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Comment by oxag3n | Hacker News Reader

Do your own research, it's not that hard:

* Select a subset of diets that might fit your lifestyle.

* Make a list of categories you consume: refined sugars, all kinds of fats, gluten, dairy.

* Look for published papers on diets and categories.

I did a few dramatic changes throughout my life based on researches I did, not the hype. The first one was refined sugars for me and my kids - they didn't have a single cavity in baby and now permanent teeth. Pediatric dentist actually it's impressive, but little sugar here and there wouldn't harm with proper hygiene. One thing I learned about medical doctors is that they are not scientists, and unless they follow a protocol to diagnose and treat you, their opinion is often B.S. For adult, removing refined sugars reduced body fat percentage over time, but what's most important - lipid panel came to normal in about a year.

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To add another data point: I love sweet things and eat a lot of desserts and sugar. I'm in my late 30s, and I've never had a cavity or weight issues. My BMI is around 21.

I'm not recommending sugar; my point is that anecdotes mean very little for this type of general diet advice.

I have a family member with no cavities despite loving sweets. His dentist told he has extra thick enamel.

I wasn't that lucky and pure oral hygiene standards in eastern Europe didn't help as well. Had half teeth with fillings by age of 20. However, after eliminating sugars, no new cavities in unaffected teeth, just had to replace existing fillings and crown in 10 years.

How strict was your elimination of sugar? Did you find a gradual trend of your lipid profile over the course of a year, or was it more sudden?

I had to cut it all at once - i.e. if added sugars is > 0 on the label, I avoided it. I still was consuming naturally occurring sugars from fruits and other produce.

Hard to tell if it was gradual or not, I had one panel done 3 months later and it showed that all values are within acceptable range now, but very close to thresholds, and ~10 months later all values were just in the middle between min/max where applicable.

I have IBS, and what I did was literally that I kept a list of foods and symptoms they cause me.

Turns out, carbohydrate-rich foods cause me massive issues, too much protein causes me some issues. Saturated fat is the least damaging to my gut health, followed my monounsaturated fats. Polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates are the devil I have to avoid, no questions asked.

Recently I was diagnosed with autoimmune and had to follow AOP diet.

It was very promising in the exclusion phase - cutting gluten and dairy eliminated all the symptoms for 3 months. Per protocol I also excluded other things like nightshades, nuts/seeds, grains. But after 3 months, while adding things back, even in small amounts, one by one, got all the symptoms back, being more severe, and after excluding things again, symptoms are not going away completely. I think that our body is a very complex system, distributed in some sense, with delayed and cascade effects that are really hard to "debug".

It's fairly basic nutrition education that cutting out or reducing refined sugar intake will reduce cavities and reduce body fat. It's all about the amount you consume them in amongst the rest of your diet.

It's not new evidence, science or research that says you should reduce your refined sugar intake.

I agree it's not new and known for decades.

But I see a significant fraction my friends, family and students in university to have no clue. I recently worked with a student who shared his struggle with extra weight and asked about my gym habits. To his surprise I can't exercise except daily walk and I told that eliminating refined sugars is low hanging fruit. The student was surprised (early 20s) and didn't know how to tell if yogurt in cafeteria had added sugars.

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