“Healthy” In The Washington Post the article concludes:
“These reversals in the field do make us wonder and scratch our heads,” said David Allison, a public health professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “But in science, change is normal and expected.” When our view of the cosmos shifted from Ptolemy to Copernicus to Newton and Einstein, Allison said, “the reaction was not to say, ‘Oh my gosh, something is wrong with physics!’ We say, ‘Oh my gosh, isn’t this cool?’ ” Allison said the problem in nutrition stems from the arrogance that sometimes accompanies dietary advice. A little humility could go a long way. “Where nutrition has some trouble,” he said, “is all the confidence and vitriol and moralism that goes along with our recommendations.”
Of course there is science, and there is science. Germ theory and epidemiology in relation to viral infections and vaccinations are a robust era of science. Planetary mechanics as well. In contrast many areas of nutritional, medical, and social science remain highly uncertain and low in confidence as to the nature of the results. You wouldn’t get that from the “experts” though. Science is science when they hold forth from on high. Except it’s not. Addendum: I forgot to mention this, but one clear issue in regards to nutrition is sensitivity to particular individuals and populations. One of the ridiculousness of modern nutrition is how lowest-common-denominator and one-size-fits-all it seems to be. Yes, I’m generalizing here, but I know people with heritable familial cholesterol who were recommended to exercise and avoid eating a wide array by nutritionists even when this condition was already known to run in the family, and, the individuals in question were relatively fit. It was obvious that lifestyle and diet were marginal variables here, but the nutritionists simply could not imagine going off script. If you have a family history of hypertension and stroke, by all means avoid salt. But it seems that for most of the population the downside risk to flavor is small to non-existent. Apparently the same might apply to cholesterol. And sorry, I think the same also applies to sugar! There are people who are more resistant to metabolic disease. If you enjoined the whole populations to avoid food that 10-25% might gain nutritional benefit, pretty soon that means everyone will eat literally nothing, because we all have different Achilles’ heels.
A lot of this collapse of the old orthodoxy can probably be traced back to Gary Taubes, at least in the public consciousness (see his The New York Times Magazine piece from 2002). Taubes and company now put sugar into the same category that fat and cholesterol were, though for somewhat different reasons (ergo, the focus on types of calories ingested). But health is not the only concern. Hundreds of millions of people have made their food less savory over a generation because of these false recommendations.
A lot about nutrition is tied up to morality, and our ancient psychological fixations on the “purity” of food. That’s why no matter what people say about veganism, or paleo, or high/low fat/sugar/carb, in terms of its functional health consequences, it’s really about the values that you are projecting in terms of the psychology. And that’s why we tend to get into dietary moral panics so often. Because nutrition has a lot of variables producing an output (weight or overall health) it’s difficult to assess which ones are effecting change. If gunnery specialists were using non-Newtonian physics to land hits on the enemy we’d know pretty quickly that non-Newtonian physics (or at least pre-Newtonian mechanical intuition) just didn’t work. Though heart disease rates have gone down, Americans have become more obese. The signals are mixed. Meanwhile many of us are turning our lives upside down, eliminating or adding food elements on the latest research, which is often overturned or found to be statistically not robust. No wonder many people have started to tune out any health advice from the “authorities.”
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This is a puzzle and actually something I’ve wondered about considerably: Did changing dietary patterns, such as lower animal fat and milk consumption, help lower heart disease (even while leading to greater obesity), or was the fall in deaths from heart disease – from an (age standardized) 400/100,000 before 1970 to a mere 80/100,000 today – exclusively the result of remarkable improvements in medicine that had to additionally work against the decline in overall health?
If tomorrow we were to go back to the medical technology of 1950 or whatever, what will the rate be like – 300/100,000? 400? 600?
http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/117/5/592.full
More detail in the references.
TL;DR - they estimate something like 50/50 for the impact of improvements in treatments and risk factors.
One thing which surprised me is they state that physical activity increased between 1980 and 2004.
P.S. I strongly agree with Razib's addendum about the importance of personalization. I also think it's worth mentioning the impact of food suppliers and lobbyists in the nutrition debates.
And Yet Another Tale of Two Maps | JayMan's Blog
This is a topic I wrote about extensively, so expect a lot from me.
(Pondering, it seems possible people found it harder to make the connection and thought cheese might be a lower fat and therefore 'healthier' choice - I mean, who actually gets out the calculator and does the comparative calculations? But being cynical, bland low quality cheese is a low cost 'stealth' filler - it seems to me now that every damn thing available to order for lunch by way of a sandwich, burger, baked potato, hot dog, etc. is packed full of tasteless melted cheese, which is there as a low cost 'filler' to make the customer think he's getting value for money in terms of feeling full enough per dollar spent. Don't get me wrong, I adore cheese, but I don't want it in every single damn thing, and I want cheese I can taste, where much less mass of tastier cheese is more rather than less, a bit like how highly flavoursome spiced food is more satiating, as in the recent discussion of chilli peppers and hot sauces. For me, good roquefort is the queen of cheeses and costs a bomb, but you don't need much of it to get a good taste of it - as long as I can beat my daughter to the refrigerator. It's pretty safe with my Chinese wife though - just the thought of veined cheese made from ewe's milk is almost enough to make her hurl.)
Is it not even true to say that if you consume more calories than you expend, you gain weight, and if you expend more than you consume, you lose weight?
That said, it's still a useful idea--just understand the limitations.
Fat Head » Toilet Humor And The HOW vs. WHY Of Getting Fat
and
The Physics Diet? | Slate Star CodexReplies: @The Z Blog
A couple of thoughts on this: I do agree that the science of nutrition is not nearly as robust as (to use Razib’s example) planetary mechanics, but I also suspect that many “authorities” in this area are aware of this. Is it instead that the breakdown is not in the research, but in how the research is forged into policies or recommendations (by governments, popular media, etc.) ?
