My mother had Alzheimer's for 20 years. I would not recommend it for more than 10 years no matter how healthy you are.
I have one copy of the APOE4 gene and am ~40lbs overweight and probably drink too much, and will definitely double my weight and triple my alcohol consumption if I get it.
I have always said the heathier you are when you begin to die, the longer it takes to die.
It’s there so that when Grandpa Steve does 15 lines of coke and smokes a full bong of premium weed and passes out he’s not taken to ER to take a spot from someone who needs it.
I guessed that but I doubt Grandpa Steve cluttering ER for a couple of hours from his coke overdoses would be a significant issue compared with his being at the hospital for several years with alzheimer's.
> Schott also notes that the clinical trial didn’t include a control group of participants who got no guidance and made no lifestyle changes. This makes it hard for researchers to pinpoint which aspect of the program might have been responsible for the positive effect. However, Heather M. Snyder, senior vice president for medical and scientific relations at the Alzheimer’s Association, tells the New York Times that the organization thought neglecting to offer an intervention to one group would be unethical.
One might counter that it’s unethical to hinder our ability to understand which interventions are effective by prejudging the outcome in this way?
If you have access to statistics for the general population, you can forego the control group, I would think. But that requires doing the study in a country with a well run health care system and properly regulated medical records so that you can get these stats without privacy issues.
You can also use Canada, with the exception of access to medical records, to minimize all of the differences between populations in the USA and the control group.
Denmark has a very different vaccination schedule because they have exposure to many fewer "childhood diseases." Might seem like a small difference given the availability of 'properly regulate medical records without privacy issues" but these sorts of differences add up.
Good luck ever doing a clinical trial with this approach. Think about cancer treatment. If we have an intervention we know is better than the natural course of the cancer, then we ought to compare the experimental treatment with the default treatment instead of letting people die from cancer in the name of "science".
Structured lifestyle intervention. Participants attended 38 facilitated peer team meetings over two years and were provided with a prescribed activity program with measurable goals for:
- aerobic, resistance and stretching exercise
- adherence to the MIND diet, a combination of the Mediterranean diet with the salt restrictions of the DASH diet
- cognitive challenge through BrainHQ training and other intellectual and social activities
- regular review of health metrics and goal-setting with a study clinician
It sure does. I just recently had to switch to 'healthy' diet. Positive effect in many ways. Including clear thinking, focus and performance. But, there is nothing new here.
Great, so my brain isn't a doomed potato after all. Just need to sleep, exercise, eat well, socialize, reduce stress, stop doomscrolling, learn a language, play chess, meditate, avoid sugar, limit screen time, and reverse the entropy of the universe. Easy.
If you stop using your phone for anything other than communicating (yes, not just the loose "stop doomscrolling" advice) a lot of these will come naturally. It will lead you to using a real alarm clock and not using your phone after going to bed, which will make your sleep schedule that much more consistent, and also improve quality of sleep. These will probably give you more motivation, which you'll need because the time you used to waste on the phone now needs to be occupied by a real hobby, and here comes language learning, chess, music, etc.
> These will probably give you more motivation, which you'll need because the time you used to waste on the phone now needs to be occupied by a real hobby, and here comes language learning, chess, music, etc.
Man, that "probably" is doing a ton of heavy lifting.
And the causality is the opposite in my experience. I view my smartphone as a maladaptive way of self-soothing. Locking away my phone just means I'm left with unchecked anxiety I can't think myself out of, and I've only deprived myself of one more method of addressing it (nonoptimally).
People without constant stress have less temptation. In times where my anxiety is the lowest due to sheer circumstance, any reason I have to doomscroll vanishes and I can then occupy my time with a hobby. But it's not because I chose to do away with my phone that I'm able to do so, it's because I didn't have to spend all my time and effort fighting stress. The less stress, the closer the "choice" gets to being a no-brainer, entirely automatic.
In econometrical terms it would be "double causality", as it forms a vicious cycle. Using your phone to self-soothe leads to not developing real hobbies, which leads to more isolation, which leads to more phone usage.
