Is Sugar Killing Us? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#131

Post by josu » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 4:37 PM UTC

spilk wrote: post #124

Article is paywalled, but anecdotally, last year I inched past that magic A1C reading where the doctor tells you you are Type 2 Diabetic. I switched to a low-carb/high-fat diet ( https://reddit.com/r/keto ) and fairly rapidly lost 30 pounds while eating things like avocados, eggs, cheese, butter, coconut oil and bacon. Several months of this diet and my A1C has dipped back to almost-normal, not even "pre-diabetic" le…

Click on "web" and then click on the link to avoid the paywall.

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#132

Post by calvano915 » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 4:42 PM UTC

spilk wrote: post #124

Article is paywalled, but anecdotally, last year I inched past that magic A1C reading where the doctor tells you you are Type 2 Diabetic. I switched to a low-carb/high-fat diet ( https://reddit.com/r/keto ) and fairly rapidly lost 30 pounds while eating things like avocados, eggs, cheese, butter, coconut oil and bacon. Several months of this diet and my A1C has dipped back to almost-normal, not even "pre-diabetic" le…

While keto seems promising in the short term, there isn't much data to validate whether it would be best for "most people". There is a definite concern long term with organ failure associated with ketoacidosis.

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#133

Post by jerf » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 4:47 PM UTC

TACIXAT wrote: post #111

I'm celiac, so my body has some crazy responses to food. I get withdrawal symptoms from a couple of foods and have cut them out because of it. Sugar was the most recent. When I stop eating it I get a sinus headache, I get the shakes (like drinking too much caffeine), and if it's bad, I throw up. What blew my mind in giving up sugar was that I lost 5 lbs. I'm was lean at 155 lbs and 6'1, I dropped below 150 now. It re…

"caffeine (withdrawal symptoms),"

Do you mean that the caffeine itself doesn't bother you (above its expected effect), but that the withdrawal is pretty rough?

I'm curious, because I also have celiac, and I've also ended up dropping caffeine because it was getting to be too much of a pain to manage it whenever I had to do without for some reason (travel mostly). I've noticed I have no grace with it; if I drink a 20oz Coke Zero right now, which is actually pretty low in caffeine (or, at most depending on your standards, "medium"), in 36 hours I will have a withdrawal headache.

But I can't tell if this is "celiac", or just generally how people respond to caffeine. Most people don't pay attention that much.

(As long as we're comparing notes: I've also noticed that alcohol has little appeal to me, because it mostly just makes me tired and gives me vague muscle pain before I'm "buzzed". In fact I can't say I've ever been "pleasantly buzzed" the way some people seem to describe.)

(Also, before someone comes along and complains about "anecdotes" being used, I do try to keep up with the celiac science, but generally speaking what we're talking about here is way beyond the current science frontier. Science may be the slow-and-steady that wins the race, but in the meantime, we can't wait for science to figure out the perfect way to live with it and/or cure it in 30-50 years... we have it now.)

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#134

Post by michaelcampbell » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 4:49 PM UTC

reactor wrote: post #68

chrismealy wrote: post #42

I quit sugar for two weeks and the runny nose and sinus headache I'd had my whole life went away. It wasn't hard. Everybody should try it.

Oh man, can you please shed more lights on this as I've exactly same problem, sinusitis and running nose (mostly because I'm allergic to cold and histamine is wreaking havoc). I'm trying all the possible way to control it, exercising regularly, taking lemon+honey everyday morning etc. But only an anti-histamine (xyzal or zyrtec) is working for me. It's interesting that to know if it has anything to do with Sugar, as…

Try also a neti-pot. It's not a cure-all, but it helps. I used to get bronchitis almost annually, and haven't now for a few years after keeping my nasal passages cleansed with one.

Could be coincidence and/or confirmation bias, but it's a low cost, low risk, thing to try.

(Be aware that you want to use a clean water source. And, I'm not a doctor.)

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#135

Post by Sklavenmoral » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 4:50 PM UTC

calvano915 wrote: post #132

spilk wrote: post #124

Article is paywalled, but anecdotally, last year I inched past that magic A1C reading where the doctor tells you you are Type 2 Diabetic. I switched to a low-carb/high-fat diet ( https://reddit.com/r/keto ) and fairly rapidly lost 30 pounds while eating things like avocados, eggs, cheese, butter, coconut oil and bacon. Several months of this diet and my A1C has dipped back to almost-normal, not even "pre-diabetic" le…

While keto seems promising in the short term, there isn't much data to validate whether it would be best for "most people". There is a definite concern long term with organ failure associated with ketoacidosis.

