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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: 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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