Say you decide you're now a chess person. Instead of doomscrolling before bed you find relaxation in the meditative study of chess games for an hour a day before going to bed and now you use your phone only as an alarm. You join your local chess club to play IRL during weekends and attend some classes too. What were the effects? Well, there are the proven long-term cognitive benefits of learning and practicing chess, there's the immediate cognitive and emotional benefit of a larger social circle and a community, and medium term you'll feel good about yourself for achieving milestones (getting to 1000 ELO, winning the weekly tournament, etc.)
None of that would have happened if you had stayed on your phone. You probably already invest just as much time on it as you would in chess in this scenario, but it has no ROI, it is designed to suck you in.
> Man, that "probably" is doing a ton of heavy lifting.
I think "giving you motivation" isn't the right way to frame it, but "probably" isn't doing heavy lifting. More like providing the affordance that wasn't there because the phone took it away and convinced you that you didn't need. Like a typical drug addiction or pretending you don't need to make friends because you have colleagues.
People are spending the amount of extra time on their phone every day that it takes to raise kids, so if you've never figured out how to allocate that time effectively, it's a good place to start.
> If you stop using your phone for anything other than communicating (yes, not just the loose "stop doomscrolling" advice) a lot of these will come naturally.
People before 2007 slept, exercised, ate well, socialized, reduced stress, learnt a language, played chess, meditated, avoided sugar, limited screen time, and reversed the entropy of the universe.
They 100% socialized more and slept better, I think. People used to have hobbies, too, at the very least watching TV and movies and talking to others about it... Lots of people nowadays just get home and do nothing but scroll
At the risk of being simplistic and reductive... you just... stop.
Unless it's calling or texting, what you do via phone can almost always be done on a computer/laptop. Allot a certain time of your day/week for handling life shit via a desktop or laptop, and a certain time of the day/week for reading news. Limit it to just that timeframe, and try to keep that timeframe small. Avoid social media as much as you can within that.
Honestly, the only way I found is to go cold turkey and really focus on hating the smartphone and "always online" culture. Reading up on the dangerous effects this stuff has on us and our children really helps with motivation, too. You won't stick to it if it's just for a specific reason like improving sleep or trying to read more books or whatever
>Just need to sleep, exercise, eat well, socialize, reduce stress, stop doomscrolling, learn a language, play chess, meditate, avoid sugar, limit screen time
these are mainly issues in america, canada and parts of europe. I'm currnetly down in colombia. I walked 30 min just to get to a cafe. am activly learning spanish with locals which also checks of socializing. I drink black coffee and you won't have much time for screens if you meet someone to keep you focused on them.
Honestly, these all start to happen naturally when you start dedicating yourself to doing something first thing in the morning. I spent my 20s smoking cigarettes, drinking as much as I wanted, eating whatever. Then after a pretty intense LSD trip I decided to re-dedicate myself to a daily meditation practice. No excuses, just every morning wake up and sit for 20 minutes.
The first thing you realize is that your sessions are a lot more fruitful when you don't show up to your morning practice hung over, or on 5 hours of sleep, or after a night of chain smoking. After that practice was established for a year, I started working out. And then you realize your training is better when you're feeding your body correctly, so your diet changes. Etc. They all flow into and out of each other, as they're all essentially the same practice.
The important thing I've found is when you want to begin a new habit, put it first thing in the morning. No excuses. Actually, this reminds me of something I read in an interview with David Bowie years ago -- when asked what he learned to appreciate as he got older his answer was just "mornings".
Yep. Good sleep makes many other decisions easy. Anecdata, but while I normally have a healthy Mediterranean diet (after many years of binge eating), if I don't sleep properly, hell unleashes.
If I eat well and I am well rested, I feel energized and positive, so I can go for exercise and then, why not, a meditative walk. If not, I die on my couch binge eating and watching nonsense.
Don't forget to have a diet low in histamine. Figuring out how to do it is a fun exercise - some of the stuff that's rich in it is otherwise genuinely healthy, like spinach.
