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Comment by petargyurov | Hacker News Reader

For a while I've had this idea of making a website that lets users search for a food item (e.g: coffee, wine, turmeric) and they are presented with a count of how many studies show it has positive or negative effects on the body.

Of course automating the parsing of thousands of papers (and ensuring the verdict is correct) is a huge task. And that's without mentioning the reliability of each study...

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https://examine.com/

They have good health effects on nearly everything.

Unfortunately, their content strategy based on truth does not perform very well. More recently they have been picking fights with the pseudoscience crowd and sensationalizing worthless content which can only be a backwards indicator.

I’ve been an Examine.com subscriber for about 1.5 years now. Well worth the money IMO if you’re into some light self-experimentation w.r.t. supplements. I had used it to research supplements that have an effect on blood pressure, and it helped me reduce mine during that period by a huge amount (like 145/90 to 120/70). Now anytime I want to look into a supplement, I pop over. So refreshing vs the usual BS medical blog spam. The linking to study abstracts is the most important part, when combined with human effect matrix.

> I had used it to research supplements that have an effect on blood pressure, and it helped me reduce mine during that period by a huge amount (like 145/90 to 120/70).

That’s a big (and healthy) drop. With high blood pressure being quite common, would you mind sharing what helped (even though I know it may not be the same for everyone and that this is not professional medical advice)?

Sure but ya this isn’t health advice! I did under supervision (in a sense) by my doctor. He originally wanted me to go on proper meds but I asked for a few months to address it on my own and he was astounded by the results.

Big caveat. I also went from doing 1 or 2 bouts of exercise a week to about 4. Exercise makes a huge difference too.

Ok so here’s what worked for me. I took things twice a day (first thing and with dinner).

Omega 3 Olive leaf extract Green coffee bean extract Magnesium Potassium Garlic Hibiscus tea (this was a tea not a pill) Also vitamin D and C (for immune not BP).

The olive leaf / green coffee bean / hibiscus are all well attested (if memory serves) as vasodilators. I think garlic too. The Magnesium and potassium also have an effect.

The Omegas were more for inflammation.

I also tried Apple cider vinegar but had no bad effect when I dropped it. Also started doing turmeric and boron but not related to blood pressure.

I joke with my doctor that to avoid taking that 1 pill I’m now taking like 20 pills. But much prefer this.

While under this regime I also got into much better shape, mostly through diet (cutting out carbs), so for me the supplements were a short term / med term thing while baseline health improved.

Final note. Genetics play a huge role in blood pressure (and have some family history) and of course your stress levels too.

Edit: just remembered, reducing my caffeine intake was also a big part of the story. 2 cups a day is now my max vs 4+ cups.

Incidentally, my dad once met a chemistry Phd on an airplane in Switzerland. They began talking about cholesterol, the guy mentioned that after years of experimentation, he found that olive leaf extract was the best substance he found for mobilizing it. My family has tried it as they do very bad with statins and their side effects, and the results are astounding. It is a very pro metabolic tea

On my other comment, I forgot to note that I phased in the three lifestyle changes. First I started the supplements and that provided most of the drop (down to 130/80 ish). Then I layered on the exercise, reduced caffeine, and change in diet. So most of the drop first came from supplements.

Thanks a lot for sharing the details!

Oh, I have been browsing around and so far I love it. I am waiting for someone to rain on the parade and explain how it's actually a terrible source...

What do you mean by picking fights with the pseudoscience crowd being a backwards indicator? Of all the directions they could go to boost traffic, that seems like a benign one.

Articles such as these are low quality: https://examine.com/nutrition/lemon-water/

Interesting, thanks. I wonder if the "Human Effect Matrix" is manually "calculated" or if they've automated it somehow.

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