Agree on quality meats. I don’t buy it from supermarkets, no fish from fisheries. Mostly organic / Line caught stuff. Good for both the body, and at least I don’t incentivise terrible practices.
Yes, vegan and eating “vegan cheese enchilladas” or cakes is certainly not going to do you any good. Most of the healthy people I know just keep away from processed foods, and away from deserts in general.
Peter wrote:
I would however say that if you want / need to lose weight, changing to mainly plant based will work (for most people for sure) and will work much better than exercise. Most people find exercise a hassle, unattractive, etc.
Exercise isn’t really about losing weight (there is a saying: “you can’t outrun your fork” – and indeed, my bike commute (40km a day, in hilly terrain) is about one and half Mars-bar equivalents in terms of energy burn: for normal amounts of exercise, the amount of calorie burn over baseline isn’t all that great).
But being normal weight with no exercise just means you’re thin and unhealthy rather than fat and unhealthy. We didn’t evolve to sit on our arses all day, and many of us in this forum have the kinds of jobs that have us sitting on our arses all day AND sitting on our arses in our cars going to said jobs. Chronic lack of exercise regardless of how healthy your diet is puts you at high risk of chronic disease later in life and being a cast member of the “Mad Max” hospitals of which you speak.
Excessive use of cars isn’t just killing ourselves slowly, it’s making our cities unpleasant places to be, imposing danger on others, polluting etc. People do ridiculous things like drive to the shop 500m away, rather than walking. In any case, exercise is a lot more attractive and less hassle than cardiovascular disease and frailty.
Peter wrote:
I won’t eat chicken (or turkey, etc) because of the prostate cancer correlation,
The correlation is not with poultry in general, but with poultry skin. “Intakes of processed and unprocessed red meat, fish, total poultry, and skinless poultry were not associated with prostate cancer recurrence or progression.”
At 78, I still walk most weeks to my local Tesco – 10 mile return trip.
Cycling on local roads looks far too dangerous here.
Meat, fish, fruit, veg, I buy from the supermarket. I have a fishing rod, and could just walk 200 metres to the harbour breakwater and fish. But I don’t.
I can remember the pre-supermarket time, and the freshness and choice in the little shops was much poorer.
MedEwok wrote:
The best life expectancy is reached by being slightly overweight (BMI range 25 to 27) and enjoying life consciously, without any extreme diet. And stay away from smoking!
Correlation does not imply causation.
Firstly, the study only showed that the reduction in premature deaths was 6%. A significant weakness in the study was that considered all causes of death – in other words, the conclusion that with all things being equal “being slightly overweight is better than being not overweight” is a false one. For instance, the small increase in death rate amongst people of ‘normal’ weight may be attributed (and with only a 6% difference, it’s not at all unlikely) to that normal weight people are more likely to engage in risky activities (not just risky leisure activities like diving, skydiving, rock climbing etc, but also riskier but physically intense jobs like some forms of building work) whereas the slightly overweight are more likely to work in nearly risk free environments like offices, and less likely to involve themselves in physical activities that are risky.
So it could be that people with slightly overweight BMI are living longer not because having that BMI is healthier, but because they are less likely to engage in risky physical activities.
Then we have to consider whether the slightly overweight people are likely to be having lesser quality of heath/life during their later years. What’s good living to 85 if you’re going to spend the last 20 years of your life suffering from a smorgasbord of chronic illnesses brought on by chronic lack of exercise and bad diet?
alioth wrote:
So it could be that people with slightly overweight BMI are living longer not because having that BMI is healthier, but because they are less likely to engage in risky physical activities.
Isn’t it simply the case that what is considered “normal” weight at the time BMI was decided based on statistical population data rather than on knowledge about what weight is optimal from a health point of view? (Which was probably not know then.)
Yes; exactly right and very well put, Alioth.
The more general issue is that the national health bodies are most interested in what is effective for the population as a whole, and for cost effectiveness in particular. That means looking at population stats.
But “you” are not interested in the population. “You” don’t really care if the local A&E looks like the scene from Mad Max, provided you have a good quality of life, until the day you die in your sleep, or perhaps by crashing into some hill in IMC on your 85th 
Population stats can show all sorts of stuff which are relevant to national planning but of little value to individual planning.
For example you get all sorts of dodgy selection criteria e.g. cancer “survival” may be living for 5 more years, and this will be regardless of the quality of life during those 5 years. For example a drug which makes everybody survive by 6 years and then they all die, having had a really sh1t life for the 6 years, would make the biggest headlines ever. CANCER CURED! I know this is a contrived example but it makes the point.
And the medical profession is fed data from the population stats – because that is the system they are supposed to be operating. Anyway, they don’t have the time to get stuck into what “you” are eating, doing, not doing, etc.
For example, statins definitely work to reduce heart attacks. So the whole population should be on them. So they should be added to drinking water. That was a real proposal recently. But… a lot of people get muscle pains (they “eat away” muscle). So in these cases (of which there are many, many more than the profession admits) the dose needs to be reduced, while monitoring the lipids data. But how often are people tested? Maybe once a year… and that’s only if there’s been “actual trouble” (e.g. got a stent, or worse).
The reality is that if you want to do the best for yourself, you have to be proactive and drive things. Your GP is not likely to do it. Even if he/she cared (and some % of them do; there is exactly one such in our local practice, out of about 10) they don’t have the time.
I still regularly hear truly crap stories e.g. somebody (male, 50s/60s, asymptomatic) got a PSA test and it came back at 5 and his GP sent him for a trans rectal biopsy… this is something out of the 19th century.
I very much doubt BMI affects how long you live, until it is well out of some sort of “normal” range. And with most people doing almost no physical activity these days, the effect of obesity on one’s willingness to do some is going to totally mask any relationship between the actual BMI number and how long one lives.
Peter wrote:
I very much doubt BMI affects how long you live, until it is well out of some sort of “normal” range.
Even then, BMI doesn’t affect how long you live. BMI is just an indicator of certain things, like many other indicators. The key is what is being indicated or what can be deduced from the indicator(s), and thereby suggest perhaps what steps can/should be taken to change the situation. As far as how long one lives, it seems that there is general acceptance that science can indicate/document why we die and/or why we die sooner rather than later, but there is no real scientific evidence for why any individual lives as long as he/she does. As said, there are population statistics, but those don’t really apply at an individual level. At the very best, they attempt to give some probabilities based on proven or accepted negative influences and the avoidance of same.
BMI is a strange choice. Bone density and muscle increase with exercise.
With the technology in the modern GP practice, it’s strange a more accurate measure of fat isn’t used.
Studies reported in the press of “overweight and fit” defined "fit"as not suffering from an illness. My definition of “fit” would require the ability to exercise for a considerable time.
When, 3 months before my 75 birthday, I had my first ever serious illness, I needed my fat, as I was losing a Kilogram every 2 days.
PS Got my Class 2 again this week, which will serve for an LAPL past my 80th birthday.
Maoraigh wrote:
Got my Class 2 again this week, which will serve for an LAPL past my 80th birthday.
Awesome My flying mentor is 76 and is a man who has flown literally everything it seems – from L1011s to F4s to flying boats to Zlins to every kind of light plane. He flies almost daily and I hope he keeps doing it for a lot longer because I still have a lot to learn from him. He claims that once he’s run his RV to its first engine overhaul he’ll sell it cheap and be finished. It’s currently at 1650 hrs with 78/80 compression and still running as new… much like him. So we’ll see.