A second thought is that moral panic about the “purity” of food is a side-effect of its ready availability. You can be picky when you know you won’t starve. I am reminded of horse-meat in the USA during the 19th century (there was just a good article on this somewhere — Priceonomics?) the popularity of which was inversely correlated with the health of the economy. Once times got better, people started to turn up their noses.
The moral projection point is an excellent one and is something I’m acutely familiar with coming from a liberal extended family with tons of food rules. I notice that the all-organic, non-GMO eaters in my family tend to live to be 2-300 years old! Their diet is just so pure.
Seriously, though, my sister was a vegan for moral reasons (which, as a meat eater I totally respect) yet also used it to help conceal her anorexia which isn’t quite as ethically sound. Interesting plot twist…
It’s only my own observation but I think the biggest risk factor for heart disease is family history .
I would put stress next followed by the other risk factors . You can go a long time ignoring your doctors advice with good genes . But with a significant family history of heart disease proper diet , exercise and other recommended precautions may not save you.
Maybe I’m a cynic but I suspect the reason we don’t hear so much about the importance of the heredity factor in heart disease is because they can’t make a pill for it.
A second thought is that moral panic about the “purity” of food is a side-effect of its ready availability.
food taboo are an ancient feature of human culture and a somewhat native aspect of cognition. avoid poison, etc.
food taboo are an ancient feature of human culture and a somewhat native aspect of cognition. avoid poison, etc.Replies: @CupOfCanada, @Helga Vierich
Probably some benefits for group cohesion.
At least it seems to have helped maintain cultural identities like Judaism for a very long time in a very diverse set of locales.
Any thoughts on how homogeneous people’s dietary needs are though?
I’d think this would be one area where human variation would rear its head in a big way. A diet that’s ideal for an Inuit person may not be the same ideal diet for an English person or a Mbuti person. My concern is that by publishing one-size-fits-all nutrition guides a lot of the recommendations are going to be just plain wrong for many people regardless of what the guidelines actually are.
1. People are different and for example one person may process sugar better than fat while another may be the exact opposite.
2. Humans have a tendency to create *group* food rules (and then to get all moral about it*).
What needs to happen is find out *which people* need to avoid too much sugar, *which people* need to avoid too much fat, *which people* need to avoid too much salt etc.
(*understandable as those food rules are what they believe is healthiest for their kids)
If tomorrow we were to go back to the medical technology of 1950 or whatever, what will the rate be like - 300/100,000? 400? 600?Replies: @Karl Zimmerman, @res, @JayMan, @Sandgroper, @The Z Blog
Over this time period, the amount of smoking went down considerably didn’t it? It’s known smoking contributes to heart disease, so all things being considered, it could be lesser tobacco use combined with neutral (or negative) dietary changes could increase obesity but decrease heart disease.
jtgw: There was a lot of noise recently about how intestinal flora changes (e.g. “fecal transplants”) affect people’s weight. Apparently not all the calories you “consume” end up in your body, and the proportion seems to depend on biological factors.
If tomorrow we were to go back to the medical technology of 1950 or whatever, what will the rate be like - 300/100,000? 400? 600?Replies: @Karl Zimmerman, @res, @JayMan, @Sandgroper, @The Z Blog
Have you seen this?
http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/117/5/592.full
More detail in the references.
TL;DR – they estimate something like 50/50 for the impact of improvements in treatments and risk factors.
One thing which surprised me is they state that physical activity increased between 1980 and 2004.
P.S. I strongly agree with Razib’s addendum about the importance of personalization. I also think it’s worth mentioning the impact of food suppliers and lobbyists in the nutrition debates.
The big problem with this reasoning (and the superficial explanations it spawns) is that expends includes things like absorption and metabolic efficiency. Both of which might vary with dietary composition (i.e. all calories are not the same) and personal characteristics like the state of your intestinal flora.
That said, it’s still a useful idea–just understand the limitations.
yeah. smoking seems one of those things that turned out to really be bad. and even worse i think as we go along….
But here's a related conundrum. Greece has one of the highest smoking rates in the world. 2,800 cigs per capita per year (3rd in the world, after Serbia and Bulgaria), with 64% of men and 40% of women smoking. I've discussed this with a Greek and he said the statistics do match his personal impressions. These numbers would be comparable to the US mid-century.
And yet, life expectancy as of 2012 - 80.6, versus US - 78.7, where cigs per capita is 1030, almost three times less than in Greece. Age adjusted mortality from CVS per 100,000 - 80 for US, 60 for Greece (in comparison, US was at 400 before the 1970s). Somewhat higher than its Mediterranean peers which smoke less - Spain (1760 cigs - 44 CVD rate), Portugal (1110 cigs - 44 CVD), Italy (1480 cigs - 52), but not really cardinally so.
Smoking no doubt has an effect, but it's probably pretty minor compared to medical technological progress.Replies: @JayMan
Professor Campos has been leading the charge against the “moral panic” about obesity for several years. An old interview in the Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/07/americas-moral-panic-over-obesity/22397/
And an even older comment in the international journal of epidemiology: http://www.nourishingconnections.com/Handouts/The%20Epidemology%20of%20Overweight%20and%20Obesity_Moral%20Panic_Campos%20et%20al_IJE_2006.pdf
Worth a read.
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/1/60.full.pdf
(it looks like there is a related article after that one as well, but I did not follow further)
I agree with Campos about:
1. Being underweight (or low-normal weight) is an underemphasized health issue.
2. The optimal weights for survival/longevity include at least part of the "overweight" BMI category.
I just worry about the obesity backlash removing attention from the aspects that really do matter to health. In these I include:
- The upper ranges of BMI (say over 35) are problematic. I think Campos would agree with this.
