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Comment by chiefalchemist | Hacker News Reader

A few thoughts.

It seems that "calorie restriction" is a misleading term. If these funds are correct, CR should be considered the norm/ideal. That means the majority, currently, over-consume.

That aside. I wonder if it's also related to modern food, and the production there of. If inflammation is the root of most disease, and CR, I presume, reduces inflammation, then what is it about our foods that trigger so much inflammation?

Finally, when all said and done, I predict this will be found to connect with gut bacteria in some way. That is, CR effects the gut, and that effect is ultimately a positive for the whole body.

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> If these funds are correct, CR should be considered the norm/ideal. That means the majority, currently, over-consume.

If we found that consuming a quart of squid ink daily extended life by 20%, we wouldn't call that "the norm". The norm is what people actually do. "Ideal" is extremely subjective, as "never satiated" is a tough steady state for most people.

> If inflammation is the root of most disease

That's a pretty wild starting point. Most disease in modern nations seems pretty tightly correlated with sedentary lifestyle and obesity.

Ok. Fair enough. Allow me to clarify.

I was speaking of norm for the body, not norm of what most people do. In any case, my point was "restriction" isn't a restriction if you're over-consuming to begin with. It's a language/communication issue. Telling people to reduce (when they think they're normal") is, imho, the wrong message. We've normalized obesity by, to some extent, allowing people to believe obesity is perfectly normal.

As for sedentary lifestyle and obesity...those are symptoms. What happens in the body is, often, inflammation. Inflammation in turn gets manifested as various diseases. Obesity is not what kills you per se. But it does trigger various things (often rooted in inflammation) that will.

Regardless, in the context of the original article, I was simply taking a stand at why CR increases lifespan.

I hear ya. We're on the same page, mostly. I just wanted to clarify my particular thoughts.

Thanks

> I was speaking of norm for the body, not norm of what most people do. In any case, my point was "restriction" isn't a restriction if you're over-consuming to begin with. It's a language/communication issue. Telling people to reduce (when they think they're normal") is, imho, the wrong message. We've normalized obesity by, to some extent, allowing people to believe obesity is perfectly normal.

Almost no one actually thinks obesity is normal. a very small set of people argue it's healthy, but that is a tiny minority.

As for "norm", caloric restriction is not about being normal weight. Caloric restriction is about cutting calories significantly below the level needed to maintain a normal weight. I don't see any way to argue that this is "normal".

> As for sedentary lifestyle and obesity...those are symptoms. What happens in the body is, often, inflammation. Inflammation in turn gets manifested as various diseases. Obesity is not what kills you per se. But it does trigger various things (often rooted in inflammation) that will.

All indications are that sedentary lifestyle is a root cause, not a symptom. Obesity is perhaps a symptom, but sedentary lifestyle is a step before that.

I don't believe there's actually any evidence for the claim that inflammation is the root issue for most disease. I get the distinct impression that this is a pseudoscience claim made by people who are selling quick fixes (as opposed to the diet and exercise people already know they need). "Inflammation" is almost a magical claim. It sounds scientific but there doesn't generally seem to be any actual science behind claims of inflammation causing arbitrary health issues.

"Almost no one actually thinks obesity is normal. a very small set of people argue it's healthy, but that is a tiny minority."

Tiny? Lol

Jokes aside, I see it differently. Much.

First, look around. Obesity is normalized. Those less so, look around and think "I'm okay...Look at that guy/gal..." We (speaking for the USA) got here because humans do what they do. In this case, they define norm by what they see.

I'm not concerned about those who argue it's healty. My concern is those who do not. Think of the current politics and healthcare. NO ONE brings up the fact that if we prevented what we could prevent, there'd be money for real illness.

As it is, we have fat people eating donuts, drinking milk by the gallon, and complaining about their premiums. That would be funny, if it wasn't so absurd.

Re: inflammation

Perhaps. But do you have a better term for "completely fucking over your normal body processes"?

I was using inflammation as a generic term for "disrupting the baseline." Sorry. You're correct. I'll try to be more particular next time.

Thanks.

> I was using inflammation as a generic term for "disrupting the baseline."

You've lumped literally all illnesses together (anything that disrupts the baseline) and referred to them as "inflammation". This is exactly what I'm criticizing. Inflammation in this context is a meaningless term used to give an appearance of medicine to pseudoscience.

Inflammation go hand in hand with 'a disrupted baseline'. It is usually the cause of part of the disruption and the symptom of another part of the disruption. So it really isn't that unwarranted to use it as a synonym.

It is unwarranted. To use "inflammation" as a synonym for "disease" is to willfully imply that inflammation is the root of every disease. This is inaccurate and it misguides people. If you have type 2 diabetes, you probably have some inflammation. But that's unlikely the root cause or the thing to worry about. Obesity and sedentary lifestyle are better causes to attack.

> I don't believe there's actually any evidence for the claim that inflammation is the root issue for most disease.

There is growing evidence that it is in the chain of causality for lots of diseases where it has previously not been thought of, and that lots of inflammatory conditions seem to be linked manifestations of common systemic causes rather than localised inflammation with unrelated causes.

This does get overplayed sometimes into “everything starts with inflammation”.

