6 ms·

I'm taking an EMT class now and it's extremely sobering how many horrifying ways to die are directly caused by one of: high blood pressure, obesity, or smoking.

I'm taking an EMT class now and it's extremely sobering how many horrifying ways to die are directly caused by one of: high blood pressure, obesity, or smoking. We're in the cardio module now, and about 3/4ths of the class is already talking about signing a DNR. Death from one of those three is often long and extremely painful. We've got so many ways we are legally required to keep the body "alive". There's a lot worse things out there than death. Keep fit out there folks. If you don't know where to start, check out intermittent fasting 16/8.

bongodongobob 3y ago
How is that considered fasting? Eat breakfast at 9, lunch at noon, and dinner at 5. That's just a normal day.
- Majestic121 3y ago
  Depends on where you are in the world, dinner at 5 would be really weird in a lot of places. Most restaurants would not even be open for another 2 hours
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Even if you eat at home saying you have to eat before many people are off work seems like a rather arbitrary restriction for the sake of 2 or 3 hours. And I say that as someone who does sometimes eat earlier and often don't really have 3 meals a day.
    - JackMorgan 3y ago
      The body doesn't significantly start burning fat for fuel until glucose stores are exhausted, which on average takes at least 12 hours of fasting. Every hour after is running on "fat batteries", so a few extra hours is the difference between zero fat burned and several oz of fat burned.
  - bongodongobob 3y ago
    Well it's not weird anywhere in the US. Skip breakfast for a snack at 10 and push dinner to 6 and it's pretty average. Fasting is not eating. But sure, let's just change the meaning to "scheduling when I eat".
- tareqak 3y ago
  Dinner has to end on or before 5. No calories from 5PM to 9AM.
  - bongodongobob 3y ago
    That's not a fast, it's just eating less.
    - tareqak 3y ago
      > Fasting is the abstention from eating and sometimes drinking. From a purely physiological context, "fasting" may refer to the metabolic status of a person who has not eaten overnight (see "Breakfast"), or to the metabolic state achieved after complete digestion and absorption of a meal.[1] Metabolic changes in the fasting state begin after absorption of a meal (typically 3–5 hours after eating). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasting
- JackMorgan 3y ago
  It's a place to _start_, once a person can handle that consistently, then more strict protocols like 18/6 or 23/1 are easier to do consistently.
jstummbillig 3y ago
If you don't know where to start, just fucking move.
- JackMorgan 3y ago
  Exercise alone almost never reduces body fat percentage long term. Calorie restriction of some sort and getting the body to burn fat via fasting/keto is required for most people.
  - galleywest200 3y ago
    Just do both and get the benefits of thinning out _and_ mental boosts from exercise.
  - anonuser123456 3y ago
    Your body will burn fat in caloric deficit. No keto required.
  - macNchz 3y ago
    Exercise definitely does improve tons of factors, even if it is not an effective way to lose weight on its own. There is also, as I understand it, some degree of distinction between weight loss and weight gain prevention: while the saying "you can't outrun a bad diet" seems to hold true for people actively trying to lose weight (something I can personally understand, when I'm in a running training block my appetite is unreal), there's also a lot of evidence showing lower rates of obesity in more densely-populated areas, where people naturally walk more, and evidence of improvement when people move from low density to high density areas, which suggests there's a component of just moving around in daily life that can be a factor: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9378543/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9378543/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6747269/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6747269/ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.23634 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.23634 https://academic.oup.com/edrv/article/43/6/966/6532493?login=false https://academic.oup.com/edrv/article/43/6/966/6532493?login...
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
082349872349872 3y ago
I put up https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39387450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39387450 partly because it's surprising how many ways to die are voluntarily exacerbated.
scinerio 3y ago
IMO fasting won't help the majority of the population since their diets tend to consist of foods that are designed to be highly consumable at volume. While the theory of time-restricted eating implies you will eat less, you can still easily exceed your TDEE in calories. Skip the fasting; exercise and eat real whole foods. It's pretty difficult to do both of those things and not lose weight.
- lr4444lr 3y ago
  That is way too hard for a lot of people. The simple "eat/no eat" is not a bad way for people to start on their way to better health.
  - saiya-jin 3y ago
    If forcing oneself to just walk for 20 mins (thats a lazy 1km, I've managed to walk cca 3km 2 weeks ago with broken foot and ripped ligament through wild forest) is too much, good luck with convincing anybody with such mentality that now is the real "no eat" time, consistently.
- tejohnso 3y ago
  Fasting isn't about eating less.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
tejohnso 3y ago
> We've got so many ways we are legally required to keep the body "alive". Could you say more about this? I've heard of rib breaking CPR but curious to know about others.
- JackMorgan 3y ago
  The rib breaking is very real. And 93% of the time it only traumatizes the giver and adds more suffering to the receiver who dies anyway. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/05/29/1177914622/a-natural-death-may-be-preferable-for-many-than-enduring-cpr https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/05/29/1177914... There are also "humans are space orcs" devices like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventricular_assist_device https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventricular_assist_device that can keep blood circulating even when the heart cannot. Or this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_positive_airway_pressure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_positive_airway_pre... that can push all the blood in your lungs from congestive heart failure back into your arteries, only for the lungs to start to slowly fill again, drowning them slowly. Not saying these measures are bad or that we should withhold care, but there is very much an attitude of "keep alive at all costs" to modern medicine that can be hard to witness and potentially traumatizing for caregivers.
  - tejohnso 3y ago
    With a terminal family member, what I found counterintuitive was that we had to take measures to avoid insane practices rather than the practitioners having to ask before doing something insane.
inglor_cz 3y ago
High blood pressure and obesity appear to be part of the same metabolic syndrome. I am all for fasting, but it won't make your death necessarily less painful. The best you can hope for is to live a decade longer and possibly make use of the progress of medical science. (It is possible that we will have a breakthrough in longevity. In that case, well, it makes a LOT of sense to be alive to see it.)

bongodongobob 3y ago

How is that considered fasting? Eat breakfast at 9, lunch at noon, and dinner at 5. That's just a normal day.

