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Comment by adammarples | Hacker News Reader

I think the article makes a valid point: stop worrying about 90% of the other stuff and focus on the thing that will almost certainly kill you - heart disease - for which there are easy diagnostic and preventative measures. I think they're arguing for a better allocation of resources, if anything.

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Isn't the global population like 50% obese? What is your actual risk of dying from it if you are relatively in shape and in your 40s?

The most current and up-to-date risk calculator for heart disease risk is the PREVENT score.

https://professional.heart.org/en/guidelines-and-statements/...

Thanks for posting this. I was able to plug in all the required values from my last checkup and blood work. Even EGFR was there, I've never paid attention to that before.

I learned about it on the Barbell Medicine podcast! They had an episode dedicated to it.

Highly recommended to search their episodes for anything about health or fitness you've been curious about.

Nice, I just subscribed to their podcast. I'm an adherent to the Starting Strength / Mark Rippetoe school of thought but always looking to learn more.

The bar for obesity is lower than a lot of people think. I have known many people who look good, have decent bodies, and are obese. Your fat distribution can be very misleading. Some people happen to hold fat very well.

It depends. Overall, lowest all-cause death indexed on BMI seems to be around 27 plus or minus [0]. Interestingly, for all subjects (not just healthy non-smokers), BMI 30-32 isn't really associated with a dramatic increase in all cause mortality.

Obviously life is more complicated than just one measure. I figure this is just another data point saying BMI is useful for population studies and not great for individual diagnosis.

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10321632/

We don't know how to treat obesity 100% though

GLP-1s are remarkably effective.

Absolutely true, but it seems there is a lot of reluctancy in prescribing them

I'm not sure that's true? Insurance is hesitant to cover their expense for less extreme cases, and they're very expensive. But I haven't heard of prescribing being a real bottleneck. They're not controlled substances and the side effect profile is pretty mild (other than price).

Yep because the system around you wants you to consume to obesity.

Are you joking? We do know how to treat eating disorders. Same as we know how to treat opioid addiction or alcoholism.

No I'm not, as far as I'm aware "diet" is one of the "drugs" with highest failure rate ever

Yes, and that's why we have eliminated addiction.

Heart disease is a big one, but so is cancer.

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