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

Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

myticker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 501 posts

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#341

Post by floundy »

OutOfHere wrote: post #320
floundy wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely, why? More people than ever are using LLMs to flood the internet with textual slop far faster than humans who have respect for the craft of writing can generate their own text. I checked Jared Hecht (the author of this piece’s blog) at jared.xyz and the oldest piece is from March 2023. Why should we give someone who has no evidence of writing anything before the release of ChatGPT the benefit of the doubt t…

Because the signs are only in your head. There is no hard evidence. It is a disingenuous and false way to attempt to discredit someone. Anyone can be accused of it for writing anything at all. The argument that the writing started after the invention of ChatGPT is simply horrible because everyone starts sometime. It's like calling someone a witch in historical times. By the way, your comment looks to be AI generated,…

Of course there is no "hard evidence" unless someone leaves evidence of the prompt or AI response in their blog post. There are certain clues and syntax. Your comment seems like it would fit in much better on Reddit than on HN.

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#342

Post by zargon »

Flere-Imsaho wrote: post #139
Aurornis wrote: post #97

Going deep on biomarkers, blood tests, and debates about optimal levels is okay for some people who derive motivation from obsessing over topics, but I’m starting to notice a trend where people obsess about these things for a couple years before burning out and moving on to the next topic. The best thing you can do for yourself is to establish healthy diet and lifestyle habits that are sustainable. A lot of people wh…

I learnt a great trick about exercise: find a podcast or audio book that you really enjoy listening to. Here's the trick: you're only allowed to listen when you're exercising. Also with food and drink: place friction between the treat and yourself. The easiest example is to not have biscuits / alcohol in the house. Bonus tip: alcohol free beer is really good these days.

I did this with Dungeon Crawler Carl, but now I finished all 7 and have to find something new.

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#343

Post by bluGill »

mrtksn wrote: post #328
floundy wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Alcoholism” is outdated and has been widely replaced by AUD (Alcohol Use Disorder). I looked at Germany, according to Wikipedia the average consumption of pure ethanol per person per year in Germany as of 2019 was 12.2 liters. This was the 5th highest in the world, and equivalent to 686 standard 5% beers per year. According to the WHO “moderate drinking” is 1 drink per day for women and 2 drinks per day for men, so…

And yet, the Germans are having long and healthy lives just like other drinkers like France, Spain and Italy. So maybe just relax and have a drink.

The question is could they have longer healthier lives without. Evidence is they can, and non drinkers have good social lives and fun too.

sure if you want to risk it fine, but don't try to claim there is no risk when there is.

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#344

Post by getnormality »

recursive wrote: post #332
getnormality wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're communicating here, perhaps unintentionally, is that what matters is not results, but blame. If the doctor said what to do but the patient didn't do it, all that matters is the patient is to blame. You've communicated that by ignoring or dismissing the question of whether better outcomes are possible through other means than demanding that everyone follow doctors' orders and blaming them if they don't. "W…

It's hard to help someone that doesn't want to be helped.

Struggling to change is different from not wanting to change. People seem to have trouble with basic distinctions like this when they're heavy into moralizing failure to change.

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#345

Post by mrlongroots »

btilly wrote: post #335
a1studmuffin wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your health is ultimately your own responsibility - it's your body. You have free will, and your appetite for risk is yours alone. You can choose to ignore expert advice and refuse to wear a seatbelt, skip your rehabilitation exercises, invest all-in on crypto, or smoke cigarettes. None of this responsibility should fall on the expert if they communicated the risks clearly.

If my health is my responsibility, then shouldn't the treatment that I receive be to the standard that I request? In 2015, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26551272/ showed that medicating all of the way to normal works out better than medicating down to stage 1 hypertension, then insisting on diet and exercise. And yet my request in 2018 to be medicated down to normal blood pressure was refused, because the professio…

Maybe 80-90% of people should take doctors at face value, but it is easy and only getting easier to at least access the knowledge to better advocate for your own healthcare (thanks to LLMs), with better outcomes. Of course, this requires doctors that respect your ability to provide useful inputs, which in your case did not happen.

My advice would be to "shop around" for doctors, establish a relationship where you demonstrate openness to what they say, try not to step on their toes unnecessarily, but also provide your own data and arguments. Some of the most "life-changing" interventions in terms of my own healthcare have been due to my own initiative and stubbornness, but I have doctors who humor me and respect my inputs. Credentials/vibes help here I think: in my case "the PhD student from the brand name school across the street who shows up with plots and regressions" is probably a soft signal that indicates that I mean business.

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#346

Post by rootusrootus »

rustman123 wrote: post #91
cogman10 wrote: post #13

I might just be tired, but this seems highly repetitive. The author mentions friends in the field and concierge doctors multiple times in as much as I read. Feels like the whole thing could be shortened to just say "here's the tests you run, the drugs you might take, the lifestyle changes you should consider".

