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Comment by lormayna | Hacker News Reader

As usual correlation don't imply causation. My uncle was a professional national level runner, he was the healtier person that I know: he ran several kilometers every day, ate correctly, no drinking, no smoking, sleep at least 8 hours/day, etc. He died from cardiovascular problems.

This not means that a correct and healty lifestyle is not going to reduce the risk, but it's not the only factor.

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>My uncle was a professional national level runner

Running long distances regularly isn't healthy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6U728AZnV0

Multiple studies have found a U-shaped curve of CAC scores as a function of regular running distance/intensity:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6543495/

Conclusion

A significantly higher rate of coronary artery calcification existed in long-term marathon, ultramarathon, and extreme runners than in submarathon runners. Marathoners and ultramarathoners also had a higher incidence of calcification, as well as higher average plaque burden, as compared to a standard database. Marathoners and ultramarathoners also had above-average coronary calcium scores as compared to a national database.

Other forms of endurance exercise (swimming, cycling) have similar effects if taken to excess . Sprinting short distances is great, and walking seems to have no upperbound on how much you can safely do of it (the Hadza do it all day and have childlike levels of LDL and minimal CAC).

There is a condition called familial hypercholesterolemia. People who eat normal, balanced diets have LDLs levels in the 1000's (normal is less than 100). You can take a blood sample and watch the fat float to the top like cream in fresh milk.

They often die of cardiovascular disease when young. And it's just a genetic defect.

FH does not seem all that well understood. It runs in my spouse's family, multiple clinical/genetic diagnoses, but no history of cardiovascular disease. Doctors haven't been convinced whether intervening with statins is necessarily justified, especially in the face of any side effects.

My family on the other hand, generally normal bloodwork, normal BMI/fitness levels, and everyone dies of heart disease fairly young. At least it's one way to avoid cancer.

The former captain of the Indian cricket team, Sourav Ganguly, recently suffered a heart attack while he was exercising. He was lucky that he was able to get prompt medical attention and recovered. But he was a fit professional athlete who was used to exercise from a young age and even he suffered from cardiac problems.

I had a heart attack last year whilst swimming and at only 39 despite swimming five times a week and having no obvious underlying issues. It feels profoundly unfair!

Did you ever get any insight from your doctors as to why it might have happened? High cholesterol? Family history? Sorry to hear that.

No I have zero chronic conditions, no auto-immune disorders that might cause issues with clotting, family history and so on. Basically from a root cause perspective it's unexplained.

So sorry to hear that. Did you experience any warning signs before, like mild chest pains, palpitations, or shortness of breath, that day or in the weeks prior? Also, were you pushing yourself on that day compared to other days of your week, or did it just come out of nowhere at an average pace day?

I had chest pain a few days before and was getting over a cold but otherwise no.

Don't forget Shane Warne, he was on a healthy juice diet but still died of heart attack.

I am sorry for your loss. But I am curious what "ate correctly" meant for him. Would you be kind enough to provide some details?

Sad to see you being downvoted like this, but I wanted to know the same thing you asked.

It seems people are really sure that exercising a lot and not eating meat or whatever is the healthiest thing one can do, for weight and health reasons... But evidence says the complete opposite, most of the time.

People are so fascinated about the idea that exercise and certain foods are so good, that they don't even bother to check the studies and the evidence, they just know it's true for some reason. It doesn't matter that everyone you know is going to a gym or running (a million more times than, say, 50 years ago) and yet the populations are only getting more obese by the minute. Or how athletes are dying young and have many health issues everywhere... Or that indigenous people don't even hunt or do nothing at all for a week (between each hunting trip), and yet they are so thin and don't have cancer.

In other words, no one really knows yet if running several kilometers every day is good for you, or if it's actually killing you. And no one knows yet what exactly is "to eat correctly", though I'm pretty sure all the stuff we've read in those paid studies made in the last 100 years are just absolute garbage.

> And no one knows yet what exactly is "to eat correctly"

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you...

Yeah, thanks for that link. That's exactly the kind of garbage I was talking about.

They just take information out of (food-industry-sponsored) horrible studies, or just repeat the same old stuff they've been repeating since those first studies were published. That page even has the obligatory "stay active" in a "what to eat" recommendation. Five-star stuff.

No wonder we've all become obese since these studies and articles started to pop up...

> They just take information out of (food-industry-sponsored) horrible studies

Any proof?

> or just repeat the same old stuff they've been repeating since those first studies were published

No. They used to tell that milk was necessary for the health, but now they tell a different story based on actual independent research.

People seem to hate it when you point things out like this. Had a guy in another thread become livid when I said I don't eat modern foods. You pretty much can't trust any nutritional study, and so as far as I'm concerned, eating like an antemodern hunter gatherer is as good as anything else.

I'm not sure what young athletes could do to be healthier; I imagine most of their issues are environmental. I personally err on the side of preindustrial when any question of lifestyle comes up, but who knows.

No excess, no junk food, very few red meat (couple of day at week) and processed food, lot of fish and healty fat, no alchool.

I am very thankful for your response. I wouldn't have guessed.

Definition of "junk food" also varies a lot. For example, many people have no idea that white bread has a higher glycemic index than sugar itself. So except for the very limited nutritional value of it, it's actually worse than just eating spoons full of sugar. So it passes the definition of "junk food", because hey it's not processed, and it's done in a bakery, traditional right? (not saying it's your case - in general) even though it's as junkier as it gets.

It's possible some people do actually eat healthy and still get very unlucky. But I bet a lot of what many consider healthy isn't. Also, we don't know what we don't know. People didn't know about lead poisoning was a problem until they did. I wonder how many unhealhty stuff we do/consume that passes totally invisible in front of our eyes. The type of things future generations will look back and say "no wonder those people were dying so young of cardiovascular diseases and cancer they were doing X! And get this, they even thought it was healthy/they didn't even know about it!"

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