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I hate this because I want to believe technology and AI and will result in modern medicine where everyone has long healthy lives. The reality that just eating
by ericmcer 4y ago
I hate this because I want to believe technology and AI and will result in modern medicine where everyone has long healthy lives.
The reality that just eating right, sleeping and exercising is still our best health advice is humorous and disheartening.
- xwdv 4y agoThat should be encouraging, not disheartening. The best methods for keeping healthy just involve easy simple things anyone could do for free everyday. That’s better than any dependence on shitty expensive drugs.
- heavyset_go 4y agoWhat is scary is that society is structured to ensure that many people can't get enough sleep, exercise and healthy meals.
- bitL 4y agoWell, it has always been a "privilege" for a few.
- 90d 4y agoThe only thing that is humorous and disheartening is that your outlook is shared by the majority and for this, we are fucked. The inability of large corporations to best what is available to EVERY PERSON, for FREE, is a BLESSING. All these companies do is add layers of complexity or outright push a worse product and rely on changing public opinion or how info is perceived for sales. This is capitalism's kiss of death. Their goal is not healing, their goal is removal of symptoms where you will be held in perpetual subsistence. And we should never let that be forgotten. On a macro level if you want to improve your health : Less processed foods, less synthetic materials, less pharmaceuticals, less time sitting and indoors. Less alcohol, less weed, Less involvement from these "professionals" all across the board. Less, less, less. Wow, isn't that weird? For those who will comment for arguments sake, I would rather you provide examples of the sitting President promoting overall good health practices (read: FREE) rather than his usual gaslighting the public into taking an untested pharmaceutical product.
- Aperocky 4y agoAs long as you stay biological that's always going to be the case.
- can16358p 4y agoOn the other hand it makes so much sense. We're the result of hundreds of millions of evolution on this planet, and we're very optimized for the actions that we can take in nature (e.g. Walk, swim, hunt an animal/grap a fruit, eat, reproduce). No wonder why these are good for us, because these are our true traits. Modern medicine, on the other hand, is a few hundred years old at best and generally work as a band-aid rather than solving the root of the problems.
- stubish 4y agoExercise always seems counterintuitive. After all, things tend to wear out and break when you use them. You don't use the good scissors for most things or they won't be good when you need them. We would be a lot less grumpy if the way to build muscle was to take it easy, and you only needed to exercise if you were overbulking and needed to wear some out. So we want a pill that triggers the regenerative effects of exercise without the actual exercise. Human Growth Hormone without the problems.
- xedrac 4y agoI really enjoyed the book "Move your DNA". It talks a lot about the loads you place on your body (even ones you don't think about) and the effects that has. Definitely worth a read.
- bitL 4y agoLymphatic system is drained only through movement. I wouldn't be surprised if the same holds for the one that was discovered in the brain recently.
- naasking 4y agoEvolution doesn't care if you're grumpy, it only "cares" if you succeeded in reproducing. Tissues that aren't stressed naturally atrophy to conserve energy, which saves on food, which is adaptive in evolutionary terms. This has the natural implication that those tissues will reach an equilibrium where they are barely stronger than your most basic needs. If the only stress you experience is getting off the couch to get some food, just doing that will be a little difficult. Larger, sudden stresses will cause injuries because your tissues won't be adapted to handle them. Exercise ensures that we mentally and physically exceed our normal stress thresholds, so the remaining stresses of life is less stressful by comparison.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago> The reality that just eating right, sleeping and exercising is still our best health advice is humorous and disheartening. You should be happy that it's so simple.
- nine_k 4y agoSimple, not easy.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 4y agoWaaay easier than external AI and technology interventions, which don't even fully exist yet and without side effects. I mean, think of it as bodybuilding: there are plenty of good ol' ways of building strength and stimulating hypertrophy on purely natural processes, and that shouldn't be disheartening as compared to, say, injecting yourself with steroids.
- Dudeman112 4y ago>Waaay easier than external AI and technology intervention RIP everyone that didn't win the normal body lottery though
- BeFlatXIII 4y ago“Most people dig their graves with their teeth” has been an adage for over 100 years now.
- hackeraccount 4y agoPeople who obsess over how health care is delivered - Public, Private or whatever - should really take this to heart. The things that really make a difference to populations (as opposed to individuals) - don't over eat, don't smoke, drink moderately, get some exercise, get vaccinated - are pretty much all (except for the last one) outside the purview of doctors, nurses and hospitals. A Dr. will always tell you about those items but they have no chance of getting you to do any of that. The people in this thread saying we should have walkable communities are being unrealistic but I'll concede that that what they're saying is better then any idea I have.
