considered in isolation and not handled in a holistic way. It's as if: the need for meaning, relationships, sleep, body, teeth, eating, professional development, daily routine, sitting, walking, how we walk, our individual body constructs, personality archetypes, mental health, etc... were more than the sum of their parts and being overly dissecting such things leads to a lessening, not increase in understanding of the whole. A great book on psychology like thinking fast and slow will do a great job at dissecting reality from that narrow point of view, just as other books will do the same in other fields. But I don't really know of any field that is respected that combines many elements to study how to maximize human potential/study the human experience as a whole. I offer no solutions, just an observation in terms of how we deal with the human experience in modernity.
  - Swizec 8y ago
    This is because I can change a thing but I can't change my whole life. Well, I can, but that's hard and single things are easy.
sharph 8y ago
How much vegetable oil did they consume?
- BoneVays 8y ago
  Judging from other "natives" I met, probably as much as they can(with Walmart being 1000 miles away, that would be little). I don't know if you were thinking in terms of "incriminating" veg oil in favor of butter etc, which is the trend in Atkins etc, but the takeaway message of such studies is exercise and the stress-free life, you become what you do and what you think! Eating is a part of thinking and doing, but only up to a point.
  - sharph 8y ago
    I was indeed thinking in terms of "incriminating" veg oil, but more in favor of omega 3 fatty acids (as is also the trend in Atkins etc,) not necessarily saturated fats in butter. (edit: Also silently implying here that n-3 to n-6 ratio matters. Omega-6 fats are essential, but in nature n-3:n-6 is found in more desirable ratios.) I get what you're saying re: exercise and stress, but I have to believe that for some percent of the population, diet rules over the ability to have enthusiasm for exercise and the ability to deal with stress. Everybody's got stress. Some people feel it more than others.
    - BoneVays 8y ago
      Just to clarify, I am talking about natural exercise and natural non-stress :) In their small communities you get stress and excrete it, while in the average larger community you accumulate it. It is the background "stress radiation", low intensity nagging stress, that does all kinds of nasty things to us - more accurately, we do it to ourselves and each other. Similarly, I would not equate time in the gym or jogging in Manhattan to their exercise. I don't know if by some fluke they have the perfect 3-6 ratio in their diets, but if you get your fresh food and exercise (and those beneficial worms ;) ), it does not matter.
ubertakter 8y ago
So, what's their average total caloric intake? Hmm... 2400-2700/day[1] which is not in the Lancet article[2], but I did find that in an American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reference[3]. It appears they get lots of exercise, which isn't surprising. [1]https://coach.nine.com.au/2018/11/05/14/03/tsimane-diet-cardiovascular-health https://coach.nine.com.au/2018/11/05/14/03/tsimane-diet-card... [2]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315262221_Coronary_atherosclerosis_in_indigenous_South_American_Tsimane_A_cross-sectional_cohort_study https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315262221_Coronary_... [3]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30383188 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30383188
- rcombine 8y ago
  That is even more illuminating. They eat primarily unrefined carbs like rice, corn, and plantains, 2400~2700 calories worth of it a day (more than I eat!), and yet they are very healthy and fit. Considering the numbers, it really looks like the difference is the amount of physical activity. I think that sedentary humans are just not supposed to eat as much as we think or want to do.
rich-tea 8y ago
This one was quick. It took decades before anyone questioned the war on fat. Looks like the war on carbs is already at that stage. Give it a few years and we'll start to see the bad affects of too much protein. Mark my words. People who live a long time don't care about diets. Show me one who did.