Majestic121 3y ago
Depends on where you are in the world, dinner at 5 would be really weird in a lot of places. Most restaurants would not even be open for another 2 hours
- ghaff 3y ago
  Even if you eat at home saying you have to eat before many people are off work seems like a rather arbitrary restriction for the sake of 2 or 3 hours. And I say that as someone who does sometimes eat earlier and often don't really have 3 meals a day.
  - JackMorgan 3y ago
    The body doesn't significantly start burning fat for fuel until glucose stores are exhausted, which on average takes at least 12 hours of fasting. Every hour after is running on "fat batteries", so a few extra hours is the difference between zero fat burned and several oz of fat burned.
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  Well it's not weird anywhere in the US. Skip breakfast for a snack at 10 and push dinner to 6 and it's pretty average. Fasting is not eating. But sure, let's just change the meaning to "scheduling when I eat".
tareqak 3y ago
Dinner has to end on or before 5. No calories from 5PM to 9AM.
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  That's not a fast, it's just eating less.
  - tareqak 3y ago
    > Fasting is the abstention from eating and sometimes drinking. From a purely physiological context, "fasting" may refer to the metabolic status of a person who has not eaten overnight (see "Breakfast"), or to the metabolic state achieved after complete digestion and absorption of a meal.[1] Metabolic changes in the fasting state begin after absorption of a meal (typically 3–5 hours after eating). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasting
JackMorgan 3y ago
It's a place to _start_, once a person can handle that consistently, then more strict protocols like 18/6 or 23/1 are easier to do consistently.

jstummbillig 3y ago

If you don't know where to start, just fucking move.

JackMorgan 3y ago
Exercise alone almost never reduces body fat percentage long term. Calorie restriction of some sort and getting the body to burn fat via fasting/keto is required for most people.
- galleywest200 3y ago
  Just do both and get the benefits of thinning out _and_ mental boosts from exercise.
- anonuser123456 3y ago
  Your body will burn fat in caloric deficit. No keto required.
- macNchz 3y ago
  Exercise definitely does improve tons of factors, even if it is not an effective way to lose weight on its own. There is also, as I understand it, some degree of distinction between weight loss and weight gain prevention: while the saying "you can't outrun a bad diet" seems to hold true for people actively trying to lose weight (something I can personally understand, when I'm in a running training block my appetite is unreal), there's also a lot of evidence showing lower rates of obesity in more densely-populated areas, where people naturally walk more, and evidence of improvement when people move from low density to high density areas, which suggests there's a component of just moving around in daily life that can be a factor: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9378543/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9378543/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6747269/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6747269/ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.23634 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.23634 https://academic.oup.com/edrv/article/43/6/966/6532493?login=false https://academic.oup.com/edrv/article/43/6/966/6532493?login...
- inglor_cz 3y ago

082349872349872 3y ago

I put up https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39387450 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39387450 partly because it's surprising how many ways to die are voluntarily exacerbated.

scinerio 3y ago

IMO fasting won't help the majority of the population since their diets tend to consist of foods that are designed to be highly consumable at volume. While the theory of time-restricted eating implies you will eat less, you can still easily exceed your TDEE in calories. Skip the fasting; exercise and eat real whole foods. It's pretty difficult to do both of those things and not lose weight.

lr4444lr 3y ago
That is way too hard for a lot of people. The simple "eat/no eat" is not a bad way for people to start on their way to better health.
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  If forcing oneself to just walk for 20 mins (thats a lazy 1km, I've managed to walk cca 3km 2 weeks ago with broken foot and ripped ligament through wild forest) is too much, good luck with convincing anybody with such mentality that now is the real "no eat" time, consistently.
tejohnso 3y ago
Fasting isn't about eating less.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

tejohnso 3y ago

> We've got so many ways we are legally required to keep the body "alive". Could you say more about this? I've heard of rib breaking CPR but curious to know about others.

JackMorgan 3y ago
The rib breaking is very real. And 93% of the time it only traumatizes the giver and adds more suffering to the receiver who dies anyway. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/05/29/1177914622/a-natural-death-may-be-preferable-for-many-than-enduring-cpr https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/05/29/1177914... There are also "humans are space orcs" devices like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventricular_assist_device https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventricular_assist_device that can keep blood circulating even when the heart cannot. Or this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_positive_airway_pressure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_positive_airway_pre... that can push all the blood in your lungs from congestive heart failure back into your arteries, only for the lungs to start to slowly fill again, drowning them slowly. Not saying these measures are bad or that we should withhold care, but there is very much an attitude of "keep alive at all costs" to modern medicine that can be hard to witness and potentially traumatizing for caregivers.
- tejohnso 3y ago
  With a terminal family member, what I found counterintuitive was that we had to take measures to avoid insane practices rather than the practitioners having to ask before doing something insane.

inglor_cz 3y ago

High blood pressure and obesity appear to be part of the same metabolic syndrome. I am all for fasting, but it won't make your death necessarily less painful. The best you can hope for is to live a decade longer and possibly make use of the progress of medical science. (It is possible that we will have a breakthrough in longevity. In that case, well, it makes a LOT of sense to be alive to see it.)