- I think higher BMI's (say 25-35 with some allowance for gender) are a flag that there might be an issue. Rather than emphasizing the longevity benefits for the group I think we need to better understand how to detect risks to health in individuals from that group. For example, look at outcomes for people in those ranges controlling for fitness, percent body fat, fat distribution, etc.Replies: @Bill P
http://www.webmd.com/diet/20140430/is-healthy-obesity-a-myth
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/09/idea-of-healthy-obesity-is-tested/
as an aside i'm gonna stick my neck out and say that the fecal transplant/gut bacteria obesity connection is BS. that study was, at best, inconclusive.
It applies to monkeys though too. There’s a window where they’re accepting and curious (based on what their parents feed them) but it then closes as they get older.
Do you think the secondhand smoke studies are good science ?
And an even older comment in the international journal of epidemiology: http://www.nourishingconnections.com/Handouts/The%20Epidemology%20of%20Overweight%20and%20Obesity_Moral%20Panic_Campos%20et%20al_IJE_2006.pdf
Worth a read.Replies: @res, @Robert Ford
Thanks for the links. The second was interesting in that immediately after it there was a counterpoint that was omitted. Here’s a link to that as well:
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/1/60.full.pdf
(it looks like there is a related article after that one as well, but I did not follow further)
I agree with Campos about:
1. Being underweight (or low-normal weight) is an underemphasized health issue.
2. The optimal weights for survival/longevity include at least part of the “overweight” BMI category.
I just worry about the obesity backlash removing attention from the aspects that really do matter to health. In these I include:
– The upper ranges of BMI (say over 35) are problematic. I think Campos would agree with this.
– I think higher BMI’s (say 25-35 with some allowance for gender) are a flag that there might be an issue. Rather than emphasizing the longevity benefits for the group I think we need to better understand how to detect risks to health in individuals from that group. For example, look at outcomes for people in those ranges controlling for fitness, percent body fat, fat distribution, etc.
Soeaking for myself, I like to look around and see attractive - or at least not hideous - people. Is that wrong of me?
So even if obesity could be "healthy," I still think it's problematic.Replies: @JayMan
This is reason that science is different from ideology/religion.
Beware of Dunning-kruger effect, if you find some who sounds like authority.
And an even older comment in the international journal of epidemiology: http://www.nourishingconnections.com/Handouts/The%20Epidemology%20of%20Overweight%20and%20Obesity_Moral%20Panic_Campos%20et%20al_IJE_2006.pdf
Worth a read.Replies: @res, @Robert Ford
nothing personal but IMO Campos is an insane ideologue. plus he needs to update his priors, as Razib would say: http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/01/healthy-obesity-actually-a-thing.html
http://www.webmd.com/diet/20140430/is-healthy-obesity-a-myth
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/09/idea-of-healthy-obesity-is-tested/
as an aside i’m gonna stick my neck out and say that the fecal transplant/gut bacteria obesity connection is BS. that study was, at best, inconclusive.
I think that’s precisely the problem.
1. People are different and for example one person may process sugar better than fat while another may be the exact opposite.
2. Humans have a tendency to create *group* food rules (and then to get all moral about it*).
What needs to happen is find out *which people* need to avoid too much sugar, *which people* need to avoid too much fat, *which people* need to avoid too much salt etc.
(*understandable as those food rules are what they believe is healthiest for their kids)
You’d think so, right?
But here’s a related conundrum. Greece has one of the highest smoking rates in the world. 2,800 cigs per capita per year (3rd in the world, after Serbia and Bulgaria), with 64% of men and 40% of women smoking. I’ve discussed this with a Greek and he said the statistics do match his personal impressions. These numbers would be comparable to the US mid-century.
And yet, life expectancy as of 2012 – 80.6, versus US – 78.7, where cigs per capita is 1030, almost three times less than in Greece. Age adjusted mortality from CVS per 100,000 – 80 for US, 60 for Greece (in comparison, US was at 400 before the 1970s). Somewhat higher than its Mediterranean peers which smoke less – Spain (1760 cigs – 44 CVD rate), Portugal (1110 cigs – 44 CVD), Italy (1480 cigs – 52), but not really cardinally so.
Smoking no doubt has an effect, but it’s probably pretty minor compared to medical technological progress.
HBD is Life and Death | JayMan's Blog
If tomorrow we were to go back to the medical technology of 1950 or whatever, what will the rate be like - 300/100,000? 400? 600?Replies: @Karl Zimmerman, @res, @JayMan, @Sandgroper, @The Z Blog
Well, there’s this, for whatever it’s worth:
And Yet Another Tale of Two Maps | JayMan’s Blog
This is a topic I wrote about extensively, so expect a lot from me.
It’s technically true, but not necessarily useful or horrendously meaningful:
Fat Head » Toilet Humor And The HOW vs. WHY Of Getting Fat
and
The Physics Diet? | Slate Star Codex
Scott Alexander is correct to notice that his calorie/weight ratio has changed over time. This is something everyone seems to experience. Body builders talk about this all the time. The way to understand it is to think of the internal combustion engine. The early models used a lot of fuel to produce very little horsepower and torque. As engineering and material science improved, the engines became increasing efficient.
Metabolism, it seems to me, is about how efficiently the body converts food energy. The body can do three things with fuel, while the ICE can do just two. That third item is store energy for later use in the form of body fat. As far as mammals go, the most efficient on earth is probably the giraffe. They poop dust because their bodies are so good at converting their foot into usable energy and storing the rest.
I think what happens with humans is our metabolic efficiency declines. The appetite may not track with it and the habits are slow to adjust, as well. We get used to having the big supper, for example and keep doing it long after our body's metabolic efficiency curve turns south. The result is the middle-aged paunch.
http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/1/60.full.pdf
(it looks like there is a related article after that one as well, but I did not follow further)
I agree with Campos about:
1. Being underweight (or low-normal weight) is an underemphasized health issue.
2. The optimal weights for survival/longevity include at least part of the "overweight" BMI category.
I just worry about the obesity backlash removing attention from the aspects that really do matter to health. In these I include:
- The upper ranges of BMI (say over 35) are problematic. I think Campos would agree with this.