- bitexploder 4y agoDefine: eating right. It’s really hard. Sleeping and exercise are easier.
- discordance 4y agoIt varies slightly from person to person, but generally “lots of vegetables and minimize highly processed foods. Those are the common denominators of a healthy diet. From there, you can fill in the blanks to suit your tastes and your unique physiological needs by adding your choice of high-quality fats (nuts, seeds, avocados, olive oil, fatty fish), carbohydrates (whole grains, fruit, starchy root vegetables), and plant- or animal-based protein (legumes, soy, fish, lean sustainably raised meat, poultry, eggs, dairy).” https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/what-does-a-healthy-diet-look-like https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/what-does-a-h...
- dontwearitout 4y agoIndividual needs vary, but the Mediterranean diet is a great place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_diet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_diet > The Mediterranean diet is associated with a reduction in all-cause mortality in observational studies. There is evidence that the Mediterranean diet lowers the risk of heart disease and early death. The American Heart Association and American Diabetes Association recommend the Mediterranean diet as a healthy dietary pattern that may reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes, respectively.
- dmarlow 4y agoThat's not a realistic view though. Technology and AI aren't some magical things that remove the need to have a balanced life. At the end of the day, we are living/breathing animals that depend on the things around us to grow and thrive.
- irrational 4y agoI don’t understand why it is disheartening?
- adamredwoods 4y agoI wish gyms were less expensive, and had places, even a table perhaps, that kids and tweens could use. It would make exercise more accessible for me and my lifestyle. In university, I had an indoor track I could use, it was fantastic and had plenty of room for families and people exercising.
- steve_adams_86 4y agoThis should be in every city. The only way I could reliably exercise when my kids were babies was by running them in a stroller. Apart from the mental health aspect (lack of agency, no time or space to yourself), you can’t always subject your kids to the weather of the day or they’re uncooperative to the point that the run isn’t feasible. Not to mention the multitude of reasons people can’t run, from disabilities to simply having no safe place to run with a stroller. Smooth sidewalks with space are kind of a luxury. With a lifestyle and/or restrictions like that, no wonder people get out of shape. We can’t rely on our communities having space and accommodation for kids and so, well, without a family network we’re on our own.
- sterlind 4y agoeven with disabilities, you can usually exercise. I can't run or really walk, but my upper body's gotten strong from pushing my chair. I've found my health is better (physical and mental) in walkable cities than in suburbs, even though I'm not walking.
- xwdv 4y agoYou don’t need a gym, those are just excuses. You can do a lot right at home, and more frequently as you don’t need to go all the way to the gym every time.
- data_maan 4y agoI had a friend during the peak of the pandemic who complaint he couldn't exercise because all the gyms were closed. It never occurred to him to get a cheap workout app and get active at home. Even after I told him about this option he rather kept complaining. People are amazingly stupid sometimes...
- burnerburnito 4y agoModern medical tech and practices are keeping us alive healthier and longer. Being disheartened by the fact you still need to eat right, sleep, etc. is like being disheartened that you still need to do regular maintenance on your car and treat it well. The simple fact is that if you sabotage your body, you'll have more issues cropping up sooner and with greater severity, and if you keep it strong all that medical advancement actually has an opportunity to help you in the cases where your body can't help itself. It doesn't discredit medical advancement, only reminds us that many people's lifestyles can often be more destructive than we realize.
- im3w1l 4y agoThe thing with eating and sleeping right etc is that we know the limits of it: it can keep you alive into your 90's at best, and more realistically into your 80's. Technology on the other hand is completely uncapped. A pill that keeps a degenerate bum alive into the 80's might be really hard to achieve, but the kicker is that once you do, it's just another step or two to keeping him alive until 200.
- irrational 4y agoIsn’t genetics more important? There are families where everyone dies young - look at the guy who popularized jogging. All the men in his family die young. He tried to beat it be exercising, eating healthy, etc. Still died young. Same age as his father. Others families live into their hundreds without any effort. It would seem the first thing to do is to figure out a way to fix DNA.
