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from the it-does-a-body-good-(in-small-doses) dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
[...]Research on 5,834 U.S. adults by Brigham Young University exercise science professor Larry Tucker, Ph.D., found people who drink low-fat milk experience several years less biological aging than those who drink high-fat (2% and whole) milk.
[...]Tucker investigated the relationship between telomere length and both milk intake frequency (daily drinkers vs. weekly drinkers or less) and milk fat content consumed (whole vs. 2% vs. 1% vs. skim). Telomeres are the nucleotide endcaps of human chromosomes. They act like a biological clock and they're extremely correlated with age; each time a cell replicates, humans lose a tiny bit of the endcaps. Therefore, the older people get, the shorter their telomeres.
And, apparently, the more high-fat milk people drink, the shorter their telomeres are, according to the new BYU study, published in Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity. The study revealed that for every 1% increase in milk fat consumed (drinking 2% vs. 1% milk), telomeres were 69 base pairs shorter in the adults studied, which translated into more than four years in additional biological aging. When Tucker analyzed the extremes of milk drinkers, adults who consumed whole milk had telomeres that were a striking 145 base pairs shorter than non-fat milk drinkers.
-- submitted from IRC
Larry A. Tucker. Milk Fat Intake and Telomere Length in U.S. Women and Men: The Role of the Milk Fat Fraction. Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity, 2019; 2019: 1 DOI: 10.1155/2019/1574021
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Saturday January 25 2020, @02:18PM (22 children)
Note that depending on study, somewhere around ninety percent of Africans and Asian adults are lactose intolerant and can't or shouldn't drink milk, and for northern euros the lactose intolerance rate is around ten percent.
Note that symptom level varies and just because you "shouldn't" doesn't mean you'd die. See ethanol consumption, for an example of "you shouldn't but almost everyone does and mostly nothing bad happens".
Anyway the concept of "everyone gotta drink milk" is a very white privilege cultural thing. Only white people should be drinking and digesting this magical 1% milk.
And the point is you'd think a genetic age difference of 5 years would show up in lifespan numbers because entire races can't or shouldn't drink this magical fountain of youth milk at all, but it doesn't seem to, as per the wikipedia article for "race and health in the united states".
From a meme point of view this is really going to set off those GOMAD gallon of milk a day fitness weirdos. A gallon of milk a day can't be healthy for anything but a growing calf, but some white guys propose it for fitness so I donno.
Milk has a lot of contaminants and 1% should have half the fat soluble pesticides and hormones of 2%, shouldn't it? So maybe its as simple as the 1%-ers consume half the pesticides of 2%-ers.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @02:21PM
It's a Mormon thing... the space lizard Moroni told Joseph Smith to drink Coca-Cola, not milk, so now they'll do anything possible to discredit milk.
(Score: 2) by bussdriver on Saturday January 25 2020, @03:38PM (5 children)
It will not be easy to get numbers from different nations with bigger factors between the people influencing lifespan. Sticking to a biological marker is much better even if it's not a direct outcome based marker. Not having any milk might be a disadvantage, but I think it's probably completely harmful once you remove the nutritional needs of malnourished children in the EU 1000 a years ago.
Lactose Intolerance is a gut bacteria problem; you could turn somebody either direction.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @04:49PM (4 children)
Actually, no. Lactose intolerance is a lactase enzyme production problem.
We're mammals. Like all mammals, most humans stop producing lactase enzyme around five years of age. After that, lactose moves untouched to the small intestine, where gut bacteria (yes, they have a role in this) ferment the sugar, causing bloating, cramps and gaz, the classic symptoms of lactose intolerance.
But at some point in human history, a group of caucasians, particularly those living in cold northern european areas, had an evolutionnary advantage if their bodies kept producing lactase longer, because that gave them access to a food source available all year long, including the cold harsh winters, providing them with essential nutrients not easily obtainable during the cold season. Darwinism ran its course, soon giving birth to an entire human population who kept producing lactase enzyme even late in life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @05:46PM (1 child)
This is more or less what I was always told, but it fails to explain how not eating dairy for a year could result in lactose intolerance that wasn't present perviously.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 25 2020, @05:49PM
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:13PM
Not just them. Several groups across Asia and Africa did this independently as well.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @11:10PM
It’s probably a combination of genetics and epigenetics. Genes can be turned on and off.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @04:03PM (7 children)
Lactose intolerance, is mostly about your gut bacteria. I had no problems with lactose until I moved to Asia and had a couple rounds of antibiotics. After that, I became lactose intolerant. Genes can change their expression, but not that quickly.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @04:56PM (1 child)
You were probably already lactose intolerant at the genetic level (your body stoped producing lactase enzyme when you were around five), but you didn't notice it because you had little or no lactose-fermenting bacteria in your gut. At some point in your life (probably due more to your move to Asia than to antibiotics), those latose-fermenting bacteria moved in to your gut, starting to cause the classic symptoms of lactose intolerance that you didn't experience before.
