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Biohacking Lite

karpathy.github.io

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Re: Biohacking Lite

#71

Post by atopia »

gdebel wrote: post #51

I'm French (and incidentally a doctor,and my post is not judgemental in any way, this is not the point). Everytime I travel to the USA, I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" (= by my own standards). You can find really good junk food everywhere, or pay a really high price to eat in high-level Italian restaurants for example, but it is very difficult to eat standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-add…

I absolutely agree - sugar is definitely the issue. Most individuals don't get enough healthy fats due to marketing tactics. Stuff like Omega 3s and general unsaturated fats are incredibly important for brain function, reparation of tissue, etc.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#72

Post by thechao »

jaypeg25 wrote: post #53
jackschultz wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big shoutout to saying low impact cardio. Running is the big example that can cause pain where people's bodies are so different that it's not clear what the correct form is for them or if there's even a good form. I play and follow golf and the big injury issue with Tiger that made him multiple surgeries, and also had to reshape his golf swing from the pain running caused. Here's an article[0] about that from Running…

I have a long history of back pain going back to college (32 now). As I've gotten older (and a bit bigger) I've started to get knee pain in addition if I run a lot. So I recently switched to biking which has honestly been way more fun, opened me up to exploring more parts of my city and the surrounding area than running did, and I haven't really had any associated pains since starting roughly a year ago. I still drin…

Back pain is almost always an indicator of posterior chain weakness. Do daily squats (just up & down), and do toe-touch-stretches (legs about 2x shoulder width, right-hand-to-left-toe, stand up with arms in the air, left-hand-to-right-toe).

Personally, I just do weighted squats & heavy deadlift, but if your knees are bad, that's a bad idea. You can chat with a PT for 50–80$ and they can tell you exactly what's wrong & how to fix it in less than an hour.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#73

Post by JamesBarney »

ve55 wrote: post #35

>all of which I won’t go into full details of because it lets a bit too much of the mad scientist crazy out. This is a bit disappointing, but I know how the author feels. I can definitely feel like I am going to be judged for being crazy telling people about the strange ways in which I try to empirically optimize my health. But, nothing is more important than our health, and I think it would have great effects on rea…

What were the changes you made that had biggest impacts?

Re: Biohacking Lite

#74

Post by zan2434 »

I think the most sustainable way to lose fat (not weight ofc) is to gain lean muscle mass. You can substantially increase your basal metabolic rate and induce a calorie deficit to incur fat loss without actually eating any less. The problem of course is that your body does automatically increase your appetite commensurately as your BMR goes up, but calorie counting + discipline can help you stay lean as you gain muscle mass, and then lose the fat over time.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#75

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #21

I wouldn't rank glucose above fats. As I understand it, it's not exactly a "shorter battery" than fat - it is simply a form of energy that is abundant in plant life, but fat is still a (much) "better battery". The reason our body always favors burning glucose first is NOT because glucose is "better" but actually because it is an inferior type of fuel (it creates "pollution" and is difficult to burn - you can develop…

You don't develop type 2 diabetes from being fat, you develop diabetes from high average blood glucose levels triggering insulin resistance.

Also, what is the pollution you are talking about? From what I understand, lipolysis generates ketones, which at normal lipolytic amounts aren't toxic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_2_diabetes?wprov=sfla1

Re: Biohacking Lite

#76

Post by abnry »

abellerose wrote: post #70
choeger wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick remark: Sugar, as other carbohydrates, is cheap . It also tastes well, objectively (as much as taste can be objectively measured). So if you go for industrial-level food production, you end up with a higher proportion of sugar than what would be considered healthy. Sugar per se ist not bad at all (try to have an apple without it ;)). But our economy demands cheap, somewhat tasty, calories. Hence we end up with…

I've never known that people add sugar to their apples. I have lived in US & Canada and I find that odd people need to add sugar to enjoy an apple. Croissants or baguettes are not a daily thing if my assumption is correct. My experience is buying them when walking home from work and if I'm in the mood because bread isn't generally healthy for people compared to something else that happens to be better. edit: okay, I…

