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Why Are People Unhealthy?
- Quinzel 3y agoUnderwhelming article that sort of works on the basis that people are unhealthy because they have failed to do the right things to be healthy in some way shape or form (a.k.a: obesity is a moral failure by the person to exercise self-control and make good choices relating to their health). However, the truth of the matter is that obesity is a chronic illness and people are unhealthy actually more so due to a combination of environmental and genetic factors, and this is even more glaringly obvious in light of GLP-1 agonists like liraglutide and semaglutide.
- tekla 3y ago[flagged]
- add-sub-mul-div 3y agoEverything is easy, if you ignore or don't understand any of the nuance of it.
- tekla 3y agoWeight loss is a thermodynamics problem. You eat less you lose weight,
- KittenInABox 3y agoProve it. Start a diet of 2k/cal a day of gasoline.
- tekla 3y agoCool, please provide how much gasoline I need to eat to generate 2k calories per day without it also killing me
- KittenInABox 3y agoIt's simply thermodynamics, so just drink a few oz of gasoline per day.
- spcebar 3y agoFor the interested, a gallon of gasoline is somewhere in the area of 31,000 calories, so around 7.6oz should do the trick. As for the second part, turning into a car is suggested.
- avery17 3y agoYes that is technically correct but its not very helpful. In practice weight loss is a mental health problem. You can explain thermodynamics to fat people all day, it wont help them lose weight.
- david-gpu 3y ago> In practice weight loss is a mental health problem We can easily make animal models obese by feeding them a diet rich in rapidly-absorbed carbohydrates. Are they obese due to mental health problems? Or is it the elevated insulin level induced by their diet?
- ehnto 3y agoPartially true, it is more complex than that though. Within the parameters of lifestyle it is not as easy since not everyone will burn off fat the same way in a caloric deficit that also allows them to keep functioning in your day to day life. Some people's resting metabolic is simply not that high either and so dieting alone is a slow and unhelpful process. Someone in that position will find it really hard to make progress if they treat it like a thermodynamics problem. They need a metamorphic change to their body to increase their energy usage; they will need to get fitter as well as diet. Not just excercise but actual fitness progress that changes their body.
- tekla 3y ago> it is more complex than that though No its not. Eat less and you will lose weight, humans do not ignore the laws of physics.
- ehnto 3y agoDismissive and reductionist advice that was obsolete years ago. Equal amounts true and useless. If it were that simple, we would just stop eating until we were thin, but since we would first get sick and then die before meeting our targets there must be more to it. Unless the entropy of a decaying corpose satisfies your fitness goals? The human body has a number of separate energy systems, both creation of and consumption of fat only happens in certain circumstances. If those circumstances aren't met, you don't burn fat at a rate that is sufficient for progress in a timeframe that satisfies most people's goals. This is just physiology, stuff we do understand not fitness psuedoscience. If you don't treat the problem like a human problem, instead of a physics problem, you will have an inefficient weightloss program that makes the human sad and then they quit.
- tekla 3y ago> If those circumstances aren't met, you don't burn fat at a rate that is sufficient for progress in a timeframe that satisfies most people's goals Irrelevant. Humans obey the laws of physics. An entire post of excuses. Eat less and you WILL lose weight. You can do it by eating nothing but sugar, Twinkies, or Big Macs. It doesn't matter. Many people have done this to disprove the bullshit that its more complicated than Calories In < Calories Out.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- moogly 3y agoWere it easy, there wouldn't be any obese people. Now, _that_ is easy.
- anon-sre-srm 3y ago[flagged]
- snvzz 3y agoPut the fork down. It's really easy. The sugar-induced cravings go away in the first couple of days. It's just, they don't know about carbs vs fats or fasting. They eat 5 meals a day plus snacks. The majority of people, contrary to what seems to be the article's belief, do NOT have this information. And there are strong parties with interest in keeping it so.
- blackzetsu 3y agoAgree that environmental factors play role, however diet, exercise, sleep, stress, social life are also equally important
- Quinzel 3y agoMmm… but I would argue that diet, exercise, sleep, stress and social life are determined by environmental factors more so that personal choices…
- sydbarrett74 3y agoMetabolic syndrome is largely down to environment and genetics, but personal responsibility isn't totally let off the hook. If one walks briskly for 30-60 minutes several times a week, that will do wonders for insulin resistance.
- blackzetsu 3y agoCompletely agree, We can't do much about genetics and environment (to a large extent), however we can focus on whats in our control
- richrichie 3y ago“ Everyone knows that sugar is bad for health but a lot of us tend to ignore it.” This factually incorrect on two counts. 1. Sugar (Glucose) is fundamental to the functioning of the body. 2. Everyone does not know. Nor do they agree.
- Quinzel 3y agoIf we want to be factually correct though, then it is important to note that sugar (table sugar, the tiny white cubes people sometimes add to their drinks or cereal or baking) is not actually glucose, but rather, it is sucrose, a disaccharide made up of two monosaccharides that have been bonded together (fructose + glucose) and so sugar is not actually good for people, but yes, glucose is fundamental to the functioning of the body. The human liver can actually create glucose through a process called gluconeogenesis in the absence of consumption of glucose.
- xmonkee 3y agosugar is not actually good for you does not follow from it being a disaccharide. AFAIK when controlling for calories sucrose and fructose are no worse than any other form of carb, and controlling for calories carbs are no worse than fat. In fact they are much better in certain cases (like doing more than minimal amounts of cardio)
- Gibbon1 3y agoThe metabolic pathways to process fructose and glucose are different. I think they can be bad for you in entirely different ways.
