Comment by eebynight | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eebynight | Hacker News Reader

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Not trying to be nitpicky but urine sticks are notoriously unreliable:

False-positive when you are first starting because you are not well adapted to utilizing ketones and urinate out most of the BHB.

False-negative when you are well adapted because usable fuel will not be wasted in urine.

It is generally accepted that the only foolproof way to truly know if you are in ketosis is to do a blood BHB measurement.

Other than that, I would only comment that it seems there are certain phenotypes that have much more success with low carb diets and vice versa with high carb diets. I don't think it is as easy as dismissing it because you had a poor experience.

Also, not particularly a fan of many of the observational nonsense coming out of both camps (low carb vs plant based) over the last few years. There was a HN article posted a while back but we really have a legitimacy problem in nutritional science right now. P-value hacking and nonsense correlation is just far too common and then most never read the study to get the true story behind the results.

Finally, this is anecdotal but I have known people whose libidos have dropped on low carb diets and also others who lost libido when they went most vegan (whole food, plant based). This supports the idea:

"Figure out what works for you and ignore the rest."

Crazy concept...

I agree with most of what you said. Yes sticks are unreliable, but I know my way around food and know how to keep my daily intake of carbs to be <40-50gr/day and sticks were just another easy to get data point to confirm what I was doing, but yes, it is anecdotal experience.

And yes, food research is very problematic. Some reasons are valid, for example we will probably never have randomized double blind placebo control study on various food intake patterns which lasts years or decades because it would cost too much and is very hard to do. But we can draw at least some conclusions based on the weight of evidence that we have. My only "problem", setting anecdotes aside, is that people jump on latest trends and make a cult out of it, when there are not even low quality observational studies to support what they claim. For example lately carnivore diet pops up too often with magical claims.

There are differences between people, and some will thrive on some diets where others would be miserable. But that is why we need to find the biggest common ground for all of us first then optimise on differences. Cut all the fluff and pointless optimisations in the beginning, first stick to the most basic things : eat real food, move moderately, sleep well, don't drink alcohol or at least not too often or daily, try to be less reactive (less stressful), do it for a few months and then try to optimise for your ticket in the gene lottery.

The carnivore diet is definitely at the nearly pure anecdote stage right now haha

Let's not forget most diet trends start at that point until someone decides to the take the anecdotes seriously and start researching it more.

I agree with your conclusions about interpreting research and find that weighing the evidence combined with some well defined n=1 trials on yourself can do wonders.

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