Come to think of it, maybe the antibiotics played a role as well, decimating a formerly well established gut flora, breaking the equilibrium and opening the door to a new population that were present in your new country of adoption.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @05:57PM
That's more or less what I was observing. There was a period where I was consuming a ton of live culture yogurts with strains of bacteria that are known to be able to digest lactase and it seemed to help. including S. Thermophillus, IIRC. But, eating enough to make that work is somewhat of a challenge and I haven't yet figured out how to get it to be self-sustaining.
I remember from my days studying microbiology that it's usually not a problem of too many bacteria, it's a problem of having the wrong mixture of bacteria or having bacteria in the wrong places. If you're going to nuke the population with wide band antibiotics, then you really ought to have a plan for restoring the ones that are friendly or neutral. If you've got the right mixture of bacteria, the ones that secrete nasty chemicals have to compete with ones that are either beneficial or neutral and the net result is a limitation of the harmful byproduct.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Arik on Saturday January 25 2020, @05:41PM (4 children)
The other poster may be somewhat on the right track, gut bacteria is the other major factor that gets overlooked.
As far as I understand it, virtually no one in Japan is able to digest lactose (lack the milk drinking gene) yet they consume quite a bit of dairy with no apparent symptoms. As far as I understand it, that's supposed to be down to their gut bacteria *also* being unable to digest lactose, so it simply passes through untouched.
You only get symptoms if you can't digest the lactose yourself, but your gut bacteria can. It's their subsequent excretion that causes the symptoms. So it makes sense you might have been not digesting the whole time, but the antibiotics caused catastrophe in your gut bacteria and this somehow caused you to start experiencing symptoms.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:02PM (1 child)
It was mainland China and for that year I hardly even saw butter. There was a near complete lack of any dairy products, even finding butter was often an issue in some of those small towns. The only butter I could find would usually be in those little packets. I could generally get soft serve ice cream and apple milk. (Actually pretty tasty)
My suspicion has been that it's the wrong mix of bacteria. I had a great deal of luck by introducing massive amounts of bacteria back into the body via live culture yogurt including strains that are known to digest lactose in a less problematic way, but the amount it took was a lot and I haven't been able to figure out an appropriate mix or schedule to make it self sustaining. I was eating about a gallon of live culture yogurt a week to see much effect and at that point, it was unclear whether it was just extra lactase from the bacteria or if some had set up shop in my digestive track.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:11PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @08:37PM (1 child)
Even people who can digest lactose can be lactose intolerant depending on their gut bacteria.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @02:05AM
Who upvoted this?! This is the most anti-intellectual comment in the thread...
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday January 25 2020, @04:26PM
There are a ton of variables to consider in a study of this sort. I'm a bit skeptical that they've been able to control for everything else and managed to pin down this supposed correlation between whole milk and shorter telomers. As in, perhaps people who drink 1% milk are more health conscious in general? Fat soluble contaminants is a good point, and definitely another possibility.
For centuries, Europeans have shunned drinking of water because it was too hard to get clean water. Instead, they drank beer, wine, and other alcoholic drinks on a regular basis, and consequently evolved greater tolerance for alcohol. Milk (and beer) goes back at least to Bronze Age times in the Middle East. Same thing. Peoples who herded goats and cattle evolved lactose tolerance that extends into adulthood. The custom of adults drinking milk spread over most of Eurasia and North Africa, but not into Sub-Saharan Africa.
Goign all the way to fat-free milk is not fun. Most fat free milk tastes horrible. The one exception I know of is Braum's (a regional restaurant specializing in dairy) fat-free milk. That stuff tastes just fine.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:09PM (2 children)
Note that symptom level varies and just because you "shouldn't" doesn't mean you'd die."
As to the first, that's very much an artifact of history. Most Americans of African descent are from a few areas in west Africa that specifically lack this gene. That's not even true of west Africa as a whole, there are groups that historically keep cattle; the Fulani, for instance, keep dairy cows, make cheeses, etc. And many of them have the lactase persistence gene. They are West African, they're just a bit further inland than the groups that were most often enslaved. The jungle and coast aren't the best places to keep cattle, but that's not all of Africa, or even all of one region inside of Africa.
And on top of that, even those who lack the lactase persistence gene can and often do drink milk. The gene doesn't cause symptoms, it simply prevents you from digesting the lactase. You'll absorb the other nutrients and pass the lactase through untouched, and that's not really a problem. There's no problem unless your gut bacteria *does* start digesting the lactase. So it's more complicated than just 'you shouldn't drink it if you don't have the gene.' Lots of Japanese (for one example) eat dairy regularly with no symptoms, no ill effects, despite not being able to digest the lactase.
"Only white people should be drinking and digesting this magical 1% milk."
