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The Billionaire Who Is Planning His 125th Birthday

nytimes.com

51–60 of 60 posts

Re: The Billionaire Who Is Planning His 125th Birthday

#51
post #27

He doesn’t count calories or believe in extreme caloric restriction as a way to extend life. Not only has caloric restriction been shown to work in mammals (including primates), but it has known mechanisms of action. That's some hefty evidence to ignore. But he does believe that excess weight is a sure way to abbreviate it, and reprimands friends, acquaintances and even strangers who are heavy. The latest studies ( h…

This is interesting, however. Let's think about it for a minute. - Caloric restriction has been shown to work. Caloric restriction would most likely result in individuals being at least slightly underweight. - Underweight have higher mortality in the old age. Mildly overweight need not worry. So how does that work together?

Caloric restriction requires you to eat food that is denser in nutrients. Many who don't eat much do so because they're poor and can't afford enough food, let alone food that is denser in nutrients. That is why, on average, those with lower body weights have lower mortality. Those who assiduously follow a CR diet rich in nutrients may live longer, but they must be a tiny slice of the pie.

Re: The Billionaire Who Is Planning His 125th Birthday

#52
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's not like they're toxic... Have you seen the movie K-Pax?

I would expect banana peels to be quite toxic on average. Lots of pesticides, and unless you live in a place where bananas grow, who knows what they do to the bananas to prepare them for shipping.

A few pesticides are quite toxic to humans. Most aren't. There are some (e.g. cypermethrin) with no known lethal dose in humans.

Re: The Billionaire Who Is Planning His 125th Birthday

#53
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sufficient exercise can reverse or minimize many of those diseases you mention.

Except that carefully controlled studies have failed to support your claim that sufficient (whatever that is) exercise can reverse or minimize most of those diseases.

Neither of you have provided any evidence to support your assertions. I don't understand how either of you can have positive karma scores.

Re: The Billionaire Who Is Planning His 125th Birthday

#54
post #6

It is interesting that him, and other rich men like Kurzweil are choosing plant-base diets instead of the Taubes, paleo crowd-pushed meat and fat diets. They can't be both right.

What if they're both right, but not for the same population? It doesn't sound unreasonable that different people with different metabolisms would benefit from different diets.

Re: The Billionaire Who Is Planning His 125th Birthday

#55
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect banana peels to be quite toxic on average. Lots of pesticides, and unless you live in a place where bananas grow, who knows what they do to the bananas to prepare them for shipping.

Wouldn't organic bananas avoid that?

I wouldn't count on it, as there are varying definitions of organic.

Re: The Billionaire Who Is Planning His 125th Birthday

#56
post #6

It is interesting that him, and other rich men like Kurzweil are choosing plant-base diets instead of the Taubes, paleo crowd-pushed meat and fat diets. They can't be both right.

I don't think that the paleo crowd is really pushing a high fat and meat diet like you say. Taubes' views could almost be more easily lumped in with those of Atkins followers than of paleo eaters. Different people have different feelings about it but in general paleo eating is more centrally about eliminating the consumption of processed sugars, excessive sodium, gluten, and lactose. Vegetables and fruits make up a significant portion of the diet and eating leaner game meats and fish is usually encouraged over the more fatty factory farm meats. The idea is basically just that things that have relatively recently become cornerstones of our diet, whether due to technological advances or otherwise, might not be so good for us because we didn't evolve with exposure to anything like them. It comes down to making choices like having an orange instead of a bowl of ice cream, some roasted asparagus instead of a buttery dinner roll, or a nice cut of rabbit instead of a 70% lean hamburger with melted cheese. That seems like a fairly reasonable stance on diet to me, regardless of whether or not you buy the evolutionary rationale.

Re: The Billionaire Who Is Planning His 125th Birthday

#57
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that she quit smoking at 120! A beautiful case study for those who see causation in correlation.

Obviously, smoking causes death! /troll

But in this particular case it looks like stopping smoking causes death. Smoked to 120, stopped, died at 122.5.

Re: The Billionaire Who Is Planning His 125th Birthday

#58
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't they both be right? We're omnivores. I would be surprised if there weren't multiple diets that led to health.

The two are wildly opposing, blaming each other for all the modern life diseases. It's not impossible to be both right, given a sufficiently diverse human genotype pool, but rather hard to imagine really.

The list of things they eat could be right, but the arguments behind them wrong.

Re: The Billionaire Who Is Planning His 125th Birthday

#59

Whenever a thread comes up about someone taking a sincere interest in nutrition and making difficult sacrifices to try to enjoy a better life, you start to see people come out and mock it and make jokes and assert a certain "well I'm having more fun" type superiority. Well, I'm not so sure about that. Most of the people I know who work to live really healthy have the guts to go counter-cultural/counter-mainstream in…

Being fit and feeling good about myself is a better feeling than anything I have derived from food. I love me some delicious food, but not at the expense of my health.

Re: The Billionaire Who Is Planning His 125th Birthday

#60

He doesn’t count calories or believe in extreme caloric restriction as a way to extend life. Not only has caloric restriction been shown to work in mammals (including primates), but it has known mechanisms of action. That's some hefty evidence to ignore. But he does believe that excess weight is a sure way to abbreviate it, and reprimands friends, acquaintances and even strangers who are heavy. The latest studies ( h…

On the contrary. The outer shell/skin of any live aerobic organism is most exposed to oxidative stress (21% O compared to cells inside the body -3%) hence the anti-oxidant defenses are most expressed exactly there. They are also most exposed to solar radiation ("sun-kissed") which makes perfect sense when you review the most active antioxidants -dark-green leafy veggies and dark-colored berries (anthocyanin). Calorie Restriction works by inducing NO (AMPK) and lowering core body temperature thus reducing the inflammatory impact of exogenous agents- nutrients,viruses,environmental stressors etc and also by reducing the endogenous thermogenic hormones (insulin, leptin, estrogen,norepinephrine etc.
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