Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

sustainableplastics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 403 posts

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#371

Post by myshpa »

wiradikusuma wrote: post #182

I live in a country where, despite 70% water (I know, seawater) and lots of rainforests, most urban people drink bottled water (single-use and refills). Talk about selling ice to Eskimos. Probably because the ice outside is polluted, and it's easier to buy instead of fixing the root cause. Anyway, ignoring the effect on nature since we clearly don't care about it, how damaging would the effect be to people who consum…

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/08/230816114128.h...

Oceans release microplastics into the atmosphere

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#372

Post by therealdrag0 »

edgyquant wrote: post #325
avgcorrection wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tunnel-vision on this subject is truly astounding. I can't think of any subject that is treated in the same way. Say that someone was failing at university because they have no motivation. And they have no motivation because they have depression. Then a vocal minority would always butt in with the following truism: - Failing university courses is caused by not studying enough. There is no subverting the fact that…

How about we stop trying to come up with any reason but the objective one for the cause of the problem?

It’s not looking for a reason besides the objective one, it’s trying to find the reasons behind the objective one.

Many commenters like to slight of hand their possibly objective comments about calories as making their comments about moral or will-power failings just as objective, when it’s not a transitive property.

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#373

Post by flexagoon »

SirMaster wrote: post #250
saberience wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obesity is caused by eating too much. If you don’t eat then you won’t gain weight, there is no subverting the laws of thermodynamics. It sounds callous but if you go to Africa or visit a prisoner of war camp you won’t find many fat people and so blaming chemicals in America for so many fat people doesn’t make much sense to me.

But not eating slows down your metabolism, and then you will eventually find yourself at a point where you are tired all the time because you are not consuming enough calories to have a high enough metabolism and energy level, and yet you are still slowly gaining weight because you are too tired to do anything to burn it off.

> not eating slows down your metabolism

Starvation mode is a myth. Well, kinda. You do enter "starvation mode" where your metabolism significantly slows down, but only if you're actually starving. Simply eating in a caloric deficit will not do anything to your metabolism.

The beginning of this article talks about that in great detail:

https://physiqonomics.com/eating-too-much/

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#374

Post by flextheruler »

flextheruler wrote: post #365
gizmo wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True in the technical sense, but it doesn’t address the mystery that in the 40s, 50s, 60s people in rich countries had access to plenty of food, ate lots of calories, and yet obesity was very rare.

That’s no mystery. The amount of calories the average person expends has decreased as we’ve become more sedentary. In the 40s, 50s, and 60s most people did manual labor and even office jobs were not as sedentary since you couldn’t just sit at a computer. Here’s another simple overlooked example, grocery shopping, before the rise of superstores you’d go into town and visit 4 different stores. The butcher, the hardware…

To add onto this it seems there’s a causation of low iq with obesity but not vice versa.

I also just had this thought about declining levels of fertility in humans. If it’s being caused by external factors like plastic or any pollution we’d expect to see similar effects in all other mammals especially ones close to human populations.

I wasn’t able to find any studies backing this up with just a cursory search, but it is likely the easiest way to add or detract from the plastic hypothesis.

I do know that not all but most studies comparing fertility between decades found that when controlling for obesity the differences were not statistically significant between time periods.

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#375

Post by SirMaster »

flexagoon wrote: post #373
SirMaster wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not eating slows down your metabolism, and then you will eventually find yourself at a point where you are tired all the time because you are not consuming enough calories to have a high enough metabolism and energy level, and yet you are still slowly gaining weight because you are too tired to do anything to burn it off.

> not eating slows down your metabolism Starvation mode is a myth. Well, kinda. You do enter "starvation mode" where your metabolism significantly slows down, but only if you're actually starving . Simply eating in a caloric deficit will not do anything to your metabolism. The beginning of this article talks about that in great detail: https://physiqonomics.com/eating-too-much/

I thought there have been studies finding that simply eating less doesn't necessarily work for some people because of metabolism. Maybe they have a thyroid issue too.

And that the amount you would have to limit yourself to with a completely sedentary life (like many people have) and still be in a caloric deficit is just not sustainable for people and would make you feel absolutely miserable and also unlikely to get enough vitamins and minerals and cause other health problems.

because let's be honest, telling people to eat less is not going to stop them from eating junk, just less junk.

"Just eating less" I don't think is really enough for most cases. You need to also be active and exercise along with, and even better, be eating the right balance of macros.

I would say you need to do maybe 2 of the 3 to lose or maintain weight, and doing all 3 will certainly allow you to lose weight. But doing just 1 is unlikely to see results.

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#376

Post by justinator »

hardware2win wrote: post #177
rthomas6 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the metabolic syndrome/obesity epidemic. 40% of US adults have obesity. By 2030 about half of US adults will, and in 29 states more than half of adults will be obese. We see obesity becoming increasingly normalized. People feel powerless to stop it and that we should just accept it. It feels to me like there is something besides diet changes happening to us. That's part of it, but I wonder if microplastics or so…

>It feels to me like there is something besides diet changes happening to us. Cars?

Also the move from labor jobs to most everything ycombinator seeds.

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#377

Post by bombolo »

HPsquared wrote: post #163
bombolo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call you someone who doesn't like to eat good food :D

A good canteen can combine more ingredients in a more sophisticated way than I have time for at home. I'm not making Beef Bourguignon at home, but it's easy for them to make up a big batch. Economies of scale!

That's how you end up fat.

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#379

Post by no_identd »

edgyquant wrote: post #325
avgcorrection wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tunnel-vision on this subject is truly astounding. I can't think of any subject that is treated in the same way. Say that someone was failing at university because they have no motivation. And they have no motivation because they have depression. Then a vocal minority would always butt in with the following truism: - Failing university courses is caused by not studying enough. There is no subverting the fact that…

How about we stop trying to come up with any reason but the objective one for the cause of the problem?

'The mistake here lies in the assumption that it is possible to describe an object completely (we won't go so far as to say "explain") without making any reference to its relation to its environment (whether this relation be one of indifference, selective relevance and capacity for stimulation, of disconnection, or of closure). In order to avoid these problems, which arise from the point of departure taken, both subjectivist and objectivist theories of knowledge have to be replaced by the system/environment distinction, which then makes the distinction subject/object irrelevant.'

― Luhmann, Niklas (1990), The Cognitive Program of Constructivism and a Reality that Remains Unknown. In: Krohn W., Küppers G. & Nowotny H. (eds.) Selforganization. Portrait of a scientific revolution. Kluwer, Dordrecht: pp. 64–85, p. 66

I'd say more, but frankly, I'm only on hackernews rn because I can't bloody sleep and doing more than copy pasting would wake me up too much

Re: New study finds microplastics infiltrate all systems of body, alter behaviour

#380

Post by no_identd »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #372
edgyquant wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about we stop trying to come up with any reason but the objective one for the cause of the problem?

It’s not looking for a reason besides the objective one, it’s trying to find the reasons behind the objective one. Many commenters like to slight of hand their possibly objective comments about calories as making their comments about moral or will-power failings just as objective, when it’s not a transitive property.

Probably https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasitransitive_relation

;)

Post reply on HN