- DoingIsLearning 8y ago
  > People who live a long time don't care about diets. Show me one who did. Jack LaLanne? He was one of the first modern evangelists of fitness and diet and lived to be 96, according to wikipedia. Purely anecdotal but you did ask for a single example.
devm0de 8y ago
What about what protective or healthy heart genetic markers their population might have?
negamax 8y ago
Small anecdote: I did travels through Europe a while back and did lots of walking. That's fairly normal in many European towns and cities. Really felt great and decided to do 20k steps a day after return. Which tapered off slowly and unconsciously. Need to get back to that level. Your body respond quickly in positive direction, I can recall that much.
- bigDICK 8y ago
  I think a lot of people miss out on this when talking about their TDEE. Folks in some countries are more active as part of their routine, outside of planned exercises. I noticed this a lot when I traveled, too. I was walking everywhere, all the time. As were the locals.
emptybits 8y ago
Another fact about Bolivians ... they are, on average, the shortest people in the world. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-shortest-average-heights.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-short...
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Oh! Short stature, mountainous country near the equator - means the least gravity affecting their circulation! Natural heart-healthy situation!
  - snazz 8y ago
    Do astronauts have better hearts? Was this studied in the twins experiement we saw a while ago?
  - emptybits 8y ago
    Short heart-to-brain distance may also predict an ability to handle high G-forces as a fighter pilot. https://fightersweep.com/1411/agsm/ https://fightersweep.com/1411/agsm/
  - copperx 8y ago
    You might be joking, but higher altitude also means less oxygen, which translates to reduced oxidation and less risk of cancer. I'm on my cellphone so I don't have the paper on hand, but there was a big study where they compared lung cancer rates in different geographic areas and found that the highest cancer incidence was at sea level, whereas the lowest was at higher elevations. They tried controlling for other obvious variables but elevation was unquestionably the best explanation. Oxidation may explain plaque in arteries.
PerfectElement 8y ago
> 72% of calories come from carbohydrates Not much different from the Blue Zones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone
caublestone 8y ago
Does anyone know if the Tsimane drink alcohol?
lordnacho 8y ago
One thing I didn't get a clear answer from the doctor about last time I saw one was this. Can you unclog your arteries by changing your lifestyle, ie diet and exercise, or is the clogging permanent?
- cogman10 8y ago
  https://www.webmd.com/cholesterol-management/cholesterol-and-artery-plaque-buildup https://www.webmd.com/cholesterol-management/cholesterol-and... > Once a cholesterol plaque is there, it's generally there to stay. With effective treatment, though, plaque buildup may slow down or stop. > Some evidence shows that, with aggressive treatment, cholesterol plaques can even shrink slightly. In one major study, cholesterol plaques shrank 10% in size after a 50% reduction in blood cholesterol levels. > The best way to treat cholesterol plaques is to prevent them from forming or progressing. That can be done with lifestyle changes and, if needed, medication.
  - hackits 8y ago
    https://youtu.be/c5ELzL7DGpw?t=2426 https://youtu.be/c5ELzL7DGpw?t=2426 Vitamin K - Mk7, Vitamin V, and Magnesium seem to help with the removal of calcifications of the artillery. Though I couldn't really find referees other than reports on `Vitamin K intake and calcifications in breast arteries Angela`
- cageface 8y ago
  Diet can unclog arteries, at least in some cases. https://dresselstyn.com/JFP_06307_Article1.pdf https://dresselstyn.com/JFP_06307_Article1.pdf
discreteevent 8y ago
It would be interesting to know if they observed how much sleep they take.
jonplackett 8y ago
