Health Advices and Longevity

Great bump! I was meaning to pass this news along and the bump reminded me:

Suppressed gut bacteria (Dialister and Coprococcus) linked to depression.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-018-0337-x

 

It still boggles that it ever necessary to transition at all.

 

As someone that was addicted to coke, I do know what the transition means! LOL

 

This is indeed very interesting. Many disease are know being linked to gut microbiome and the "leaking gut syndrome". I'm having a hard time understand how this information can me applied to the clinical practice and real treatments. There are some articles showing improvement when adding probiotics, others articles when adding only PREbiotics. Some researches thinks this disbiosis can starts in childhood, due city environment and lack of contact with immune modulators like sand, animals goo and poo (yeah I know), and other micro organism that are called "the old good friends".
Nevertheless I do have faith in a world with less depressed people.

 

Since you're a science nut I hope you take this the right way when I say that one should always regard the possibility of "correlation not causation". These studies typically come with a lot of factors which are rarely taken into account. Say for example:

Person A) Bikes to work, gym 3 times a week, eats healthily, normal BMI, drinks mostly water.

Person B) Car to work, no gym, eats whatever, BMI>35, drinks mostly diet coke.

If the latter person then has a heart attack at 50 years old, was it because of the diet coke or because of something else? It's always hard to isolate factors in these human studies because people who live more healthily overall tend to adopt more healthy habits than just the one.

But then we go and single it out and say "oh, it was because of this, or it was because of that" And this way each field, and each industry, can have it's day in the sun and claim that if "we only do x" everything will be alright.

As much as one can debate the ethics of animal studies it really is one of the best way to get clean answers from these things, because in a lab environment you can have genetically identical mice and cut away all the other random factors. So if artificial sweeteners really do give mice disease with all other parameters being the same then I will agree we're on to something here.

All in all this isn't a jab either for or against artificial sweeteners, I'm merely questioning what accuracy can be gained from such human studies. But if anyone cares I drink mostly water myself. Water, black coffee, lemonwater and ACV-water are my everyday go-tos.

 

You have a good point and that’s why I have mentioned that we have to remember the important bias of the study delineation. We have several exemples in history smoke vs exercise, smoke vs obesity, smoke vs risk taking. The statistical treatment try to overcome the confusion but, we never know. Nevertheless, I’m open minded to new evidence in the future.

 

@David De Lucena, have you seen any studies on the effects of artificial sweeteners and the liver? I'm convinced that's where those additives do real damage...

 

What? Nooo.

They metabolize into stuff that has no nutritional value, its fiiiiine, stop being a baby.

Formaldehyde is good for the skin.

 

Hello Jeff. Those old sweeteners like Aspartame have a good amount of evidence about liver and kidney toxicity. The most striking in rats and monkeys, but there are sporadic reports in humans. Several countries do not use Aspartame anymore. As @Taverius wrote, Aspartame its metabolised into methanal, benzo-derivatives and ethanal (Formol)... all of them are capable of DNA damage. But woman like them(formol) into their hair!! LOL Sacarine and Ciclamate are toxic to neuron culture in a Petri Dish, and some report worsening memory when using them. A college of mine has a case series of Adults ADHD improving after they took of Sacarine And Ciclamate. Stevia, in the order hand seems protective to the liver in some studies and damaging in others studies, but some report gut microbiota disruption and some other problems.
There is as term that I first read here in SBAF: "there is no free lunch". As a latin speaker this phrase it's not used in Spain nor Brasil and for me its an ancient truth. In medicine, when you try to modify something (like playing games with the brain perception of taste) someone could imagine that would bring some costs.

Spoiler: Articles

1. https://watermark.silverchair.com/1...ePRp1IjsjKNQLzfZbQsB9Z7AfKgHMdGbzzncxfr0D2rDA

2.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2880768/

3. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213231716304104

4. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2018/3823426/

5.https://www.researchgate.net/profil...n-Liver-Cells-in-Weanling-Syrian-Hamsters.pdf

 

I noticed I disliked TwoEars post few hours ago. Definitely a typo... Carry on

 

@ButtUglyJeff

(not really directed at ButtUgly, more of a rant)

This has probably been mentioned before but a high intake of sugar and high-fructose corn syrup (also lots of fast carbs such as wheat in general) tend to lead to fatty liver disease, which in turn can lead to liver scarring. Which is the same fatty liver and liver scarring you can get from the over-consumption of alcohol.

