Chronic inflammation may be a "disease of affluence" | Hacker News Reader

Chronic inflammation may be a "disease of affluence"

bigthink.com

51 pointsPaulHoule49 comments

Coincidentally I recently started changing my diet to combat inflammation from my bad habits and covid recently. I've found that a combo of 16-8 intermittent fasting, no or very low sugar/processed food/high GI food intake, higher amounts of "clean" proteins, low red meat, and moderate exercise has massively improved my life. The weight loss is also surprisingly good despite being a side goal. I take and eat foods containing magnesium and potassium too but am unsure if that has helped.

Same here, but I opted for the carnivore diet.

Interesting but you're going in the exact wrong direction. "There's evidence that diets high in red meat and processed meats may contribute to inflammation."

Is that true for unprocessed meats like steak, too? Stats predominantly reflecting a diet consisting of pizza, sandwiches, burgers (chased down with soda and/or beer) are irrelevant, if we’re talking about carnivore.

I know. It may well be so, but I'm willing to try it because I don't find "may contribute" to be a strong deterrent, even supposing it's not wrong. There are many people with various inflammations that have found the carnivore diet to be very effective, (e.g., see Mikhaila Peterson). It may be that red meat is bad, or not entirely healthy, and the diet could still work because it's a very extreme keto and elimination diet. Elimination diets are known to work, see the Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) diet. Leaving out all processed food or some vegetables could mean excluding some unknown allergenic or noxious substance to which some of us may be too sensitive to. There's also an interesting argument about it being the diet we evolved with for millions of years.

And yet you can find thousand of videos online of people who healed their lifelong health issues on carnivore eating beef and all of their inflamation is gone, so doing a reality check would be wise first.

I wanted to avoid that much red meat since it also caused problems for me, but not as obviously, so I didn't go with this. I still eat vegetables and other things, and avoid red meats about 90% of my meals, so probably not the same.

Different things work for different people though, so this thing that I came up with may only work well enough for me but not for others, and carnivore for others.

what kind of improvements?

Hey. Reposting my other comment here since the reply is similar:

I can feel connective tissues and other pains that have been attributed to it by medical folk. It got pretty bad. Stress, anxiety, and other things also contribute. I noticed that it would be worse shortly after consuming high raw sugar foods or fatty/carby things like pizza, so I changed the diet over time to see what helped and didn't and ended up with this. The changes I made caused these issues to slowly decrease and now pretty much entirely gone away.

So, very minimal or no body pains in general where it used to be a lot worse. Sleep is improved, and my energy levels are more stable. I've also noticed that I don't get hungry as often, and when I do it doesn't cause mood issues like it used to. I used to be quite grumpy if I hadn't eaten in a while.

The weight loss may be the primary cause of reduced chronic inflammation, more so than any particular food choice.

Diet and lifestyle ( 'brand' name is probably not good when it's your food.....)

That's possible yeah. I worked this out over a longer period of time, testing adding/removing things and intentionally eating "trigger" foods to see if it actually causes issues or was just a temp problem or some sort of mental trick.

How are you measuring inflammation levels?

I can feel connective tissues and other pains that have been attributed to it by medical folk. It got pretty bad. Stress, anxiety, and other things also contribute. I noticed that it would be worse shortly after consuming high raw sugar foods or fatty/carby things like pizza, so I changed the diet over time to see what helped and didn't and ended up with this. Red meat also contributed but not as obviously/responsively. The changes I made caused these issues to slowly decrease and now pretty much entirely gone away.

What are examples of clean proteins?

Boneless-skinless chicken breast, 97/3 ground turkey, white fish, low fat/low sugar greek yogurt and other similar dairy products like Skyr.

Meat, fish and dairy have higher levels of dioxins.

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/where-does-the-arsenic-in-c...

What’s the definition of a clean protein. Do any plant proteins qualify?

Can't +1 enough. The single best thing I've done in my entire life, for my emotional and physical health was cutting sugar and moving to IF. The pain and inflammation in my lower back serves as a stark reminder of why cheat days are not worth it. Cutting gluten also removed a huge, huge amount of inflammation for me.

