> I don't quite understand the fascination of the HN crowd with intermittent fasting.
Well, have you tried it? Unlike many fad diets there's nothing to buy, no long-term commitment, just one or a few days where you don't eat. You can do some reading to find tricks to make it easier, but all it really takes is willpower. Maybe it will do something for you, maybe not.
> a handful of flawed or limited studies
As much as we worship high quality, large-population, peer-reviewed studies, ultimately the only study that matters is the n=1, yourself - only you can find out what works for you.
>As much as we worship high quality, large-population, peer-reviewed studies, ultimately the only study that matters is the n=1, yourself - only you can find out what works for you.
I understand what you're trying to say but found it funny you tried to conflate real vetted science with "worship" and then said to throw all that out in favor of a personal opinion.
What "works for you" doesn't have to be "personal opinion". You can freely conduct scientific experiments on yourself. Analysis of such experiments is even abnormally easy, because you can ignore issues of drawing from a "sample" population in favor of analysis techniques that are based on the fact that you're taking data from 100% of the population of interest. (You may still be "sampling" data, depending on what you're measuring, but you've still only got one dimension of sampling instead of two then, which is still easier to deal with.)
You just aren't allowed to take the n=1 experiment you just ran and claim it applies to everybody equally.
But if you want to know what works for you, and do not particularly care to publish a scientific paper, you can do experiments freely, and the results are as valid as your experimental methodology and the resulting statistical power justify.
You are also further entitled at that point to trust your n=1 experiment for yourself over any future n=50 experiment in the future, because it doesn't matter whether 35 of 50 people slept better when taking Vitamin C before bed or whatever; what you personally care about is whether you do, and no amount of reading that paper will tell you whether you're going to be in the 35 or the 15.
I've had to experiment on myself like crazy for various reasons. My results are (most likely) utterly inapplicable to you. And I don't care very much about that. You can do your own experiments on you. In the meantime, while I don't know exactly what the parallel universe looks like in which I didn't do these experiments, I am very confident (95%+) parallel Jerf is in pretty bad shape and almost certainly on some rather powerful and nasty meds that he does not in fact need to be on that are actually making things worse in the long term.
My experiments have been informed by various papers related to my condition, so it's not like that science is useless; far from it! But, again, no amount of reading papers about Celiac disease and how taking more Taurine helped 80% of people's hearts work better will tell me whether I'm in the 80% or the 20%.
It had an immediate and significant positive effect on my heart, which at ~38 years old was starting to seriously misbehave. (Most likely paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, although after wearing a heart monitor for two weeks the doctors declined to diagnose. At this point my heart was misbehaving badly enough that I straight-up was not getting any quality sleep, just to give you an idea of how thump-ety-thump we're talking here.)
Re my comment about science still being useful, there are certainly papers about taurine supplementation being useful for people suffering from atrial fibrellation. IIRC, I did not find any references on that for Celiac specifically, but since Celiac is basically "generalized failure to properly absorb nutrients" it's not much of a leap to assume it's related.
For heart purposes, it should be matched with 1/2-1/3rd (from the looks of it; it's about as well tested as most dosages, which if you dig into them, are often a lot more guess-and-check than you might like) as much L-Arginine by mass, i.e., I take about 3g Taurine and 1g L-Arginine about three times a day. (I'm a big guy, but the papers often tested twice that, too, so it shouldn't be a dosage issue.)
It was ultimately only a part of the nutrient cocktail I ultimately ended up needing, but it was/is a very important part of it. On those occasions I run out of it, I can tell less than 24 hours later.
There are worse things than Celiac; at least I can supplement my way out of the worst aspects of it, and that's not a thing you can say about all chronic conditions. But it still sorta blows; I'm constantly playing nutrient catch-up with my body.
Perhaps that was an overly antagonistic choice of words, but when you consider the way such studies are analyzed, summarized, and reconstituted for consumption by the public, all nuance is lost and all that's left is a generic guideline that may have little or no relevance for any given person.
How do you know one specific thing worked, and it wasn't something else? Or just mere coincidence? As someone who has Crohn's disease I have lost track of the times someone has said "oh, blah worked for this person" etc etc.... all anecdotes, with no way of deciding whether there are side-effects that need to be weighed-up. No thanks.
What's the alternative? Inaction until science figures out the human body?