It is currently estimated that 80 million of Americans have fatty liver disease; alcoholic, non-alcoholic or a combination of the two. It's a bloody epidemic and it's all down to our western eating habits. Our ancestors never had access to this much sugar, fast carbs and alcohol. We're simply not designed for it physiologically. And physiologically speaking fasting, intermittent fasting and going without food for a couple of days or weeks here and there is actually extremely healthy for us. It gives our body time to rest and heal and clean out old and bad cells.

Whenever this discussion of artificial sweeteners come up I also generally like to make the point that:

Artificial sweeteners: Maybe bad for us. Studies are showing either no effect, or some effect, in the regularly consumed doses. If you want to be safe I agree I think it's wise to at least avoid over-consumption.

However, now let's put that into perspective with some other things:

Sugar: Definitely 100% very bad for us. Pure poison.

High-fructose corn syrup: Even worse than sugar, very hard on the liver. Being put into a lot of candy these days instead of sugar because of cost.

Alcohol: Very bad for us, the old studies that showed that small amounts are beneficial have generally been disproved (sorry). Effects the brain, liver and gut bacteria plus many other things in a negative way.

Too many fast carbs (wheat, starches, pasta, white rice etc): Bad for us, makes our blood-sugar and insulin go haywire and can lead to insulin resistance which leads to a myriad of other issues.

Trans-fat: Very bad for us, linked to build up of coronary plaque and circulatory disease in general. Very different from natural fats which are good for us and help heal and fuel the body.

My point here is that being healthy is about so much more than artificial sweeteners, and that there are far worse dangers which we regularly ignore in our everyday life.

So if you live a healthy balanced life, get your exercise, get your sleep, follow a healthy diet such a the Mediterranean diet or Keto (which are pretty similar but keto has less carbs), avoid sugars, don't overindulge in alcohol too often etc... if you do all that you can probably hydrate with diet-coke and still be pretty healthy overall.

On the other hand if you don't exercise, don't get enough sleep, is generally stressed out, eat mostly fast food, snack on candy and crisps, binge drink every weekend etc... then there is no amount of "skipping artificial sweeteners" which is going to save you.

This ended up a lot longer than I thought it would, my point is simply that I think there are a lot worse things we can do (and which many regularly do) than consuming artificial sweeteners.

 

f**k that, pasta every day for life.

Is not like I wanna live forever anyway.

 

I don't want to put words in TwoEars's mouth but I think the point isn't living longer (much less forever...lol) but living better while being alive.

Functioning, relatively healthy & reasonably free of pain.I have a long way to go (I'm a sugar/carb addict myself) but I think it makes a helluvalotta sense.

Of course we're all free to eat as we see fit, but there are...consequences.

 

This is probably the worst possible thread to be reading as I ate my leftover carryout sesame chicken.

On the plus side, I learned that my frequent forgetting to eat is actually healthy, intermittent fasting.

I strive for a balance between 'No pasta! Bad!' and 'Pasta everyday!'. Perfect example: Christian Bale's Batman was ripped but miserable. Adam West's Batman, well... he definitely enjoyed pasta from time to time (and taffy), but still beat up sharks.

 

Very good point of view.
We were just focusing a little bit in the sweetners because most of my patients nowadays cut the sugar but use artificial sweeteners in food and beverage , sometimes 3-4 times a day, thinking they are having good healthy habits.

 

Is detox a real thing or can you replace it with training and drinking water because you sweat out toxins?

 

Would you say that its fine to eat small amounts of refined sugar, as long as its not "alone", like in a coke? So a fruits fructose is fine, because of all the other stuff in the fruit that slows down how fast it gets into the blood. Therefore not causing a spike that requires a insulin respons for balance, right?
So if I drink coke with a otherwise healthy meal, its fine?

 

Per my alternative medicine docs advice, I try to do a liver detox about 2x a year. I don't do artificial sweetners or much sugar but I do like the beer.

 

Detox? Why not just fast?
Typical Detox is usually a pretty caloric deficit thing anyway

 

Intermittent fasting is really the only thing truly "detoxing" on demand. Your body does all the actual detoxing it needs automatically in a healthy individual.

Most "detox" regimes are actually flushing the shit (lulz) out of your gut flora.

There is one hope I have as GI research progresses: gut microbiome can be read and analyzed such that we can implant/extract specific bacterias as needed for the individual. Fecal transplant therapy might be an initial avenue for this but as technology advances, it will become really cool to see how much further we push this.

TBrain-gut axis research gets me incredibly excited and one of the strongest factors to why I want to practice medicine. I sadly did not get accepted this year but plan to apply again. Hard to accept in my early - mid thirties but exciting nonetheless.