Life expectancy can increase up to 10 years by shifting towards healthier diets | Hacker News Reader

Life expectancy can increase up to 10 years by shifting towards healthier diets

nature.com

40 pointspieter_mj33 comments

After traditional diets either failed or provided only temporary success, I've discovered a personalized approach that combines elements from various diets. This allows me to handle the rules of each individual diet more flexibly. My strategy includes:

• Eat more protein. (low carb)

• Eat less. (calories restriction)

• Skip breakfast. (intermediate fasting)

Pick two of these rules every day.

I have to say I’ve felt way better on a lower protein, higher carb/fiber diet.

Another thing that improved my wellbeing is that I started eating more and making sure I exercise.

And lastly, the third thing that has helped me is that I make sure to not skip breakfast. Need to break the fast and get some glucose for my brain.

Not refuting your experience, just saying that nutrition is weird and seems to be highly personal.

I got downvoted heavily last time I mentioned this on HN, but I have done 90 days on fresh vegetable juice several times in my life, and it feels amazing. I've gotten several 60+ year old people to try it, including my father, and all achieve great weight loss (30-45 lbs). One 63 year old male even had blood work done before and after, and even though he lived on only vegetable and fruit juice for 90 days, basically ALL his metrics improved. Even glucose and A1C improved, which shocked his doctor since he was living on basically only sugar for 90 days.

You most likely got downvoted because you are advocating for a long-term juice cleanse, which is widely regarded as unhealthy and potentially dangerous [0]. The benefits you claim are not scientifically supported, and the lack of protein almost certainly means that most of the weight loss your unfortunate companions experienced was muscle loss. I would discourage anyone reading this comment chain from following the advice above for any meaningful period of time.

0: https://www.livescience.com/48887-juice-cleanse-dangers.html

Think about how foolish you'd have to be to think a fat guy lost 45 lbs of muscle in 90 days lol.

Definitely, keep listening to the nonsense 'science' that has caused the unhealthiest population in the history of the world. Don't forget to lay off the eggs and salt!

I find it incredibly fascinating.

I tried something similar to fix my stomach / immune system health ailments but I gained weight and I was hungry all the time. This was after being 95% vegetarian for ~10 years (which I blame for my progressively worse issues). Ultimately I went carnivore and I've been carnivore for 1.5 year, my weight went down to the one I had when I was 20, I eat once a day and I'm less tired after sleeping too little.

I also know that people who copied the diet of Freelee (the banana girl) had horrible results all around.

I find it hard to believe that people would lie about their experience (what would they gain from it?). I wonder if there is some genetic trait which predisposes towards needing a drastically different diet to achieve good results.

Well, there is a big difference between eating bananas or whatever else, and drinking a gallon or more of juice a day. It's very hard for most people to eat 10-12 lbs of vegetables a day, but juice them and drinking the 7-8 lbs of juice isn't that hard.

Interesting although not entirely surprising results.

Some aspects of the results were hard for me to interpret though. Although some risk seemed to increase in a dose dependent way, some didn't. For example, with refined grains once you got out of the lowest quintile, your risk went up but it didn't seem to be dose dependent. So the gains were in eliminating refined grains or not? Sugar consumption though was different: there seemed to be gains to any reduction in sugar. I wonder if those kinds of nonlinearities would replicate or not.

I believe it, but there will always be that problem where a head of lettuce was $8 and an entire Big Mac combo was $12.

. No one really knows what healthy food is but i think ppl usually mean not heavily processed factory food. you can eat healthy for cheap

I think no one knows what healthy food really is because basically anything can be labeled as "healthy" or "natural" but most of it is highly processed. "Organics" which has the emotional connection of being "healthier" is always more expensive, but you can find that same organic food at a farmers market for a much less price.

I don't think it's possible to really eat healthy anymore, unless you are growing it, or slaughtering it yourself, or you have some closer understanding/connection to its source, such as a local farm & butcher, farmers market, etc.

Eat like your grandparents and weight yourself regularly to adjust quantities. Doing that will already put you in the top 5% easily.

It's really not that hard to eat healthy, you just have to avoid 9 out of 10 aisles.

It might be too late for this idea. It might need to be great grandparents by now.

The grandmother I knew was diabetic after a lifetime of soda and Mars bars. The grandfather I knew was almost overweight (before cancer) and had several heart attacks in his lifetime.

It only gets harder and harder to avoid processed junk, and those "deals" where I'm not sure the meat is even meat anymore.

But McDonald's also has salads?

During the pandemic they stopped making salads and haven't started making them again (at least in Texas).

Depending on the dressing they are no 'win' at all.

5lb bag of yellow potatoes $4. 1lb of ground beef $5. 8 buns <$1.50. ketchup, mustard will last months. That's 4 quarter pounders for $10 with many servings of fries. Add lettuce and onions if you want, another <$3 total.

Eat more protein to lose weight. Avoid seed oils and oxalic acid containing foods for health.

The article says "The largest gains are obtained from consuming more whole grains, nuts and fruits and less sugar-sweetened beverages and processed meats."

I really don't think the biggest problem for someone drinking 2L of coke a day, or living mostly on ham sandwiches and hot dogs, is seed oils or oxalic acid.

Also vegetarian/vegan diets are generally associated with better health outcomes, favourable BMI and lower all-cause mortality in meta studies.

I thought all those studies have ppl eating processed meat along with industrial junk food. Its hard to eat vegetarian food like that.

Is it just purely correlation ?

Most vegetarians I know eat tons of heavily processed frankenfoods meant to mimick popular non-vegetarian foods. They also tend to eat lots of sugar and simple grains. The biggest exception has been my Indian coworkers, who tend to either make or source vegetarian meals that respect that vegetable is the root word in vegetarian.

Correlation doesn't imply causation.

People picking a vegetarian diet (which has been the mainstream healthy option for the last 50 years) are probably more health conscious than someone downing 5 mcdonalds per day.

French fries, donuts, and other deep fried or packaged and highly processed foods are often called “carbs” but most of the calories are from high PUFA seed oils, not carbs.

I do think high PUFA seed oils are often an issue there… they cause damage to the liver, and mitochondria, such that people feel worse, and have less energy- which in turn promotes both inactivity, and overeating. There is lots of good data on various species of lab animals getting NAFLD and metabolic diseases when swapping out MUFA and SFA for PUFA.

> Oxalic acid is an organic compound found in many plants, including leafy greens, vegetables, fruits, cocoa, nuts, and seeds

Seems to contradict directly with the article

Coincidentally, I was watching a video on this topic last night. I'm only 20 minutes in, though. https://youtu.be/J35ENSaXyGU

I should add that in watching because oxalates recently pierced my attention, and I consume lots of spinach and nuts. I'm watching this video for possible tips on mitigation, but I don't yet know the individuals who are speaking well enough to trust them as info sources.

I would definitely not trust someone pushing for the carnivore diet as a source of truth. It's very likely that, like many things, the average person doesn't have to worry about oxalates.

I'd like to counter your carnivore-biased doctor with a doctor with a wfpb-biased approach covering the same topic https://nutritionfacts.org/video/oxalates-in-spinach-and-kid...

Thanks! I'm an omnivore, and I'm just beginning to research this oxalates thing.

I wanted to point it out because it seems like that youtuber you shared is a keto influencer with an anti-vegan agenda, pushing for a carnivore diet (his words). I would not take his words as gospel.

Related: The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinar...

1 meal per day six times a week.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RuOvn4UqznU

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