I had a successful exit two years ago ,thinking retirement would be bliss,traveling here, exploring hobbies there. But it all became routine and surprisingly boring, faster than I expected.
Over time, I started forgetting things, which really unsettled me. I became increasingly lazy and unmotivated.
Earlier this year,I began volunteering as a systems administrator and network engineer for an NGO and I couldn’t be happier. The daily interaction with staff has significantly improved my cognition,which had been rapidly declining.
What an inspiring way to give back, kudos. There's definitely something to be said for keeping busy, and as you allude it's that people-centered problem solving and banter that gets you that lift.
Yeah it's real. I spent a few months recovering from PTSD and burnout a few years ago, and noticed myself starting to slip in various ways. As soon as I could, I picked up a coding project as part of my recovery plan — it was really helpful.
Even if I retire, I hope to be able to do some cognitively-challenging thing for as long as I can.
I don't mean to be negative, but things become boring fast when you have no hobbies and interests outside of work. You were likely programmed to do work -- so much that it became your only hobby.
The sad thing is - especially in software/tech - it's so competitive these days, if you don't "live to work", you won't work enough to live..
As a 30+ year software dev, the expectations / requirements are definitely more challenging than when I started. Mind you, the tools are also somewhat better, but there's this feeling of needing to be always-on that's hard to shake.
And the whole "take as many days as you need" fake-unlimited-vacation thing, where people end up taking less vacation days than before because it feels "wrong" to actually take 4-5 weeks vacation in a year when others aren't taking as much. At my previous employer, when I joined, it was start at 18 vacation days per year, add one for every year at the company up to 28 - and you could bank up to ~35 before you lost days. At least you felt "entitled" to take those days. Then, they switched to "flexible PTO" and I'm sure overall, people took less days vacation. My current employer is "flexible" and I feel anxious taking 4 weeks throughout the year.
Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) Study: Rationale, Design and Baseline Characteristics of a Randomized Control Trial of the MIND Diet on Cognitive Decline - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8042655/#T3 - Table 3.
Intervention targets of the MIND Diet
Basically, the description for a healthy pescetarian diet that these studies are using.
The more important question appears to be why it seems to difficult to follow the advice?
Personally, I'm well aware of the positive effects of drinking plenty of water, eating vegetables, exercising daily, and going to bed early. However, I buy myself a chocolate bar every day, love pizza, just want to unwind after a hard day at work, and still read Reddit late into the night.
All the healthy stuff has friction: a workout takes time out of the day, the veggies need preparation, while going to bed early means I'm missing out on fun or intriguing things that I would learn about otherwise.
It's probably easier to monetize chocolate bars, pizza and reddit (ads). Easier to slip into "junk" mode and harder to stop.
My exercise equipment is long paid for (10+ years ago), I watch sports while exercising (subscription paid whether I exercise or not) and going to bed early means less need for caffeine / painkillers to get through the day. Veggies are somewhat more expensive, not sure if the margins are as high on them as on ultra-processed food.
And yet, I'm right there with you - I struggle daily with doing the right thing.
This was a large multi centre prospective RCT; so I would say that it adds to evidence from other sources acquired in less rigorous ways. This was also a structured multidisciplinary intervention; so this study may add to what can be done in terms of implementation, because there is still work to be done on that front. But yes, at face value, it sounds like what we already know! (But which many/most are not implementing…)
Instead of berating people or repeating messages over and over, let's focus on getting GLP-1 and GIP receptor agonists into as many people's hands as possible.
lol yeah let’s fund more pharma bull shit and kick the can for actually solving the problem. More CEOs need yachts. Diet education and curbing the corps poisoning us is far more effective.
How come it's so hard for people to drink water? Honest question. Like why don't you just wake up in the morning, take a whiz, brush your teeth, and drink a glass of water?
What gets in between? Because the first two are 99% success rate I'd bet.
But is that bad? Do people actually need to drink more than they are thirsty for? Why is it that our hunger sense is over-tuned, but conventional wisdom says that our hydration sense is under-tuned?
Honestly, I feel like "always be drinking" only appeared once bottled water did.
