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Comment by atomical | Hacker News Reader

Notice that there is no mention of diet because diet doesn't matter that much as long as there is a surplus. The body is pretty amazing.

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This is an extremely ignorant comment. In what other system would you ever say, "the inputs are irrelevant provided you supply enough volume"? Diet absolutely matters tremendously. We just don't have a good understanding of how individual variability and gut microbiomes affect one's optimal diet. But we can all universally agree that humans need to avoid sugar, eat little to no processed food, and eat less in general.

Eating less is not good advice if you want to build muscle. Frail elderly people often don't eat enough, or lack fiber, for example because their teeth hurt. Appetite also declines with age.

>Frail elderly people often don't eat enough, or lack fiber, for example because their teeth hurt. Appetite also declines with age.

You're strongly implying causation here. I'm unaware of any serious body of research that indicates elderly people are getting frailer because of a decrease in appetite.

I did not mean to imply that, I just wanted to make the point that eating less is not always good advice, in particular in the age bracket that suffers from age related muscle loss.

You're right, and there's always exceptions to the rule. Eg some of those with life threatening injuries probably need processed food in the interim. But the general point stands which is that human longevity had been correlated with caloric restriction. Even in Ben Franklin's wit and wisdom, he remarks that to preserve one's life, one should eat less. This observation is timeless

Human longevity has also been correlated with many other things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone

I don't think caloric restriction has been shown to increase lifespan in humans. It works very well in the mouse model, but iirc monkeys don't benefit (as much?).

Individual variability and gut microbione are both pseudoscience. That's ignorance right there. If you want to science please use Cochrane Collab.

I heard sugar is good for the brain. Is that incorrect?

Diet is extremely important on these matters, where did you get the idea it wasn't?

Apparently not because it didn't play a big role in the outcome. Did you read the article?

> A decline in physical activity, common among older people, is only one reason sarcopenia happens. Other contributing factors include hormonal changes, chronic illness, body-wide inflammation and poor nutrition.

Poor nutrition is mentioned.

It's wasn't a major cause of muscle loss.

I don't understand how you are inferring the weight of each thing in a list. In fact, that quote directly contradicts you.

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