- I think higher BMI's (say 25-35 with some allowance for gender) are a flag that there might be an issue. Rather than emphasizing the longevity benefits for the group I think we need to better understand how to detect risks to health in individuals from that group. For example, look at outcomes for people in those ranges controlling for fitness, percent body fat, fat distribution, etc.Replies: @Bill P
Why can’t we take aesthetics into account? Doesn’t it lower everyone’s quality of life if we have a bunch of butterballs waddling around everywhere and using the motorized carts in the grocery store?
Soeaking for myself, I like to look around and see attractive – or at least not hideous – people. Is that wrong of me?
So even if obesity could be “healthy,” I still think it’s problematic.
I would put stress next followed by the other risk factors . You can go a long time ignoring your doctors advice with good genes . But with a significant family history of heart disease proper diet , exercise and other recommended precautions may not save you.
Maybe I'm a cynic but I suspect the reason we don't hear so much about the importance of the heredity factor in heart disease is because they can't make a pill for it.Replies: @JayMan
Yup (at least 55% heritable).
But here's a related conundrum. Greece has one of the highest smoking rates in the world. 2,800 cigs per capita per year (3rd in the world, after Serbia and Bulgaria), with 64% of men and 40% of women smoking. I've discussed this with a Greek and he said the statistics do match his personal impressions. These numbers would be comparable to the US mid-century.
And yet, life expectancy as of 2012 - 80.6, versus US - 78.7, where cigs per capita is 1030, almost three times less than in Greece. Age adjusted mortality from CVS per 100,000 - 80 for US, 60 for Greece (in comparison, US was at 400 before the 1970s). Somewhat higher than its Mediterranean peers which smoke less - Spain (1760 cigs - 44 CVD rate), Portugal (1110 cigs - 44 CVD), Italy (1480 cigs - 52), but not really cardinally so.
Smoking no doubt has an effect, but it's probably pretty minor compared to medical technological progress.Replies: @JayMan
Ummm hmmm:
HBD is Life and Death | JayMan’s Blog
Amen brother!
That, precisely, is a huge part of the problem with the diet and exercise mantra: it is effectively religion – neopuritanism, of a fashion. That, and the highly personal nature of weight and fitness, makes meaningful conversation difficult to impossible (though some of us try).
I could point to a myriad of flaws in even the most basic wisdom, one of which is partly captured here:
Individual variation; that’s a big factor that is often ignored. For example, people respond different to exercise, with a sizable fraction of people responding poorly to negatively to exercise training.
I suppose some of the key posts/pages of mine that discuss the weaknesses in modern health advice – and how it’s researched – are:
IQ and Death | JayMan’s Blog
Obesity Facts: section Overstated impact of obesity per se on health | JayMan’s Blog
If you want to have some fun, read discussions of steroids on body builder sites. These guys use themselves as test subjects for just about anything. They get blood work, carefully monitor their vitals, diet, etc. Then they post their results and engage in long discussions with others conducting the same experiments on themselves.
Anyway, the divide you see in those conversations is very much like those you see between HBD and anti-racists. Both sides can be right and wrong for reasons of belief, rather than science, but they are all convinced science is on their side.Replies: @JayMan
Soeaking for myself, I like to look around and see attractive - or at least not hideous - people. Is that wrong of me?
So even if obesity could be "healthy," I still think it's problematic.Replies: @JayMan
Please do let us know how to fix it.
Otherwise I always like your links, even this one was interesting (but I think I already read it some time ago), so keep up the good work.
food taboo are an ancient feature of human culture and a somewhat native aspect of cognition. avoid poison, etc.Replies: @CupOfCanada, @Helga Vierich
All this has almost made me wonder about my long standing aversion to eating nutritionists.
Horrendously meaningful.. I love that!
If tomorrow we were to go back to the medical technology of 1950 or whatever, what will the rate be like - 300/100,000? 400? 600?Replies: @Karl Zimmerman, @res, @JayMan, @Sandgroper, @The Z Blog
I no longer have the relevant graph conveniently to hand (typical – I usually trim and discard my more useful references just shortly before I need them – I think it was something Stephan Guyenet posted on his Whole Health Source blog, but I now can’t find it quickly), but what happened in America (and I expect similarly in Australia, from personal observation) over the 80s/90s was that a major drop in consumption of butter, cream and full fat milk and a big switch to low fat dairy was more than compensated by an increase in consumption of cheese, in terms of annual per capita consumption by weight.
(Pondering, it seems possible people found it harder to make the connection and thought cheese might be a lower fat and therefore ‘healthier’ choice – I mean, who actually gets out the calculator and does the comparative calculations? But being cynical, bland low quality cheese is a low cost ‘stealth’ filler – it seems to me now that every damn thing available to order for lunch by way of a sandwich, burger, baked potato, hot dog, etc. is packed full of tasteless melted cheese, which is there as a low cost ‘filler’ to make the customer think he’s getting value for money in terms of feeling full enough per dollar spent. Don’t get me wrong, I adore cheese, but I don’t want it in every single damn thing, and I want cheese I can taste, where much less mass of tastier cheese is more rather than less, a bit like how highly flavoursome spiced food is more satiating, as in the recent discussion of chilli peppers and hot sauces. For me, good roquefort is the queen of cheeses and costs a bomb, but you don’t need much of it to get a good taste of it – as long as I can beat my daughter to the refrigerator. It’s pretty safe with my Chinese wife though – just the thought of veined cheese made from ewe’s milk is almost enough to make her hurl.)