And that's just racist nonsense. No matter how you define this "white people" group, it will include many people who lack lactase persistence, and exclude many who do not. Unless you define "white people" specifically as those who do have lactase persistence, in which case 10% of those blue-eyed blonde haired Swedes are NOT white, but 50% of those black-eyed, wooly-haired, black-skinned Fulani ARE white, and a whopping *90%* of the black-eyed, wooly-haired, black-skinned Tutsi in central Africa must be white as well! The same proportion of Tutsis as Swedes.
Now "white people" is so vague and undefinable I don't advise using the phrase at all, but somehow it still doesn't seem *quite* vague enough to allow for that outcome.
This isn't a "racial" difference (and neither is anything else, but that's another topic) it's a population or individual difference. Cattle farming, and lactase persistence, was developed in multiple places around the world - multiple places in Africa, multiple places in Asia, and possibly multiple places in Europe as well (certainly at least once, independent of the other continents.)
"Milk has a lot of contaminants and 1% should have half the fat soluble pesticides and hormones of 2%, shouldn't it?"
That sounds like a hypothesis worthy of investigation to me.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @09:57PM
50% of those black-eyed, wooly-haired, black-skinned Fulani ARE white, and a whopping *90%* of the black-eyed, wooly-haired, black-skinned Tutsi in central Africa must be white as well!
No. That is "cultural appropriation"! We need to take action now!
--
drinka-pinta-milka-day.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @04:17PM
Agree with your comment, just wanted to snark that we now have racial essentialist legality. Can't drink milk? You're fired from the white snowflake race! If essentialist legality doesn't work with something that has an objective basis like gender, even if not understood completely, it's hopeless to work with something that's fundamentally a social construct like race.
Conservatives seem to like their social constructs, both with gender and race.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Captival on Saturday January 25 2020, @10:40PM (1 child)
This site has 'Flamebait' and 'Troll' options, but is sadly lacking a 'This Person Is Clinically Insane And Happily Proving It' mod.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 26 2020, @03:44PM
Every post would end up -1 Nuts.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 26 2020, @12:02AM
You...*do* know large swathes of sub-Saharan Africans are descended from the pastoralist Bantu, don't you? Or that the Maasai drink plenty of it? Or that (Asian) Indian people have a culture which heavily emphasizes a lactovegeterian diet?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @02:19PM (1 child)
50 pushups gets you your Masters degree and 100 gets you your PhD. It's obvious that this guy's strongest muscle isn't his brain because he forgot the bit about "correlation doesn't imply causation". Can't wait for his followup study which will determine how your height depends on whether you like maraschino cherries on sundaes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:16PM
The paper got published. That's all that matters for him. Boo yeah!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday January 25 2020, @02:34PM (20 children)
This study deals specifically with Telomere length aging. There is another IMHO far more important argument for drinking whole milk particularly in children and teens: Obesity. Another recent study claimed that low-fat milk drinkers are 40% more likely to be obese. With half of my country obese, I am banking on the latter being more impactful than telomere length by a wide margin.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Saturday January 25 2020, @03:18PM
They definitely don't make much of a case that milk fat has some specific function with respect to telomeres. They, in their introduction, note that oxidative stress can cause telomere shortening, but don't explain why milkfat, specifically, would lead to substantial oxidative stress. To me, that says they didn't formulate a hypothesis in advance, and just hoped they'd find some relationship at all between milk consumption(be it amount or some other factor) and telomere length.
Most likely the spurious correlation we're seeing is people who care about their health when shopping vs people who don't in aggregate form.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 25 2020, @04:02PM (14 children)
There's also the fact that the longer your telomeres, the more likely you are to get cancer and die. For those doing the math, dying shortens your life.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @05:06PM
I dunno, your credibility is shot so probably the opposite is true!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @11:07PM (12 children)
You are getting your correlation and causation mixed up. Each time a cell divides they get shorter due to the 5′-3′ direction on each half of the strand going in opposite directions. Shorter telomeres in healthy cells open them up to suffering other oncogenic changes. However, one thing cancer does, a lot, is divide. Therefore, cancer cells have mechanisms to restore and lengthen the telomeres beyond the ability of normal cells so as to allow such excess cell division by avoiding external senescence and apoptosis. This causes the common misunderstanding people have between long telomeres in cells and cancer.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 26 2020, @03:45PM (11 children)
There's a Nobel prize saying you are incorrect.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @08:37PM (10 children)
I am already well-aware of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and I suggest you more-carefully read the literature. I think you are confusing high-telomerase and other telomere-lengthening enzymes and activity along with abnormally long telomeres (given their number of divisions) in cancer cells with the long telomeres in general increasing the risk of cancer. May I suggest https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3370421/ [nih.gov] and citations 32 and 33 as a good starting point
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 26 2020, @09:57PM (7 children)
Ah, you mean the stolen valor prize given to Carol Greider? Yeah, you should probably check the findings of the guy who she did some of the research on the subject for, before she stole his work.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @12:55AM (6 children)
Oncology is not my specialty, nor do I believe it is yours, so one or both of our understandings may be out of date. And was the latest Nobel Prize that seem applicable to the topic at hand. However, if you have sources that disagree with the ones I've cited, feel free to cite them as well. If I'm incorrect I'd like to know, but my initial review of the literature seems to disagree with your assertion. Also, a quick Google for Carol Greider doesn't show any evidence of controversy but that may be drowned out by the results for her Nobel Prize. Nor is "guy who she did some of the research on the subject for, before she stole his work" much of a lead to go on. In the mean time, everyone else is free to read the literature I cited or find others themselves.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 27 2020, @03:13AM (4 children)
Check into the writings of Bret Weinstein. He's the evolutionary biologist she was running studies for when she decided to take the work for herself. I'd stick to the biology bits unless you're looking to get angry over politics though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @08:11PM (3 children)
Are you actually claiming that Greider stole the discovery of telomerase from Weinstein, who was supervising her at the time? She isolated telomerarse in 1984 and published the results with her doctoral advisor Elizabeth Blackburn in 1985†, while he was almost certainly in high school at the time (as he was a college freshman in 1987††). Or are you talking about something else? I'm not sure what that would be because it doesn't seem like they were ever in a position where she would have "run studies" for him. Especially given the number of her articles that show up in my research index (over 100) compared to his 2, which means that whatever he was researching probably wasn't medicine.