- SamPatt 4y agoQuoting from his (Jim Fixx) wiki article: In 1986 exercise physiologist Kenneth Cooper published an inventory of the risk factors that might have contributed to Fixx's death.[6] Granted access to his medical records and autopsy, and after interviewing his friends and family, Cooper concluded that Fixx was genetically predisposed—his father died of a heart attack at 43 after a previous one at 35,[7] and Fixx himself had a congenitally enlarged heart—and had an unhealthy life: Fixx was a heavy smoker before beginning running at age 36, had a stressful occupation, had undergone a second divorce, and gained weight up to 214 pounds (97 kg).[8] Medical opinion continues to uphold the link between moderate exercise and longevity.[9]
- api 4y agoHumans are a very long lived species already at least when compared to most other large high metabolism mammals. That means evolution already did a lot of optimization for longevity, possibly driven by the high value of grandparents in child rearing and passing on valuable knowledge. This is also why lots of mouse longevity research doesn’t translate well to humans. Mice are not a particularly longevity optimized mammal so it means there is more low hanging fruit there. For us all the low hanging fruit is likely picked.
- t-writescode 4y agoIf we prioritized walkable cities and outdoor time in our lives, would that be so bad? I find it American culture and decades of bad city planning to be a greater harm for living healthy than most other sources of not living healthy.
- expert_here 4y ago
- eurasiantiger 4y agoMake it a misdemeanor to use inhalable nicotine products indoors and near residential buildings. Make people go for a walk to smoke or vape.
- coldtea 4y ago>I hate this because I want to believe technology and AI and will result in modern medicine where everyone has long healthy lives. Medical technology and AI is not even close to any major improvement in life expectancy, except in much rare cases (heart transplants is one example: they're insignificant in raising overall life expectancy, as they're statistically too rare to matter). The big majority of the improvement in life expectancy in the 20th century was from low-hanging stuff like running water, sterilization, waste disposal, and basic antibiotics, not from the high-tech transplants, DNA research, fancy drugs and so on.
- 90d 4y agoMake AI. Choose next path : (1) herculean effort to make it confirm to what they have established as politically correct. (2) improve AI.
- doctor_eval 4y ago(1) herculean effort to make it treat everyone with kindness and respect. (2) improve AI. (3) work out how to do both at the same time. FTFY
- wwweston 4y agoEveryone wants "politically correct" AI. Wanna keep it from turning murderbot or paperclip maximizer? Welcome to the arena of politics of correct values. Wanna use it for longevity research? Same. Some people also would like to make sure it isn't helping stoke antisemitism or genocide, but apparently that's controversial for some reason, so guess it's political. (And that's before we get to the usual issue that people using "politically correct" as the drive-by aspersion that's so unfortunately common are usually more ideological than those they criticize and very much have their own political correctness they're anxious to impose by any means available to them...)
- moloch-hai 4y agoHaving been vaccinated for Tdap recently very reliably predicts a 40% lower risk of dementia. I gather flu vaccine has similar effect size. Nobody knows why. Ask, and people speculate about inflammation. Having been treated for herpes lately -- valacyclovir, lately -- seems too to have outsize effect. I get all three. People doing autopsies say brains they examine are very often laced with herpes virus and bacteria, vs. doctrine that insists nothing gets in. US grants $2B annually to study plaque formation in transgenic mice. Approximately none of it goes for anything of value. When the amyloid boat sinks, a lot of biochemists will need to find something else to do. They would better look early.
- Andrex 4y agoMaybe the expectation that technology will solve all our problems has been and will always be false. Techno-utopianism is a shallow dream.
- eloff 4y agoSays the guy hypocritically from his smartphone. Technology has solved so many problems. It's also created new ones. But we're way better off, there's no question of that.
- marricks 4y ago> Says the guy hypocritically from his smartphone. How is it hypocritical? Opposed to any other times in human history you can’t give up on society and live a peaceful life in a community. We’re born into it along with all our families and friends. Telling someone to go off and live in the woods is a life of solitude and probably harsh run ins with the law. There is no choice nowadays and saying “ha but you live in society so you can’t critique it” is a willful ignorance.
- eloff 4y agoThe Amish get by all right. Seriously, if you really believe you're better off without technology, you can live that way without going and living in the woods. Saying you're better off without technology from a smartphone is hypocrisy. I double down on that.
- gscott 4y agoMaybe you are not out of luck yet! https://scitechdaily.com/new-pill-replicates-exercise-and-strengthens-muscle/ https://scitechdaily.com/new-pill-replicates-exercise-and-st...
- jmcgough 4y agoThis is a single study with a limited sample. A meta-analysis puts it at about 30-40%.