I don’t think you should be looking at studies when it comes to how you eat, you should be focusing on how you feel, observing your own body and possibly talking to a doctor. I had a really big problem with acid reflux a while back after I stopped drinking alcohol. I visited many gastrologists and most of them offered little to no help, most only prescribed me drugs which was in my opinion not a solution. I finally meet with a gastrologist that did an endoscopy and basically sat me down and said that if I wanted to get over my acid reflux I needed to eat really light over the next four months, no fruits, no tomatoes, no pork or beef only poultry, no fried food, no greasy food, and the list went on. I did the diet, had a few cheat days because it was hard, and my stomach recovered. After the four months I reintroduced certain foods and started learning about how my body reacted to them. I also realized that I feel a lot better with a full stomach than with an empty one. My point is we all have slight different bodies and that while studies are great, sometimes it just good to study yourself and how you feel. On a side note, if you’re one of those people fasting to be healthy yet haven’t cut out drugs, alcohol and tabaco out of your life then do that first, it is the first step to good health.
The problem with this, for too many people, is that they've never felt "good". They don't have a point of reference they could use to guide them to a better lifestyle
They only know the right-now and that's good enough for them.
This is something I've seen with my friends and family who have never been in good shape. They don't know that it's possible to go up 3 flights of stairs 2-3 steps at a time at a brisk pace and NOT be panting with exhaustion afterwards. They don't know that it's not normal to fart 24/7 and have constant heartburn, because that's all they've ever known.
Bravo! And because this is HN let me add: I love seeing light hearted responses like this that elicit a smile, on HN. Where the overall tone is normally very serious :)
I disagree. I regularly downvote comments whose purpose is largely for humour. Not because they aren't funny/witty/clever, but because this is Hacker News, not Reddit. Let's keep it that way.
Humor on the internet has a weird way of spreading and just destroying any conversation. So often I go to the comments on reddit hoping for further insight or a different point of view, only to find the top three threads are memes and puns.
However, I did enjoy this limited foray into humor, and appreciate that we can seemingly keep it limited to a couple funny comments, and still have intelligent conversation.
Or maybe allow some diversity in the mood of the conversation? There is always a time and a place for humor and non-serious conversation. I get that you don't want this forum to devolve, but it also devolves if you are dead set on a single mode of operation.
This is an excellent comment, and anecdata aside, is very similar to my own experiences. Started a ketogenic diet ~3 years ago - was very close to FODMAP and immediately saw stomach/gut/sweat/sleep/general well being improvements across the board. Been super interesting (since) to see what has an effect on me and after how much.
In particular, I cut alcohol in a big way (mostly casual beer) and was fairly stunned to realise how much I'd lived with "booze blues" every day. It's now very, very obvious the effect alcohol has on my body afterwards (elevated heart rate, booze blues, etc etc). But at the time was like a fog being lifted for the first time in almost 20 years.
We're all different, what works for me might not for you, etc - but personally was hugely enlightening to just reset and play around with what does what.
But when you are young and healthy, you can basically eat everything you want and don't feel bad at the moment. The problem is that all the side effects will come later.
Unfortunately food intolerancies could appear at very early childhood causing several gut & non-gut related problems. So in that case a child can't know what is healthy or good because the baseline is so bad.
This is great and much needed advice. My parents didn’t realize my stomach problems early on despite having a decent diet, and it affected me more later in life.
yeah, this is weird for me. lately I started recognizing that people are leaning towards extreme options or treat decision as "either this or that" while not looking at something in the middle or combining couple of tools to single use.
Do you mean mainly in the scientific/engineering context? Because, in general in the world of public discourse, that’s arguably the dominant theme of the past 20 years, if not the last 2000.
This seems like an uncharitable take: OP seems to be arguing you should focus on what you can measure (even if it’s personal experience), and seek guidance when you need help.
The concrete advice at the end seems pretty supported by science. Drinking and smoking are definitively bad for you.
smoking - yes, it's incontrovertible.
drinking - less clear; mortality rates for teetotallers (total abstinence) are higher than for even moderate to heavy drinkers, and there are health benefits from eg 1-2 servings of red wine. IMHO the issue is the degree to which people slip from a drink or maybe 2, to 3 or maybe 4.
I agree that ultimately your own subjective experience is the best measure of how your diet is working for you, surely studies like this are good information about what diet protocol might be interesting to try, especially since it can take a couple weeks to really feel the effects of a new diet.
Not true. Many types of cancer can be spotted early on, if you pay attention to your body and know where to look at.
And go to a medical check, if there are warning signs.
Checkung nevus. Early on means, if you notice them changing size and color - have them checked and maybe removed. No spreading skin cancer as a result
Breast cancer: feeling knots, etc. are warning signs.
Lung cancer: pain
Brain cancer:
certain types of headaches can be ignored with pills, or checked
etc. etc.
I am not aware of any cancer, which has no warning signs. But yes, most if not all signs are not a guaranteed test result. And in fact, it probably does not helping many people freaking out, when they notice warning signs, caused by harmles other causes. But doing so in a rational manner definitely increases your chances of early spotting.
This is good advice, I had similar issues with acid reflux. Though I didn't have the patience to cut so much out of my diet. I ended up starting a diet journal and tracking closer attention to what food & drink triggered my acid reflux. Coffee turned out to be the worst culprit, and cutting out coffee eliminated 80% of my acid reflux incidents.
It's probably best to go the full diet change route & slowly introduce new foods again, but if you read the OP's recommendations and think "I can't do that" there are other ways.
Just because we have slightly different bodies doesn’t mean we can’t do science. We need controls etc, but it’s doable even if it’s very hard with complex biological systems.
BTW: what did you eat during the time? It seems like you couldn’t eat a lot of you leave out fruits and most meat
Well, ethanol reacts with hydrochloric acid producing chloroethane gas, so theoretically it can reduce acidity of stomach content by converting liquid acid into non-acidic and slightly anesthetic burps.
Focusing on how you feel is also a great way to die prematurely. Hypertension, Heart Disease and Cancer all don't care one iota about how you feel. This has literally nothing to do with what you're talking about other than being about eating habits.
Do you happen still have the list of things your gastrologist said you could eat? I'm having a bit of reflux issue myself, and I would love to solve it purely with diet, but I don't know where to start.
People who never experimented themselves with nutrition do not understand the limitations of these studies. They only look for one effect for a relative short period of time. So not only they might miss other side effects but also they conclude based on the shock effect major changes have on your body. But once these changes become normal the body adapts and the effects might go completely away.
From my personal experience: very high protein with calorie deficit can allow you to build muscle while losing fat but also causes impotence, anxiety, poop so hard you scrape your insides till you fill the toilet with blood. Are the studies right? Yes. Do you want to follow their advice? Not really.
I have a similar experience. I feel better all around when my stomach is full than when it's not. But that's not a feasible way to stay at a healthy weight so I deal.
Acid reflux burns your throat and sometimes even the stomach lining. Imagine taking a lit candle. You can wave your finger through the flame without issue. But now if you burn that finger, any heat, no matter how small is going to burn and cause an upset. Eating bland foods allows the stomach an easier time digesting, preventing reflux into the throat and allowing the burns to heal so that in the future when you get the occasional bit of reflux like most people, it won’t burn and you’ll carry on your day like normal. If I get particularly stressed and eat badly for example and don’t notice I’m burning up inside, I need to take 3 months of just bland foods, boring diet, Gaviscon and Nizatidine and then I’m back to normal again. It’s a fun ride!