Ketoacidosis and ketosis are two different things.

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#136

Post by taeric » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 4:51 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #114

nikatwork wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the heads up, since you've told me that all food is equal I'm going to switch my diet to only include Soda, Doritos and Hotpockets. I'm sure my body will adapt amazingly.

What do you honestly think would happen if you did, assuming that your calories were limited to an amount that kept you at a consistent healthy weight for your size?

Restricting calories for weight control works as well as restricting lines of code for bug control. At a high level, it works. Especially if you have quality lines of code.

However, consider the trivial case of your calories coming from poison. Not shockingly, strict equivalence is out the door.

Which is not too say it is a worthless proxy. It is quite good, actually. But it is just a proxy.

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#137

Post by calvano915 » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 4:55 PM UTC

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #106

What's interesting is that most of the population of this planet does not even realize that glucose is not the only source of energy and that we can be powered entirely by beta-hydroxybutyrate (which comes from fats); our carbohydrate requirement is zero because our body can synthesize all the glucose it needs. Here is a pretty good and scientific talk about what is happening (warning > 1 hour long): https://www.yout…

There are costs to gluconeogenesis (glucose via protein catabolism), kidney issues to name one (deamination producing ammonia). The body does not synthesize glucose from fatty acids (beta-oxidation occurs producing aceytl-coA in the mitochondria, thus producing energy, but aceytl-CoA cannot be converted upwards in the pathway to glucose). A small amount of glucose can/does get created from glycerol.

Nutrition recommendations up to this point still recommend high ratio of carbs (45-65% of kcals) because they are the most direct metabolic pathway. Also incredibly important for gut health is fiber, which is a complex carbohydrate (and prebiotic). The concern of carbs is non-complex ones as a high percentage of intake.

They have found that the brain runs on ketones (for a long time it was thought that it required glucose specifically) but long term research is non-existent. So yes, the body can live off of "no carbs", but stating that our carbohydrate requirement is zero is just false according to the literature and nutritional history of the majority of humans.

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#138

Post by calvano915 » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 4:55 PM UTC

Sklavenmoral wrote: post #135

calvano915 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While keto seems promising in the short term, there isn't much data to validate whether it would be best for "most people". There is a definite concern long term with organ failure associated with ketoacidosis.

Ketoacidosis and ketosis are two different things.

Ketoacidosis is a definite concern with ketosis. Perhaps "common effect" was a bit overstated :/

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#139

Post by croon » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #103

kumarski wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's very true that in most scenarios it's entirely too easy to eat too much sugar in the foods we consume. I think most people with a nutritional chemistry background would agree, as well, most general medicine practitioners that eating less sugar is a proper direction for much of the population.

That's not the point you made though. You specifically said that it's hard to overconsume fat and protein. It really isn't. When we look at what obese people eat they aren't just eating too much sugar. They're eating too much of everything, including fat. Cutting out the sugar would help (especially because it's often a pointless addition with a painless substitution eg soda to non-sugar soda), but it would not be en…

There's a flaw in your logic.

True; obese people aren't just eating too much sugar, but also fat (and protein), but the problem is still the sugar.

The sugar makes you hungry, making you able to eat more fat (which is highly calorie dense). If you cut the sugar (and other high GI/II carbs), you will eat a lot less of the rest.

Sure, the problem in calorie intake is the combination, but eating just fat and protein is fine, while eating only carbs and protein is definitely not.

Re: Is Sugar Killing Us?

#140

Post by VLM » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

cyeb wrote: post #88

mads wrote: post #45

I firmly believe that sugar not only makes us fat, but also has an effect on the psychological state of certain people (e.g. people with anxiety problems). In my own experience, cutting out sugar (from anything else but fruit) and wheat from my diet has made a big difference.

I've been told my whole life that wheat (or whole-grained and fibrous foods in general) is healthy -- can you elaborate some more?

Fiber seems quite healthy. Something like broccoli is good for you. I don't think there's any serious disagreement with that.

By playing enough games with legal serving size, which has no relationship with observed consumption, you can end up with a standard serving of broccoli having twice the fiber as a standard serving of wheat as found in bread, for example.

Generally speaking it was very unusual for your ancestors to eat grains as the primary component of their diet before the very recent advent of agriculture. Grains are highly effective at fattening up large mammal livestock, such as cows, pigs, and humans. If a farmer would feed it to a pig to fatten it up, its probably a poor dietary choice for the average overweight American.

Wheat is extremely healthy ... economically ... if you're a wheat farmer or perhaps in health care. For everyone else, unlimited grain consumption turns out about the same for humans as hogs, at least WRT bod fat percentages.