431–440 of 501 posts
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…
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If you fix it without statins through better lifestyle and diet, that is the preferrable route. As to why medicine is like this, it's because it's conservative, usually about 17 years behind university research[0], and doctors are shackled to guidelines in most health systems or risk losing their licenses. It isn't a coincidence that the article author had his out-of-pocket concierge doctor tell him the more up-to-da…
I have an objection to the "better lifestyle and diet" approach. Sure, it is absolutely true that better lifestyle and diet has a huge effect. However it is absolutely certain that the vast majority of people who are told to improve their lifestyle and diet, won't. The result is doctors giving advice that they know won't be followed. And thereby transferring potential fault from the doctor to the patient, with no imp…
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Not that hard in this case. Just give them a pill.
Or, as we're becoming aware with GLP-1 drugs, an injection. (For now!). It's better to help people behave better with drugs than moral condemnation. Almost infinitely better, as it turns out, regarding a lot of problematic behavior regarded as "untreatable" previously.
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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…
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…
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.
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…
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I've taken courses in primitive wilderness survival, and one of the staple foods was grass seed. Also lots of roots are edible with cooking, and it looks like we've been cooking for about a million years. Then there's wild rice, cattails, beans, berries, all sorts of stuff. I agree that most wild plants are high in fiber and low in sugar, but there are are a lot of complex carbs to be had, if you have fire.
Interesting. So its possible to gather enough of these food to get eg ~200+g carbs per day (speaking in ancestral context, a tribe)? Also how much must you eat of these to get enough in order to get enough digestable carbs due to the high fiber content?
> Pontzer, an evolutionary anthropologist who studies modern-day hunter-gatherers, says traditional diets vary widely, and the vast majority of them include a high percentage of carbohydrates.
> For instance, the Hadza, a hunter-gatherer group in northeast Tanzania that Pontzer has studied for the past ten years, spend their days walking eight to 12 kilometers, climbing trees and digging for root vegetables. Their diet consists of various meats, vegetables and fruits, as well as a significant amount of honey. In fact, they get 15 to 20 percent of their calories from honey, a simple carbohydrate.
> The Hadza tend to maintain the same healthy weight, body mass index and walking speed throughout their entire adult lives. They commonly live into their 60s or 70s, and sometimes 80s, with very little to no cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure or diabetes—conditions that are rapidly growing in prevalence in nearly every corner of the world.
https://globalhealth.duke.edu/news/what-can-hunter-gatherers...
And from another source:
> Because humans initially evolved in Africa, where wild animals generally lack appreciable fat stores (2), it seems clear that they consumed a mixed diet of animal and plant foods, given the apparent limitations of human digestive physiology to secure adequate daily energy from protein sources alone (4).
> Hunter-gatherer societies in other environments were doubtless eating very different diets, depending on the season and types of resources available. Hayden (3) stated that hunter-gatherers such as the !Kung might live in conditions close to the “ideal” hunting and gathering environment. What do the !Kung eat? Animal foods are estimated to contribute 33% and plant foods 67% of their daily energy intakes (1). Fifty percent (by wt) of their plant-based diet comes from the mongongo nut, which is available throughout the year in massive quantities (1). Similarly, the hunter-gatherer Hazda of Tanzania consume “the bulk of their diet” as wild plants, although they live in an area with an exceptional abundance of game animals and refer to themselves as hunters (18). In the average collecting area of an Aka Pygmy group in the African rain forest, the permanent wild tuber biomass is >4545 kg (>5 tons) (19).
> Australian aborigines in some locales are known to have relied seasonally on seeds of native millet (2) or a few wild fruit and seed species (20) to satisfy daily energy demands. Some hunter-gatherer societies in Papua New Guinea relied heavily on starch from wild sago palms as an important source of energy (21), whereas most hunter-gatherer societies in California depended heavily on acorn foods from wild oaks (22).
> In nature, any dependable source of digestible energy is generally rare and when discovered is likely to assume great importance in the diet. Animal foods typically are hard to capture but food such as tree fruits and grass seeds are relatively reliable, predictable dietary elements.
https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165(23)07053-3/ful...
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> and for good reasons That prior discussion gives no good reasons. The linked medium posts are, to be frank, trash. Statins are well-tolerated drugs with little to no noticeable side effects. You might have to try a few. You may need to combine ezetimibe to maintain a moderate statin dosage level, and that's it. (Like the author of this article) Source: Leading cardiologists worldwide, and doctors of the rich and fa…
What the BMJ has to say on this very topic of statins: https://www.bmj.com/campaign/statins-open-data So no settled science here. Unless you consider the BMJ a trash journal of course.
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Part of providing good care is not burdening the patient with tests or treatments that are very unlikely to yield benefit. Put another way, the mission of healthcare is not "health at any cost."
The mission of healthcare in the eyes of those who provide it, isn't "health at any cost". For the people on the other side, "health at any cost" is pretty much the goal, usually limited by the "cost" side of things, especially in the parts of the world where they haven't yet figured out the whole "healthcare for the public" thing.
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)