Doesn't even mention sugar. Seems like that would be a very large and important difference. Just says "72% of calories come from carbohydrates compared with 52% in the US", which might encourage a westerner to eat more carbs, but if they're eating whole rice and we're eating sugar that seems kinda important. Comparison of gut bacteria would be interesting too, bet that's as important as the diet itself.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- chrischen 8y ago
  They're also exercising more than 100% of what Americans do.
apo 8y ago
> One idea is that intestinal worms - which dampen immune reactions - could be more common and this may help protect the heart. That worm infects most of the population: > And about 70% of the population has a parasitic worm infection [Ascaris lumbricoides, a type of roundworm]. ... Up to a third of the world's population also lives with such infections. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-34857022 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-34857022 Before latching onto exercise or diet as the primary factors, it's worth considering the effect of this worm infection. It could influence the heart indirectly through nutrient flow, immune suppression as suggested for the original article or the one on pregnancy, or directly via for example larvae/segments, etc. BTW, the lifecycle of this thing is the stuff of nightmares: > Ascaris lumbricoides, a roundworm, infects humans via the fecal-oral route. Eggs released by adult females are shed in feces. Unfertilized eggs are often observed in fecal samples but never become infective. Fertilized eggs embryonate and become infective after 18 days to several weeks in soil, depending on the environmental conditions (optimum: moist, warm, shaded soil).[5]. When an embryonated egg is ingested, a Rhabditiform larva hatches then penetrates the wall of the duodenum and enters the blood stream. From there, it is carried to the liver and heart, and enters pulmonary circulation to break free in the alveoli, where it grows and molts. In three weeks, the larva passes from the respiratory system to be coughed up, swallowed, and thus returned to the small intestine, where it matures to an adult male or female worm. Fertilization can now occur and the female produces as many as 200,000 eggs per day for 12–18 months. These fertilized eggs become infectious after two weeks in soil; they can persist in soil for 10 years or more.[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascaris_lumbricoides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascaris_lumbricoides Clearly, the juvenile state spends some time in the circulatory system, where it should have some opportunities to influence coronary artery calcium. I looked for studies that examined the incidence of heart disease/CAC buildup among other infected populations but didn't immediately find anything.
jvanderbot 8y ago
You know what else? They dont have air pollution like pm2.5, which is known to cause heart and lung disease. https://laqm.defra.gov.uk/public-health/pm25.html https://laqm.defra.gov.uk/public-health/pm25.html
deevolution 8y ago
"One idea is that intestinal worms - which dampen immune reactions - could be more common and this may help protect the heart" Let me get some of those worms!
scythe 8y ago
But is their health abnormal after accounting for the usual RRs associated with their BMI, exercise, fiber and trans fat intake? They don't drink or smoke, I presume? The difficulty with "non-mathematical" sciences is that they tend to treat math as a tool for validation rather than expression. This is partially a failure of communication on the part of mathematicians.
zxcvvcxz 8y ago
Can we get the actual numbers and breakdowns for fats? They're so quick to say less saturated fat is the cause, but I bet the difference in polyunsaturated fats is even BIGGER and is probably the REAL reason they are healthier. PUFAs as they are called are incredibly unhealthy, and there is Big Business trying to hide this. http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturated-oils.shtml http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturated-oils.shtml
netwanderer3 8y ago
This is a perfect example of how everything in life is always a trade off. Do you want a healthier heart to live a few extra years or do you want to sit on your couch and browse HN while enjoying your BigMac? Pick one because only a fool would believe they could have both.