† https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2009/press-release/ [nobelprize.org]
†† https://www.chronicle.com/article/The-Professor-Who-Roiled/240267 [chronicle.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 28 2020, @02:59AM (2 children)
Okay, you get that the 2k9 Nobel was not given for her 1984 work, yes? What he was researching was this: There was a company that supplies lab mice for research studies. Every mouse they shipped had abnormally long telomeres. He was interested in if this was affecting drug safety studies (Yes, it was passing a lot of drugs that should not have been even tested on humans, much less declared safe for them.) by giving a misleading cancer risk because of said telomeres and did a hell of a lot of related research on the subject, some of which he farmed out.
No, he is not a doctor, he is an evolutionary biologist. He's also one of the smartest people you will ever refuse to read or listen to.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @07:09AM (1 child)
The Nobel Prize committee explicitly said that it was "for the discovery of 'how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase'" based on these three papers: Szostak JW, Blackburn EH. Cloning yeast telomeres on linear plasmid vectors. Cell 1982; 29:245-255. Greider CW, Blackburn EH. Identification of a specific telomere terminal transferase activity in Tetrahymena extracts. Cell 1985; 43:405-13. Greider CW, Blackburn EH. A telomeric sequence in the RNA of Tetrahymena telomerase required for telomere repeat synthesis. Nature 1989; 337:331-7. It isn't uncommon for Nobel Prizes to be given many years later, once the importance of the work to the field is more apparent. After all, "The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine is awarded for discovery of major importance in life science or medicine. Discoveries that have changed the scientific paradigm and are of great benefit for mankind are awarded the prize."
That said, I did look into the situation you described. I can see why he would be pissed. The timing does look really suspicious given the timing of some of her papers around 2000-2002 and his submissions to Nature and Experimental Gerontology. And there is definitely some bad feelings there on both sides. My only real problem is that other than his assertions in various media outlets, I haven't found evidence that she stole his work beyond what could have been a misunderstanding of paper rights, a lack of acknowledgement that could have been caused by the bad blood, the bad feelings he got from the way she critiqued his Exp. Gerontol. work before submission, and his suspicions that she was the peer-reviewer. I would have hoped for some emails, letters, contracts or something. However, even if the worst of what he said is true, I don't think it would entitle him to her Nobel Prize. As stated, they gave it for the discoveries in the 80s, when he wasn't even conducting his research in biology. Although the unethical behavior may have disqualified her personally in the eyes of the committee.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday January 29 2020, @01:30AM
I don't either but dishonest shitheads should not receive Nobel prizes. Oh and he damned sure deserves at least a heartfelt attaboy for finding out using mice whose telomeres aren't shortening like they should because of unnatural breeding habits by the supplier was allowing lots of cancer-causing drugs to be wrongly approved. I know it's a controversial position but I've always been in the anti-cancer camp.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @04:33AM
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4460268/ [nih.gov] has a good summary of what you are looking for. Long story short is that the general rule is that shorter TL does raise your RR in general but that it also depends on the cell type and carcinogenesis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @02:21AM (1 child)
Dear AC: thank you for your meaningful contributions to a conversation that is almost swamped with "I feel"s and "I think"s. Truly appreciate both this post and another of yours [soylentnews.org] and I have bookmarked Telomeres, lifestyle, cancer, and aging [nih.gov] for later this week when I have some deep-delve time. Thank you!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @09:30AM
I'll assume you aren't the other AC that liked to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4460268/ [nih.gov] in a different comment. You may want to look at that one too, as the research does look more up to date and thorough then the link I had on hand. I've not had time to really look it over or check its web, as I've had my curiousity piqued by the BW/CWG thing, so get mad at the other guy if I am wrong in endorsing it.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @04:09PM (2 children)
What you eat has absolutely nothing to do with obesity. Obesity is purely a function of how many calories you store versus burn. If you burn more than you eat, and engage in resistance training, you'll eventually stop being obese and will eventually starve to death if that continues. Diet is more about how long you can keep functioning on a particular set of foods .