It’s also demonizing doctors and the healthcare system a bit too much for my liking. I’m located in Europe, so I may have a slightly different view, but my doctors clearly care and discuss with me about prevention, risks, tradeoffs, … They praise the methods of the „good“ doctors and stamps the others as driven by financial gain. Who says the expensive ones are any better in this regard? Who says they are more or les…

I'm in the US, and my experience has been similar. My doctor is good, and while we're usually limited to 30 minutes at my appointment, we have good conversations and rarely is his answer "here is another pill" or "go take this random test."

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#347

Post by a13n »

righthand wrote: post #169

Really surprised at the last few paragraphs! Read with caution this is not Real medical advice! This was a good read until they recommended using ChatGPT instead of working with your doctor. Also they have some delusion about the actual cost of using ChatGPT. > Pretty incredible. Also free. Not free at all. Not a good idea to feed a private corporation your health data!

we’re not far from the point where ChatGPT is superior than going to the doctor in terms of cost, accessibility, speed, and quality

it’s honestly not as bad as y’all think

ChatGPT isn’t perfect but neither is your doctor (or your lawyer or accountant)

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#348

Post by mrlongroots »

hermanzegerman wrote: post #258
Buttons840 wrote: post #58

I am not a statin skeptic--or rather, I don't want to be a statin skeptic. I've done the research and it makes sense to me, but I still feel some social and psychological pressures to reject statins. When I see that it is widely accepted that ApoB is better to measure than LDL-C, but the industry continues to measure LDL-C, but not ApoB, I wonder why. It makes me skeptical. When I see that the purpose of statins is t…

> When I see that it is widely accepted that ApoB is better to measure than LDL-C, but the industry continues to measure LDL-C, but not ApoB, I wonder why. That's pretty simple to explain. No conspiracy. LDL-C is much much cheaper to measure. ApoB costs 36x times as much, so Insurance Companies don't like to pay for it

> LDL-C is much much cheaper to measure. ApoB costs 36x times as much, so Insurance Companies don't like to pay for it

Unfortunately American retail prices might as well be generated by a PRNG, and do not mean much.

On Ulta, a basic lipid panel vs an ApoB test are $22 and $36 respectively. Looking at Indian lab prices, (approx. INR->USD), both are under $10 there.

https://www.ultalabtests.com/test/cholesterol-and-lipids-tes... https://www.ultalabtests.com/test/cardio-iq-apolipoprotein-b...

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#349

Post by rootusrootus »

captainkrtek wrote: post #60
AaronAPU wrote: post #32

I was planning to start getting scans ordered for specific risks like aneurysm or heart attack but what holds me back is the idea the scans will harm me worse than those things. It is very difficult to have any level of confidence with the medical industry so my current approach has been to eat as healthy as possible while staying as fit as I can without undue extreme stress.

A relevant anecdote. I’m very athletic and skinny, eat well, have a resting heart rate in the 40s, but was recently prescribed a statin at 30, due to my very high LDL cholesterol and lipoprotein A. My family has a history of cardiovascular disease despite us doing what we can w.r.t eating and exercise. I’d encourage you to get some tests at least. My mother similarly was put on statins and is getting a cardiovascular…

Seems a bit unfair sometimes how arbitrary genetics can be. I've fought my weight all my life, only recently achieving consistent success with the assistance of GLP1s. I can't claim to be consistent with exercise either. Yet my numbers are great, I've done some of these deeper tests and everything comes back beautiful. My parents were overweight their whole life and both lived deep into their 80s (and my dad only died because he got an unlucky gall bladder infection and then ignored all the rapidly accumulating evidence that he was getting quite sick; he'd have gone another few years most likely). I don't recall anyone in my immediate ancestors having a heart attack. Seems it's just not in our genetics.

My father-in-law is more like you. Athletic, skinny, been that way all his life. Heart attack and quad bypass in his 40s.

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#350

Post by floundy »

mrtksn wrote: post #328
floundy wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Alcoholism” is outdated and has been widely replaced by AUD (Alcohol Use Disorder). I looked at Germany, according to Wikipedia the average consumption of pure ethanol per person per year in Germany as of 2019 was 12.2 liters. This was the 5th highest in the world, and equivalent to 686 standard 5% beers per year. According to the WHO “moderate drinking” is 1 drink per day for women and 2 drinks per day for men, so…

And yet, the Germans are having long and healthy lives just like other drinkers like France, Spain and Italy. So maybe just relax and have a drink.

Average German lifespan is about 80 years. What if it was 70 years for an 80th percentile drinker and 90 years for a 20th percentile drinker, I assume that changes your conclusion? These are of course entirely made up numbers, and the data doesn't even exist as far as I'm aware, but goes to show how useless averages may be.

As for the other countries: 56% of French either "don't drink" or "only on special occasions", 43.5% of Spaniards never drink or less than 2x per week, and 35% of Italians do not drink compared to 12% who drink daily.

Like it or not the median data point in these population sets are those of people who drink very little.

Post reply on HN