Honestly I forget brushing more than I should too, and I skip breakfast most days even though I'm hungry. The friction required to pour the glass or set things up can be a lot early in the morning.
It helped me to get a water cooler or something to fill a bottle?
It's the signal that they have no idea what they're talking about. Always remember everything doctors said people should do to cure their stomach ulcers: the "why not?" list.
"Your medical team has carefully gone over the results of your tests, and we've finally come to the careful consensus that you should keep active, drink more water, get enough sleep but not too much, and eat your vegetables."
"But..."
"Why not? Do you think vegetables are bad for you?"
The number one reason I see people fail their diet/exercise goals is because they go to big to fast.
Training to do an ultra marathon if youve never run a 5k, swam a mile in open water, or even mountain biked for 5 miles is a sure fire way to get injured. You need to build a base of knowledge, muscle, and nutritional habits or you set yourself up for failure, imo. Not a hard rule, but close.
Crossfit is the last thing I would recommend to anyone, especially a beginner.
I think that setting goals like "do an ultra" is more likely to have people stop entirely rather than downgrading their goal to something more doable when they hit that first roadblock.
Better to start small and catch the running bug than try to do something that the vast majority of the population will never even aspire to.
I was of course generalizing, but the point I'm making is that you need to get some (very) long term fitness goals. This usually drives you to find like minded people and action long term nutritional changes. You can get to a 5km within 5 weeks.
You have to remember that something like 40% of Americans are obese.
You're right, a 5k is pretty doable, but if you get to 5k and you don't find yourself enjoying it, you're never going to get to an ultra, but if you do find yourself enjoying it, it's much easier to work your way up to a 10k. And there's a lot of points between 5k and ultra where the game changes - a 10k feels different and has a different challenge than a half which feels different than a full (I can't speak for an ultra), and many of those points are perfectly healthy to stall at.
Long term goals are great, but only once you've set yourself on that path. The goal of running for a month and a half is enough if you've never run before.
Agreed. And running actually gets a lot better if you start at an easy conversational pace (light jog) and get over the initial month or two. Huge cardiovascular and longevity benefits.
My mother had Alzheimer's for 20 years. I would not recommend it for more than 10 years no matter how healthy you are.
I have one copy of the APOE4 gene and am ~40lbs overweight and probably drink too much, and will definitely double my weight and triple my alcohol consumption if I get it.
I have always said the heathier you are when you begin to die, the longer it takes to die.
I had 2 grandparents die from Parkinson's and I would definitely pick up heroin addiction if I get diagnosed.
Should give weed a try first. For some it really helps
I've said this before, but I think that people over 80 should be allowed to legally purchase use any substance.
BUT to get immunity from prosecution they'd have to sign a notarised and confirmed Do Not Resuscitate order.
Call it the Blaze of Glory act or something =)
Not sure you need the Do Not Resuscitate order bit.
It’s there so that when Grandpa Steve does 15 lines of coke and smokes a full bong of premium weed and passes out he’s not taken to ER to take a spot from someone who needs it.
I guessed that but I doubt Grandpa Steve cluttering ER for a couple of hours from his coke overdoses would be a significant issue compared with his being at the hospital for several years with alzheimer's.
You begin to die when you are born.
Weight loss is much easier if you eat foods with low calories per gram.
I believe GP is saying they'd rather participate in self destructive weight gain and alcohol abuse than delay the decline.
Are you a bot? Why did you say that?
It's incredible to read all the nuanced deniers of the benefits of diet and exercise.
You all just rather inject yourselves with a medicine. Amazing.
> Schott also notes that the clinical trial didn’t include a control group of participants who got no guidance and made no lifestyle changes. This makes it hard for researchers to pinpoint which aspect of the program might have been responsible for the positive effect. However, Heather M. Snyder, senior vice president for medical and scientific relations at the Alzheimer’s Association, tells the New York Times that the organization thought neglecting to offer an intervention to one group would be unethical.
One might counter that it’s unethical to hinder our ability to understand which interventions are effective by prejudging the outcome in this way?