129 points by known 8y ago

"It means: 72% of calories come from carbohydrates compared with 52% in the US 14% from fat compared with 34% in the US, Tsimane also consume much less saturated fat Both Americans and Tsimane have 14% of calories from protein, but Tsimane have more lean meat" That really does seem counter to the low-carb diets that seem to be all the rage among internet communities (also HN). But, maybe it's just the constant exercise the Tsimane people are getting: "They are also far more physically active with the men averaging 17,000 steps a day and the women 16,000."

dfischer 8y ago
I’d say 8 miles a day has a lot to do with it.
- 4ntonius8lock 8y ago
  I love the title in the article: "Is it only diet and exercise?" Lol. So... they are telling the 'news' that people who eat well, are very physically active, live in close communities with little individual isolation... and they are healthy? Hold the presses! Seems like BBC had a day where they needed to put in some filler news articles.
  - txcwpalpha 8y ago
    One of the main intriguing things about this group of people is that they do not eat particularly well. > That heart health is in spite of the fact that they consume between 2,433 to 2,738 calories per day ... strangely, their diets aren’t incredibly healthy, though we can still learn a thing or two from their lifestyle. https://www.inverse.com/article/50572-tsimane-amazon-healthy-heart-high-calorie-diet https://www.inverse.com/article/50572-tsimane-amazon-healthy...
    - 4ntonius8lock 8y ago
      > One of the main intriguing things about this group of people is that they do not eat particularly well. That is only if you take for a fact we know what a healthy diet is and there is a single clear definition. For me, Healthy eating is a diverse diet that leads to good health. Particularly eating foods where caloric density is offset by nutritional value. Based on my own definition and the facts of the article, these people do eat healthy. I think the surprise comes from people who think they know what a 'healthy diet' is. As the article states, 'this is definitively not keto diet' - for me this means about zero to me. If that point is surprising to you or to a group of people, I think you are right, it is a surprising study from that point of view. Thanks for helping me understand the newsworthy part of this.
will_brown 8y ago
>That really does seem counter to the low-carb diets that seem to be all the rage among internet communities (also HN). Generally people discussing “low carb diets” really mean managing blood glucose/insulin spikes. So high glycemic carbs, refined sugars, refined carbs. Not all carbs are created equal when we talk about impacts on blood glucose and/or the liver.
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  This is true. It's likely that beside the rice and maize, most of their carbs come from vegetables. It's one of the reasons why high-performance diets are usually heavy on the broccoli!
  - munk-a 8y ago
    Another absolutely killer carb in western diets comes out of refined flour which makes it into a ton of stuff. My wife is gluten-free currently for health reasons and we've experimented with using more raw starch sources to great success. Most of these flour based foods don't need to be super-refined bleached flour.
    - mcbits 8y ago
      Most "whole wheat" flour is literally the same refined flour from the same vat, but with some bran (fiber) and germ (nutrients) mixed back in. This could happen at the refinery shortly after refining, or weeks to months later using bran and germ sourced from a warehouse somewhere. Very unpredictable and not indicated anywhere on the label. What seems consistent is that both diets high in whole grains and high-fiber diets in general have some heart health benefits. My guess is that refined+enriched flour in a high-fiber meal is not much, if any, worse than whole flour in a medium- or low-fiber meal. Those pastries and chips between meals, on the other hand...
- bigDICK 8y ago
  Healthy people who are normal weight generally don't need to worry about blood glucose, insulin, liver, or anything else on the molecular level.
phil248 8y ago
Carbs are great if you're actually going to use the energy! The best even! The problem with Western habits is we tend to carb load until we have a tremendous excess of energy which we then use to... sit down for several hours while our body gets busy turning all that unused energy in to fat.
- rcombine 8y ago
  Exactly. Humans are meant to move, and not moving makes us fat. Now that we're extremely sedentary, we literally have no use for the amounts of rice and pasta we consume. We're victims of our own success.
  - bigDICK 8y ago
    Anecdotally I've seen plenty of fat people that move a lot. When one can have a 2,000 calorie pizza delivered on a whim there isn't much that exercise can do to prevent weight gain.
- cageface 8y ago
  Converting carbs into fat is fairly inefficient. It comes at about a 40% calorie loss. So you can put on fat eating carbs alone but it’s not easy. More often than not we eat carbs together with fat so your body will very happily just directly store the fat and burn the carbs for energy. This is why things like french fries or pizza are so fattening.
  - amelius 8y ago
    But if you eat just proteins and fat, the fat is not stored (see e.g. keto diet) How can this be explained?
    - mrfusion 8y ago
      I’d guess it’s because in that case you don’t produce much insulin which is starting to be called the fat storage hormone.
kup0 8y ago
Seems like exercise is probably a big factor here. Exercise can help curb insulin spikes caused by high carb intake, among its other benefits

AimForTheBushes 8y ago

"The Tsimane get 72% of their energy from carbohydrates. The fact that they have the best indicators of cardiovascular health ever reported is the exact opposite to many recent suggestions that carbohydrates are unhealthy." Refined carbs ARE unhealthy and it's a bit disheartening that they didn't make that distinction in the article.

bpicolo 8y ago
> Non-processed carbohydrates are grown in the form of rice, plantain, manioc, and corn via slash-and-burn horticulture, and the Tsimane also gather wild nuts and fruits. Big difference between this and HFCS and table sugar.
- pkaye 8y ago
  What is the difference?
  - drdrey 8y ago
    They have different impact on blood glucose and insulin
    - pkaye 8y ago
      According the the following, sucrose has a glycemic index of 65. Plantain has 55. Brown rice has 68. Does the glycemic index say anything about impact on blood glucose and insulin levels? https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glycemic-index-and-glycemic-load-for-100-foods https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/glyce...
      - mikekchar 8y ago
        Keep in mind that food does not act in isolation. The actual glycemic index of the food you eat depends on the combination of food. So if you eat a combination of carbohydrates, fats and proteins it lowers the glycemic index. Famously, a Snicker's bar has a dramatically lower glycemic index than a slice of bread (though exactly what it is depends on what study you look at :-P ). Another way to look at this is that refined sugar is the sugar with all the other things that would have lowered the glycemic index taken away. If you add it back, the index will be lowered again. If I eat refined sugar from sugar beets and accompany it with the fiber, etc from the processing, the glycemic index will be the same as eating sugar beets. So it doesn't matter where the carbs are coming from, it only matters if you are mixing it with fibre, fat and protein.

