Health Problems

Khane said:

It's impossible to isolate diet as a contributing factor. Literally impossible.

Why do some lifelong smokers live into their 90s while others die horribly in their 40s? Everyone knows smoking is absolutely terrible for your health but why is their such a huge discrepancy?

Eat actual food, live better and healthier. That's basically the extent of it. There is nothing in this world more idiotic than people refusing to eat fat because they think it's bad for them and then paying for collagen injections. That's fucking retarded.

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It's rarely just one thing, that's what doctors struggle with. You'll smoke, and various factors (and there are plenty...) will weaken your immune system, your genetics will play a role, your environment will play a role as well, a combination of those factors will land you cancer.

Isolating diet is hard, but I believe most studies don't manage to do it, because we're not all cut for the same diet. You'd need studies like "we tried 4 different "healthy diet" for 3 months on random people, and we'd probably notice that people would get improvement from different diet.

Khane said:

It's impossible to isolate diet as a contributing factor. Literally impossible.

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With large enough samples, well-designed studies over long enough periods of time, and a careful and cautious interpretation of the results, of course it is. It's just really hard and expensive to do and requires enormous patience, so we haven't had great information yet.

Captain Suave said:

With large enough samples, well-designed studies over long enough periods of time, and a careful and cautious interpretation of the results, of course it is. It's just really hard and expensive to do and requires enormous patience, so we haven't had great information yet.

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No, the problem is all the other factors that contribute to just... living as a human. It's actually impossible. You would need to institute some psychotic, orwellian style study on a population big enough to be a country.

It's impossible. It shouldn't even be a question. Oh some of our study members are in terrible marriages, others are single and fucking like rabbits, some have dead end shit jobs, others never sleep because they can't stop "working", some of them are so, actually stupid that they live in Matrix style bliss. Our dietary results surely can be trusted. Yep

Khane said:

No, the problem is all the other factors that contribute to just... living as a human. It's actually impossible. You would need to institute some psychotic, orwellian style study on a population big enough to be a country.

It's impossible. It shouldn't even be a question. Oh some of our study members are in terrible marriages, others are single and fucking like rabbits, some have dead end shit jobs, others never sleep because they can't stop "working", some of them are so, actually stupid that they live in Matrix style bliss. Our dietary results surely can be trusted. Yep

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It's not impossible. If you get a sufficiently large study population (say, thousands to tens of thousands) those factors will either wash out or can be accounted for in the analysis. Of course, when making a recommendation to an individual on the basis of research you need to be aware that there are differences between that person and the "average person" from the study results where other effects could dominate. Learning about these differences is exactly why we need more research and not to throw up our hands and say "wtf reality complicated, better to operate on instinct rather than data".

So you think it's possible to let people live their lives outside of a draconian setting and have those same people be honest about their lifestyles while also knowing how those lifestyles contribute to health and fitness so you can completely account for them in 100% total scientific factual representation.

K

Khane said:

completely account for them in 100% total scientific factual representation

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No, I'm saying that it's possible to make statements that are true enough to be useful in improving people's lives. It's hard and we've not done a great job of it yet, but that's not a reason to stop trying.

Actually understanding how the human body works and giving us the ability to improve our health by something as available as manipulating our diet is one of the most important things we could be doing, scientifically.

That's already been solved and it's been solved for a long, long time. Eat real, whole food. The end.

Khane said:

That's already been solved and it's been solved for a long, long time. Eat real, whole food. The end.

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Meh. Nothing that broad is that simple. Are some whole foods better than others? In what combinations or proportions? For everyone, doing every kind of activity? Are there tradeoffs between performance, domains of health, and longevity? Etc.

Captain Suave said:

Meh. Nothing that broad is that simple. Are some whole foods better than others? In what combinations or proportions? For everyone, doing every kind of activity? Are there tradeoffs between performance, domains of health, and longevity? Etc.

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If you look at any high performing athlete, world class GOAT territory in any field of athletic performance they will all have highly specialized, rigorous dietary restrictions. And none of them, when compared, will be remotely similar.

That's the point.

Khane said:

If you look at any high performing athlete, world class GOAT territory in any field of athletic performance they will all have highly specialized, rigorous dietary restrictions. And none of them, when compared, will be remotely similar.

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From which we can conclude very little, other than that there is a broad range of diet that supports elite athleticism.

We're talking across each other here. I agree with you that the current state of knowledge is uncertain and that we already know enough for most people to make significant improvements to themselves. I'm just saying we could almost certainly expand the frontier with careful research.