5 ms·

Unfortunately the most compelling evidence I've seen seems to confirm the weight set-point (or set-interval) theory. A good book that summarizes main results i

by sgdpk 7y ago

Unfortunately the most compelling evidence I've seen seems to confirm the weight set-point (or set-interval) theory. A good book that summarizes main results is Sandra Aamodt's "Why diets don't work". That's not to say weight loss is impossible. If you're overeating as a habit you may be keeping your weight above your set-point. Learning to "listen" to hunger cues may then bring your weight down. It happened to me 2 years ago and I managed to keep the weight down, and I'm not feeling hungry. There are other ways of lowering the set-point, but not very recommendable in general. I think focusing on hunger cues and eating a balanced diet is good advice, together with exercise and avoiding drinking and smoking. These will (statistically) reduce morbidity risks to normal-weight levels. Note that I am not a doctor, though, so take this information with the proper grain of salt.

tobib 7y ago
> Note that I am not a doctor, though, so take this information with the proper grain of salt. In moderation though, too much sodium is bad for you
- arcticbull 7y ago
  Evidence does not appear to bear that out. "... a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure." [1] [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-t...
  - vlan0 7y ago
    Some people do have a sensitivity to salt. I am one of those people. Excessive salt does weird things to my body. My grandmother is the same way.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      Some people have a sensitivity to basically anything you can point to, I was hoping to provide some general advice that salt isn’t nearly as harmful as we’ve been led to believe.
      - vlan0 7y ago
        Right, so like all things in life. Use the advice as a guideline and experiment to validate.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
    The relative amounts of sodium and potassium in blood regulate blood pressure. Too much sodium can increase blood pressure and high blood pressure is a major cause of cardiovascular disease. This is a well-understood process with much data to back it up and it will take a lot more than one meta-analysis of 6k people to provide evidence against it. Note also a common mistake of studies that test correlations between a factor such as salt and a health outcome like CVD or death: often, the people at most high risk are already cutting down on the substance. For example (I can't find the reference now, sorry) a study that reported that moderate drinking had better health outcomes than not drinking at all included in its study population individuals who had cut alcohol consumption completely because of pre-existing (at the time of the study) disease. So obviously those people had worse health outcomes than the ones that drank moderately. This can skew results something bad. If you're testing whether cutting down on salt correlates with a reduction to CVD and some of your study population have cut down on salt because they already have CVD, the association between cutting down on salt and good outcomes will appear reduced in your data. In the first study reported in Scientific American in the link you provide it's hard to know whether this is the case because they don't link to the study (typical). The next study reported by SA, where the amount of sodium in urine was measured, seems to have suffered from this error: it found that cutting down on salt increased risk of dying from heart disease. Not benefitting from reducing salt intake is one thing, but dying more of it? That takes hellalot of explaining! The point is that just because a study found one result doesn't mean everything changes overnight. It is important to understand that when there is a large body of evidence supporting one hypothesis ("too much salt is not good for you") it takes an equally large body of evidence to reject that hypothesis. A single study, even a meta-analysis, doesn't cut it. It will take many years and a lot of work before the evidence SA presents is credible enough to change our understanding. And this is as it should be.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      Thanks for your helpful framework for evaluating these kinds of things! Any thoughts on this meta-analysis that covered dose-response relationships over 16 studies and 205,000 people and found basically that too little salt leads to cardiac death risk, and too much salt leads to potential increased stroke mortality. [1] [1] https://bmccardiovascdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12872-018-0927-9 https://bmccardiovascdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11...

by sgdpk 7y ago

tobib 7y ago

> Note that I am not a doctor, though, so take this information with the proper grain of salt. In moderation though, too much sodium is bad for you

arcticbull 7y ago
Evidence does not appear to bear that out. "... a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure." [1] [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-t...
- vlan0 7y ago
  Some people do have a sensitivity to salt. I am one of those people. Excessive salt does weird things to my body. My grandmother is the same way.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    Some people have a sensitivity to basically anything you can point to, I was hoping to provide some general advice that salt isn’t nearly as harmful as we’ve been led to believe.
    - vlan0 7y ago
      Right, so like all things in life. Use the advice as a guideline and experiment to validate.
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
  The relative amounts of sodium and potassium in blood regulate blood pressure. Too much sodium can increase blood pressure and high blood pressure is a major cause of cardiovascular disease. This is a well-understood process with much data to back it up and it will take a lot more than one meta-analysis of 6k people to provide evidence against it. Note also a common mistake of studies that test correlations between a factor such as salt and a health outcome like CVD or death: often, the people at most high risk are already cutting down on the substance. For example (I can't find the reference now, sorry) a study that reported that moderate drinking had better health outcomes than not drinking at all included in its study population individuals who had cut alcohol consumption completely because of pre-existing (at the time of the study) disease. So obviously those people had worse health outcomes than the ones that drank moderately. This can skew results something bad. If you're testing whether cutting down on salt correlates with a reduction to CVD and some of your study population have cut down on salt because they already have CVD, the association between cutting down on salt and good outcomes will appear reduced in your data. In the first study reported in Scientific American in the link you provide it's hard to know whether this is the case because they don't link to the study (typical). The next study reported by SA, where the amount of sodium in urine was measured, seems to have suffered from this error: it found that cutting down on salt increased risk of dying from heart disease. Not benefitting from reducing salt intake is one thing, but dying more of it? That takes hellalot of explaining! The point is that just because a study found one result doesn't mean everything changes overnight. It is important to understand that when there is a large body of evidence supporting one hypothesis ("too much salt is not good for you") it takes an equally large body of evidence to reject that hypothesis. A single study, even a meta-analysis, doesn't cut it. It will take many years and a lot of work before the evidence SA presents is credible enough to change our understanding. And this is as it should be.
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    Thanks for your helpful framework for evaluating these kinds of things! Any thoughts on this meta-analysis that covered dose-response relationships over 16 studies and 205,000 people and found basically that too little salt leads to cardiac death risk, and too much salt leads to potential increased stroke mortality. [1] [1] https://bmccardiovascdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12872-018-0927-9 https://bmccardiovascdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11...