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Comment by mikedilger | Hacker News Reader

> The 8-week treatment program included diet, sleep, exercise and relaxation guidance, and supplemental probiotics and phytonutrients. The control group received no intervention.

Far too many variables to change at once. Do they have such little idea of which one of these variables matters that they had to bunch them into giant groups? My guess is they did everything they felt might help slow aging... which isn't good science.

My personal theory (don't take science advice from a non-scientist, this is my crazy idea) is that the start codon, being coded by methionine, if methionine is restricted all cellular activity will slow down in equal proportion and therefore aging will slow down. Vegans get low methionine as it's highest in cheese and fish and eggs, and we know vegans live longer. Could actually be explained by just one variable.

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> we know vegans live longer

No we don't. There is no bonafide evidence of this.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28040519/

"Following extensive adjustment for potential confounding factors there was no significant difference in all-cause mortality for vegetarians versus non-vegetarians [HR=1.16 (95% CI 0.93-1.45)]. There was also no significant difference in mortality risk between pesco-vegetarians [HR=0.79 (95% CI 0.59-1.06)] or semi-vegetarians [HR=1.12 (95% CI 0.96-1.31)] versus regular meat eaters. We found no evidence that following a vegetarian diet, semi-vegetarian diet or a pesco-vegetarian diet has an independent protective effect on all-cause mortality. "

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4691673/

"United Kingdom–based vegetarians and comparable nonvegetarians have similar all-cause mortality."

I could provide many other studies as well.

You could then likely counter with many studies that suggest the opposite, which would mean that there is no conclusive, consistent evidence.

This seems to only be referring to vegetarians. Are they lumping in vegans with vegetarians, or are vegans just not a part of the data?

I see you are getting downvoted, but you're not wrong. It appears those studies do not differentiate between vegans and vegetarians so you have a point.

>Far too many variables to change at once. Do they have such little idea of which one of these variables matters that they had to bunch them into giant groups? My guess is they did everything they felt might help slow aging... which isn't good science.

Sounds like great science to me.

It's the first stage of a binary search / divide and conquer method.

I've read low methionine per se isn't as ideal as an appropriate methionine-glycine balance (googlable if you want), i.e. sure, eat a bit less muscle meat, but focus on eating more skin and bone broth -- the whole animal.

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