Falling asleep, staying asleep, are improved. Chronic pain from inflammation is reduced, mobility increased. I've throw in some regular exercise and my body feels better at 30-something than it did ten years prior.

And my god, my skin. Nowadays if I cheat and have something sugar bomby, I can feel my face and nose get greasy an hour later. My skin and oil type are not compatible with, at the very least, processed sugar.

You mention cheat days. I cheated a bit on the weekend with a few not-terrible but also not-great things and it's had a disproportionately negative impact. Also, I forgot to mention sleep playing a big role too. I stayed up way too late and paid for it today. Also had half of a no-sugar no-alcohol drink but the gas for whatever reason really hung around for a while. Back to straight water it is. It's surprising how quickly sugar takes effect.

Seems like there is a bit of a buffer but I blew through it

The older I get, the more sidecars tack onto my pods and I'm now having to prune them with more effort

The other thing correlates with Western affluence is our diet that’s much heavier in animal products. The Standard American Diet: SAD.

The diet of the Blue Zones where people live longest are mostly plant-based.

Do you believe that meat consumption is the prime causal factor?

The link between animal protein was investigated in some detail in the China Study. Also in the documentary Forks Over Knives. Evidence found that there were “diseases of the west” that correlated with the western diet. Since then, the Cleveland Clinic has used plant-based diets to reverse heart disease successfully. Other programs use it reverse heart disease.

The book How Not to Die covers many of the top killer diseases in the US and what food are best and worst to eat to avoid those fates based on reviews of scientific literature. The trend thoughtout is that plant-based diets fare best. Not surprising that this correlates with Blue Zone diets.

The book Fiber Fueled looks the science of gut health and what foods are best for gut health. The answer: a variety of plant foods.

As a study size of one, I’ve personally been able to recover quickly enough to do 6 26.2+ mile runs in six months in my forties. I think that would difficult and injury prone on a high-inflammation diet.

Also a distance runner (half and full marathons) in my 40s. I would absolutely say that dropping meat and dairy from my diet (a few months ago) has been beneficial to my running performance. Anecdotal, of course, but I know that you and I are not the only ones.

Also, yes, all of those things you cited, and others. In particular the existence of The Esselstyn Heart Disease Program [1], founded by Dr Esselstyn of Forks Over Knives fame, at the world's top heart hospital, is noteworthy.

[1] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/departments/wellness/integrat...

Do any of these books reference studies that provide causation for the observations? If not, it’s hard to judge how reliable these are. Maybe more than “I saw my boy frank go vegan and lose weight” but even then…I intimately know frank and can be reasonably sure the diet helped him lose weight. Can’t say the same for all these observational studies.

This has always been a major concern for me with a lot of studies. People seem ok with it and I’ve never understood why. It’s like trying to understand a bug by looking at the broader logs / data instead of reading the code (which is absolutely a useful tool, though the more complicated the code - like with the human body - the less useful it is. And I certainly wouldn’t be advising any fixes based off of it). And far too often reading the code tells a wildly different story.

See for yourself. Plug your favorite disease that’s killed a relative into https://nutritionfacts.org/ and find related scientific nutrition studies explained. It’s associated with the doctor who wrote How Not to Die. I believe, yes, sometimes the specific nutrients at play are understood. Take some toxins and heavy metals for example. Some accumulate in animals and travel up the food chain. So it’s no surprise there are more toxins and heavy metals that have accumulated in bigger fish. Since big beans don’t eat small beans, there’s not bio-accumulation there.

Even the USDA in trying to promote fish advices choosing fish that are “lower in mercury”. Or you could not eat fish and skip a major source of mecury exposure.

That is not a scientific source which shows causality. It is a propaganda site created to promote a particular lifestyle.

Can you provide an example from the site that has a flawed analysis of scientific literature?

Wasn’t there something linked on HN the other day that pointed out what nonsense the Blue Zones are?