People who are obese are obese because they're consuming more than they burn. There are no exceptions.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Saturday January 25 2020, @11:11PM
You are both right and wrong.
Yes, it is possible to literally starve anyone and they will lose weight.
That said, implying that a calorie is a calorie is demonstrably false. We are just scratching the surface of understanding the impact of genetics, gut biome, and diet composition.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday January 26 2020, @03:36AM
It's not just how much you consume and burn. You also have to consider how much you shit, and what you shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @12:05AM
If you read the labels* carefully you will find that many "low fat" milks have just as many calories as full cream. They replace the cream with sugar. Milk companies love to promote the "healthy" low fat stuff because then they get to both charge you extra for removing the "fat", and to sell the expensive cream as well.
*at least in countries where nutrition labels are required.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jimbrooking on Saturday January 25 2020, @03:04PM (14 children)
As I understand it, milk came to be so mammals could feed their young. Once they can eat non-milk food, there is no reason to drink any milk. That might be an interesting study: lifespan and health of non-milk-drinkers vs. skim/1%/2%/whole milk drinkers.
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Saturday January 25 2020, @03:23PM (3 children)
As I understand it, milk came to be so mammals could feed their young. Once they can eat non-milk food, there is no reason to drink any milk.
True, but not the whole story.
People from some parts of Europe or East Africa are well adapted to drinking milk as adults, as a way of surviving poor diet. Most other people are not well adapted, and
may even be lactose intolerant or have problems with some milk protein.
So, which kind of people did this study test?
And was it funded by purveyors of "milk with the milk removed"?
What happens to the telomeres of people who drink alcohol free beer? (Its obviously too late for their brain cells, but their livers might still be in good nick).
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @04:11PM (2 children)
It's not really all that true. Egg whites are "for" nourishing bird embryos. Vegetables are "for" nourishing plant seeds. Humans drink milk the same way we eat vegetables and eggs, because food is food.
Obviously if someone isn't genetically suited for drinking milk they shouldn't drink it, much like some people shouldn't eat shellfish or peanuts or whatever other perfectly normal food doesn't agree with their personal biology.
All that said, this study sure seems like junk science to me. Telomeres aren't biological age, and both telomere length and milk drinking are affected by and correlated with a bunch of other factors.
Drink whatever milk you like, if any. I'm sticking with 1% - skim being surprisingly hard to find in the brand I prefer - but only because I like it better.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Monday January 27 2020, @02:29PM (1 child)
Egg yolks are "for" nourishing bird embryos.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 28 2020, @03:00AM
And snakes. And me.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Saturday January 25 2020, @03:43PM (3 children)
Why? Cause I can and it's delicious. That said I wouldn't even classify the 1% stuff as milk, it's like opaque water. If it is less then 3% you are drinking flavored water. Which is barely better then all the fake milks and that stuff ain't even real milk but the waste-product of boiling grains and there ain't no milking grains.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:11PM (2 children)
I too like milk a lot -- always have. I also find it helps me not over eat. Most days I have a mug of milk (12 to 16 oz) after one serving of dinner and when I'm finished with the milk, I feel completely satisfied. In contrast, especially with a carb heavy meal like pasta, I will continue to feel hungry and keep on eating if I don't have the milk. Milk is like desert but without all the refined sugar and carbs and it somehow, for me, it makes a rationally sized meal as filling as Thanksgiving.
Then there's the thing where for decades we've been told to cut out the fat and as it turns out, that was terrible advice. I've decided to just eat what my body wants and not worry about it so long as I'm not obese.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:12PM (1 child)
And yes, I drink whole milk. It's fucking ambrosia.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hendrikboom on Sunday January 26 2020, @03:41AM
5 to 10% Cream isn't bad either. Especially with blueberries. Though after a while it starts to seem too much and I'm back to whole milk without blueberries. 35% cream is almost immediately too much.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 25 2020, @04:04PM (2 children)
You'd have to control the entire rest of their diets if you wanted a causal result instead of a correlative one.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Saturday January 25 2020, @04:28PM (1 child)
And don't do your infants any "favours " by using 1% milk instead of whole milk. At one point stupid people ended up with kids showing signs of malnutrition because they weren't getting enough protein. The traditional "half milk half water to start" dilutes whole milk to 1.75%, dilute enough for the first few days, before starting on 3.25% (human breast milk is about 5% after the first week or so, but starts off lower), but skim milk to 0.5%, not enough for brain development.
