We Got Better at Keeping You Alive. Not at Keeping You Healthy • Hacker News Board

Re: We Got Better at Keeping You Alive. Not at Keeping You Healthy

#21

Post by tekla » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 4:00 PM UTC

Bluescreenbuddy wrote: post #20

kakacik wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food we ourselves decide to buy and eat. Nobody, absolutely nobody is blocking you or anybody else from buying tons of veggies and fruits, raw meat etc. Its cheap, cooking with it is trivial to reach cca average restaurant level of taste and one controls fully what final meal is composed of. Some even say it tastes better when self-cooked, certainly less salty or greasy. Then the argument comes - who has time for all…

>Nobody, absolutely nobody is blocking you or anybody else from buying tons of veggies and fruits, raw meat etc. Its cheap, cooking with it is trivial to reach cca average restaurant level of taste and one controls fully what final meal is composed of. Are you not familiar with the concept of food deserts?

Food deserts are actually very controversial topic outside the bubbles where the term is used.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/08/03/food-justice-u... https://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132076786/the-root-the-myth-o...

Re: We Got Better at Keeping You Alive. Not at Keeping You Healthy

#22

Post by the_real_cher » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 7:33 PM UTC

kakacik wrote: post #16

the_real_cher wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My grandfather just went to sleep one night and never woke up. Mid 70's. It's clearly for 'some' reason but it wasn't some long drawn out illness like cancer or some sort of progressive congestive heart failure. Everyone just chalks that up to old age.

So probably things like aneurysm, burst artery in the brain, heart attack, blood clots arriving to lungs and so on. But then there is also this shutdown where body starts switching off organs one by one, and hospital personnel know this well since its visible to trained eye, and known as time of no return. My grandfather went away like that.

Yeah I'm not familiar with that way but it makes sense!

Old age is rough but I would rather go out that way than a long drawn out terminal illness.

Re: We Got Better at Keeping You Alive. Not at Keeping You Healthy

#23

Post by scotty79 » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 7:16 AM UTC

kakacik wrote: post #17

scotty79 wrote: post #6

Medicine gets us to live longer. Food industry gets us to get sick sooner.

Food we ourselves decide to buy and eat. Nobody, absolutely nobody is blocking you or anybody else from buying tons of veggies and fruits, raw meat etc. Its cheap, cooking with it is trivial to reach cca average restaurant level of taste and one controls fully what final meal is composed of. Some even say it tastes better when self-cooked, certainly less salty or greasy. Then the argument comes - who has time for all…

> Food we ourselves decide to buy and eat.

Word 'decide' makes all the heavy lifting here. How come Japanese, Koreans and others make so much better decisions? Your decisions are a function of your environment and your education. Why don't Americans get good food environment and good food education?

Re: We Got Better at Keeping You Alive. Not at Keeping You Healthy

#24

Post by robocat » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 9:20 AM UTC

mapleoin wrote: post #9

robocat wrote: post #7

"I Saw 120 Patients This Week. Here's Why They Were Actually Sick." @DrAlexWibberley https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UiVKh97rJsg

what's the tl;dw?

He worked 4 nightshifts in A&E in UK, and he tabulated the 120 patients. He thought that most middle-aged patients with heart problems were only there due to their lifestyle choices in the previous decade(s).

He tried to argue that if we had more preventative/proactive health decisions then A&E wouldn't be overrun with sick people. He implied they should be the dying of old age instead.

He said they failed to save an 8 year old girl who ate a button cell, because the department was overrun with people with acute emergency issues due to lifestyle. She died after arrival (he talked about how the electricity can cause fatal damages).

I didn't find his conclusions made sense to me, but I still felt the video was worthwhile watching (especially if you are middle aged like me).

Re: We Got Better at Keeping You Alive. Not at Keeping You Healthy

#25

Post by yuye » Wed, Aug 12, 2026, 12:54 PM UTC

alex43578 wrote: post #19

Choices a doctor makes keep you alive: surgery, medicine, that diagnostic scan. The choices you make over 50+ years keep you healthy: reasonable exercise, sleep, and diet; avoiding chronic stress, drugs, tobacco, alcohol, obesity.

>avoiding chronic stress

If I only knew how