4 ms·

Its the low quality food, my memory improved a lot, after I stopped eating sugar and most refined foods. Theres even some research that Alzheimer starts from ba

by tonis2 11mo ago

Its the low quality food, my memory improved a lot, after I stopped eating sugar and most refined foods. Theres even some research that Alzheimer starts from bad bacteria in the gut, that loves sugar.

iamacyborg 11mo ago
Bacteria (and your body) like sugar because it’s an easy to use fuel source. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having reasonable amounts of sugar in your diet.
- parasti 11mo ago
  "Eating sugar" and "reasonable amounts of sugar in your diet" are two very different things.
  - iamacyborg 11mo ago
    Sure, but like literally anything else, the dose makes the poison.
- PeterStuer 11mo ago
  As a European visitong the US, I am constantly amazed at how there is masses of sugar added to 'normal' food over there. You take a bite expecting a certain flavour, and go wtf did someone glace this with caramel or drop some candy in the flour mix?
- naIak 11mo ago
  There’s no reasonable amount of sugar, unless there’s fibre to go with it. Sugar by itself (ie refined sugar) is a poison.
  - iamacyborg 11mo ago
    What kind of content are you looking at to believe nonsense like that?
    - madaxe_again 11mo ago
      Apparently very popular content - a parent at my kid’s kindergarten wanted to make cake for their kids birthday, said they’d only use 1 tsp of honey in the whole thing. Cue universal freak out in the parents’ WhatsApp group. Apparently, sugar: - causes cancer - causes autism - causes hyperactivity - causes blindness - makes children indolent and lazy - will permanently ruin a child if they even look at it It’s weird, IMO. I let my kiddo have sugar within reason, and somehow she’s leaner than any of the other kids in her class, who even already have rotten teeth at two, despite their sugar free diets. They feed them simple carbs almost exclusively, and are oblivious to amylase. Perhaps it’s because she’s physically active - the rest of her cohort are pretty much forbidden from walking or running as those pose risks, and children must be sheltered from all conceivable risk so that they grow up into independent and capable adults. I would argue that that - physical activity - is far more important than what you shove in your face. There have been repeatedly, credibly and demonstrably shown to be significant benefits to not spending your entire life sitting on your ass - but I guess it’s harder to get off your ass than to proselytise about sugar being an evil and artificial harmful chemical that has no place in the human body - despite it literally being what we run off of.
      - aldarion 11mo ago
        "I would argue that that - physical activity - is far more important than what you shove in your face." No, it bloody is not. I used to drive a bicycle for 6 - 12 hours ever day while working in the delivery. I also didn't watch what I was eating. I ended up getting fat and with haemorrhoids. So I had to quit cycling. Then I spend some time (years actually) researching and slowly improving my diet. Result? I lost weight, my haemorrhoids (and several other health issues) stopped acting up, and I am overall much healthier despite most of my physical activity being walking. Yes, exercise is important. But it won't help you if you eat massive amounts of garbage food. So stop talking stuff you have no clue about. Also, we do not "run off of" sugar. Human body can run off sugar, or fat, or a combination of these. And argument could be made that running off fat is actually healthier. Body can in fact produce all sugar it needs with absolutely zero need for dietary sugar (note that doesn't mean you should go zero carb, just that carbs / sugars are not a metabolic necessity). As for this: "who even already have rotten teeth at two, despite their sugar free diets. They feed them simple carbs almost exclusively, and are oblivious to amylase." Uhh... carbs ARE sugars. It literally doesn't matter that you are avoiding "sugar" if you end up eating bread instead.
- Ekaros 11mo ago
  What is the reasonable amount? Could it be less than we currently have in many diets?
  - iamacyborg 11mo ago
    Less than the average American diet, probably. Less than other diets? It depends.
- aldarion 11mo ago
  Reasonable amount being whatever you get from an occasional fruit snack. Not whatever we have in the modern / food pyramid diet.
- somenameforme 11mo ago
  The catch is that the body likes lots of things that are awful for it. For instance drug abuse isn't limited to humans - some bears have gotten addicted to huffing gas to get high. [1] Quite cute if it wasn't so awful! The big issue is that in modern times a whole bunch of things are going wrong - testosterone levels (adjusted for health/bmi/age) are declining, IQ is declining [2], basically every single psychological disorder is skyrocketing, and much more. And the reason why isn't clear. So the most likely reason is that we're doing what humanity has done repeatedly and endlessly throughout history and likely accidentally poisoning ourselves with some thing or things -- things that we believe to be completely safe. So a precautionary principle approach to consumption is to consider what we evolved with and sugar definitely wasn't that. Sugar only really took off in the 19th century. And various further refined sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup and other such things only took off in the late 20th century. [1] - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2294757/Bear-ly-conscious-Russian-creatures-pass-developing-aviation-fuel-addiction-sniffing-discarded-gas-barrels.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2294757/Bear-ly-con... [2] - https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-...