Formula? Only if you can't nurse and can't get milk. Otherwise it's just a waste of money.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 26 2020, @03:46PM
Don't look at me, I drink heavy cream. Milk is only for cooking with.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 25 2020, @05:59PM
Blood came to be for transport of oxygen, nutrients, CO2 and waste products among the internal organs. Doesn't mean that some species haven't adapted to make blood their food...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:04PM (1 child)
The only reason to drink milk is for vitamin D in areas where there's not enough sunlight. It's why the genetic ability is found primarily in individuals that are from areas that get very little sun during the winter.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday January 26 2020, @03:42AM
Isn't that vitamin D *added* to the milk?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Saturday January 25 2020, @04:15PM (13 children)
( https://www.hindawi.com/journals/omcl/2019/1574021/ [hindawi.com] ) ~added some line breaks~
And here's the actual question the participants were asked:
Note it's really not just saturated fats but specific to whole milk:
So, first off, this is about the milks you use in your hot cocoa and in your cereals. Not what you put in your tea or coffee. Secondly, if you have only a little saturated fats in your diet you might be able to get away with daily whole milks but the vast majority of adults are better off with daily lean milks. Also, dropping the milks altogether isn't good for you. And, all in all, it's all in support of the existing dietary guidelines so there's nothing surprising about it.
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(Score: 4, Touché) by barbara hudson on Saturday January 25 2020, @04:41PM (12 children)
Conclusion: bacon makes you live longer.
Or at least gives you more to look forward to first thing in the morning ...
because I can do equally shitty pseudoscience. Because they didn't actually "find" anything.
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(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:01PM (2 children)
My great grand fathers died around 30 years of age with cardiac issues. For the last 70+ years the family chalked up the cause to their traditional bacon and eggs breakfast diet, but... I think just as, if not more, likely that they checked out because they couldn't picture another 40 years dealing with the wife and children.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Funny) by barbara hudson on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:20PM (1 child)
Because of the high familial risk of heart disease, ended up being referred to a cardiologist, who found nothing (yep, I'm a totally heartless bitch), but ordered a 2-day nuclear medicine MIBI stress test. Absolutely nothing out of the normal. Not "normal for your age", just "normal."
Which is what I told them, because the more cholesterol and other fats I eat, the lower my LDL and the higher my HDL. My LDL is half normal, and my HDL is between 175 and 235% of normal. People would kill to have those numbers.
And this is after a lifetime of eating lots of fats, trans-fats, processed food, junk food, and decades of 2 fried eggs, sausage, home fries, and beans for breakfast 7 days a week (hey, it's what you do when you make a living writing code).
When the government banned trans fats a couple of years ago, I showed people the news item, then asked "does this mean free liposuction for trans folk? I could afford to lose a few pounds, or at least put it somewhere else." I had to explain the fricking joke. No. Sense. Of. Humour!
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 26 2020, @02:45AM
One of my great grandmothers chewed tobacco until she was 96, lived to 98... some people have protective somethings that a lot of people don't. For diet (and maybe even chewing tobacco) I suspect our tag-along microbes have a tremendous amount to do with it, and I wonder how many of today's health challenges are due to variants of the hygiene hypothesis. Clean food, clean water, clean bodies - that's gotta screw up the micro-biome something fierce. "Germ free" is a delusion, we might create a scorched earth ecosystem for the germs, but all that means is that the pioneer species can invade unopposed. Whatever is going on on people's hands after singing "Happy Birthday To You" while scrubbing with anti-bacterial soap, it's nothing that existed more than about 100 years ago - which, in my mind means that there's been a million times longer evolutionary period developing a balanced system, as compared to the quasi-sterile world we've been trying to create.
Sterility has its place, for instance in brain surgery, right? Or so you might think. There are some brain surgeries that use a nasal approach to minimize collateral damage, and: no, they don't even attempt to sterilize the sinuses before cutting down into the brain tissue. Surprisingly, post-operative complications due to infection run about the same rate for the nasal entry procedures as traditional shave the head scrub the scalp entry procedures.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:32PM (8 children)
It wasn't their questions. It was the NHANES's. But the difference between whole 3.25% and fat 3.7% is 0.5g in saturated fats for every 100g milk so it's just not distinguishing I would imagine. Btw, non-fat milk is 0.1g saturated fat for every 100g while 1% fat milk is 1g saturated fats for every 100g so that's where you have a proportionally bigger difference where they should probably made a bigger effort to ask about. But again, not their questions or survey...
Incidentally, bacon is 15g saturated per 100g. There's also a point here about what type of fatty acids we're talking about which the paper does go into which also related to recommendations about red meat and such... But I have no plans of every cutting on my saturated fats in general so this is where I stop caring altogether.
Their findings is that it's not entirely about the fat consumption. It's about the type of fat and other components in the milk:
Anyhow, as said, the study itself is limited by the question format. But it's very "meta" as it links dozens of other studies and discusses policies so it's pretty good for us laymen to get a sense for why the polices are what they are despite seemingly mixed results in different studies.