Causations are not necessarily one way. Inflammation causes disease, disease causes obesity (unhealthy people tend to move less), obesity causes more inflammation. Start anywhere in the circle.

  I don't believe there's actually any evidence for the 
  claim that inflammation is the root issue for most disease

I quote from a seven year old issue of Nature insight (http://www.nature.com/nature/supplements/insights/inflammati...):

  Inflammation forms the basis of many physiological and 
  pathological processes. Much is known about how 
  inflammation is initiated, develops and resolves over the 
  short term. But less is known about the causes and 
  consequences of chronic inflammation, which underlies many 
  human diseases. Recent studies have extended our 
  understanding of chronic inflammation and the cross-talk 
  that occurs between inflammatory responses and other 
  physiological and pathological

This is common knowledge and has been for a long time.

I criticized referring to inflammation as the root of most diseases. I did not say inflammation does not play a factor in many diseases.

CR reduces inflammation through the mTor pathway. And a lot(if not all) of the benefits of CR are seen with protein restriction or intermittent fasting(which both don't modify total caloric intake) because they both act on the same receptor.

So CR isn't about eating too much food (though many of us are) it's about certain biological pathways that get activated during famine that prioritize longevity over other things like procreation.

Yes. But isn't it odd that our diets cause information in the first place. In an evolutionary way, that feels odd. So, then I have to wonder, is this further incrimination of the modern diet? And lifestyle?

That is, is CR simple a proxy / correlation for putting less (modern) shit in your body?

So, for your first question, no, we didn't evolve for the food we need to survive to cause inflammation. In the past, ancient humans had no diabetes or cancer, and ate mostly protein, fats (saturated and monounsaturated), high fiber vegetables, and roughly a 1:1 ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids. So it seems more likely that our relatively recent addition of sugar, vegetable oils and highly refined carbohydrates (lacking any fiber content) has something to do with that.

I think your second question is on the money. CR seems like a red herring in this case, because it's likely that those who eat less will also eat less processed foods, less sugars, and more fibrous vegetables or filling fats that would help them actually keep their calorie intake low while still feeling satiated. In the study with the Rhesus monkeys, it said that the ones that weren't on calorie restriction were diabetic or pre-diabetic. Monkeys in the wild don't really get diabetes, in the same way that our human ancestors never got diabetes, so what were they feeding these monkeys? I looked at some of the source studies backing this bbc article. The report from the Nature magazine(https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14063) actually says that the University of Wisconsin study 'contained a significantly higher amount of sucrose compared to the NIA diet' (https://www.nia.nih.gov/newsroom/announcements/2017/01/calor...) and that the other study, the one with a diet of varied protein sources, actually did not see any health benefits in the CR monkeys. I wonder, if you fed the UW monkeys a diet low in sucrose and other easily digestible carbohydrates in order to keep their blood glucose and inflammation extremely low, would there be a big difference in the health of the CR monkeys and the others? If the NIA study is any indication, probably not.

"In the past, ancient humans had no diabetes or cancer"

Do you have a source for this?

But CR doesn't work because our diets cause inflammation. The CR was discovered in worms, and they're eating the same diet they always did.

That is, is CR simple a proxy / correlation for putting less (modern) shit in your body? No, you can take a drug rapamycin that has the exact same effects as CR, even if you are putting the exact same amount of food in your body. The benefits of CR are not caused because food is damaging, and less food is less damaging. CR is your body noticing it's running low on food and telling your body to do some maintenance. Rapamycin does the exact same thing, causes your body to enter maintenance mode.

I suspect CR speaks to your gut more than you body. A couple months back there was an article (somewhere) on the benefits of a 3 day fast. CR feels like a slightly different version of that.

And, best I can tell, if it goes in your mouth than it's about your gut (bacteria). Any downstream reactions are communicated via those bacteria.

>then what is it about our foods that trigger so much inflammation?

Huge quantities of sodium and sugar, all kinds of BS half-tested preservatives and additives, growth hormones and the like.

Yup. It was kinda a passive aggressiveness rhetoric question ;)

> If inflammation is the root of most disease

Reminds me of a quote in one of Heinlein's books, that all forms of death could ultimately be described as heart failure.

Funny.

But do note I did say "If..."

A CRON or calorie restriction optimal nutrition diet is a thing, not only eating fewer calories but what you do eat has to be absolutely perfect in nutrition.

Micheal Mosley on BBC interviewed a CRON advocate he are an apple peel but threw away the inner part.

I've read that a rumbling stomach is necessary for gut health without it your microbiome suffers, CR may incidentally do that.

Yes. The arc of my point, kinda, was that we eat for what we perceive as nutritional. When we should really focus (more) on eating for our gut.

>he ate an apple peel but threw away the inner part

I can do reduced calories, but that right there just sounds miserable.

I saw the program, the guy actually had a giant bowl of fruit, mostly frozen berries(!), and yes, apple peel. He seemed pretty cheerful, and it didn't look like privation.

I do remember reading the blog of some guy way back around 2007 or so who was on a 1000 calorie per day diet. One of the most miserable things I ever read. The highlight of his week was 1 square of 100% cacao chocolate.

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