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'Healthiest hearts in the world' found

bbc.co.uk

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Re: 'Healthiest hearts in the world' found

#51

Post by DoingIsLearning »

rich-tea wrote: post #19

This one was quick. It took decades before anyone questioned the war on fat. Looks like the war on carbs is already at that stage. Give it a few years and we'll start to see the bad affects of too much protein. Mark my words. People who live a long time don't care about diets. Show me one who did.

> People who live a long time don't care about diets. Show me one who did.

Jack LaLanne?

He was one of the first modern evangelists of fitness and diet and lived to be 96, according to wikipedia.

Purely anecdotal but you did ask for a single example.

Re: 'Healthiest hearts in the world' found

#52

Post by TulliusCicero »

Scaevolus wrote: post #13

> At the age of 45, almost no Tsimane had CAC in their arteries while 25% of Americans do. > By the time they reach age 75, two-thirds of Tsimane are CAC-free compared with the overwhelming majority of Americans (80%) having signs of CAC. The article doesn't mention obesity at all . 40% of Americans over 40 are obese[1]. Tsimane obesity rates of adults (>20 years) are 5.6% for women and 1.6% for men[2]. Journalists l…

The fact that they walk a huge amount (16,000/17,000 steps per day) seems to be a very obvious factor.

Unfortunately, getting this kind of behavior, at least in the US, would be enormously challenging, because our land use policies and regulations are generally designed to make walking useless and/or painful.

I've lived in several parts of the US, currently live in Munich, only NYC felt close to Munich in walkability, and I honestly think I'd still give Munich the edge (even though it's not as dense and business convenience is worse). The other areas I lived in -- Silicon Valley, Seattle suburb, Utah, various parts of Alabama -- were all complete and utter garbage for walking. They're very obviously not even trying.

Re: 'Healthiest hearts in the world' found

#53

Post by ssivark »

4ntonius8lock wrote: post #21
Scaevolus wrote: post #13

> At the age of 45, almost no Tsimane had CAC in their arteries while 25% of Americans do. > By the time they reach age 75, two-thirds of Tsimane are CAC-free compared with the overwhelming majority of Americans (80%) having signs of CAC. The article doesn't mention obesity at all . 40% of Americans over 40 are obese[1]. Tsimane obesity rates of adults (>20 years) are 5.6% for women and 1.6% for men[2]. Journalists l…

It's almost as if human experiences don't fit into the carefully curated categories we have in modern society where individual aspects are considered in isolation and not handled in a holistic way. It's as if: the need for meaning, relationships, sleep, body, teeth, eating, professional development, daily routine, sitting, walking, how we walk, our individual body constructs, personality archetypes, mental health, et…

> It's almost as if human experiences don't fit into the carefully curated categories we have in modern society where individual aspects are considered in isolation and not handled in a holistic way.

Well put. The challenge for any individual author is that it is much easier to write defensively in a narrow niche (cue: increasing specialization in research). It is very easy to start flinging accusations and ad-hominem attacks on an author who's ambitiously trying to synthesize connections between apparently disparate topics, which discourages any ounce of originality/creativity.

A more obvious problem is how our systems bias for an explosion of "content" and evisceration of nuance. For some thoughts on the topic, see https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/09/24/norbert-wiener-comm...

To start with, I wonder whether we can construct a better reading list for an audience with a more holistic bent, not just in relation to health, but for other domains too. Once a curated audience is established, authors might find more inducement to write such stuff. That said, once these floodgates are opened, filtering out the bullshit-mongers will take significant effort and judicious exercise of editorial discretion.

In case anyone is interested, some ad-hoc examples, based on what I've been reading lately:

- Christopher Alexander (full series of ten books, ostensibly relating to architecture, but actually reflecting on so much more)

- Writings by some cybernetics pioneers (eg: Norbert Weiner and Ross Ashby)

- Design as participation, by Kevin Slavin -- https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/design-as-participation

PS: Some of my current readings skirt "unfashionable" topics related to AI/ML, many of which are papers from the 80s :-)

Re: 'Healthiest hearts in the world' found

#55

Post by 4ntonius8lock »

Swizec wrote: post #24
4ntonius8lock wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as if human experiences don't fit into the carefully curated categories we have in modern society where individual aspects are considered in isolation and not handled in a holistic way. It's as if: the need for meaning, relationships, sleep, body, teeth, eating, professional development, daily routine, sitting, walking, how we walk, our individual body constructs, personality archetypes, mental health, et…

This is because I can change a thing but I can't change my whole life. Well, I can, but that's hard and single things are easy.

You are right, it is necessary to dissect. But I feel it's taken on a life of it's own.

Just as work to live in some places has been distorted to live to work.

We should create categories to understand, not understand to create categories.

