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Inflammation, but Not Telomere Length, Predicts Ageing at Extreme Old Age

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

61–70 of 157 posts

Re: Inflammation, but Not Telomere Length, Predicts Ageing at Extreme Old Age

#61
post #26

It's always strange to me how certain studies seem to gain so many upvotes on hackernews....a few thoughts: 1. This is a single study published in 2015, what does the wider literature say? Any dieticians or clinicians recommending anything from this? 2. The journal is EBioMedicine, which is not nothing but not exactly pre-eminent either. 3. This seems like just a common sense conclusion: "In Cox proportional hazard m…

Outside of physics, a single study with a surprising result is usually wrong.

Re: Inflammation, but Not Telomere Length, Predicts Ageing at Extreme Old Age

#62
post #14

Most people talk food when inflammation is mentioned. But let's not forget, arguably, an even bigger contributor: stress - mental or physical, say via a chronic illness. Relevant: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5476783/#s2titl...

Curious – are there legitimate ways to measure stress?

only short term via cortisol, long term burnout is as mysterious as it is destructive

Re: Inflammation, but Not Telomere Length, Predicts Ageing at Extreme Old Age

#63
post #13
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm here for it. You're saying that a water only fast for approximately 48 hours once every full moon helps out? I've done some intermittent fasting before (I think that's where you make sure you don't eat after 18:00 and only start at 9:00)

Yes, exactly how long probably depends on a lot of factors, but the benefits really starts for me after 30+ hours. Drinking water with potassium + magnesium + salt also helps a lot, to replenish electrolytes, but some people can manage without. Some people can continue workouts, others continue for 7+ days. It's all about experimentation. Atm. i start each week fasting and just fast for as long as it feels ok. Often…

I really appreciate some of the detailed comments here, but I will caution people that if you have a serious medical condition you may find fasting is a lot harder on you than the above suggests it will be.

If it benefits you, it may get easier over time. I have a serious medical condition. I used to routinely throw up when I was even just underfed for one day.

It now takes longer than one day for me to start having strong reactions. Fasting and semi-fasting have been beneficial for my condition, but it was amazingly hard on me for a really long time and is still not easy.

I tend to semi-fast for somewhere between one and two days (often around 36 hours) most months. I've done longer -- up to a week -- but two per month for a newcomer sounds like a lot to me and I assume that's because of how hard it is on me.

So YMMV and probably will.

Re: Inflammation, but Not Telomere Length, Predicts Ageing at Extreme Old Age

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why sweet potatoes?

Not the OP, but I'm going to guess that it's because sweet potatoes have pretty high nutritional content such that you can survive by only eating them for some time without developing deficiencies.

It’s because it was literally the only food I knew that didn’t bother me. Look at AIP diet for a better plan. But this was something I could follow when I was barely able to get out of bed.

Boiled or microwaved. Always plain.

I Felt a lot better afterwards.

Re: Inflammation, but Not Telomere Length, Predicts Ageing at Extreme Old Age

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was in a massive Sjogrens flare. Stopped eating for a month. Collapsing aside, my inflammation was fixed. Did a month on sweet potatoes. Very boring but same result.

Why sweet potatoes?

I never feel bad afterwards. It’s a safe food for me. Plus it’s filling.

Re: Inflammation, but Not Telomere Length, Predicts Ageing at Extreme Old Age

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was in a massive Sjogrens flare. Stopped eating for a month. Collapsing aside, my inflammation was fixed. Did a month on sweet potatoes. Very boring but same result.

Not the first time I read about sweet potatoes on HN. Could you describe a little more on that front, eg what was your breakfast/lunch/dinner like during that month?

Microwaved or boiled. Plain. 2 a day. It was very boring.

Re: Inflammation, but Not Telomere Length, Predicts Ageing at Extreme Old Age

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okinawa diet is some 40% sweet potatoes and top percentile life span so can’t hurt.

Sure it could. You can't just isolate some portion of a highly complex system and claim that the isolated portion will be beneficial in any similar system. Just for an extreme example to make the point - say some diet included a poisonous component as well as the antidote. Those eating the diet may well be just fine. However if somebody else simply looked at the poisonous part and copied only that, they would not do…

Yea. Never eat only one food for extended periods.

This was a pure desperation move.

Re: Inflammation, but Not Telomere Length, Predicts Ageing at Extreme Old Age

#68
post #26

It's always strange to me how certain studies seem to gain so many upvotes on hackernews....a few thoughts: 1. This is a single study published in 2015, what does the wider literature say? Any dieticians or clinicians recommending anything from this? 2. The journal is EBioMedicine, which is not nothing but not exactly pre-eminent either. 3. This seems like just a common sense conclusion: "In Cox proportional hazard m…

It looks like it is actually a meta-analysis: A study of several other studies, which has good points and pitfalls.

we combined community-based prospective cohorts: Tokyo Oldest Old Survey on Total Health (TOOTH), Tokyo Centenarians Study (TCS) and Japanese Semi-Supercentenarians Study (JSS) comprising 1554 individuals including 684 centenarians and (semi-)supercentenarians, 167 pairs of centenarian offspring and spouses, and 536 community-living very old (85 to 99 years).

One of the good points is that it tends to include data from a great many more people than most studies can include. One of the pitfalls is that it is challenging to combine data from multiple studies because they probably used different methodologies, were measuring different things, etc and this puts a lot of noise in the data and cleaning the data to get something useful and meaningful can be quite hard.

Meta studies can be a case of "garbage in, garbage out." But when they are done well, they can roll up a whole lot of information together to draw conclusions we simply don't have the resources to meaningfully study some other way.

Re: Inflammation, but Not Telomere Length, Predicts Ageing at Extreme Old Age

#69
post #10

It is rapidly becoming clear that inflammation drives many processes of disease and ageing. Many people are turning to anti-inflammatory diets rich in fruits like blueberries, fish with Omega Acids and turmeric. For example, there are many yoga practitioners in India who have extreme old age and great health that people worldwide can all benefit from listening to, like Baba Ramdev.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramdev#Claimed_cure_for_COVID-...

If there's one thing that has become apparent during COVID, it's that there is great reason to be skeptical of "official government guidelines" of in situations like COVID (acutely emerging and constantly changing scenario.)

They simply can't process information fast enough to make well informed statements.

Now I don't have an opinion on ayurvedic medicine and it's legitimacy but something being "banned by the government" alone means nothing today.

Re: Inflammation, but Not Telomere Length, Predicts Ageing at Extreme Old Age

#70
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose emphasis is on this: "telomere length was not a predictor of successful ageing".

yet everyone in the comments is sounding off as if this scientifically proves their random anecdotes about fasting

What’s wrong with fasting, isn’t it likely to increase life expectancy. I certainly feel better from this attempt at Ramadan (not religious just interested to try it as flat mate is Syrian). What evidence do you have that fasting -> less inflammation -> better ageing is wrong?
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