No validate scientific evidence, blue zones are areas with bad record keeping and no birth certificates etc…

One of the places with higher longevity has good record keeping and birth certificates: Loma Linda, California. What’s different about this city? A lot Seventh Day Adventists who adhere to vegetarianism live there… and live about 10 years longer than average.

There are a lot of other things different about the 7DAs besides vegetarianism that could be more causal.

Knowing nothing about their practices I'd wager a guess that having tightly knit communities plays a big part in their elderly well being.

Yes: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/09/28/places-c...

https://web.archive.org/web/20230928151239/https://www.econo...

Mostly plant-based? This is kind of wishful thinking. Okinawa, for instance, eats plenty of fish. The Greeks and the Italians eat plenty of fish, meat and cheese.

The poorest countries have the greatest percentage of plant-based food and, no surprise, they also have the shortest lifespans. The reality is that the phrase "plant-based" is now a buzzword replacement for "vegetarian" and it has more political meaning than any real connection to health or nutrition. Hostess Twinkees, Hohos, Ring Dings, etc. are all very good examples of plant-based food.

The Okinawa diet commonly touted for longevity was primarily sweet potato, and only 1% fish.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okinawa_diet

Unfortunately, I now have to have doubts about any Japanese longevity associations after many centenarians were found to have been secretly dead. Families were collecting the death benefits and pretending the person was still alive.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/10/japenese-cente...

So the secret to longevity really is generous social benefits ... and not checking too carefully if the beneficiary is still alive.

> The poorest countries have the greatest percentage of plant-based food and, no surprise, they also have the shortest lifespans.

Are you suggesting it's because of plants and not because they're poor?

Instead of making ecological comparisons, you should ask the question of what the science shows within one population, like in prospective cohort studies. Does increased vegetable consumption correlate with better or worse health outcomes?

> Hostess Twinkees, Hohos, Ring Dings, etc. are all very good examples of plant-based food.

Sure, but that's not what people are talking about when they refer to plants in the context of health and nutrition.

>Are you suggesting it's because of plants and not because they're poor?

I believe they are suggesting that the diet being plant-based is not a guarantee of health or a long life-span, contrary to what the parent comment implied.

And that nutritious and healthy diet is not necessarily plant-based.

>> Hostess Twinkees, Hohos, Ring Dings, etc. are all very good examples of plant-based food.

>Sure, but that's not what people are talking about when they refer to plants in the context of health and nutrition.

Citation needed.

Specifically, this definition[0] disagrees with your opinion, allowing "higly processed foods" and "refined sweeteners" in a plant-based diet (necessittating a newly-invented acronym WFPB[1], meaning "whole-food plant-based"). They helpfully included a lollipop pictogram to get the point across.

"Plant-based" is a useless noise-word that should not be used at all, especially when you do have something concrete in mind. And if you don't, it's better not to speak, and figure out what you mean first.

We already have words like vegetarian and vegan that, while not scientifically precise, allow for a decent amount of understanding of what a person eats when they say they follow a vegetarian or a vegan diet.

Plant-based communicates no such thing. All "plant-based" diet definitions seem to generally involve eating less meat, without specifying less than what. The phrase "plant based" is as vapid as "more healthy" when provided without further elaboration.

This[2] defintion of "plant-based", for example, puts Mediterranean diet as an example; this effectively prescribes eating fish and poultry[3]. The same source[3] says the Japenese diet is similar (and is, therefore, also plant-based). The parent comment juxtaposed these two diets to "plant-based" ones, because their best guess as to what "plant-based" means did not include "heavy on poultry and fish".

Nobody seems to be able to say what exactly isn't a plant-based diet. Example [4]:

>Whole30, a popular diet and lifestyle plan, doesn’t usually qualify. “The Whole30 diet traditionally is heavier on animal proteins, though it is possible to follow this diet in a plant-based way,” Manaker says.

I'm guessing that subsisting exclusively on beef steak is not a plant-based diet, but perhaps, too, that can be followed in a plant-based way somehow.