I've seen it everywhere. My doctor trying to shove pills down my throat when I had developed some bad habits and he didn't ask me ONE question about diet or night routine. I've seen it in universities where professors attack each others field instead of finding the common thread. In the boss that says "that's not your job, thats marketing/QA/dev/business dev/growth team/etc". It's a lack of understand that a team should provide value to the overall and the categories should only be there to aid in overall progress.

Re: 'Healthiest hearts in the world' found

#56

Post by sm4rk0 »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #33
ericmcer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah very strange they do a breakdown of what percentages each diet has, but not the overall caloric intake. If you consume 5000 calories a day, it really does not matter how healthy your macros are. I wonder what the results would show if they did a similar study but compared people of similar body compositions. Who has the healthiest population of people with a BMI of ~20.

After a quick Google I found several older articles that do mention the caloric intake of the Tsimané [1]. It is curious that the BBC article left that out. 1: https://www.inverse.com/article/50572-tsimane-amazon-healthy...

"they consume between 2,433 to 2,738 calories per day"

Re: 'Healthiest hearts in the world' found

#57

Post by pkaye »

bpicolo wrote: post #5
AimForTheBushes wrote: post #4

"The Tsimane get 72% of their energy from carbohydrates. The fact that they have the best indicators of cardiovascular health ever reported is the exact opposite to many recent suggestions that carbohydrates are unhealthy." Refined carbs ARE unhealthy and it's a bit disheartening that they didn't make that distinction in the article.

> Non-processed carbohydrates are grown in the form of rice, plantain, manioc, and corn via slash-and-burn horticulture, and the Tsimane also gather wild nuts and fruits. Big difference between this and HFCS and table sugar.

What is the difference?

Re: 'Healthiest hearts in the world' found

#58

Post by mcbits »

munk-a wrote: post #23
52-6F-62 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true. It's likely that beside the rice and maize, most of their carbs come from vegetables. It's one of the reasons why high-performance diets are usually heavy on the broccoli!

Another absolutely killer carb in western diets comes out of refined flour which makes it into a ton of stuff. My wife is gluten-free currently for health reasons and we've experimented with using more raw starch sources to great success. Most of these flour based foods don't need to be super-refined bleached flour.

Most "whole wheat" flour is literally the same refined flour from the same vat, but with some bran (fiber) and germ (nutrients) mixed back in. This could happen at the refinery shortly after refining, or weeks to months later using bran and germ sourced from a warehouse somewhere. Very unpredictable and not indicated anywhere on the label.

What seems consistent is that both diets high in whole grains and high-fiber diets in general have some heart health benefits. My guess is that refined+enriched flour in a high-fiber meal is not much, if any, worse than whole flour in a medium- or low-fiber meal. Those pastries and chips between meals, on the other hand...

Re: 'Healthiest hearts in the world' found

#59

Post by nickjj »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #52
Scaevolus wrote: post #13

> At the age of 45, almost no Tsimane had CAC in their arteries while 25% of Americans do. > By the time they reach age 75, two-thirds of Tsimane are CAC-free compared with the overwhelming majority of Americans (80%) having signs of CAC. The article doesn't mention obesity at all . 40% of Americans over 40 are obese[1]. Tsimane obesity rates of adults (>20 years) are 5.6% for women and 1.6% for men[2]. Journalists l…

The fact that they walk a huge amount (16,000/17,000 steps per day) seems to be a very obvious factor. Unfortunately, getting this kind of behavior, at least in the US, would be enormously challenging, because our land use policies and regulations are generally designed to make walking useless and/or painful. I've lived in several parts of the US, currently live in Munich, only NYC felt close to Munich in walkability…

Are you unable to walk around your neighborhood in SV, Seattle and other places?

I live on Long Island (not NYC) but it's not hard to find places to walk around in safety. I put in 3-5 miles (roughly 6,000 - 10,000 steps going by Google) a day just aimlessly walking side streets for general exercise and clearing my mind.

When I visited SV it didn't seem too bad downtown. Can't speak for the other places though.

But if you want to put in the steps, you just need ground to walk on and preferably not be constantly dealing with highways (that would really suck).

Re: 'Healthiest hearts in the world' found

#60

Post by bigDICK »

negamax wrote: post #26

Small anecdote: I did travels through Europe a while back and did lots of walking. That's fairly normal in many European towns and cities. Really felt great and decided to do 20k steps a day after return. Which tapered off slowly and unconsciously. Need to get back to that level. Your body respond quickly in positive direction, I can recall that much.

I think a lot of people miss out on this when talking about their TDEE. Folks in some countries are more active as part of their routine, outside of planned exercises. I noticed this a lot when I traveled, too. I was walking everywhere, all the time. As were the locals.
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