If you have access to statistics for the general population, you can forego the control group, I would think. But that requires doing the study in a country with a well run health care system and properly regulated medical records so that you can get these stats without privacy issues.
(Glances in Denmark's general direction.. )
You can also use Canada, with the exception of access to medical records, to minimize all of the differences between populations in the USA and the control group.
Denmark has a very different vaccination schedule because they have exposure to many fewer "childhood diseases." Might seem like a small difference given the availability of 'properly regulate medical records without privacy issues" but these sorts of differences add up.
> neglecting to offer an intervention to one group would be unethical.
i read that as "doing Science would be unethical"
There are many contexts where doing an experiment with proper controls is literally a crime against humanity.
Which means, yes, that there are many studies where the control isn't quite proper. And that does slow down progress in medical science.
Good luck ever doing a clinical trial with this approach. Think about cancer treatment. If we have an intervention we know is better than the natural course of the cancer, then we ought to compare the experimental treatment with the default treatment instead of letting people die from cancer in the name of "science".
Structured lifestyle intervention. Participants attended 38 facilitated peer team meetings over two years and were provided with a prescribed activity program with measurable goals for:
- aerobic, resistance and stretching exercise
- adherence to the MIND diet, a combination of the Mediterranean diet with the salt restrictions of the DASH diet
- cognitive challenge through BrainHQ training and other intellectual and social activities
- regular review of health metrics and goal-setting with a study clinician
Just BrainHQ training alone would likely increase the scores. The rest is general health management.
"General health" has been shown to affect cognitive performance.
Especially when you are including sleep and diet in "general health"
It sure does. I just recently had to switch to 'healthy' diet. Positive effect in many ways. Including clear thinking, focus and performance. But, there is nothing new here.
Great, so my brain isn't a doomed potato after all. Just need to sleep, exercise, eat well, socialize, reduce stress, stop doomscrolling, learn a language, play chess, meditate, avoid sugar, limit screen time, and reverse the entropy of the universe. Easy.
If you stop using your phone for anything other than communicating (yes, not just the loose "stop doomscrolling" advice) a lot of these will come naturally. It will lead you to using a real alarm clock and not using your phone after going to bed, which will make your sleep schedule that much more consistent, and also improve quality of sleep. These will probably give you more motivation, which you'll need because the time you used to waste on the phone now needs to be occupied by a real hobby, and here comes language learning, chess, music, etc.
(not saying you specifically are a phone addict)
> These will probably give you more motivation, which you'll need because the time you used to waste on the phone now needs to be occupied by a real hobby, and here comes language learning, chess, music, etc.
Man, that "probably" is doing a ton of heavy lifting.
And the causality is the opposite in my experience. I view my smartphone as a maladaptive way of self-soothing. Locking away my phone just means I'm left with unchecked anxiety I can't think myself out of, and I've only deprived myself of one more method of addressing it (nonoptimally).
People without constant stress have less temptation. In times where my anxiety is the lowest due to sheer circumstance, any reason I have to doomscroll vanishes and I can then occupy my time with a hobby. But it's not because I chose to do away with my phone that I'm able to do so, it's because I didn't have to spend all my time and effort fighting stress. The less stress, the closer the "choice" gets to being a no-brainer, entirely automatic.
In econometrical terms it would be "double causality", as it forms a vicious cycle. Using your phone to self-soothe leads to not developing real hobbies, which leads to more isolation, which leads to more phone usage.
Say you decide you're now a chess person. Instead of doomscrolling before bed you find relaxation in the meditative study of chess games for an hour a day before going to bed and now you use your phone only as an alarm. You join your local chess club to play IRL during weekends and attend some classes too. What were the effects? Well, there are the proven long-term cognitive benefits of learning and practicing chess, there's the immediate cognitive and emotional benefit of a larger social circle and a community, and medium term you'll feel good about yourself for achieving milestones (getting to 1000 ELO, winning the weekly tournament, etc.)
None of that would have happened if you had stayed on your phone. You probably already invest just as much time on it as you would in chess in this scenario, but it has no ROI, it is designed to suck you in.
