Comment by Harj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Harj | Hacker News Reader

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You can check your inflammation levels via a blood test called hs-CRP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-reactive_protein).

I took it and was surprised to learn I was in the high risk range. I tried a vegetarian diet for just under a month, re-tested and I'd dropped into the low risk range (this was the only lifestyle change I made that month). I found that a full vegetarian diet isn't sustainable for me so now I'm trying out only having meat once a day (usually for dinner) and will re-test to see what result that has. I suspect that the absence of meat may have been less important than the increase in vegetables.

The caveat is that hs-CRP isn't a perfect test because your result can be spiked temporarily if e.g. your body is recovering from intense exercise or a cold. That's why I think it's a good test to do more regularly and have longitudinal data for.

I've been spending a bunch of time getting more comprehensive blood tests recently. If you've any questions feel free to ping me (harjeet [dot] taggar [at] gmail).

For a counter-point, I eat an extremely meat heavy diet and have a superb CRP number (.23).

It's more likely about avoiding low quality meats, which unfortunately is what 95% of the meat produced in the US is.

That's a very good point. Quality of meat isn't something that seems to be accounted for in studies linking meat consumption to various diseases/health issues.

Out of curiousity, do you eat a lot of vegetables?

Estimating here but I'd put my breakdown by calorie as:

-45% high quality meat (grassfed, pastured, cage-free depending on species)

-10% low quality meat (traditional supermarket stuff)

-30% green leafy vegetables (read: very low non-dietary-fiber carbs)

-10% fruit or carby veggies (e.g. tubers)

-5% grains (never gluten containing)

So I definitely have other confounding factors that might influence my CRP number: low carbs, very low grains. That said, I arrived at my current diet via 3.5 years of A/B testing what works for me, optimizing for specifically what causes my digestion the least inflammation. I'm very happy with the results.

By low quality meat, do you just mean corn fed?

For ruminants, yes.

But I think "just" might be understating it. Corn-fed cattle do not have the proper stomach ph to naturally protect against bacteria overgrowth in their stomachs (whereas if they consumed solely grass, this is naturally not a problem). As a workaround to the bacteria problem they are force fed antibiotics for their entire lives. Additionally: corn fed cattle yield 30-50% more meat because they are insanely obese. Beef producers have a perverse incentive to keep these animals in confined conditions (read: knee deep in their own shit) so that they don't get too much exercise. When you eat conventionally raised cattle, you're consuming the meat of a crippling infirm animal that lived its life in appalling conditions. It's a bad scene.

Is there any evidence that eating corn-fed as opposed to grass-fed ruminants affects health in any way?

It's not just ruminants; these days even farmed fish are fed corn.

I'm very curious that eating meat only once a day is a compromise for you. How much did you eat before you started thinking about this?

At a minimum twice a day, which I don't think is that unusual for most people e.g a chicken sandwich for lunch and chicken with some kind of side for dinner.

Cutting down to once a day i.e. having a vegetarian lunch, might not sound like much but it's harder than you'd expect. Most restaurant versions of a vegetarian option is a meat dish minus the meat e.g. a sandwich with just lettuce and perhaps one tomato slice. Finding a vegetarian option that's tasty and filling can be challenging (though comes with a good consequence of forcing you to discover new places to eat).

I'm sure this is much easier if you work someplace with a good catered lunch option.

Hmmm, I guess I'm something of an anomaly then. I can easily skip meat for a few days, or weeks, depending on what I'm cooking. I essentially never eat meat for breakfast, and my lunches normally don't involve meat either (typically a peanut butter and banana sandwich on wheat, some carrots with hummus, and a yogurt). If I eat at work, I prefer to make a salad. Dinner's the most likely culprit, although there are a lot of curries I enjoy vegetarian. Now that I think about it, I guess the last time I ate meat was Saturday, and someone else made the meal.

I guess it depends on how much you cook too, you're right about it being harder to find good vegetarian options, but I eat out one meal a week at most normally, and prefer none because I love cooking. I live in a small-midsize town in the south, so there's plenty of meat about.

Very interesting; where do you get your blood tested? AFAIK, you have to be willing to pay the lab expense, which is tailored for insurance.

Yes unfortunately most insurance won't cover any tests beyond the basic ones in your yearly medical. There are a few options:

- WellnessFX (http://wellnessfx.com) offers the nicest experience and display of your results, but it's pricey and the tests all come bundled together so you can't pick just one or two you're interested in.

- http://health-tests-direct.com and http://directlabs.com are other options that have more a la carte options.

- If you're in the Bay Area, the cheapest (by some distance) option is to use a new blood testing lab called Theranos, which has a location in the back of the Walgreens on University Ave in Palo Alto. If you download their lab order form (http://theranos.com/Content/pdf/theranos_lab_form.pdf), tick the tests you'd like and have an MD sign it (doesn't have to be your doctor, could be a friend). You can take it into the Walgreens and they'll draw your blood there and email you the results a few days later.

Here is a nice fluff piece on the founder of Theranos

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/02/elizabeth-holmes-t...

Url being wired.com already make it very clear it's a fluff piece

For anyone else that was wondering how much this test will run you-

"Cost is just $40 – $70 and it’s covered by most insurers, including Medicare..."[0]

[0]http://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehaiken/2011/06/17/3-lifes...

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