"What the Health"

Health, Fitness, Food, Insurance, Longevity, Diets,...
Dragline
Posts: 4436
Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2011 1:50 am

Re: "What the Health"

Post by Dragline »

slsdly wrote:
Thu Jun 22, 2017 6:23 am
Triglycerides 0.62, HDL 1.33. Maybe having meat with one or two meals per week on average? 2-3 eggs a day though. Minimal dairy. The rest mostly vegetables, legumes, some whole grains. Exercise 4-5 days a week.
Yes, some of these look like the Canada/UK/Australia version (mmol/l). There is a conversion calculator here: http://www.onlineconversion.com/cholesterol.htm

US numbers are in mg/dl so are usually figures in 10s. Also, the "Triglyceride number" in the US is five times the equivalent in LDL or HDL, so to get total cholesterol, for example, you add LDL, HDL and (Tri * .20).

To convert the UK ratio at issue to US, you would multiply by 2.3 as it turns out.

So assuming sldy's ratio would convert to about 1.07. A 0.68 UK ratio converts to about 1.56 US.
Last edited by Dragline on Thu Jun 22, 2017 10:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

Toska2
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Re: "What the Health"

Post by Toska2 »

:| I always think of health solely​ relating to diet being myopic.

Once one concerns themselves not to eat crap, the gains plateau. Exercise, social network, meaningful work all take on a more significant role with health.

Fwiw My 96 year old grandma has eaten wonder bread, Oscar Meyer bologna and Kraft cheese sandwiches for thirty years. However, for 50+ years it was whatever grew in a zone 4 & 1/4 acre garden.

Dragline
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Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2011 1:50 am

Re: "What the Health"

Post by Dragline »

Well, our tiny epidemiological study seems to indicate that whether you are a carnivore, omnivore or herbivore, healthy cholesterol metrics can be achieved by all. Meaning the meat factor doesn't really matter and other factors are at issue. In this group, I would suspect the lack of processed foods, smoking and alcohol abuse, and a propensity to exercise is what differs it from the general population.

enigmaT120
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Location: Falls City, OR

Re: "What the Health"

Post by enigmaT120 »

Triglyceride 76 mg/dL
HDL Chol 42 mg/dL

I get 1.8. Kaiser P. doesn't give any recommendations for that ratio. I'm 53. I eat for a living, lots of fruit (blueberries today) and vegetables, but am still an omnivore. My HDL has always been low like that, once under 40. I can't eat seafood without constantly suppressing the urge to puke so I gave up on fish. I work out quite a bit.

But here's the advice from my Kaiser doctor. I should point out that Kaiser only makes money off me when I'm healthy, unlike the example somebody posted above. "Continue
trying to eat a healthy diet plentiful in fruits and vegetables and lower
in saturated fats from meat, cheese, and oils."

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jennypenny
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Re: "What the Health"

Post by jennypenny »

enigmaT120 wrote:
Thu Jun 22, 2017 10:53 am
I eat for a living
Seriously? How did you get that kind of job? I think I could be good at that. :D

sl-owl-orris
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Location: UK

Re: "What the Health"

Post by sl-owl-orris »

BRUTE wrote:
Thu Jun 22, 2017 9:58 am
that seems absurdly low - is it calculated using mmol/L (civilized world) or mg/dl (US)? the US measurements are typically in the <2 - 4+ range, whereas the mmol ones are in the <0.5-2.5+ range.

http://www.docsopinion.com/2014/07/17/t ... hdl-ratio/

in any case, it seems a very healthy ratio.
Total cholesterol 143 mg/dl
HDL 66 mg/dl
LDL 68 mg/dl
TG 45 mg/dl

TG/HDL 0.68

SustainableHappiness
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Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2016 6:39 pm

Re: "What the Health"

Post by SustainableHappiness »

Olaz wrote:
Thu Jun 22, 2017 10:23 am
What about pets? What are examples of healthy diets for them? Is a WFPB diet good for some pets and not others?
Yes, you can eat them too if you aren't WFPB.

Chickens, dogs, turtles if cooked right, DON'T EAT PET ROCKS.

Bad for plump tasty pets.

enigmaT120
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Location: Falls City, OR

Re: "What the Health"

Post by enigmaT120 »

jennypenny wrote:
Thu Jun 22, 2017 11:09 am
enigmaT120 wrote:
Thu Jun 22, 2017 10:53 am
I eat for a living
Seriously? How did you get that kind of job? I think I could be good at that. :D
I inspect processed fruit and vegetables for the USDA, and eating them is pretty much required since flavor is one of the factors in the grade. Today I probably ate a couple pounds of frozen blueberries. I do eat more than is required for most of the products. The only non-healthy stuff we eat is at an MRE production facility where they make entrees for military MREs, and even those things are very processed, but high in protein. And salt, but I sweat enough that I don't worry about that. Think Mountain House back packing meals but with minimum protein requirements.

SustainableHappiness, that was funny.

slsdly
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Re: "What the Health"

Post by slsdly »

@Dragline: Ah yes, my numbers are in mmol/L.

slowtraveler
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Re: "What the Health"

Post by slowtraveler »

This reminds me that Harrari in the "Sapeins" youtube series mentions that we likely evolved to eat marrow at one point. Then we evolved to eat something else, but I love the adaptability we display. It's hard to find a native group that eats 0 animal products. But they eat very differently than do most modern people. They eat the meat and organs (guts, intestines, heart, liver, kidneys, eyes, genitals, everything edible), marrow, make a broth and it is nearly always a smaller part of the caloric composition than plant based foods. In today's world, most people eat the same parts and there's way more pollution concentrating in the food chain.