  - iamacyborg 11mo ago
    > So a precautionary principle approach to consumption is to consider what we evolved with and sugar definitely wasn't that. Sugar only really took off in the 19th century. We have evidence that apiculture has been a thing for well over 8,000 years. Our bodies literally love to burn glucose as fuel and we perform better physically (and mentally I assume) when glucose is readily available. We have literally evolved to be sugar burning machines. Just don’t eat too much of it and you’ll be fine.
    - bavell 11mo ago
      You completely missed the point GP was making. Yes, sugar is an easy fuel source. The point is we have NOT evolved to consume massive amounts every day without breaks (i.e. daily) and without lots of fiber to buffer it.
- sph 11mo ago
  Define reasonable.
  - iamacyborg 11mo ago
    Not a major proportion of your daily caloric intake and not in excess of your daily caloric burn (unless you’re actively trying to gain weight). More if you’re doing a lot of aerobic exercise.
Krssst 11mo ago
Shitty food has been around for a long time. Some virus known for causing long-term effects in non-negligible parts of the population has been around since 2019. > The increase in disability prevalence from 2016 to 2022 is likely attributable in part to the long-term effects of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
- danielheath 11mo ago
  Wild to me that the first mention of COVID is this far down the page. Most people have been infected at least a couple of times may this point, and at this point it’s very well documented to cause lasting cognitive decline.
  - watwut 11mo ago
    The actual article (not the blog post) does mention it as likely partial cause.
    - sigmoid10 11mo ago
      This thesis contradicts the chart though. Why would older people be much less affected and the generation 70+ even show a negative trend if these people were far more likely to experience a more severe disease progression? You would expect them to be hit at least as hard (if not harder) as young people from those long term memory effects. The trend for the youngest age group also starts well before 2019.
      - instagib 11mo ago
        In my family, people 70+ stop using mobile phones or never used them in the first place.
      - watwut 11mo ago
        First when you have combination of factors, this can happen. Second, old people were more likely to die on covid. Kids were getting covid too, just not dying and long term covid consequences were observed in then. It can easily be that where old person died, young ended up with long term consequence. There is no reason to assume the effect would be uniform accross generations. ----- Either way, cell phone obsession and "rewiring of biology" claims are wven further from anything shown in the article. They are both purely what HN and the blogger want it to be.
marginalia_nu 11mo ago
Could be multiple factors. In my N=1 experience fiddling with various things in my life. * Improving diet (primarily avoiding refined foods and sugar) generally improves my energy levels. * Cutting out social media mostly improves concentration. * Trying to avoid rumination such as problem solving or rehearsing arguments through meditative practices reduces stress levels, makes it easier to be present and react to things in front of you. * Sleep is also pretty big for cognitive clarity. Having a consistent sleep schedule and not drinking coffee past noon helps with sleep. But really, all of these seem to tie into each other. If you want to improve your diet, it's much harder if you are tired from lack of sleep or overstimulation. If you want to improve your sleep, you can't be scrolling social media all day. Mental exhaustion also makes awareness/meditation harder.
gcanyon 11mo ago
I was just talking with my wife yesterday about how readily people assume they have superior competence to or greater insight than experts in a given field. I'm not picking on you in particular, but your comment jumped out at me. Substantially: We've been eating "low quality" food of one type -- ultra-processed food -- since at least the '60s, so what's your explanation for the recency of the effect? And some time earlier than that -- very roughly the 1920s and earlier -- we were eating "low quality" foods of a different type: spoiled, adulterated, and questionably-sourced food products, so do you claim that we started with poor concentration then, got better/had a heyday in the mid-20th century, and now we're declining again? In short: what's your evidence to support your claim?
- Emma_Goldman 11mo ago
  It's reasoned conjecture on an internet message board. Yes, it is over-stated. But if one treats quality of diet as one variable among many in cognitive capacity, which is the only sane approach, then trying to match the diet of a population to trendlines in society-wide cognitive performance is not going to tell you anything.
jazzcomputer 11mo ago
As someone who has eaten way too much sugary food I think my gut-brain coupling may have had enough of this. A few weeks ago I had a sugar binge one night and the cognitive effects were impossible to ignore the next day. Fortunately after 2-3 days I was back to normal but of my sample size of one, and in my condition (which is pre-diabetic) I observed a clear link. It was a good experience as it's prompted me to get more serious about cutting back sugar, implemented as long term, achievable habit change.