Cut the grains and you'll end up with my diet while on a caloric deficit :D
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(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday January 25 2020, @07:15PM (7 children)
ANY study that cites the "Mediterranean Diet" as any sort of proof is full of shit. The diet has nothing to do with health - it turned out to be normal human genetic variance in large populations. But like all bad science, it's going to take a generation to die.
The problem of dietary fat is entirely genetic. Many humans can't handle it properly - some thrive on it, with LDL levels dropping and HDL levels rising the more fat they eat. Several genes are involved, and the more mutated genes that enable the quick conversion of LDL to HDL, the better. Is it random? Don't know, don't care. We can't change it, just be aware of it, and rub it in the noses of the people who go "oh bad fat!" :-)
For a while I went on a diet of 3 to 5 fried eggs a day at breakfast - my LDL dropped to less than half normal, and my HDL to well over twice normal. The problem isn't dietary fat - it's our genes. Other mammals don't have this problem, same as almost all other mammals don't go into menopause. Two genetic defects of the human race.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Saturday January 25 2020, @08:22PM (6 children)
A quick review of recent and most cited shows the term is actively being used by medical researchers: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?scisbd=1&q=Mediterranean+Diet [google.com]
Nature just run a story showing how increased activity and dietary changes can overcome genetic susceptibility: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41525-019-0099-2 [nature.com]
Most nutrition and medical research agrees saturated fats are too abundant in our "western" diets for the vast majority of people. Are there exception? Sure. There people out there celebrating 90yr/old after smoking two packs a day for 70 years. I met them. Doesn't mean much as far as what medical bodies should recommend to the general population and to food industry regulatory bodies.
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(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday January 25 2020, @10:20PM (5 children)
And many doctors still cite low seretonin in the brain as the cause of depression even though there is no proof, and plenty of proof that SSRIs cause increased suicide rates over both the short and long term. The Mediterranean diet is another such myth.
Also, there are people who don't have a problem with eating a high fat diet because of mutations. This is easily proven by a combination of blood tests and arterial scans. Runs in families. In such cases, it's not like their bodies resist damages caused by bad habits - the fat is rapidly taken up and used by the body. As it should be. Humans have a genetic defect that causes fat to deposit in coronary arteries. Most other hominids don't. Instead they get fibrotic masses. Not healthy either way, except in the case of humans who get neither.
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(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Saturday January 25 2020, @11:04PM (1 child)
Well, I would have to ask, "compared to what?" I have a hypothesis that the Mediterranean diet is healthier than the "Twinkies and McDonald's diet."
I can only force a sample of one, so I know which one I'd pick if I had to test that hypothesis.
(Score: 1, Troll) by barbara hudson on Saturday January 25 2020, @11:13PM
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(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday January 26 2020, @01:16AM (2 children)
First of all, I'm talking about researchers not doctors. And in the literature most of the meta agrees they don't do better more than placebo.
That being said, doctors and medical authorities keep prescribing SSRIs for the same reason parents check under the bed for monsters: Placebos work and there's a genuine risk in taking it away from patients that believe in it while it also conductive to the rest of the treatment for doctors to able to say "take this and go to therapy" instead of "go to therapy" as if they're shoeing them away. I believe it was around here where I heard how in Germany some clinics instruct doctors to prescribe actual placebos (sugar pills) when referring to psychiatric / psychological care for that reason as well. They also give them a whole list of side-effects and tell them to phone back just so the patients feel they're being looked after.
Hold on now. Seems you're mixing things up. This is the bad stuff by the following order per importance:
1. Obesity.
2. Carbs.
3. Saturated fat.
So, when talking about no.3, we're assuming no caloric surplus otherwise there's obesity which fucks everything up regardless. I'm also assuming no deficit since you literally burn through it all when cutting anyhow so you only really want high proteins to keep the muscles from breaking apart but otherwise you can eat anything up to the caloric limit.
So, in that context, the Mediterranean diet is simply a name space for high protein, high fat, low carbs, low saturated fats diet. It's actually quite close to the Atkins-like bacon and milk diet we're enjoying. Just slightly better. How much better? Well, I'm thinking, 3-5years worth telomere length speaking :D
How relevant is it? Well, from what I read, about 90% of the population is stuck dealing with no.1 and no.2 with the regulations over emphasizing no.3, almost entirely ignoring no.2 and failing to deal with no.1. So, with this in mind, the researchers basically just started advocating the Mediterranean diet as a catch all. Sure, most people would be fine with just cutting on the carbs and getting their BMI in check. But there are a LOT of skinny young people getting heart attacks despite doing cardio and eating right due to no.3 so they figured they might as well cover all their bases. And as for an added bonus, there's this new telomere length thing now so they clearly weren't all wrong recommending it.
Maybe it's too much of fad. But it's not a myth. It's just over rated a bit. Still, it's easy to find good recipes googling Mediterranean diet cook books so I'm not complaining.