- adrian_b 3y agoWhile glucose is either used directly or it is stored as glycogen in liver and muscles, fructose is used in a different way. Fructose is mostly converted by the liver and much of the energy obtained from it is used to synthesize fat. In moderate quantities, fructose should cause no bad effects, but in excessive quantities it causes various problems, like fatty liver, as it has been known for millennia, because the method of producing foie gras is based on this (i.e. overfeeding geese with sweet fruits, but the same method would also work on humans). For humans it is recommended to avoid a daily intake of more than 25 g fructose or 50 g sugar (sucrose). When the main source of sugar are fruits it is not easy to eat more sugar than recommended, because most fruits have only around 10% sugar. Only a few fruits have over 15% sugar, e.g. grapes, (fresh) figs and (fresh) dates, and even with those you have to eat generous amounts before eating too much fructose. On the other hand, with dried fruits or with food with added sugar or HFCS, it has become extremely easy to eat too much fructose. The effects of fructose can be compared with those of alcohol, even if they are much less severe. In small quantities, both are sources of energy, but in too large quantities they both damage the liver. Fructose does not have effects on the nervous system and it becomes harmful only at higher daily intakes, but nonetheless it must not be abused.
- blackzetsu 3y agoA comment : Being obese is not the only form of "unhealthy", One can be in pretty decent shape and still unhealthy..
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Quinzel 3y agoNo, obese is not the only form of “unhealthy” but the picture at the top of the article is a picture of an obese dude stuffing his face with pizza, and the article makes reference to things like weight loss. So, it’s not shocking that people would draw a link between the two and think that the article might be directed towards obesity related unhealthy, rather than say something more like substance abuse unhealthy. And I wonder if that’s a result of an unconscious bias because what is perceived as attitudes towards eating and exercise related choices, are seen more so as just that, choices. Where as issues relating to something unhealthy like substance abuse is seen as something people have less personal choice over.
- adrian_b 3y agoI suppose that the reason for the picture may be that obesity is the form of unhealthiness that can be instantly seen just by looking at someone. Many other forms are either not visible externally or they may be noticed only when someone has to perform some physical task, like running or lifting something.
- gmerc 3y agoBoth art and article reek of weak AI prompting.
- doix 3y agoThis is such an over simplification. What about people who have knowledge and are unable to be healthy? There are "food deserts" where due to geography/economics it's difficult to purchase healthy food. There was an article on HN the other day showing that after you gain weight and lose it, it's difficult to keep it off because you don't feel full easily and feel hungry more often. So if you were fat as a kid, you're at a huge disadvantage later on in life. It's "easy" to live on a SW engineering salary where you can afford whatever food you want, after being raised by parents that fed you good food and not be fat. It's much harder when you grew up fat, working a minimum wage job and living in a food desert.
- andsoitis 3y ago> There are "food deserts" where due to geography/economics it's difficult to purchase healthy food. What is a concrete example of such a place?
- redserk 3y agoPart of my childhood was in West Virginia and visit family occasionally. I can attest to the comment about food deserts. There's a nearby Dollar General, which is fine for processed food and sodas, but you have to go 20 miles away to a grocery store with proper fresh food. Here's an article from 2015. Things have seemingly not gotten better: https://wvpublic.org/whats-an-appalachian-food-desert-and-why-are-they-increasing/ https://wvpublic.org/whats-an-appalachian-food-desert-and-wh...
- unlikelytomato 3y agoI have bought plenty of healthy food from Dollar General. Rice, beans, canned tuna, nuts, seeds, frozen veggies, etc. It's all the same types of things I would recommend someone trying to eat healthier to get from a supermarket
- andsoitis 3y agoHere's a more recent article (2023): https://mountainstatespotlight.org/2023/01/26/wv-healthy-food-access-hunger/ https://mountainstatespotlight.org/2023/01/26/wv-healthy-foo... Access to fresh fruit and veg in West Virginia is mostly a problem in the rural areas from what I can tell (and by searching for "fruit and vegetable" or "supermarket" on google maps). Would teaching people how to grow their own fresh produce in the rural areas work?
- mattlondon 3y agoYou could probably boil this while article down to "Will power." They say men think about sex every 7 seconds. For me it is thinking about eating every 7 seconds. It is all-consuming and short-circuiting within the brain. A constant non-stop drumbeat in my brain telling me to eat eat eat eat eat eat eat. That would be fine if I ever felt full, but I rarely do - it feels like I have no "off switch". At least as an alcoholic you can go cold turkey and do total abstinence, but you can't go cold turkey on food since you need to eat something, and for me eating is a trigger that just makes me want to eat more and more and more. My will power is at its absolute limits keeping me in the "overweight" BMI range rather than obese and above - it's hard! Perhaps I need therapy or surgery.
- Quinzel 3y agoTry liraglutide or semaglutide. You won’t think about food anymore.
- glp1guide 3y agoGLP1 RAs do reduce "food noise" and cravings, but remember they don't necessarily work for everyone and do have some side effects that can be severe. Most of the anecdotal data is right on though -- cravings are lessened, you stay full emptier (the result of delayed gastric emptying), and should even think about food less.
- MrYellowP 3y ago> At least as an alcoholic you can go cold turkey and do total abstinence Worth mentioning in case an alcoholic reads this and thinks it's a good idea to try: It is, in fact, a really bad idea, because it can kill you. I don't know how to pick a good link, so simply search "alcohol cold turkey lethal" and pick any of the non-blog links you can find. There's plenty.
- astura 3y agoThis is how Kevin Nash's son died a few months back - https://thehill.com/homenews/3703554-wwe-star-kevin-nash-reveals-26-year-old-sons-cause-of-death/ https://thehill.com/homenews/3703554-wwe-star-kevin-nash-rev... Alcohol withdrawal should be done under medical supervision.