Just to clarify a point about the “smoking rate paradox”, namely the fact that the USA has worse health outcomes than certain countries (e.g. Greece) with higher smoking rates: The USA used to have one of the highest smoking rates in the world. This isn’t true anymore, probably largely because Americans were hit so hard with smoking-related health problems that a massive anti-smoking campaign was launched earlier and harder in the USA than elsewhere. The USA was the canary in the coal mine, so to speak, and its reflected in our current health outcomes. Denmark is comparable to the USA in this regard — smoking became fashionable in Denmark before it did in other countries (the Danish Queen herself is a long-time smoker, after all), and that at least in part explains why Denmark rivals the USA for poor life expectancy showings in the developed world.
In other words, let’s not underrate the public health impact of smoking just yet. Let’s wait another few decades and see how the trends stack up.
See here for more info: http://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/news/20110125/us-smoking-rates-keep-life-expectancy-down
About smoking’s impact on Denmark’s life expectancy vs. Sweden’s: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK62583/
If tomorrow we were to go back to the medical technology of 1950 or whatever, what will the rate be like - 300/100,000? 400? 600?Replies: @Karl Zimmerman, @res, @JayMan, @Sandgroper, @The Z Blog
As JayMan alluded to, demographics is most likely the answer or at least the place to start. As the US population has become less “Frankish” things like heart disease rates have fallen accordingly. A similar patter can be found with girls reaching menarche. A decade ago or so their was a panic about the fact girls were hitting puberty earlier and the assumption was it had to do with the use of hormones in beef. A better explanation was that the population was simply less white.
That, precisely, is a huge part of the problem with the diet and exercise mantra: it is effectively religion – neopuritanism, of a fashion. That, and the highly personal nature of weight and fitness, makes meaningful conversation difficult to impossible (though some of us try).
I could point to a myriad of flaws in even the most basic wisdom, one of which is partly captured here:Individual variation; that's a big factor that is often ignored. For example, people respond different to exercise, with a sizable fraction of people responding poorly to negatively to exercise training.
I suppose some of the key posts/pages of mine that discuss the weaknesses in modern health advice – and how it's researched – are:
IQ and Death | JayMan's Blog
Obesity Facts: section Overstated impact of obesity per se on health | JayMan's BlogReplies: @The Z Blog
I’ve been strength training, off and on, for my entire life and I am an old man. As a result I have talked endlessly with other resistance trainers about diet, supplements, training techniques, blood chemistry, genetics, etc. There’s a word we use, “bro-science” to describe the body of knowledge weight lifters have acquired. As in “Hey bro, how did you…”
If you want to have some fun, read discussions of steroids on body builder sites. These guys use themselves as test subjects for just about anything. They get blood work, carefully monitor their vitals, diet, etc. Then they post their results and engage in long discussions with others conducting the same experiments on themselves.
Anyway, the divide you see in those conversations is very much like those you see between HBD and anti-racists. Both sides can be right and wrong for reasons of belief, rather than science, but they are all convinced science is on their side.
Fat Head » Toilet Humor And The HOW vs. WHY Of Getting Fat
and
The Physics Diet? | Slate Star CodexReplies: @The Z Blog
The comments at Slate Star are mostly spam so I’ll post this here. I’ve been a weight trainer for a long time. I’ve also logged my calories and exercise for a long time. Even in my old age, I still track miles run, miles biked, my lifts, my daily caloric breakdown, etc. I learned VisiCalc just to make it easier to track this stuff so you can get a sense for how long I’ve been at this hobby.
Scott Alexander is correct to notice that his calorie/weight ratio has changed over time. This is something everyone seems to experience. Body builders talk about this all the time. The way to understand it is to think of the internal combustion engine. The early models used a lot of fuel to produce very little horsepower and torque. As engineering and material science improved, the engines became increasing efficient.
Metabolism, it seems to me, is about how efficiently the body converts food energy. The body can do three things with fuel, while the ICE can do just two. That third item is store energy for later use in the form of body fat. As far as mammals go, the most efficient on earth is probably the giraffe. They poop dust because their bodies are so good at converting their foot into usable energy and storing the rest.
I think what happens with humans is our metabolic efficiency declines. The appetite may not track with it and the habits are slow to adjust, as well. We get used to having the big supper, for example and keep doing it long after our body’s metabolic efficiency curve turns south. The result is the middle-aged paunch.
i think the best explanation is changes in body fat % among kids. menarche traditionally starts way later in many third world countries because of diet from a wide array of populations.
Absolutely. The best way to keep your little girl from reaching puberty “too early” is to make sure she does not have enough food.
Sorta like the fossil gap in the evolution theory.
I guess he doesn’t know how to fix it (neither do I), but the point was that obesity would still be a problem even if it had no adverse health effects. Because it surely does have adverse aesthetic effects.
Otherwise I always like your links, even this one was interesting (but I think I already read it some time ago), so keep up the good work.
One more quick point about exercise. Your study doesn’t mention what kind of exercising those participants were prescribed. Exercise can be street workout, powerlifting, kettlebells, crossfit, long-distance running, sprinting, kayaking, swimming, or something else. Needless to say, they all have vastly different effects on the body, so they all need to be tested separately.
And here besides the aesthetics argument there is another one. I personally train mostly with kettlebells with the occasional barbell exercise and mid-distance running thrown into the mix. The reason is not so much aesthetics (although people, both male and female, will look differently at you depending on your musculature), but quality of life. I played with my nephew, and could lift him up the air many times over for half an hour until he got tired – that’s something I couldn’t have done without doing regular exercises. At the office when something relatively heavy (the emphasis is on the “relatively” part) needs to be lifted, I’m asked for the task. I move easier. I can pick up things from the floor easier. Even my behavior changes. When I was injured for a long time (over a year)*, I got less assertive, and because I’m not too assertive in the first place, that was a serious disadvantage. I can concentrate better at work. Etc.