> Man, that "probably" is doing a ton of heavy lifting.
I think "giving you motivation" isn't the right way to frame it, but "probably" isn't doing heavy lifting. More like providing the affordance that wasn't there because the phone took it away and convinced you that you didn't need. Like a typical drug addiction or pretending you don't need to make friends because you have colleagues.
People are spending the amount of extra time on their phone every day that it takes to raise kids, so if you've never figured out how to allocate that time effectively, it's a good place to start.
> If you stop using your phone for anything other than communicating (yes, not just the loose "stop doomscrolling" advice) a lot of these will come naturally.
People before 2007 slept, exercised, ate well, socialized, reduced stress, learnt a language, played chess, meditated, avoided sugar, limited screen time, and reversed the entropy of the universe.
They 100% socialized more and slept better, I think. People used to have hobbies, too, at the very least watching TV and movies and talking to others about it... Lots of people nowadays just get home and do nothing but scroll
Are you commenting this using a phone?
Work computer. I only check news (including HN) during business hours, to protect myself from unnecessary stress
But how to do that?
At the risk of being simplistic and reductive... you just... stop.
Unless it's calling or texting, what you do via phone can almost always be done on a computer/laptop. Allot a certain time of your day/week for handling life shit via a desktop or laptop, and a certain time of the day/week for reading news. Limit it to just that timeframe, and try to keep that timeframe small. Avoid social media as much as you can within that.
Honestly, the only way I found is to go cold turkey and really focus on hating the smartphone and "always online" culture. Reading up on the dangerous effects this stuff has on us and our children really helps with motivation, too. You won't stick to it if it's just for a specific reason like improving sleep or trying to read more books or whatever
>Just need to sleep, exercise, eat well, socialize, reduce stress, stop doomscrolling, learn a language, play chess, meditate, avoid sugar, limit screen time
these are mainly issues in america, canada and parts of europe. I'm currnetly down in colombia. I walked 30 min just to get to a cafe. am activly learning spanish with locals which also checks of socializing. I drink black coffee and you won't have much time for screens if you meet someone to keep you focused on them.
> and reverse the entropy of the universe.
if only...
Honestly, these all start to happen naturally when you start dedicating yourself to doing something first thing in the morning. I spent my 20s smoking cigarettes, drinking as much as I wanted, eating whatever. Then after a pretty intense LSD trip I decided to re-dedicate myself to a daily meditation practice. No excuses, just every morning wake up and sit for 20 minutes.
The first thing you realize is that your sessions are a lot more fruitful when you don't show up to your morning practice hung over, or on 5 hours of sleep, or after a night of chain smoking. After that practice was established for a year, I started working out. And then you realize your training is better when you're feeding your body correctly, so your diet changes. Etc. They all flow into and out of each other, as they're all essentially the same practice.
The important thing I've found is when you want to begin a new habit, put it first thing in the morning. No excuses. Actually, this reminds me of something I read in an interview with David Bowie years ago -- when asked what he learned to appreciate as he got older his answer was just "mornings".
pick one intervention and work on just that one to start. less anxious decision paralysis
I say sleep is the best one to open with
Yep. Good sleep makes many other decisions easy. Anecdata, but while I normally have a healthy Mediterranean diet (after many years of binge eating), if I don't sleep properly, hell unleashes.
If I eat well and I am well rested, I feel energized and positive, so I can go for exercise and then, why not, a meditative walk. If not, I die on my couch binge eating and watching nonsense.
Do whatever it takes to get your sleep done.
If only I could actually do something about my awful sleep, even sleep medicine has no effect other than completely ruining my next day.
The point of life is to struggle. I don't even mean that to be deep. And I don't wish misery on anyone.
I'm saying entropy is a mess. That's what it is.
All these have always been part of the default human design / experience, and you are just failing to live as intended.
Excluding the last one, those are all things that will probably make you happier day to day, too.
I could have told you that for a lot less than 50 mil!