throwaway55554 8y ago

Tsimane diet fad coming soon.

rcombine 8y ago
Tsimane _exercise_ regimen, really.
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  Don't forget the intestinal worms

Scaevolus 8y ago

> At the age of 45, almost no Tsimane had CAC in their arteries while 25% of Americans do. > By the time they reach age 75, two-thirds of Tsimane are CAC-free compared with the overwhelming majority of Americans (80%) having signs of CAC. The article doesn't mention obesity at all. 40% of Americans over 40 are obese[1]. Tsimane obesity rates of adults (>20 years) are 5.6% for women and 1.6% for men[2]. Journalists love writing about dietary composition as if increasing your fish (or whatever) consumption is a magic bullet, but merely changing composition without losing weight is only a moderate improvement (maybe 30% fewer heart attacks, based on that retracted NEJM dietary study[3]). [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html [2]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3392307/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3392307/ [3]: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1200303 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1200303

4ntonius8lock 8y ago
It's almost as if human experiences don't fit into the carefully curated categories we have in modern society where individual aspects are considered in isolation and not handled in a holistic way. It's as if: the need for meaning, relationships, sleep, body, teeth, eating, professional development, daily routine, sitting, walking, how we walk, our individual body constructs, personality archetypes, mental health, etc... were more than the sum of their parts and being overly dissecting such things leads to a lessening, not increase in understanding of the whole. A great book on psychology like thinking fast and slow will do a great job at dissecting reality from that narrow point of view, just as other books will do the same in other fields. But I don't really know of any field that is respected that combines many elements to study how to maximize human potential/study the human experience as a whole. I offer no solutions, just an observation in terms of how we deal with the human experience in modernity.
- Swizec 8y ago
  This is because I can change a thing but I can't change my whole life. Well, I can, but that's hard and single things are easy.

sharph 8y ago

How much vegetable oil did they consume?

BoneVays 8y ago
Judging from other "natives" I met, probably as much as they can(with Walmart being 1000 miles away, that would be little). I don't know if you were thinking in terms of "incriminating" veg oil in favor of butter etc, which is the trend in Atkins etc, but the takeaway message of such studies is exercise and the stress-free life, you become what you do and what you think! Eating is a part of thinking and doing, but only up to a point.
- sharph 8y ago
  I was indeed thinking in terms of "incriminating" veg oil, but more in favor of omega 3 fatty acids (as is also the trend in Atkins etc,) not necessarily saturated fats in butter. (edit: Also silently implying here that n-3 to n-6 ratio matters. Omega-6 fats are essential, but in nature n-3:n-6 is found in more desirable ratios.) I get what you're saying re: exercise and stress, but I have to believe that for some percent of the population, diet rules over the ability to have enthusiasm for exercise and the ability to deal with stress. Everybody's got stress. Some people feel it more than others.
  - BoneVays 8y ago
    Just to clarify, I am talking about natural exercise and natural non-stress :) In their small communities you get stress and excrete it, while in the average larger community you accumulate it. It is the background "stress radiation", low intensity nagging stress, that does all kinds of nasty things to us - more accurately, we do it to ourselves and each other. Similarly, I would not equate time in the gym or jogging in Manhattan to their exercise. I don't know if by some fluke they have the perfect 3-6 ratio in their diets, but if you get your fresh food and exercise (and those beneficial worms ;) ), it does not matter.