All of this is a considerable advantage, and to be honest, I’d be willing to sacrifice a few years in life expectancy for these benefits. I’m not sure if my health is better, but I’m certainly stronger and fitter because of my training, and that helps me in my everyday life in small but noticeable ways.
Most of these benefits don’t come with long-distance running, which is why I switched from running marathons to working out with kettlebells, but even long-distance running have a host of advantages besides the – admittedly often dubious or marginal – health benefits.
*It must be noted that the injury turned out to be RSI from typing and using the mouse, and totally unrelated to sports…
Of course, my view on health and exercise wisdom is, broadly, this: do what works for you and stop insisting it'll work for everyone else!Replies: @reiner Tor
If you want to have some fun, read discussions of steroids on body builder sites. These guys use themselves as test subjects for just about anything. They get blood work, carefully monitor their vitals, diet, etc. Then they post their results and engage in long discussions with others conducting the same experiments on themselves.
Anyway, the divide you see in those conversations is very much like those you see between HBD and anti-racists. Both sides can be right and wrong for reasons of belief, rather than science, but they are all convinced science is on their side.Replies: @JayMan
Exercise enthusiasts aren’t exactly a representative slice of the population. The fanatical ones, even less so. That’s the kicker.
By the way, that last sentence in the point of this post and the previous one.Replies: @JayMan
Which is why I never said they were. That and it is an obvious fact and it had nothing to with my point. But, your comment is a good example of just how blinkered people get when it comes to subjects like diet, exercise and general health. Everyone has their pet theories and that’s all they see.
By the way, that last sentence in the point of this post and the previous one.
You’ll have to dig into the various individual studies in the meta-analyses. I think the fact that they all converge on zero effect overall makes the precise type of exercise moot.
As I said above, a sizable fraction of people are low to negative responders to exercise (both to strength training and to cardio). Those things work for you, but probably not really a good general prescription.
Of course, my view on health and exercise wisdom is, broadly, this: do what works for you and stop insisting it’ll work for everyone else!
By the way, that last sentence in the point of this post and the previous one.Replies: @JayMan
Trust me son, I’m the exact opposite of that – a much needed stance at that.
No, I think you’re missing my point, but it may not have been clear in my comment. I don’t believe that everyone is partly right, or that everyone has some piece of the overall story, ala the five blind men and the elephant. I think a whole lot of people are just plain wrong. The truth is closer what I have been saying.
Of course, my view on health and exercise wisdom is, broadly, this: do what works for you and stop insisting it'll work for everyone else!Replies: @reiner Tor
JayMan, I have read a few sports studies, and most of them are extremely flawed. For example I read a study on strength training, where there were negative responders – guys who got weaker on the same training program most of their peers got stronger. They made a point of the fact that all guys were doing exactly the same program. Which is my problem with the result. Of course if I started to do Schwarzenegger’s early training program I’d get probably weaker (and quickly injured), too. The reason is that my genetics are totally different from those of that lucky bastard Schwarzenegger. (I also don’t use PEDs, but Schwarzenegger would have been way better than me without PEDs. I think he’s still better than I am, even though I’m some three decades younger.)
So basically these studies usually prove that if all people are given the same training program, then some people won’t improve and some will actually get worse. That’s something anybody with very little experience already knows: there are no one-size-fits-all workout programs, and a program which is good for the average might be overtraining some, and overtraining – as everybody knows – leads to worse results than no training at all. Even with good genetics someone who’s never done any sports needs to be given an easier program than someone who has some basic fitness.
In other words, I seriously doubt if everybody was given a good personalized training program, then they wouldn’t improve significantly. Some people would no doubt improve much slower and would level off at a much lower level, while others would be improving quickly and reach higher peaks. There could even be outliers who would initially respond very well but level off quickly and others who would improve slowly but unstoppably to reach very high levels. Some people would need to restrict their exercising to maybe a couple half-hour sessions a week. Initially it could be maybe five minutes per day or something. But the idea that some people couldn’t be improved at all? With very few exceptions (the disabled and the seriously ill, and some elite athletes) I cannot believe that would be the case with anybody.
Why do I think so? My thinking is simple: most people are descended mostly from 18th century farmers. In the 18th century you had to be significantly stronger (in the physical sense) and fitter in order to be a farmer than most people are now, and you certainly couldn’t have been obscenely obese like the ones who use these carts to move (instead of walking, of which such a person is usually barely capable, if at all). (I’ve mostly seen these people on pictures on pages like “People of Walmart” or something.) I don’t think we’ve changed genetically that much over the past couple of centuries. (I believe less than couple of centuries, probably even in the early 20th century most people’s lives were physically quite a bit more demanding than today.) So I believe that with working out, you could get stronger. Maybe not very strong. I’m not very strong myself. I’m just stronger than I used to be. And believe me, that improves my quality of life, and I’d find it difficult to believe that it wouldn’t improve it for almost everybody.
My main point was actually not that exercising could improve quality of life, but that even if some people cannot be made stronger by exercising, that is a problem in and of itself, even if there’s no way to improve it, and even if it has zero health implications. Because it does diminish quality of life.
You do realize that resistance training studies are bare-bones operations examining improvement in one set of muscles (usually biceps or quads) with one very basic movement, using "exercise novices," right? It just doesn't get more basic or discrete than that.
As well, there's only so many ways to do cardio. Similar results.Hence my Kool-Aid comment. :)You sure about that?
The Amish are known for their bulging muscles, after all...
The response pattern in these studies typically follows a perfect normal distribution – as many human traits tend to.Time for a proverbial walk in the woods. ;)Replies: @reiner Tor, @reiner Tor
It seems you’ve drank the Kool-Aid. 🙂
Because it would be so much better to give everyone a different program when you’re looking at individual variation in exercise response… :\
You do realize that resistance training studies are bare-bones operations examining improvement in one set of muscles (usually biceps or quads) with one very basic movement, using “exercise novices,” right? It just doesn’t get more basic or discrete than that.