Don't forget to have a diet low in histamine. Figuring out how to do it is a fun exercise - some of the stuff that's rich in it is otherwise genuinely healthy, like spinach.
> reverse the entropy of the universe.
INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER
Don't forget to journal
I had a successful exit two years ago ,thinking retirement would be bliss,traveling here, exploring hobbies there. But it all became routine and surprisingly boring, faster than I expected.
Over time, I started forgetting things, which really unsettled me. I became increasingly lazy and unmotivated.
Earlier this year,I began volunteering as a systems administrator and network engineer for an NGO and I couldn’t be happier. The daily interaction with staff has significantly improved my cognition,which had been rapidly declining.
What an inspiring way to give back, kudos. There's definitely something to be said for keeping busy, and as you allude it's that people-centered problem solving and banter that gets you that lift.
Yeah it's real. I spent a few months recovering from PTSD and burnout a few years ago, and noticed myself starting to slip in various ways. As soon as I could, I picked up a coding project as part of my recovery plan — it was really helpful.
Even if I retire, I hope to be able to do some cognitively-challenging thing for as long as I can.
I don't mean to be negative, but things become boring fast when you have no hobbies and interests outside of work. You were likely programmed to do work -- so much that it became your only hobby.
The sad thing is - especially in software/tech - it's so competitive these days, if you don't "live to work", you won't work enough to live..
As a 30+ year software dev, the expectations / requirements are definitely more challenging than when I started. Mind you, the tools are also somewhat better, but there's this feeling of needing to be always-on that's hard to shake.
And the whole "take as many days as you need" fake-unlimited-vacation thing, where people end up taking less vacation days than before because it feels "wrong" to actually take 4-5 weeks vacation in a year when others aren't taking as much. At my previous employer, when I joined, it was start at 18 vacation days per year, add one for every year at the company up to 28 - and you could bank up to ~35 before you lost days. At least you felt "entitled" to take those days. Then, they switched to "flexible PTO" and I'm sure overall, people took less days vacation. My current employer is "flexible" and I feel anxious taking 4 weeks throughout the year.
[dead]
Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) Study: Rationale, Design and Baseline Characteristics of a Randomized Control Trial of the MIND Diet on Cognitive Decline - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8042655/#T3 - Table 3. Intervention targets of the MIND Diet
Basically, the description for a healthy pescetarian diet that these studies are using.
How many times do we need to hear "exercise and healthy eating" prolong life and improve cognitive function?
The more important question appears to be why it seems to difficult to follow the advice?
Personally, I'm well aware of the positive effects of drinking plenty of water, eating vegetables, exercising daily, and going to bed early. However, I buy myself a chocolate bar every day, love pizza, just want to unwind after a hard day at work, and still read Reddit late into the night.
All the healthy stuff has friction: a workout takes time out of the day, the veggies need preparation, while going to bed early means I'm missing out on fun or intriguing things that I would learn about otherwise.
It's probably easier to monetize chocolate bars, pizza and reddit (ads). Easier to slip into "junk" mode and harder to stop.
My exercise equipment is long paid for (10+ years ago), I watch sports while exercising (subscription paid whether I exercise or not) and going to bed early means less need for caffeine / painkillers to get through the day. Veggies are somewhat more expensive, not sure if the margins are as high on them as on ultra-processed food.
And yet, I'm right there with you - I struggle daily with doing the right thing.
For the elderly, participating on Reddit would probably be a step up.
Cable news and Tiktok are far worse.
Because it takes effort, but once it becomes a habit, it's fine.
This was a large multi centre prospective RCT; so I would say that it adds to evidence from other sources acquired in less rigorous ways. This was also a structured multidisciplinary intervention; so this study may add to what can be done in terms of implementation, because there is still work to be done on that front. But yes, at face value, it sounds like what we already know! (But which many/most are not implementing…)
Apparently a lot. Between 2021 and 2023 the US obesity rate was 40%+.
Instead of berating people or repeating messages over and over, let's focus on getting GLP-1 and GIP receptor agonists into as many people's hands as possible.
lol yeah let’s fund more pharma bull shit and kick the can for actually solving the problem. More CEOs need yachts. Diet education and curbing the corps poisoning us is far more effective.
