http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Roberts He was well known for self experimentation and writing the book, "The Shangri-La Diet".
Forgive me, but I'm having trouble understanding why his death is significant for a crowd such as Hacker news? I didn't know about him, and I don't mean to talk ill of the dead, but from a quick google it would seem he's mostly just a dietary quack? Even if he wasn't a quack, I still don't really get his relevance.
"Dietary quack" is a reasonably sizable chunk of HN audience.
Forget the part about chugging olive oil, how about that entire sub-category of his blog dedicated to the belief that pre-natal ultrasounds somehow cause autism? Or the hand-waving away the multiple studies that show that GFCF diets have no proven positive effect on autism symptoms? Or using the word "cure" offhand, based on an n=1 self-report of another diet? nope.gif I don't even care about the weight loss and card…
It's common for innovators to be mocked for their unconventional ideas.
> "Collapsed while hiking." The only way that can happen is with an interruption in blood flow, which means a clot or a bleed. If you want, I can go into details, but with his butter and his omega habits, he was putting himself at risk for both, contradictory as that may sound. This is not science. You are drawing a conclusion to support your own preconceived medical notions based on incredibly limited evidence. The…
Yes, exactly, everyone has anecdotes. I knew someone who did "all the right things," as recommended by the most mainstream medical advice, ate low fat, exercised, kept track of his bloodwork, etc., and dropped dead on a hike right around the same age. It happens.
Doing all the right things won't guarantee survival to age 100, 80, 60, or even 40. I think about it like this: We're all born with a genetically determined maximum life span that is unknown to us. Our environment and our choices cannot extend it -- they can only shorten it. It's great that your friend did all the right things, because he would likely have died sooner if he hadn't. Ultimately, he got a raw deal, and I wish medical science had been able to do better for him. There are a lot of dedicated, smart, honest people working to improve our understanding of disease and its prevention so stories like your friend's will end at age 90. n=1 experiments are useful for hypothesis generation, but they can never answer a non-trivial question.
> So that's at least N=2, the number of people on the Shangri La diet who have died prematurely. I won't say that diet can't lead to suicide but...it was suicide for Swartz, right?
Correct. It was suicide. I didn't mean to imply he died because of the diet (just like we shouldn't infer that Seth died because of the diet). Apologies if it seemed I implied that. Nevertheless, it's possible that the diet messed with Aaron's brain. Personally, I've benefited from the diet. So I'm firmly in Seth's camp. But his death does raise questions.
Exactly. If readers of his blog have also been ingesting huge quantities of omega3 and consuming sticks of butter before going to bed, they deserve to know the details of Seth's "collapse." His grieving family is entitled to some privacy but Seth, after all, chose to make his (potentially dangerous) self-experiments public. He may have inadvertently caused great harm.
Did his diet mess with Swartz's brain? Possibly. I doubt it, though. Being harassed by the DOJ was more than enough to drive anyone to suicide.
They are completely appropriate and very timely. "Collapsed while hiking." The only way that can happen is with an interruption in blood flow, which means a clot or a bleed. If you want, I can go into details, but with his butter and his omega habits, he was putting himself at risk for both, contradictory as that may sound.
Seth had high quality health cover provided by UC Berkeley, and availed himself of routine checkups, including cholesterol counts. He reported that his numbers had been going down since he started this regime. His unusual diet may have been connected to his death, and it's certainly reason for concern, but you don't know anything about the causality.
We know for certain that Seth had coronary artery disease. How? Because he had a non-zero score on his coronary CT scan. It is not normal to have calcified coronary arteries -- at any age. It may be so common as to be the statistical norm, but coronary calcification is never physiologically normal. Coronary artery disease is responsible for about half of all deaths in the United States. Seth may have had "quality health cover," but we know he still developed coronary disease. Remember, too, that sudden unexpected death is the first symptom in 20% of cases of coronary artery disease. This is a terrible problem that the field is working hard to solve.
> So that's at least N=2, the number of people on the Shangri La diet who have died prematurely. I won't say that diet can't lead to suicide but...it was suicide for Swartz, right?
Correct. It was suicide. I didn't mean to imply he died because of the diet (just like we shouldn't infer that Seth died because of the diet). Apologies if it seemed I implied that. Nevertheless, it's possible that the diet messed with Aaron's brain. Personally, I've benefited from the diet. So I'm firmly in Seth's camp. But his death does raise questions.
I didn't think so. I just wanted some clarification.
They are completely appropriate and very timely. "Collapsed while hiking." The only way that can happen is with an interruption in blood flow, which means a clot or a bleed. If you want, I can go into details, but with his butter and his omega habits, he was putting himself at risk for both, contradictory as that may sound.
> "Collapsed while hiking." The only way that can happen is with an interruption in blood flow, which means a clot or a bleed. or just due to plain old heatstroke and/or going beyond your physical limit (on that given day and for you given overall condition for that day). You should at least have mentioned whether you know this hills. I hike a lot in the East Bay, and if i remember the Sat was pretty sunny.
"Going beyond your physical limit" -- what, exactly, does that mean? Thousands of times a day, people get on treadmills in cardiologists' offices, and are taken to their physical limit with a "maximal effort stress test." Even this doesn't precipitate life-threatening complications unless cardiovascular disease is present.
There are some genetic blood disorders that can cause sudden death during extremely heavy exertion (e.g. professional football drills) at altitude, but they are very rare in caucasians, and Berkeley's hills don't qualify as "altitude."
The science is not overwhelming that fat is what kills you. The lipid hypothesis may not be correct. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18615352
On the other hand, there is little doubt that overwhelming ingestion of anything will kill you. I'm not sure if it is too much or how long he kept it up, but 60g of butter sounds a lot to me.
So the traditional wisdom from what I remember is 20% fat, 30% protein and 50% carbs. 1000 calories a day from carbs means 250 grams of carbs a day. That sounds like a lot too.