ubertakter 8y ago

So, what's their average total caloric intake? Hmm... 2400-2700/day[1] which is not in the Lancet article[2], but I did find that in an American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reference[3]. It appears they get lots of exercise, which isn't surprising. [1]https://coach.nine.com.au/2018/11/05/14/03/tsimane-diet-cardiovascular-health https://coach.nine.com.au/2018/11/05/14/03/tsimane-diet-card... [2]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315262221_Coronary_atherosclerosis_in_indigenous_South_American_Tsimane_A_cross-sectional_cohort_study https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315262221_Coronary_... [3]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30383188 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30383188

rcombine 8y ago
That is even more illuminating. They eat primarily unrefined carbs like rice, corn, and plantains, 2400~2700 calories worth of it a day (more than I eat!), and yet they are very healthy and fit. Considering the numbers, it really looks like the difference is the amount of physical activity. I think that sedentary humans are just not supposed to eat as much as we think or want to do.

rich-tea 8y ago

This one was quick. It took decades before anyone questioned the war on fat. Looks like the war on carbs is already at that stage. Give it a few years and we'll start to see the bad affects of too much protein. Mark my words. People who live a long time don't care about diets. Show me one who did.

DoingIsLearning 8y ago
> People who live a long time don't care about diets. Show me one who did. Jack LaLanne? He was one of the first modern evangelists of fitness and diet and lived to be 96, according to wikipedia. Purely anecdotal but you did ask for a single example.

devm0de 8y ago

What about what protective or healthy heart genetic markers their population might have?

negamax 8y ago

Small anecdote: I did travels through Europe a while back and did lots of walking. That's fairly normal in many European towns and cities. Really felt great and decided to do 20k steps a day after return. Which tapered off slowly and unconsciously. Need to get back to that level. Your body respond quickly in positive direction, I can recall that much.

bigDICK 8y ago
I think a lot of people miss out on this when talking about their TDEE. Folks in some countries are more active as part of their routine, outside of planned exercises. I noticed this a lot when I traveled, too. I was walking everywhere, all the time. As were the locals.

emptybits 8y ago

Another fact about Bolivians ... they are, on average, the shortest people in the world. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-shortest-average-heights.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-short...

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
Oh! Short stature, mountainous country near the equator - means the least gravity affecting their circulation! Natural heart-healthy situation!
- snazz 8y ago
  Do astronauts have better hearts? Was this studied in the twins experiement we saw a while ago?
- emptybits 8y ago
  Short heart-to-brain distance may also predict an ability to handle high G-forces as a fighter pilot. https://fightersweep.com/1411/agsm/ https://fightersweep.com/1411/agsm/
- copperx 8y ago
  You might be joking, but higher altitude also means less oxygen, which translates to reduced oxidation and less risk of cancer. I'm on my cellphone so I don't have the paper on hand, but there was a big study where they compared lung cancer rates in different geographic areas and found that the highest cancer incidence was at sea level, whereas the lowest was at higher elevations. They tried controlling for other obvious variables but elevation was unquestionably the best explanation. Oxidation may explain plaque in arteries.

PerfectElement 8y ago

> 72% of calories come from carbohydrates Not much different from the Blue Zones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone

caublestone 8y ago

Does anyone know if the Tsimane drink alcohol?

lordnacho 8y ago

One thing I didn't get a clear answer from the doctor about last time I saw one was this. Can you unclog your arteries by changing your lifestyle, ie diet and exercise, or is the clogging permanent?

cogman10 8y ago
https://www.webmd.com/cholesterol-management/cholesterol-and-artery-plaque-buildup https://www.webmd.com/cholesterol-management/cholesterol-and... > Once a cholesterol plaque is there, it's generally there to stay. With effective treatment, though, plaque buildup may slow down or stop. > Some evidence shows that, with aggressive treatment, cholesterol plaques can even shrink slightly. In one major study, cholesterol plaques shrank 10% in size after a 50% reduction in blood cholesterol levels. > The best way to treat cholesterol plaques is to prevent them from forming or progressing. That can be done with lifestyle changes and, if needed, medication.
- hackits 8y ago
  https://youtu.be/c5ELzL7DGpw?t=2426 https://youtu.be/c5ELzL7DGpw?t=2426 Vitamin K - Mk7, Vitamin V, and Magnesium seem to help with the removal of calcifications of the artillery. Though I couldn't really find referees other than reports on `Vitamin K intake and calcifications in breast arteries Angela`
cageface 8y ago
Diet can unclog arteries, at least in some cases. https://dresselstyn.com/JFP_06307_Article1.pdf https://dresselstyn.com/JFP_06307_Article1.pdf

discreteevent 8y ago

It would be interesting to know if they observed how much sleep they take.