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I'm actually working on an app for myself to remind me of that.
For example, there is a full glass of water sitting on my desk from 9am. It's noon. I haven't taken a sip. Until now.
Constant reminders do work.
How come it's so hard for people to drink water? Honest question. Like why don't you just wake up in the morning, take a whiz, brush your teeth, and drink a glass of water?
What gets in between? Because the first two are 99% success rate I'd bet.
Because most people drink to thirst, not out of habit.
But is that bad? Do people actually need to drink more than they are thirsty for? Why is it that our hunger sense is over-tuned, but conventional wisdom says that our hydration sense is under-tuned?
Honestly, I feel like "always be drinking" only appeared once bottled water did.
Honestly I forget brushing more than I should too, and I skip breakfast most days even though I'm hungry. The friction required to pour the glass or set things up can be a lot early in the morning.
It helped me to get a water cooler or something to fill a bottle?
Oh shit I missed my water break. Thanks for the reminder friend.
Beatings will continue until morale improves.
It's the signal that they have no idea what they're talking about. Always remember everything doctors said people should do to cure their stomach ulcers: the "why not?" list.
"Your medical team has carefully gone over the results of your tests, and we've finally come to the careful consensus that you should keep active, drink more water, get enough sleep but not too much, and eat your vegetables."
"But..."
"Why not? Do you think vegetables are bad for you?"
"But doctor, I have a broken leg!"
"Research says hopping on one foot can burn 600 calories in 30 minutes! Why the look, get going already!"
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Don't try to be healthy, try to be strong or try to do an ultra - or even crossfit. Community & nutrition usually follow IMO.
Hard disagree with this.
The number one reason I see people fail their diet/exercise goals is because they go to big to fast.
Training to do an ultra marathon if youve never run a 5k, swam a mile in open water, or even mountain biked for 5 miles is a sure fire way to get injured. You need to build a base of knowledge, muscle, and nutritional habits or you set yourself up for failure, imo. Not a hard rule, but close.
Crossfit is the last thing I would recommend to anyone, especially a beginner.
> because they go to big to fast.
I didn't say anything about doing it fast. Prepping for an ultra is a long term thing.
Maybe start with a 5k rather than an ultra?
I think that setting goals like "do an ultra" is more likely to have people stop entirely rather than downgrading their goal to something more doable when they hit that first roadblock.
Better to start small and catch the running bug than try to do something that the vast majority of the population will never even aspire to.
I was of course generalizing, but the point I'm making is that you need to get some (very) long term fitness goals. This usually drives you to find like minded people and action long term nutritional changes. You can get to a 5km within 5 weeks.
> You can get to a 5km within 5 weeks.
You have to remember that something like 40% of Americans are obese.
You're right, a 5k is pretty doable, but if you get to 5k and you don't find yourself enjoying it, you're never going to get to an ultra, but if you do find yourself enjoying it, it's much easier to work your way up to a 10k. And there's a lot of points between 5k and ultra where the game changes - a 10k feels different and has a different challenge than a half which feels different than a full (I can't speak for an ultra), and many of those points are perfectly healthy to stall at.
Long term goals are great, but only once you've set yourself on that path. The goal of running for a month and a half is enough if you've never run before.
Agreed. And running actually gets a lot better if you start at an easy conversational pace (light jog) and get over the initial month or two. Huge cardiovascular and longevity benefits.
Are you related to Dricus du Plessis?
Also, ultras will overwork the shit out of your heart. (Bro science)
Lol, no - unfortunately not Bismarck either. :) It's a common Afrikaans/SA surname.
I'm pretty sure every age-correlated decline can be slowed down with lifestyle changes, it seems like stating the obvious.
I bet relying on AI isn't one of them.
Nonsense, my AI therapist says that relying on AI makes me smrt!
"Smrt" means "death" in Czech, so...
Also a Simpsons reference: https://youtu.be/ls5BFzuxGw4