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I am personally convinced that we have an extremely primitive understanding of human biology and that we use the biomarkers we have (such as cholesterol) in gro

I am personally convinced that we have an extremely primitive understanding of human biology and that we use the biomarkers we have (such as cholesterol) in grossly inappropriate ways. We've seen this story play out time and time again, with everything from vitamin D to HDL/LDL. Low levels of vitamin D are related to everything from depression to heart disease to diabetes, but a recent study gave people over 300% of their daily value of vitamin D every single day for 10 years and found zero improvement on a giant list of health metrics. The same with LDL/HDL: bad LDL/HDL numbers give you dramatically higher risk for heart disease and stroke, so people designed a drug that improves those numbers, but of course it does nothing for your actual health. We need to fix the actual, underlying causes of disease - lifestyle and diet - not hack the various biomarkers higher or lower until the numbers look good. I'm actually working on a startup to help with this, so if anyone's curious (about using it or just to discuss) my email's in my profile.

mrslave 5y ago
> not hack the various biomarkers higher or lower until the numbers look good Goodhart's law is an adage often stated as "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". (Wikipedia)
kkfx 5y ago
The classic Italian/French MDs schools told simply 5 time HDL must be lower than LDL, but nowadays people want absolute numbers and interests around diets and meds just push debatable practice that might hold a bit of truth but are so vaporous to be a nonsense. Also about diet remember that just in the recent history we are shifted, without really scientific proofs behind, from saying "eggs are good, eat them at least one a day" to "egg are bad, limit them"; "blue fish are the protein of the see, eat them much" to "blue fish are pollutants collectors of the see, avoid them| etc, mostly following some lobbyist PR campaign dressed as science so just talking about diet it's complex. Again, the old school when medicine was not that much a business say: all animal foods help lower the LDL, so eggs, fish, cheese, meat help. Starchy foods (from potatoes to beans, rice, ...) do the opposite. Taking a global look from countries with more animal protein based diets and others with starchy foods based diets confirm that well, but such simple observations is considered flawed because there are too many variables in the middle, while no one really criticize modern studies that actually tend to fail proving anything, just claiming...

mrslave 5y ago

> not hack the various biomarkers higher or lower until the numbers look good Goodhart's law is an adage often stated as "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". (Wikipedia)

kkfx 5y ago

The classic Italian/French MDs schools told simply 5 time HDL must be lower than LDL, but nowadays people want absolute numbers and interests around diets and meds just push debatable practice that might hold a bit of truth but are so vaporous to be a nonsense. Also about diet remember that just in the recent history we are shifted, without really scientific proofs behind, from saying "eggs are good, eat them at least one a day" to "egg are bad, limit them"; "blue fish are the protein of the see, eat them much" to "blue fish are pollutants collectors of the see, avoid them| etc, mostly following some lobbyist PR campaign dressed as science so just talking about diet it's complex. Again, the old school when medicine was not that much a business say: all animal foods help lower the LDL, so eggs, fish, cheese, meat help. Starchy foods (from potatoes to beans, rice, ...) do the opposite. Taking a global look from countries with more animal protein based diets and others with starchy foods based diets confirm that well, but such simple observations is considered flawed because there are too many variables in the middle, while no one really criticize modern studies that actually tend to fail proving anything, just claiming...