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Is there literally any straightforward evidence that diet composition affects mortality?

nosianu 4y ago
> affects mortality? Why would you only care about mortality? I had some unfortunate experience with heavy metal poisoning (university clinic diagnosed - mercury, shown by lab tests). There was zero danger of dying and I doubt it took away any of my life expectancy. But it SUCKS and especially the brain works at a substantially lower level. I did not understand even simple sentences even after reading them several times at the height of the problem. I wrote Internet comments that made no sense when I read them again the next day, but at the time it felt perfectly alright and logical (sentence structure was weird too). (Just an aside) And you know what? I had to end up with a senior researcher doctor at a university clinic before getting diagnosed. Because most doctors were a little like your question: They looked at the vitals and found no obvious disease and sent me home "it's all in your head". Which is funny because it's largely true - mercury being a neurotoxin, but for some reason the brain being the product of physics and bio-chemistry not registering with the oh so "science and evidence" based doctors, who seem to have a strangely meta-physical and esoteric view of it. Anyway, back on topic: I find this obsession with the binary outcome "death / no death" strange. Before death, your extremely parallel structure (not just your own trillions cells, each cell itself has lots of independently working parts, and then there are even more bacteria and other organisms occupying your insides and the outside who all contribute and are often affected too) does a poorer job of bringing the "you" into being. See your body like a computer running the software that is "you". The quality of the simulation drops if the hardware is impacted (you are the activity of your parts - a brain without activity is not "you", you are not there if the hardware does not run the "you" software). But the life expectancy may not be impacted at all. Surely, if you provide far from optimal fuel you can expect the quality to suffer too, not just when you are poisoned or otherwise restricted. So, it is a question of what version of "you" do you want to be? Is mere existence enough?
- dionidium 4y ago
  It's not that I object to any of that, so much as it's just that mortality is a lot easier to measure.

> affects mortality? Why would you only care about mortality? I had some unfortunate experience with heavy metal poisoning (university clinic diagnosed - mercury, shown by lab tests). There was zero danger of dying and I doubt it took away any of my life expectancy. But it SUCKS and especially the brain works at a substantially lower level. I did not understand even simple sentences even after reading them several times at the height of the problem. I wrote Internet comments that made no sense when I read them again the next day, but at the time it felt perfectly alright and logical (sentence structure was weird too). (Just an aside) And you know what? I had to end up with a senior researcher doctor at a university clinic before getting diagnosed. Because most doctors were a little like your question: They looked at the vitals and found no obvious disease and sent me home "it's all in your head". Which is funny because it's largely true - mercury being a neurotoxin, but for some reason the brain being the product of physics and bio-chemistry not registering with the oh so "science and evidence" based doctors, who seem to have a strangely meta-physical and esoteric view of it. Anyway, back on topic: I find this obsession with the binary outcome "death / no death" strange. Before death, your extremely parallel structure (not just your own trillions cells, each cell itself has lots of independently working parts, and then there are even more bacteria and other organisms occupying your insides and the outside who all contribute and are often affected too) does a poorer job of bringing the "you" into being. See your body like a computer running the software that is "you". The quality of the simulation drops if the hardware is impacted (you are the activity of your parts - a brain without activity is not "you", you are not there if the hardware does not run the "you" software). But the life expectancy may not be impacted at all. Surely, if you provide far from optimal fuel you can expect the quality to suffer too, not just when you are poisoned or otherwise restricted. So, it is a question of what version of "you" do you want to be? Is mere existence enough?

dionidium 4y ago
It's not that I object to any of that, so much as it's just that mortality is a lot easier to measure.