As well, there’s only so many ways to do cardio. Similar results.
Hence my Kool-Aid comment. 🙂
You sure about that?
The Amish are known for their bulging muscles, after all…
The response pattern in these studies typically follows a perfect normal distribution – as many human traits tend to.
Time for a proverbial walk in the woods. 😉
However, it's obvious that negative responders were overtrained. Yes, you can overtrain one simple muscle. You get muscle soreness and it won't heal before the next workout. The muscle soreness worsens, and won't heal... That is overtraining. The solution? You have to decrease the workload. (Initially drastically decrease, usually. Later on, usually, you'll be able to handle even more, like I could handle more workload now than I could when I was a beginner, but that's normal.)OK, they're doing biceps curls. I never did regularly biceps curls (and the last time I did it at all was some fifteen years ago), so not much experience there. However, I did do a very simple exercise program a few years ago. It was a pull-up program. Of course, it presupposes you can do pull-ups properly, and being a complex exercise, it uses several muscles (instead of just the one muscle biceps curls use), but the program was still fairly simple. Assume you can do five repetitions (that's where I started, five, maybe six reps maximum): you do five sets. The first set consists of your maximum five reps. The second set only four. The third only three. Two. One. The second day you do 5-4-3-2-2. Then 5-4-3-3-2. 5-4-4-3-2, 5-5-4-3-2. One day off. Then 6-5-4-3-2, 6-5-4-3-3, 6-5-4-4-3... 6-6-5-4-3, one day off, 7-6-5-4-3, etc. After roughly a month you get to 10 reps, at which point you change to some other program lest overtraining sets in.
All went well, if I opened the window, the whole session barely made me sweat, so I went on with the program. Except that for me the first symptoms of overtraining set in around the third week, for example I constantly had muscle soreness. In the end I couldn't raise my max repetitions above 9, and then I had to take several weeks of rest with no pull-ups. Next time I tried to do pull-up one month later, I did 5 reps and I felt I could do maybe 6. (I.e. the same as before I started the program.) In other words, I probably improved the first couple of weeks but then overtrained myself and in the end there was no improvement from the program as a whole.
Then I'm sure there are people who couldn't improve right after the first week, for whom even the first day's program was too much, and so couldn't improve at all. Everything tells me there must be people who are even worse responders than I am. Now it's not impossible for me to do 10 pull-ups, since I had done them a few years before this (before my injury), and I can do them right now. (I think. I haven't tried that many for a long time, and I'm not going to try it now.) The only problem was the training program, which was good for many people, but not for me: I got overtrained on the same program others used to double their number of max reps.
What makes you so confident that if it was biceps curls instead of pull-ups, the same phenomenon wouldn't be observed? And if the same phenomenon was observed (some people overtraining, i.e. negative respondents), then what makes you so confident that if modified their training programs accordingly (i.e. either less repetitions or longer recovery times or both) then they wouldn't have improved? (Keep in mind that there's a lot of trial and error here, the only thing an experienced instructor can tell is whether you're overtrained, but cannot tell in advance exactly what exercise load will cause it.)There are many different training programs for cardio as well. It's even a question what type of cardio you are doing - running is different from cycling is different from long-distance swimming is different from rowing is different from... And even if you want running (not recommended at all for obese or even novice overweight people), and the person can run maximum 2 minutes, you can tell him to run 1 minute very day, or 2 min every other day, or even 2 min every day, or even 2 min twice a day, or just 1 min, but twice a day, etc. The possible variation is large.Where did bulging muscles enter this argument? If I hadn't made it clear, I don't have bulging muscles myself. Most people who train with kettlebells don't have them either. I'm quite a bit more muscular (less thin) than when I started exercising. Several people who've known me for a long time have told me that. But I don't think I'm more muscular than the average Amish, which is not much. A genetically thin guy has to exercise to get to the average level. Genetics is a bitch. But again: if you're seriously weaker than average, it's almost sure you wouldn't survive in a farming environment, unless you would be more muscular in such an environment.
Have you seen Amish who look like that? The number of people who look like the one on the picture has gone up over the past half century, way up. Genetics don't change that much that quickly. So it must be the environment. Yeah, I've seen some pictures with slightly overweight Amish. Maybe there are quite overweight Amish, too. I doubt there are seriously obese Amish at all.
So my point is that unless you are strong enough to survive in a farming environment (most city-dwellers like yours truly aren't), then there must be a lot of space for improvement for you.
You do realize that resistance training studies are bare-bones operations examining improvement in one set of muscles (usually biceps or quads) with one very basic movement, using "exercise novices," right? It just doesn't get more basic or discrete than that.
As well, there's only so many ways to do cardio. Similar results.Hence my Kool-Aid comment. :)You sure about that?
The Amish are known for their bulging muscles, after all...
The response pattern in these studies typically follows a perfect normal distribution – as many human traits tend to.Time for a proverbial walk in the woods. ;)Replies: @reiner Tor, @reiner Tor
Depends on what you’d like to prove. If you want to prove that there’s huge individual variation – I got no problem with that. Except that that’s widely known. Everybody knows this.
However, it’s obvious that negative responders were overtrained. Yes, you can overtrain one simple muscle. You get muscle soreness and it won’t heal before the next workout. The muscle soreness worsens, and won’t heal… That is overtraining. The solution? You have to decrease the workload. (Initially drastically decrease, usually. Later on, usually, you’ll be able to handle even more, like I could handle more workload now than I could when I was a beginner, but that’s normal.)