We've also come up with other ways to get high amounts of the nutrient needs provided by meats without the exposure.

BRUTE
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Re: "What the Health"

Post by BRUTE »

enigmaT120 wrote:
Thu Jun 22, 2017 10:53 am
...my HDL has always been low like that, once under 40 ... lower
in saturated fats.."
eating saturated fats raises HDL

BRUTE
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Re: "What the Health"

Post by BRUTE »

sl-owl-orris wrote:
Thu Jun 22, 2017 1:55 pm
TG 45 mg/dl
wow, that's by far the lowest TG brute has ever heard of. the healthy level seems to be <150mg/DL, so sl-owl-orris is < 1/3 of the healthiest limit.

BRUTE
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Re: "What the Health"

Post by BRUTE »

Toska2 wrote:
Thu Jun 22, 2017 10:34 am
Once one concerns themselves not to eat crap, the gains plateau.
while a popular sentiment, brute's experience is contrary to this idea. the whole idea of "clean eating", "non-processed food" or "eating real food" is a red herring, a bit like veganism.

while it's certainly possible to eat a healthy non-crap or vegan diet, the ideas are orthogonal to the actual impact of the diet. sugar, HFCS, hydrogenated vegetable oils/trans fats are all vegan. sugar can be very "unprocessed". lots of unprocessed food can still have very negative effects on metabolism and fat accumulation.

so for any number humans that undertake one of these red herring diets, a few will (by chance?) happen to pick a subset that actually works great. others will pick a subset that does not lead to the desired outcomes.

brute doesn't think "processing" necessarily adds negative value to food, and "unprocessed" doesn't add blank positive value. brute would rather eat "processed" (what does that even mean?) meat and animal fats than "unprocessed" fruit or grain, due to impact on metabolism.

while processing can certainly affect the health impact of foods, brute would not subscribe to the idea that more processing is always worse, or that a less processed food item is always less healthy than a more processed one.

ThisDinosaur
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Re: "What the Health"

Post by ThisDinosaur »

+1 to Brute

"Processed" food is a vague term for a lot of different types of food prep. Some processing includes cooking, roasting, pasteurizing(heating to kill bacteria), freezing, canning, pureeing, grinding or milling grain, adding preservatives, adding sugar/"flavors", or "fortifying" with vitamins. Adding fillers to food is another common type of processing. Did you know ground beef and hamburger patties are often mostly soy? Its cheaper protein than animal meat, and most people don't mind the taste difference.

Some conceivable ways pre processed foods are bad for you include the fact that non-fresh food changes chemically over time, even when frozen or aseptically canned. Probably more important is the fact that some processing (including cooking and grinding of wheat flour) makes more calories available for digestion with less energy input from your body. More calories for less work => obesity. Hence the raw food diet.

Avoiding processed food is a reasonably good heuristic for health, but misses a lot of important nuance. Same thing for veganism. All things equal, a SAD dieter switching to veganism will probably get healthier. But if you're cooking with vegetable oil and eating lots of carbs, you could conceivably be getting worse.

Smashter
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Location: Midwest USA

Re: "What the Health"

Post by Smashter »

I think "processed" in the sense of this thread refers to bottom of the barrel stuff like TV Dinners, candy bars, Cool Ranch Doritos, etc. Not your standard 80/20 ground beef you find at the supermarket.

So, if forced to pick one set of foods for a month, I think even Brute would choose steel cut oats and fresh fruit as opposed to Slim Jims and Spam.

Of course, eating to your phenotype and conducting n=1 experiments is always going to be the best way to go. If you thrive on Slim Jims and Spam, no one should tell you otherwise.

Smashter
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Location: Midwest USA

Re: "What the Health"

Post by Smashter »

ThisDinosaur wrote:
Fri Jun 23, 2017 8:02 am
if you're cooking with vegetable oil and eating lots of carbs, you could conceivably be getting worse.
Many people thrive on high carb diets. I agree with what you're saying for the most part, but just want to emphasize that you can't demonize an entire macronutrient.

BRUTE
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Re: "What the Health"

Post by BRUTE »

Smashter wrote:
Fri Jun 23, 2017 8:05 am
So, if forced to pick one set of foods for a month, I think even Brute would choose steel cut oats and fresh fruit as opposed to Slim Jims and Spam.
negative.

ThisDinosaur
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Re: "What the Health"

Post by ThisDinosaur »

@Smashter. I'm not demonizing carbs. I'm demonizing too much of any one thing. Notice I said "lots."

BRUTE
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Re: "What the Health"

Post by BRUTE »

ThisDinosaur wrote:
Fri Jun 23, 2017 9:24 am
@Smashter. I'm not demonizing carbs. I'm demonizing too much of any one thing. Notice I said "lots."
"lots" isn't that much for the majority of humans that aren't physical laborers. if humans are pre-diabetic or fat, it's highly likely caused by chronically overeating carbs vs. their own personal tolerance. that would include the majority of westerners.

Dragline
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Re: "What the Health"

Post by Dragline »

BRUTE wrote:
Fri Jun 23, 2017 8:48 am
Smashter wrote:
Fri Jun 23, 2017 8:05 am
So, if forced to pick one set of foods for a month, I think even Brute would choose steel cut oats and fresh fruit as opposed to Slim Jims and Spam.
negative.
Brute as a Leprachaun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiylnBNwKac :lol:

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