jonplackett 8y ago

Doesn't even mention sugar. Seems like that would be a very large and important difference. Just says "72% of calories come from carbohydrates compared with 52% in the US", which might encourage a westerner to eat more carbs, but if they're eating whole rice and we're eating sugar that seems kinda important. Comparison of gut bacteria would be interesting too, bet that's as important as the diet itself.

deleted 8y ago
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chrischen 8y ago
They're also exercising more than 100% of what Americans do.

apo 8y ago

> One idea is that intestinal worms - which dampen immune reactions - could be more common and this may help protect the heart. That worm infects most of the population: > And about 70% of the population has a parasitic worm infection [Ascaris lumbricoides, a type of roundworm]. ... Up to a third of the world's population also lives with such infections. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-34857022 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-34857022 Before latching onto exercise or diet as the primary factors, it's worth considering the effect of this worm infection. It could influence the heart indirectly through nutrient flow, immune suppression as suggested for the original article or the one on pregnancy, or directly via for example larvae/segments, etc. BTW, the lifecycle of this thing is the stuff of nightmares: > Ascaris lumbricoides, a roundworm, infects humans via the fecal-oral route. Eggs released by adult females are shed in feces. Unfertilized eggs are often observed in fecal samples but never become infective. Fertilized eggs embryonate and become infective after 18 days to several weeks in soil, depending on the environmental conditions (optimum: moist, warm, shaded soil).[5]. When an embryonated egg is ingested, a Rhabditiform larva hatches then penetrates the wall of the duodenum and enters the blood stream. From there, it is carried to the liver and heart, and enters pulmonary circulation to break free in the alveoli, where it grows and molts. In three weeks, the larva passes from the respiratory system to be coughed up, swallowed, and thus returned to the small intestine, where it matures to an adult male or female worm. Fertilization can now occur and the female produces as many as 200,000 eggs per day for 12–18 months. These fertilized eggs become infectious after two weeks in soil; they can persist in soil for 10 years or more.[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascaris_lumbricoides https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascaris_lumbricoides Clearly, the juvenile state spends some time in the circulatory system, where it should have some opportunities to influence coronary artery calcium. I looked for studies that examined the incidence of heart disease/CAC buildup among other infected populations but didn't immediately find anything.

jvanderbot 8y ago

You know what else? They dont have air pollution like pm2.5, which is known to cause heart and lung disease. https://laqm.defra.gov.uk/public-health/pm25.html https://laqm.defra.gov.uk/public-health/pm25.html

deevolution 8y ago

"One idea is that intestinal worms - which dampen immune reactions - could be more common and this may help protect the heart" Let me get some of those worms!

scythe 8y ago

But is their health abnormal after accounting for the usual RRs associated with their BMI, exercise, fiber and trans fat intake? They don't drink or smoke, I presume? The difficulty with "non-mathematical" sciences is that they tend to treat math as a tool for validation rather than expression. This is partially a failure of communication on the part of mathematicians.

zxcvvcxz 8y ago

Can we get the actual numbers and breakdowns for fats? They're so quick to say less saturated fat is the cause, but I bet the difference in polyunsaturated fats is even BIGGER and is probably the REAL reason they are healthier. PUFAs as they are called are incredibly unhealthy, and there is Big Business trying to hide this. http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturated-oils.shtml http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/unsaturated-oils.shtml

netwanderer3 8y ago

This is a perfect example of how everything in life is always a trade off. Do you want a healthier heart to live a few extra years or do you want to sit on your couch and browse HN while enjoying your BigMac? Pick one because only a fool would believe they could have both.