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Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#111

Post by jtuente »

DannoHung wrote: post #96
rsync wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Currently the best way to consume food is to avoid addictive and highly processed food products and then trust your gut with the rest." Allow me to suggest a further path forward that is superior to "trusting your gut": Establish a regular, very high output exercise regime - incorporating both long duration aerobic/cardio and relatively intense resistance training. Under such a regimen, you will notice what food doe…

That's not true at all. http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2008/08/13/the-michael-phelps-di... In this case, he's fucking Mr Fusion. You probably mean something like... train for muscle growth or something or to run (not win) a marathon.

Phelps is more analogous to having a nitrous injection system in a super-tuned competitive racecar, as opposed to a typical high-powered sports car.

Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#112

Post by [deleted] »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #103
rsync wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And there are studies that show walking is just as good, and it certainly wears down the body less than your alternative." I have seen those studies and I tend to agree with them. My own personal experience supports the notion that walking is extremely healthful and provides almost all of the benefits you have in mind. That is, if you're using measures like "do I feel good" "do I look good" "have I kept off those 20…

You're essentially saying the disabled are worth less than the able bodied.

[deleted]

Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#113

Post by jtuente »

brianwawok wrote: post #72
nommm-nommm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started watching my diet in my 20s. I started doing so because I didn't want to harm myself long term and I started gaining weight. I still go back to my boxed pasta diet once in a while (I grew up on the stuff! I love it!) and it doesn't effect me in a noticeable way. I'm no longer an athlete though. Actually that is not true, it does effect my poop. I strongly perfer pooping on a veggie rich diet! Thankfully gett…

Boxed pasta is not the worst thing in the world though, it's like a 5/10. You can generally do far worse, say french fries and slushies and Oreos.

> You can generally do far worse, say french fries and slushies and Oreos.

Yes, the breakfast of morbidly obese champions.

Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#114

Post by clock_tower »

static_noise wrote: post #17

I'm waiting for the day that nutricionists find out that there are different kinds of people with different nutritional needs. Imposing rules on the population on a weak scientific basis harms the people, science and the government in the process. Currently the best way to consume food is to avoid addictive and highly processed food products and then trust your gut with the rest. Eat what you like and avoid what caus…

> I'm waiting for the day that nutricionists find out that there are different kinds of people with different nutritional needs.

The nutritionist side of public health evolved to deal with questions where this isn't true. Everyone needs vitamin A to avoid beriberi and vitamin C to avoid scurvy; no one benefits from polluted milk or polluted water; that sort of thing. Now, the big problems have been solved, and nutritionists are trying to treat semi-ideopathic diseases of affluence as if they were the immense, obvious dietary scourges of a hundred years ago...

This is true of the whole field of public health, to an extent. Cholera and yellow fever are under control, smallpox is all but extinct, polio is on its last legs, and now we're trying to use the tools that defeated those diseases to fight drug addiction, lifestyle-induced diseases, diseases of aging, and STDs.

At least things aren't as bad now as they were. Traditional public-health approaches look nonsensical when used against 20th-century issues, but they did a wonderful job against 19th-century ones.

Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#115

Post by jsprogrammer »

tgb29 wrote: post #79
jimrandomh wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I went to the doctor and they said don't wait more than 3-4 hours between meals. This is utterly crazy. If you couldn't go more than 3-4 hours between meals without experiencing dizziness, something about your diet was seriously wrong. If you felt better after experimentally eating something different, then eating that was almost certainly healthier. Yes, even if it was donuts. Don't let cultural beliefs about food…

My problem has been that if I stand up to quickly, I have a moment of dizziness. There are many variables; blood pressure, blood sugar, nervous system, altitude etc. The more aware I am of my diet and how nutrition affects my body, I find the more sensitive I become to changes. I cut coffee, bread, sugar, and beef/pork. I would eat very nutritious meals, and my energy levels and body felt amazing, but the stand up an…

The safest technique might be to slowly titrate to lower doses of sugar and caffeine instead of going cold turkey, particularly if you have a long history of sugar and caffeine use. You will probably also need to wait a few weeks from your original baseline before assessing the impact of your new diet. Synapses and more will need to adjust to their new environment.

Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#116

Post by brianwawok »

jtuente wrote: post #113
brianwawok wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boxed pasta is not the worst thing in the world though, it's like a 5/10. You can generally do far worse, say french fries and slushies and Oreos.

> You can generally do far worse, say french fries and slushies and Oreos. Yes, the breakfast of morbidly obese champions.

Ha ha ha, I did not mean them combined but not that you mention it...

Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#117

Post by undersuit »

kazinator wrote: post #77
vzip wrote: post #60

Remove the sugar and starches from your diet, and be physically active. You'll need ample salt, maybe even more than you'd expect.

I eat low sodium, cycle 70 miles a week, run 30, and sweat buckets. I'm fine. When I go traveling, I end up eating out a lot due to circumstances. The sodium intake bloats up the skin, yowzers! My wedding band gets stuck on my finger, when normally it slides off easily, and I lose a bit of definition. I hate how that looks and feels.

Body builders will maintain high sodium levels until just before a competition, whereupon they stop consuming sodium and their water retention decreases granting them extra temporary muscle definition.

Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#118

Post by Trumpitron »

I think the core issue is that biology doesn't know as much as the media likes to claim it does. I mean read this: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-06/uovh-mlf05291.... If true, this effectively invalidates nearly all previous research regarding the safety of anything we inject into our blood stream because they may in fact impact the brain.

Many people have a choice to make. Although the scientific community may make a consistently supported claim about something does not mean that something will turn out to be true. Creating a near-perfect predictive model of the human body for doctors to use is about as complex a task as reverse engineering a UFO (actually reverse engineering an alien space craft is still probably more simple). They are going to make mistakes along the way.

So you are faced with a choice. Either take a risk with incomplete knowledge that something man made will not be harmful in the long term or keep doing most of the same stuff that we've been doing for centuries that has a known, if imperfect, outcome. Yes there are a lot of things can will probably kill you first, but does that mean you should continue to assume more risk on the claim that a predictive model that the scientific community generally endorses is correct enough to avoid harm?

Then again "organic" can mean a lot of things and the lack of regulation and quality control can and has made things worse on the other end. Just because it has the label "USDA Organic" doesn't mean that the USDA or FDA has done the job you think it does. There is risk and uncertainty either way.

Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#119

Post by grahamburger »

noxToken wrote: post #57
static_noise wrote: post #17

I'm waiting for the day that nutricionists find out that there are different kinds of people with different nutritional needs. Imposing rules on the population on a weak scientific basis harms the people, science and the government in the process. Currently the best way to consume food is to avoid addictive and highly processed food products and then trust your gut with the rest. Eat what you like and avoid what caus…

> Currently the best way to consume food is to avoid addictive and highly processed food products I assume by highly processed, you mean foods altered in such that they are now high in fats, salt, sugars or some combination thereof. I ask, because the term processed gets thrown around (in my experience) for highly preserved foods like canned meat to flash frozen frozen vegetables in the freezer aisle. The former is o…

I realized how meaningless the term 'processed food' is when I started trying to eat a more natural diet and every source of information I could find on the topic recommended I start by buying a food processor.

Re: Scientists can’t agree whether salt is killing us

#120

Post by jsprogrammer »

jdnier wrote: post #94

I think Dr Michael Greger's short video summary of salt research argues pretty convincingly that if you reduce your salt intake to very low levels (what he calls "normal-for-our-species salt intake"), you will not suffer from hypertension. http://nutritionfacts.org/video/high-blood-pressure-may-be-a... Another salt video looking at conflicts of interest: http://nutritionfacts.org/video/sodium-skeptics-try-to-shake...

In case someone doesnt want to watch the videos: the amount of sodium discussed in the first video as "normal" is <1g/day.
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