I think the OP meant natural sugar, not added! And sadly, many jams and pies have extra sugar added, I much prefer the no/low sugar versions.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#77

Post by nxc18 »

JamesBarney wrote: post #67
gdebel wrote: post #51

I'm French (and incidentally a doctor,and my post is not judgemental in any way, this is not the point). Everytime I travel to the USA, I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" (= by my own standards). You can find really good junk food everywhere, or pay a really high price to eat in high-level Italian restaurants for example, but it is very difficult to eat standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-add…

> I think sugar is the main problem (not fat) Most of the research is that it's both. (Tt's the worst when fat and sugar are together) Specifically food is more rewarding, denser, cheaper, and easier to find than it used to be, so we overeat it. Same thing happens with almost any animal that's given ad libitum access to the american diet. It seems there are two societal solutions, extremely heavy handed government in…

It doesn't need to be extreme, taxes are proven to be effective and are quite simple. They solve the problem of unhealthy food being too easily available by raising the price to reflect the true cost to society (the externalities, like obesity). Junk food is only cheaper than healthy food because our society has made that choice, and it can just as easily choose to change that.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#78

Post by [deleted] »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #54
gdebel wrote: post #51

I'm French (and incidentally a doctor,and my post is not judgemental in any way, this is not the point). Everytime I travel to the USA, I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" (= by my own standards). You can find really good junk food everywhere, or pay a really high price to eat in high-level Italian restaurants for example, but it is very difficult to eat standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-add…

Last year I went to Europe for a two week vacation. I stuffed myself like a greedy pig for two weeks, but I barely gained any weight on my return to the US. The next week, I went on a staff retreat for only 3 days and stuffed myself again. That time, I gained more than twice what I'd gained in Europe. I'm convinced that the quality of European food is, on average, vastly superior to what's available in America.

[deleted]

Re: Biohacking Lite

#79

Post by JamesBarney »

Swizec wrote: post #7
curiousgal wrote: post #2

As someone struggling to gain weight it always bugs me how "being healthy" is only associated with weight loss.

My biggest concern about focus on weight loss as the metric instead of "healthy lifestyle" is that losing weight is easiest when you do it in an unhealthy way. Crash diets are a good example of unhealthy weight loss. Another funfact is that you can literally go to bed for a few weeks, let muscle atrophy kick in, and lose more weight than any diet+exercise regime. Won't make you healthier, but you'll lose the weight.…

Despite all the lecturing, the research doesn't really agree. Crash(extreme) diets work just as well as slower diets and the people gain back weight at roughly the same rate.

Re: Biohacking Lite

#80

Post by mettamage »

gdebel wrote: post #51

I'm French (and incidentally a doctor,and my post is not judgemental in any way, this is not the point). Everytime I travel to the USA, I'm puzzled by how difficult it is to "eat normally" (= by my own standards). You can find really good junk food everywhere, or pay a really high price to eat in high-level Italian restaurants for example, but it is very difficult to eat standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-add…

Ah, the Americans... ;-)

As a Dutch person living in Amsterdam, I completely agree. I noticed when I visited SF a few times (and California in general) that:

- Vegetables are more expensive

- Bread is sweetened (there goes my breakdfast)

- Bread sucks (yep, I said it, basic bread should be thrown into the thrash can)

- Basic cheese in the US is a new species, and I am afraid of it

I went around these 2 issues by buying the highest quality French bread and imported cheese (how I missed actual France with their actual French bread... :'( ). While it was expensive, I could at least make a breakfast that I eat in Amsterdam (bread with cheese with butter, unsweetened).

The butter was normal. I have to give the US that.

Though, I do like what you guys can do with oatmeal. It taught me that the normal Dutch breakfast is uninspiring as hell, haha. So all in all, it was reall a positive experience, but it's so much nicer when you meet American people showing how they eat breakfast rather than traveling around in the country and simply guessing how to eat normal (normal being unsweetened / healthy -- I find that normal...).

Also, I found the US amazing with certain dinner options (e.g. sushi burito's).

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