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(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday January 26 2020, @01:35AM (1 child)
Also, telomeres are bullshit. They can grow longer, as they did in the astronaut twins where one spent a year in space. Upon return, his telomeres were shorter, but they grew back to their normal length. The research assumes this is not possible. Same as I assumed it wasn't possible because nobody checked it until recently.
So telomeres are not an indication of aging, because people don't grow younger as they age unless they're Benjamin Button.
All those reports of Scott Kelly aging faster in space than his twin Mark on earth turned out to be both premature and wrong, unless you believe that he got younger upon return.
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(Score: 2) by RamiK on Sunday January 26 2020, @03:49AM
And the food industry. The unsaturated fats thing started when the industry tried to push in trans fats, then resisted their removal, then resisted replacing saturated fats with unsaturated, then finally accepted it but tried to push more carbs in.
But the thing is, for every bad paper, there's a dozen good ones that the regulator ignores and no one mentions. Now at least researchers are required to reveal funding sources in most publications so we're starting to see less and less fake science. Doesn't change the fact the administration simply ignores the science... But still, the science is better at least.
First of all, they're biomarkers, not aging itself. That being said, I think you got your facts critically wrong not reading the next paragraph through:
( https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/nasas-twins-study-creates-portrait-human-body-after-year-space-180971945/ [smithsonianmag.com] )
So, the telomeres elongated during spaceflight but shorten back and even further shortened once back on earth for a while eventually being shorter than his brother's. But again, just bio markers. They reflect age over time in the same sense wrinkles can tell how you're aging. Some days will be drier... Sometimes I'll get facial dandruff... Sometimes you'll shine like a 12 year old... Doesn't change the fact they add up, aren't getting fuller and I'm getting old. At least, where gravity is involved...
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(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @05:56PM (4 children)
Those who select 1% are probably more health-conscious in general. It may not be the direct cause.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:29PM (3 children)
If they were more health-conscious, they could have saved money by buying 3.25% and drinking less of it.
But the actual study failed to account for those who drink less milk because they eat more fat. For example, it was assumed that people who ate breakfast cereal took in more milk (makes sense) but forgot people who eat more dietary fat via bacon and eggs and toast and home fries for breakfast.
Those people have higher fat consumption, which, given that their lower milk consumption was linked to longer telomeres, might actually have been due to higher fat consumption overall, and not lower milk consumption.
Which is why just before posting I made another bacon and cheese sandwich fried in bacon grease. Tastes great, and gotta protect those telomeres.
Nothing like a second breakfast for lunch.
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(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Sunday January 26 2020, @03:54AM (2 children)
Maybe I should try that.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday January 26 2020, @06:03PM
Also, the initial claim is based on telomeres being related to aging. Scott Kelly's telomeres were initially shorter than his twin brother Mark who stayed on earth. However, they've grown back to their normal length, something that was reported last night on the W5 investigative program on CBC in the context of whether it's even possible to get to Mars and return without suffering debilitating health effects.
The short answer - just use robots. Cheaper, you don't have to keep them alive (powered up) all through the journey, and you can send a lot more for the same price. Plus you can work them until they die and nobody's going to say "bring back the body."
Think of how many Mars rovers we could send to, say, the moon, to be worked in near-real-time from earth. People would pay to work a rover. Throw a couple hundred up there and crawl all over the place. Turn it into a game with a leader board and everything.
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(Score: 2) by SunTzuWarmaster on Monday January 27 2020, @05:46PM
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:25PM (4 children)
I can't stand straight milk; but I like ice cream, cheese, etc.
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(Score: 3, Funny) by barbara hudson on Saturday January 25 2020, @06:33PM (3 children)
So drink 3.25% - it's called homo milk on your sales receipt printout for a reason ;-p
Goat milk is also tasty. But for some reason, people won't even try it ... must be the name. We literally could not give it away when we were given hundreds of litres to distribute.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @07:33PM
Goat milk has higher fat content and therefore a stronger taste. Warm goat milk sooth stomach.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Sunday January 26 2020, @01:27AM (1 child)
Fat content is irrelevant to me--I can't stand the taste of straight milk. It literally makes me want to puke. Once I got to be old enough to refuse it, I did--I had a big fight with my parents and everything. What would be the point of trying goat milk? I don't feel like I'm missing anything by not drinking cow milk. It's not like alcohol where you go to a milk party and feel left out.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @02:17AM
Oh, oh wow. Now I'm picturing a milk party, and I TOTALLY do not want to be left out.
Why would you do this to me? Giving me this idea that can never, ever be materialized?
*sobs*
(Score: 2) by corey on Sunday January 26 2020, @10:45AM
The first thing that came to mind when reading this was that this has nothing to do with milk but the explanation is in wider behaviours that correlate to drinking full fat milk (that's what we can it in Australia). Like those that drink full fat milk normally eat a diet that's over subscribed on the calories or something. I remember reading about those Japanese people who are the oldest in the world, live on an under-calorie diet.
Anyway I drink full fat milk and if I live a couple of years less, that's Ok.