When a diet described as plant-based requires you to "enjoy" fish and poultry weekly, we are firmly in the territory outlined in Orwell's brilliant essay "Politics and the English language"[5], which correctly observed (and predicted) the proliferation of meaningless buzz-words like "plant-based" (and corresponding acronyms), as well as the subsequent atrophy of thought.

"I am trying to less meat than I used to" has an unambiguous meaning.

"I am switching to a plant-based diet" has no meaning, because it communicates precisely zero information.

Please avoid using words and phrases that don't mean anything. For Orwell's sake, if not for ours.

[0] https://www.forksoverknives.com/how-tos/plant-based-primer-b...

[1] https://www.doctorsfornutrition.org/general-public/what-is-w...

[2] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-is-a-plant-based-di...

[3] https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h...

[4] https://www.everydayhealth.com/diet-nutrition/plant-based-di...

[5] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

Seed oils, Fillers, Leaviners, texturisers, emulsifiers.....poison.

Blue zones are a myth. Once you take in account their shitty birth certificiates (faked and/or missing) it collapses like a house of cards.

Where can one find a source for this claim ? I only read that article about Okinawa.

I find it hard to believe that so many people have an uncertainty of 5-10 years on their birth date (or lie about it) that it skews the statistics.

I don’t buy it, this author is cherry picking from superficial observations.

Google has many articles, but this one lays out the different hypotheses in a nonbiased way https://www.vox.com/unexplainable/23404983/food-allergy-alle...

It seems like the hygiene hypothesis is true... I wonder how long before patches that replace allergy shots exist to fix us :)

Look up autoimmune protocol diet if you want to cut inflammation.

Me along with the number of people I’ve since met, played around with what was OK to eat and not OK to eat to get inflammation under control only to eventually realize I was reinventing the same diet as AIP.

Gout was historically known as "the disease of kings" or "rich man's disease".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gout

What causes inflammation? https://wiki.cosmicdeathfungus.com/wiki/Main_Page

> research [] conducted in the Philippines and Ecuador

These are tropical countries where coconuts are an evolutionary-appropriate part of the food supply. Coconut oil is mostly saturated, and is stable at human temperature. Western countries switched to polyunsaturated "vegetable oil" as a dietary staple.

Sometime in the 1940's the paint industry figured out how to make their paints and stains from petroleum distillates. Originally the paint industry used linseed oil and soybean oil for most of their products. The unsaturated components of polyunsaturated seed oils combine spontaneously with the oxygen in the air to form a hard film [0].

The paint industry essentially said, "farmers, thanks for your products all these years, best of luck in your future endeavors." The seed oil conglomerates [1] (ADM, et al) were screwed. Then they realized they could just rebrand their products as "vegetable oil". Ancel Keys was hired to convince people of the hazard of saturated fats...

Omega-6 degrades to prosteglandins [2], which are molecules of stress and inflammation [3]. Omega-3's are more unstable than Omega-6 oils. IMHO, the ω-3 / ω-6 ratio doesn't really matter - the most important thing to get inflammation under control is to limit "vegetable oil" intake.

Olive Oil's okay, if it's genuine. Unfiltered olive oil is even better. But wikipedia says the American Heart Association still recommends getting your daily dose of inflammation precursors [4]. Not impressed.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drying_oil

[1] https://www.imarcgroup.com/vegetable-oil-manufacturers

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostaglandin

[3] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0334211100

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-6_fatty_acid#Health_effe...

"Evolutionarily appropriate food" doesn't mean anything because it doesn't answer the question of whether something is correlated with better or worse health outcomes when put to the test. Just surviving into reproductive age isn't the standard we have for ourselves. We want to live into old age.

Instead of using the narratives in your post to reach a conclusion, your question should be: what does the science show on unsaturated fats and vegetable oils? What is the direction of effect on our health?

So far it seems that vegetable oils like canola oil are neutral at worst and health-promoting at best. Here's a review of the metaanalyses on the topic: https://www.the-nutrivore.com/post/a-comprehensive-rebuttal-...

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