91–100 of 182 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which imaginary years were those? The years where a proliferation of marginal drug improvements (due to expiring patents) were replaced by a cure? Where access to diagnostic equipment and preventative care wasn't severely limited by for-profit healthcare companies? I'd like to know more!!!
It’s in the article.
I strongly believe that fasting is one of the best ways to combat obesity, diabetes, cancer, high blood pressure, and more. The scientific literature is certainly accumulating tremendous evidence supporting this hypothesis [1]. Here is one of my favorite videos on the subject [2], a talk by Dr Pradip Jamnadas who is one of the top cardiologists in Florida. There is no industry that profits on you being healthier thro…
It’s obvious that obesity is correlated, especially since losing weight often makes symptoms disappear. I think we need to better understand precisely what the metabolic pathway is. Losing weight obviously is the best intervention, but the statistics I’ve seen indicate that for people needing to lose in excess of 30 lbs the success rate of keeping the weight off is An interesting note, bariatric procedures have had mixed results in this arena, laparoscopic banding has basically been abandoned as ineffective over the long term, in favor of vertical sleeve gastrectomy (restrictive) and gastric bypass (restrictive and malabsorptive). Paired feeding research indicates that the greater weight loss from bypass vs. sleeve does not just come from malabsorption, but from an as yet unknown metabolic change.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Soviet Union attempted to set prices for all goods in the economy. The trouble was that a raise in the price of say wood, would have downstream effects on things like the price of toothpicks. It was a big mess. I'd say it's harder to create a measure of carbon output for a given finished product that is remotely accurate. It really depends where each part of the pencil was manufactured, what specific materials ar…
Excise taxation is not the same thing as price setting, though. If you want a good explanation for what excise taxation's about, albeit one that uses stodgy, old-fashioned language, you need look no further than Adam Smith's writings on the subject in The Wealth of Nations.
Easiest solution to diabetes: Sugar tax. Easiest solution to climate change: Carbon tax. If we havn't used these solutions, someone high up in the food chain is placing a greater emphasis on profits from the status quo instead of the wellbeing of the population.
The best solution is that people choose to eat less sugar. It's better because it doesn't require treating adults like children, or humans like pets or cattle. Diet choices are not a problem of policy.
People choose to eat high-sugar foods because they're cheap. A tax will help make them less-cheap.
Easiest solution to diabetes: Sugar tax. Easiest solution to climate change: Carbon tax. If we havn't used these solutions, someone high up in the food chain is placing a greater emphasis on profits from the status quo instead of the wellbeing of the population.
My personal opinion, based on nothing more than my experiences, and probably not worth much:
How did we reduce smoking, another addictive, pleasurable activity with negative health consequences? We taxed it, sure, but we also had aggressive public health campaigns, provided medical assistance, and developed harm-reducing substitutes. Most importantly, we changed the culture, marketing and image of smoking. We didn't simply tax cigarettes and get smoking rates to appreciably fall.
Food is even more difficult. Everyone needs to eat. No one needs to smoke. People with unhealthy attitudes towards food can't just give up eating. We have a culture that celebrates overconsumption. We have holidays seemingly dedicated to it. Advertising and the media are constantly promoting unhealthy eating.. Unhealthy eating is an easily accessible pleasure to many in the lower economic classes thanks to subsidies combined with the inherently low cost of production. With such a low starting price, you'd have to have crushing taxes to cause a meaningful shift in habits. Such taxes would be unfair to the people who can safely consume those products. Does it help if we tax, say, sweetened, carbonated beverages while excluding fruit juices or sugary fruits? Honey has even more fructose than "high fructose" corn syrup. Should we tax that too?
The health care model in the US doesn't really help much on the matter, but this isn't a battle against diabetes, diabetes is just the result of an overweight population with bad dietary habits. There is the inherited kind, and then there is the "earned" kind. One is genetically unavoidable, the other is mostly preventable. It is not even the food, or fats, or carbs, or sugars, it's too many calories over extended ti…
I'd tread lightly here. Some initial research is showing that artificial sweeteners can stress your gut bacteria, which is a not well understood area of human metabolism.
The health care model in the US doesn't really help much on the matter, but this isn't a battle against diabetes, diabetes is just the result of an overweight population with bad dietary habits. There is the inherited kind, and then there is the "earned" kind. One is genetically unavoidable, the other is mostly preventable. It is not even the food, or fats, or carbs, or sugars, it's too many calories over extended ti…
There's an inherited kind, an earned kind, and a "whoops, diabetes!" kind. My sister spent the first 36 years of her life without diabetes or symptoms of diabetes. 5'3", 130 pounds. Then she had her second child, and whatever happened during that time eradicated her ability to deal with sugar. She had been perfectly healthy aside from an ovarian cyst which was removed before she was pregnant with the second child. So…
The health care model in the US doesn't really help much on the matter, but this isn't a battle against diabetes, diabetes is just the result of an overweight population with bad dietary habits. There is the inherited kind, and then there is the "earned" kind. One is genetically unavoidable, the other is mostly preventable. It is not even the food, or fats, or carbs, or sugars, it's too many calories over extended ti…
Perhaps you mean leptin? Ghrelin is for hunger while leptin is for satiety, so the latter is really more the limiting factory.
Do you guys think the mid-late 20th century phenomena of fat = bad, sugar = no comment, has anything to do with this battle?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Easiest solution to diabetes: Sugar tax. Wrong. You should BAN High-fructose corn syrup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup It is way more harmful than natural sugar. It is not banned yet because: - It is made from corn, and corn is heavily substituted by US government. - It is super cheap (high volume of corn available) - It is not only slightly sweet but also prevents spoilage (that's why they…
This HFCS story is a bit of a strange thing. At some point it was marketed as a more "natural" alternative to plain sugar. Then it became the villain and people said you should use normal sugar. The truth is: HFCS is not much different from normal sugar. They're both calorie dense and not very healthy.