11–20 of 142 posts
This statement. In a country with a national health care(like mine) this does not happen. If the doctor thinks you need a test, it gets done.
> Am I missing other major downsides to taking a more proactive approach to managing my own health? Are there other things I should consider looking at to get a complete picture of my health? A potential downside is the tendency is to shift from being proactive about your health to diagnosing (or worse -- treating) yourself based on independent research. I get that it's tempting to fire up google scholar, pubmed, upt…
The issue is that doctors give you muddled advice too. I had my blood test done last year and I was told that I should cut down on eating any meat and switch to a plant based diet. He also vaguely told me to do more exercise. Yet, I eat incredibly lean food, albeit high protein mainly because I weight lift. I also run 4.5 miles every other day. He couldn't go into more detail apart from this general warning. I could…
We're not going to "solve" the problem until we have a ton more data (maybe sensors in everyone along with the understanding of the markers to look for) so we can fit you to an optimal path based on a lot of observed variables. But even then we're just going to be playing percentages off each other, and contrary to the life-extender crowd out there, it may turn out that there is no 110-year optimal path for most of us, at least until we start reengineering the body at a more fundamental level.
I think this article is very insightful. One very good indicator (although not as good as the details the author got tested) is a person's HDL to triglyceride ratio. High levels of HDL are good, and low triglycerides are good, since its currently thought that higher triglyceride levels are linked to the small, dense LDL particles that work their way into artery walls.
> Generic advice to eat well and exercise is not as effective as having a specific number you're trying to improve on e.g. lowering your ApoB count. What. No. If you need to work on a number, why don't you try improving the number of minutes you spend doing cardiovascular exercise per week?
>The advice to "eat well and exercise" didn't seem particularly insightful
...but it actually makes a world of a difference. I think this is the most important advice and people tend to discard it as generic and useless - the truth is that it's very hard. Being active isn't a big deal, but for a week? For a full month? Full year? Full decade? Being consistent in eating well and exercising is challenging.
The doctor won't set goals for yourself, but if need a number, give yourself one and try improving on it constantly. There are tons of tools, apps, websites to help you. I've always been very active since I was a kid and still am now (~500 minutes of sports/week) and I can already see a big difference with my friends who aren't. And I'm not old at all.
If you decide to start exercising cause you have symptoms, it's probably too late.
1. For starters doctors are good but not super people. The amount of time you can allocate yourself can mean you win via quantity over quality.
2. Tragedy of the commons. Tests that might help you don't necessarily help society. Tying up a machine that helps people with cancer hurts society but might have a benefit to yourself. What you want is different to what your doctor wants.
3. Doctors are not specialists. I read a quote(Unknown how truth) doctors only have 24 hours of dietary training and should not be giving out dietary advice. But given they often see people incapable of helping themselves or going to a specialist they give out advice anyway.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue is that doctors give you muddled advice too. I had my blood test done last year and I was told that I should cut down on eating any meat and switch to a plant based diet. He also vaguely told me to do more exercise. Yet, I eat incredibly lean food, albeit high protein mainly because I weight lift. I also run 4.5 miles every other day. He couldn't go into more detail apart from this general warning. I could…
The claim that you can't get sufficient protein for pretty much any level of exercise from a plant-based diet is utterly specious. For example, quinoa is 14% complete protein, and chia is almost 17% — also complete protein — with an Ω3-to-Ω6 ratio of around 3:1, almost exactly the inverse of beef. Source: I'm a vegetarian, and I pay scrupulous attention to this stuff.
From Google, 1 ounce of Chia seeds is 4.7 gms of protein, 138 calories. I would have to eat 31 ounces of Chia seeds to get 150 gms of protein. That is 4030 calories per day. Guess what happens then? I gain weight.
I'm not so sure this is a wise approach.
I won't say that numbers aren't important, but it's worth noting that in many cases, doctors still don't know what particular measurements actually mean in practical terms because cause versus correlation is so hard to figure out in complex systems like the human body.
As an example: the general consensus has been that "good" cholesterol (HDL) has a protective effect and that those with lower HDL levels are at risk. You can have an LDL of under 150, low triglycerides and your cholesterol ratios can be stellar, but if your absolute HDL number is low, there's a good chance your doctor will talk to you and, at a minimum, recommend ways that you might be able to bring your HDL level up.
One common approach of doing this has been to use niacin, yet a 2011 clinical trial involving the use of niacin in an attempt to increase HDL levels in a high-risk population failed to produce the hoped-for risk reduction despite the fact that the niacin did increase HDL levels[1]. A larger, more recent study had a very similar outcome[2].
One logical possibility is that the HDL level reflects some other underlying factor which controls for risk and doesn't itself have the ability to influence risk. If this is the case, a higher HDL number may confer little to no protection unless it is the product of some other natural process.
[1] http://www.nih.gov/news/health/may2011/nhlbi-26.htm
[2] http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2013/03/0...
> Am I missing other major downsides to taking a more proactive approach to managing my own health? Are there other things I should consider looking at to get a complete picture of my health? A potential downside is the tendency is to shift from being proactive about your health to diagnosing (or worse -- treating) yourself based on independent research. I get that it's tempting to fire up google scholar, pubmed, upt…
The issue is that doctors give you muddled advice too. I had my blood test done last year and I was told that I should cut down on eating any meat and switch to a plant based diet. He also vaguely told me to do more exercise. Yet, I eat incredibly lean food, albeit high protein mainly because I weight lift. I also run 4.5 miles every other day. He couldn't go into more detail apart from this general warning. I could…
You can get enough protein for weight training on a vegetarian diet btw.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue is that doctors give you muddled advice too. I had my blood test done last year and I was told that I should cut down on eating any meat and switch to a plant based diet. He also vaguely told me to do more exercise. Yet, I eat incredibly lean food, albeit high protein mainly because I weight lift. I also run 4.5 miles every other day. He couldn't go into more detail apart from this general warning. I could…
Human bodies are really complicated. Doctors can always be better informed, but in the end they're still playing the statistics game, and we have pretty poor statistics on this stuff (especially with diet, which is almost always self-reported in any large study). For most people, beyond smoking, weight management, and maybe exercise and sleep, we've found basically nothing that will move your risk factors more than a…
http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/Thought-balloon-above-man-...
Of course it's important care about your health and do what you can, but given the large error bars on our knowledge and the randomness of life in general, I think that it's worth thinking about how much time and effort should be spent on it. There is a correct amount of effort, I'm just not sure that monitoring these additional numbers is worth it; it may be adding more noise than signal to the problem of living a fulfilled, healthy, and happy life.