by tonis2 11mo ago

iamacyborg 11mo ago

Bacteria (and your body) like sugar because it’s an easy to use fuel source. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having reasonable amounts of sugar in your diet.

parasti 11mo ago
"Eating sugar" and "reasonable amounts of sugar in your diet" are two very different things.
- iamacyborg 11mo ago
  Sure, but like literally anything else, the dose makes the poison.
PeterStuer 11mo ago
As a European visitong the US, I am constantly amazed at how there is masses of sugar added to 'normal' food over there. You take a bite expecting a certain flavour, and go wtf did someone glace this with caramel or drop some candy in the flour mix?
naIak 11mo ago
There’s no reasonable amount of sugar, unless there’s fibre to go with it. Sugar by itself (ie refined sugar) is a poison.
- iamacyborg 11mo ago
  What kind of content are you looking at to believe nonsense like that?
  - madaxe_again 11mo ago
    Apparently very popular content - a parent at my kid’s kindergarten wanted to make cake for their kids birthday, said they’d only use 1 tsp of honey in the whole thing. Cue universal freak out in the parents’ WhatsApp group. Apparently, sugar: - causes cancer - causes autism - causes hyperactivity - causes blindness - makes children indolent and lazy - will permanently ruin a child if they even look at it It’s weird, IMO. I let my kiddo have sugar within reason, and somehow she’s leaner than any of the other kids in her class, who even already have rotten teeth at two, despite their sugar free diets. They feed them simple carbs almost exclusively, and are oblivious to amylase. Perhaps it’s because she’s physically active - the rest of her cohort are pretty much forbidden from walking or running as those pose risks, and children must be sheltered from all conceivable risk so that they grow up into independent and capable adults. I would argue that that - physical activity - is far more important than what you shove in your face. There have been repeatedly, credibly and demonstrably shown to be significant benefits to not spending your entire life sitting on your ass - but I guess it’s harder to get off your ass than to proselytise about sugar being an evil and artificial harmful chemical that has no place in the human body - despite it literally being what we run off of.
    - aldarion 11mo ago
      "I would argue that that - physical activity - is far more important than what you shove in your face." No, it bloody is not. I used to drive a bicycle for 6 - 12 hours ever day while working in the delivery. I also didn't watch what I was eating. I ended up getting fat and with haemorrhoids. So I had to quit cycling. Then I spend some time (years actually) researching and slowly improving my diet. Result? I lost weight, my haemorrhoids (and several other health issues) stopped acting up, and I am overall much healthier despite most of my physical activity being walking. Yes, exercise is important. But it won't help you if you eat massive amounts of garbage food. So stop talking stuff you have no clue about. Also, we do not "run off of" sugar. Human body can run off sugar, or fat, or a combination of these. And argument could be made that running off fat is actually healthier. Body can in fact produce all sugar it needs with absolutely zero need for dietary sugar (note that doesn't mean you should go zero carb, just that carbs / sugars are not a metabolic necessity). As for this: "who even already have rotten teeth at two, despite their sugar free diets. They feed them simple carbs almost exclusively, and are oblivious to amylase." Uhh... carbs ARE sugars. It literally doesn't matter that you are avoiding "sugar" if you end up eating bread instead.
Ekaros 11mo ago
What is the reasonable amount? Could it be less than we currently have in many diets?
- iamacyborg 11mo ago
  Less than the average American diet, probably. Less than other diets? It depends.
aldarion 11mo ago
Reasonable amount being whatever you get from an occasional fruit snack. Not whatever we have in the modern / food pyramid diet.
somenameforme 11mo ago
The catch is that the body likes lots of things that are awful for it. For instance drug abuse isn't limited to humans - some bears have gotten addicted to huffing gas to get high. [1] Quite cute if it wasn't so awful! The big issue is that in modern times a whole bunch of things are going wrong - testosterone levels (adjusted for health/bmi/age) are declining, IQ is declining [2], basically every single psychological disorder is skyrocketing, and much more. And the reason why isn't clear. So the most likely reason is that we're doing what humanity has done repeatedly and endlessly throughout history and likely accidentally poisoning ourselves with some thing or things -- things that we believe to be completely safe. So a precautionary principle approach to consumption is to consider what we evolved with and sugar definitely wasn't that. Sugar only really took off in the 19th century. And various further refined sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup and other such things only took off in the late 20th century. [1] - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2294757/Bear-ly-conscious-Russian-creatures-pass-developing-aviation-fuel-addiction-sniffing-discarded-gas-barrels.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2294757/Bear-ly-con... [2] - https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-iq-scores-decline-reverse-flynn-effect/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-...
- iamacyborg 11mo ago
  > So a precautionary principle approach to consumption is to consider what we evolved with and sugar definitely wasn't that. Sugar only really took off in the 19th century. We have evidence that apiculture has been a thing for well over 8,000 years. Our bodies literally love to burn glucose as fuel and we perform better physically (and mentally I assume) when glucose is readily available. We have literally evolved to be sugar burning machines. Just don’t eat too much of it and you’ll be fine.
  - bavell 11mo ago
    You completely missed the point GP was making. Yes, sugar is an easy fuel source. The point is we have NOT evolved to consume massive amounts every day without breaks (i.e. daily) and without lots of fiber to buffer it.
sph 11mo ago
Define reasonable.
- iamacyborg 11mo ago
  Not a major proportion of your daily caloric intake and not in excess of your daily caloric burn (unless you’re actively trying to gain weight). More if you’re doing a lot of aerobic exercise.