OK, they’re doing biceps curls. I never did regularly biceps curls (and the last time I did it at all was some fifteen years ago), so not much experience there. However, I did do a very simple exercise program a few years ago. It was a pull-up program. Of course, it presupposes you can do pull-ups properly, and being a complex exercise, it uses several muscles (instead of just the one muscle biceps curls use), but the program was still fairly simple. Assume you can do five repetitions (that’s where I started, five, maybe six reps maximum): you do five sets. The first set consists of your maximum five reps. The second set only four. The third only three. Two. One. The second day you do 5-4-3-2-2. Then 5-4-3-3-2. 5-4-4-3-2, 5-5-4-3-2. One day off. Then 6-5-4-3-2, 6-5-4-3-3, 6-5-4-4-3… 6-6-5-4-3, one day off, 7-6-5-4-3, etc. After roughly a month you get to 10 reps, at which point you change to some other program lest overtraining sets in.
All went well, if I opened the window, the whole session barely made me sweat, so I went on with the program. Except that for me the first symptoms of overtraining set in around the third week, for example I constantly had muscle soreness. In the end I couldn’t raise my max repetitions above 9, and then I had to take several weeks of rest with no pull-ups. Next time I tried to do pull-up one month later, I did 5 reps and I felt I could do maybe 6. (I.e. the same as before I started the program.) In other words, I probably improved the first couple of weeks but then overtrained myself and in the end there was no improvement from the program as a whole.
Then I’m sure there are people who couldn’t improve right after the first week, for whom even the first day’s program was too much, and so couldn’t improve at all. Everything tells me there must be people who are even worse responders than I am. Now it’s not impossible for me to do 10 pull-ups, since I had done them a few years before this (before my injury), and I can do them right now. (I think. I haven’t tried that many for a long time, and I’m not going to try it now.) The only problem was the training program, which was good for many people, but not for me: I got overtrained on the same program others used to double their number of max reps.
What makes you so confident that if it was biceps curls instead of pull-ups, the same phenomenon wouldn’t be observed? And if the same phenomenon was observed (some people overtraining, i.e. negative respondents), then what makes you so confident that if modified their training programs accordingly (i.e. either less repetitions or longer recovery times or both) then they wouldn’t have improved? (Keep in mind that there’s a lot of trial and error here, the only thing an experienced instructor can tell is whether you’re overtrained, but cannot tell in advance exactly what exercise load will cause it.)
There are many different training programs for cardio as well. It’s even a question what type of cardio you are doing – running is different from cycling is different from long-distance swimming is different from rowing is different from… And even if you want running (not recommended at all for obese or even novice overweight people), and the person can run maximum 2 minutes, you can tell him to run 1 minute very day, or 2 min every other day, or even 2 min every day, or even 2 min twice a day, or just 1 min, but twice a day, etc. The possible variation is large.
Where did bulging muscles enter this argument? If I hadn’t made it clear, I don’t have bulging muscles myself. Most people who train with kettlebells don’t have them either. I’m quite a bit more muscular (less thin) than when I started exercising. Several people who’ve known me for a long time have told me that. But I don’t think I’m more muscular than the average Amish, which is not much. A genetically thin guy has to exercise to get to the average level. Genetics is a bitch. But again: if you’re seriously weaker than average, it’s almost sure you wouldn’t survive in a farming environment, unless you would be more muscular in such an environment.
Have you seen Amish who look like that? The number of people who look like the one on the picture has gone up over the past half century, way up. Genetics don’t change that much that quickly. So it must be the environment. Yeah, I’ve seen some pictures with slightly overweight Amish. Maybe there are quite overweight Amish, too. I doubt there are seriously obese Amish at all.
So my point is that unless you are strong enough to survive in a farming environment (most city-dwellers like yours truly aren’t), then there must be a lot of space for improvement for you.
You think the life quality of the person who uses a Walmart scooter because he can’t walk any more will not improve if he gets in a better shape? Maybe. There’s a deaf subculture and they insist they are happy the way they are. I somehow think they’d be better off if they weren’t all deaf.
it strikes me that social milieu is critical. i’ve been running with very thin females (very thin by the modern american average at least) for over 6 months, and they keep me pretty motivated because i don’t want to slouch. the lifting part of my workout regime has been easier because as a male i see immediate results in strength, and later on in body form. i keep running mostly to get rid of the fat, though i’m trying to phase carbs out (though this is hard if you are a social person who doesn’t want to be an asshole!)
the initial impetus to increase muscle to fat ratio was health, but at this point it’s aesthetic. i’ve been much smarter than average my whole life, and now i’m pretty keen on being super fit too.
You do realize that resistance training studies are bare-bones operations examining improvement in one set of muscles (usually biceps or quads) with one very basic movement, using "exercise novices," right? It just doesn't get more basic or discrete than that.
As well, there's only so many ways to do cardio. Similar results.Hence my Kool-Aid comment. :)You sure about that?
The Amish are known for their bulging muscles, after all...
The response pattern in these studies typically follows a perfect normal distribution – as many human traits tend to.Time for a proverbial walk in the woods. ;)Replies: @reiner Tor, @reiner Tor
I thought longer about this objection of yours. Of course workout is more complex than just everybody doing the same thing. However, you are correct that if each person is doing something else, then there’s no way to compare the results, because there will be too many variables. So what’s the solutions?
Well, I think a good solution would be to honestly admit that currently we have no good enough tools to research this area. In other words, instead of declaring something as fact based on ridiculously oversimplified research (everybody doing the same thing), we should show some humility.
I think we’d need to properly understand why and how a human body responds to workouts, why we grow (or don’t grow) muscles, etc. Currently we have many lines of research here and many ideas, but we don’t really understand it. Once we understood that, we’ll probably understand the mechanism of overtraining (or if we still won’t, we’ll need to understand that, too), and then we’ll also know if there are some people who will be overtrained even if given just very small amounts of training. (I personally doubt there will be any such people who could be considered healthy in any way at all, but the possibility is always there.)