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Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

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Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#71

Post by Buttons840 »

lisbbb wrote: post #59
pstuart wrote: post #21

A key takeaway is: don't be afraid of taking statins if you need them. I fell for the "statins are bad" BS for years and have paid the price.

My dad would disagree--he's 84, was on statins for years and they did terrible things to his body. I'm sure the drugs kept him alive, but the side effects, as he describes them, particularly to his legs and kidneys, were pretty severe. He only got better when he stopped taking them.

I believe statins reduce risk by about 30%, so there's a roughly 30% chance the statins have done good things for your dad.

(I think that's what the stats mean, right? I'm open to correction on this. I do believe the statin studies, I'm not a science denier. I think what I've said matches the science, as far as I understand.)

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#72

Post by its-summertime »

dust42 wrote: post #63

Long story short care about your health. If you don't do already, maybe now is a good time to start. What you put into your body: no processed food, cook yourself, lots of variety of veggies and fruits, little meat, little alcohol. What you do with your body: regular exercise, low stress, enough sleep. What you do with your mind: good social environment, good relationships. And an apple a day keeps the doctor away!

"Long story short" should probably be followed by a short version of the long story.

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#73

Post by CapitalistCartr »

bambax wrote: post #66

> Don’t Die! Why the f* not. My in-laws are over 95. They refuse to go to an elderly home and as a result make everyone miserable, starting with themselves and inflicting infinite suffering on their children who each have a family of their own, and need to take care of them all of the time. I don't want to do that to my own children. I don't want to not die. I don't esp. want to die but I'm not really afraid of it, i…

You're almost certainly going to die by or before 110, anyway. (Ir)Regardless of your efforts, or lack thereof, our bodies typically give out in the 100-110 year range with very few exceptions.

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#74

Post by mac-mc »

zamiang_brennan wrote: post #54

Great post but quite surprised there is no mention of cutting red meat. There is a lot of evidence that especially the American diet is dangerously high in red meat to the point of elevating Heart Disease risk.

IMO, I think that is more of a saturated fat issue, and only a subset of the population is like that. Others solve their health issues through eating a lot of red meat.

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#75

Post by zoeysmithe »

zamiang_brennan wrote: post #54

Great post but quite surprised there is no mention of cutting red meat. There is a lot of evidence that especially the American diet is dangerously high in red meat to the point of elevating Heart Disease risk.

Also processed red meats or processed meats in general. Processed meats are the ones strongly linked with heart disease. At least for those who dont want to go vegetarian.

Processed meats are so bad, they should be eliminated entirely from everyone's diet. The World Health Organization has classified processed meat as a Group 1 carcinogen. No amount of it is considered safe.

Unprocessed read meat is still a problem and WHO advises less than 350g a week. Which is 12–18 ounces of cooked meat. 12g is about one adult serving of steak. So you really are looking at 1.5 servings per week of unprocessed red meat to be safe. At most! You probably should try for less or closer to 12g.

And really if you're at a healthy weight, then I'm not sure how helpful this is. Obesity is a bigger risk factor. This is a bit of the elephant in the room for heart health. Not only should we not be eating things associated with heart disease but also we need to keep ourselves at a healthy weight.

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#76

Post by slumpt_ »

echelon wrote: post #69
dust42 wrote: post #63

Long story short care about your health. If you don't do already, maybe now is a good time to start. What you put into your body: no processed food, cook yourself, lots of variety of veggies and fruits, little meat, little alcohol. What you do with your body: regular exercise, low stress, enough sleep. What you do with your mind: good social environment, good relationships. And an apple a day keeps the doctor away!

> lots of variety of veggies and fruits, little meat This is wrong. Our bodies evolved to rend flesh and eat meat. They are optimized by millions of years of evolution to process and run on meat. The biochemical pathways of carb-heavy diets put more oxidative stress on the body.

podcast science is a bit low-brow for hn brother

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#77

Post by tgv »

dust42 wrote: post #63

Long story short care about your health. If you don't do already, maybe now is a good time to start. What you put into your body: no processed food, cook yourself, lots of variety of veggies and fruits, little meat, little alcohol. What you do with your body: regular exercise, low stress, enough sleep. What you do with your mind: good social environment, good relationships. And an apple a day keeps the doctor away!

Not all things labeled "processed foods" are bad, it seems. There are enough scientists that say the distinction is often hypocritical (example from an article: a factory-made carrot cake is labeled UPF, but a home-baked one isn't, even though they're practically the same thing). Sugar, fats, and lack of fiber make factory-food unhealthy, they say. Others add that we can't feed the growing metropolitan areas without it.

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#78

Post by adrianN »

bambax wrote: post #66

> Don’t Die! Why the f* not. My in-laws are over 95. They refuse to go to an elderly home and as a result make everyone miserable, starting with themselves and inflicting infinite suffering on their children who each have a family of their own, and need to take care of them all of the time. I don't want to do that to my own children. I don't want to not die. I don't esp. want to die but I'm not really afraid of it, i…

If you prevent every ailment you don’t become frail and just take care of yourself.

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#79

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

everdrive wrote: post #65

What if heart disease saves me from dementia? I'm not just being contrarian. I think about this a lot of the time. I'm already 40. I'm being healthy now, but whatever damage has already been done is baked in. (plus whatever is in my genetics) A quick death at 65-70 might be much more preferable to a slow terrible decade-long decline.

Heart disease can be a slow decade long death, where you become incapable of physically doing anything. It's not just a heart attack out of nowhere and you're dead.

Re: Ticker: Don't die of heart disease

#80

Post by JoshTriplett »

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.

> scans will harm me worse than those things

There are two known harms from scans:

- Radiation. This is why people shouldn't get these scans several times a year, but 1-2 are very unlikely to move the needle. The average radiation from a full chest CT is just under the average dose for ~2 years of normal background radiation. (I don't know if a CTA uses less than average.)

- Acting on something you would otherwise have ignored, where ignoring it might have been the right answer. The main problem here is that it's hard to get a medical opinion saying "you should ignore this" because of perverse incentives: there's an aversion to recommending doing nothing because that could lead to a lawsuit, whereas "overtreatment" will not get a doctor sued. However, you can make a deliberate decision to do this anyway even after getting the scan; seek second and third opinions, consider alternatives, weigh risk versus reward, make a considered decision.

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