Why do top achievers drink Diet Coke?

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7 points·n-e-w··7 comments

This thread is pretty interesting.

I’ve had a non-trivial “addiction” to Diet Coke in various times of my life. MDs and Neuroscientists please weigh in! When I put my Bayesian hat on, I think this claim falls over (lots of people in general drink Diet Coke so the background numbers are high and people are likely to self-select as being “more intelligent” etc etc)

Im thinking correlation vs causation. Fad diets are common among eccentrics otherwise. I drink diet coke occasionally and here I am. Plus, aspartame has only been around since the 50's or so. Over achievers arent new. Right place, right time, right parents.

Might as well ask why do top achievers drink coffee and know sugar is very unhealthy…

There's an interesting comment in the tweets that links to an article claiming high levels of uric acid in the blood of high achievers. The article is about the consequent prevalence of gout in that demographic.

Less well known is uric acid's effect on hypertension -- which would also perhaps (anecdotally) explain likely elevated levels of heart attack and stroke in that same demographic.

All terribly confounded, though. Hard to unravel chickens from eggs, lifestyle factors etc.

I didn't realize black coffee naturally had sugar in it. How interesting!

If you believe that copying what “top achievers” do will also make you a “top achiever” then I have some bad news for you.

First off, they don’t.

Secondly, there just aren’t enough top achievers around to make any statistically significant observations about them.

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