Krssst 11mo ago

Shitty food has been around for a long time. Some virus known for causing long-term effects in non-negligible parts of the population has been around since 2019. > The increase in disability prevalence from 2016 to 2022 is likely attributable in part to the long-term effects of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

danielheath 11mo ago
Wild to me that the first mention of COVID is this far down the page. Most people have been infected at least a couple of times may this point, and at this point it’s very well documented to cause lasting cognitive decline.
- watwut 11mo ago
  The actual article (not the blog post) does mention it as likely partial cause.
  - sigmoid10 11mo ago
    This thesis contradicts the chart though. Why would older people be much less affected and the generation 70+ even show a negative trend if these people were far more likely to experience a more severe disease progression? You would expect them to be hit at least as hard (if not harder) as young people from those long term memory effects. The trend for the youngest age group also starts well before 2019.
    - instagib 11mo ago
      In my family, people 70+ stop using mobile phones or never used them in the first place.
    - watwut 11mo ago
      First when you have combination of factors, this can happen. Second, old people were more likely to die on covid. Kids were getting covid too, just not dying and long term covid consequences were observed in then. It can easily be that where old person died, young ended up with long term consequence. There is no reason to assume the effect would be uniform accross generations. ----- Either way, cell phone obsession and "rewiring of biology" claims are wven further from anything shown in the article. They are both purely what HN and the blogger want it to be.

marginalia_nu 11mo ago

Could be multiple factors. In my N=1 experience fiddling with various things in my life. * Improving diet (primarily avoiding refined foods and sugar) generally improves my energy levels. * Cutting out social media mostly improves concentration. * Trying to avoid rumination such as problem solving or rehearsing arguments through meditative practices reduces stress levels, makes it easier to be present and react to things in front of you. * Sleep is also pretty big for cognitive clarity. Having a consistent sleep schedule and not drinking coffee past noon helps with sleep. But really, all of these seem to tie into each other. If you want to improve your diet, it's much harder if you are tired from lack of sleep or overstimulation. If you want to improve your sleep, you can't be scrolling social media all day. Mental exhaustion also makes awareness/meditation harder.

gcanyon 11mo ago

I was just talking with my wife yesterday about how readily people assume they have superior competence to or greater insight than experts in a given field. I'm not picking on you in particular, but your comment jumped out at me. Substantially: We've been eating "low quality" food of one type -- ultra-processed food -- since at least the '60s, so what's your explanation for the recency of the effect? And some time earlier than that -- very roughly the 1920s and earlier -- we were eating "low quality" foods of a different type: spoiled, adulterated, and questionably-sourced food products, so do you claim that we started with poor concentration then, got better/had a heyday in the mid-20th century, and now we're declining again? In short: what's your evidence to support your claim?

Emma_Goldman 11mo ago
It's reasoned conjecture on an internet message board. Yes, it is over-stated. But if one treats quality of diet as one variable among many in cognitive capacity, which is the only sane approach, then trying to match the diet of a population to trendlines in society-wide cognitive performance is not going to tell you anything.

jazzcomputer 11mo ago

As someone who has eaten way too much sugary food I think my gut-brain coupling may have had enough of this. A few weeks ago I had a sugar binge one night and the cognitive effects were impossible to ignore the next day. Fortunately after 2-3 days I was back to normal but of my sample size of one, and in my condition (which is pre-diabetic) I observed a clear link. It was a good experience as it's prompted me to get more serious about cutting back sugar, implemented as long term, achievable habit change.