At the end of the day, it's just you doing what works for you. When you do find something that works for you, it's just another anecdote that won't work for everyone else, but it's hard to argue with what makes you happier.
Also, it's not like eating less is exotic or risky. It's one of the many things I'd try if I was suffering.
Treat it like a study. Only change one variable at a time and observe changes. Note any potential confounding variables. You talk as if only scientists can science or apply the scientific method, which is entirely the wrong view to take. It should be something everybody is capable of using and generally everybody is if they're genuinely interested in doing so. I've been in academia for a long time, what we do isn't that special.
We should be (and there are people who do) encouraging people to learn how their diets, their behaviors affect them emotionally, physiologically and psychologically. Scientific studies really aren't as applicable to the general population as one would like to believe. So the only way to learn is to experiment on themselves.
> As someone who has Crohn's disease I have lost track of the times someone has said "oh, blah worked for this person" etc etc.... all anecdotes
This is the point, a sample n=1 is only valid for that one person. You can only make educated guesses on what to test on yourself, but probably you need something slightly different from everyone else.
I do not know much about your disease, but for a diet is it pretty harmless to experiment if you are not doing anything extreme and keep yourself informed on current science
There is a huge amount of info out there these days. Patients often know more about their own condition than most doctors they will meet.
If you have never fasted before, you need to read up on fasting. If you want to make dietary changes, you read up on lots of dietary stuff. Etc.
If you have a specific diagnosis, you can read up on the latest research into that, plus related stuff. For example, I read stuff about genetics and the gut biome because that helps me put things into context.
You do a thing and something happens. You note it and try to figure out what the process is. Was it random? Was it coincidence? Was it causative? If so, how? You build from there.
That's a risk of any course of action (or inaction) a person undertakes. Following your doctors or the government's guidance is no different, just shifting responsibility, and comes with its own risks (e.g. read The Big Fat Surprise).
Pragmatically speaking, would you prefer a shorter life where you feel great, or a longer one where you just feel "OK"? What if we're talking one month? One year?
Only if you use flawed metrics. If you use the same metrics for health and the same methodology of a reasonable scientific paper then you get a purely better result. the gotcha is that it is useless for everyone but you.
A problem would be if you do too many experiments too often, but this you also need to control in n=50.
There is a huge difference between subjectivity and n=1
I don't understand how this is feasible. As a young healthy male I never had my full blood count have values anything other than within reference range. Even when I ate noodles everyday in college because I was broke, or now I eat balanced and healthy unprocessed food, veggies, lean meat etc I have similar blood counts. How do you measure a diet's effect within your lifetime? It seems like even if you look healthy by all measures a normal person is capable of measuring right now, but still be eating unhealthy.
> but still be eating unhealthy.
but maybe you are at a good health level while you only eat junk food. Like people who smoke all of their life and have no health issue.
Diet researches do not measure lifespans of participants.
Those who do are rare, as they would need to last at least a few decades. IIRC to publish actual research on diet effect on lifespan you need 80 years.
What you do is develop metrics useful to predict lifespan and quality of life and then see the impact of a diet of those metrics. There is nothing you cannot do privately here (using some laboratory for analysis obviously)
I am not saying it is easy and for sure it is error prone, but so is science itself.
I get where you're coming for (you want to draw conclusions for yourself, not for a whole population), but I don't think that is as you paint it.
You are not a good observer of yourself. You have biases and subjectivity when "measuring" yourself, so that makes your own "measurements" of yourself unreliable. Furthermore, there are certain observations you cannot even make. For obvious reasons, you cannot even do something so simple as estimating the effect on life expectancy :).
> You have biases and subjectivity when "measuring" yourself
As do the nurse who draws your blood, the tech who tests it, and the doctor who interprets the results. By all means recruit them to assist in your study, but don't do it in blind faith.
> that makes your own "measurements" of yourself unreliable
Perhaps in some ways and for some metrics, but conversely you are the best at knowing where you experience pain, how you "feel," and how today differs from yesterday.
> you cannot even do something so simple as estimating the effect on life expectancy :)
Well, have you tried it? Unlike many fad diets there's nothing to buy, no long-term commitment, just one or a few days where you don't eat. You can do some reading to find tricks to make it easier, but all it really takes is willpower. Maybe it will do something for you, maybe not.
> a handful of flawed or limited studies
As much as we worship high quality, large-population, peer-reviewed studies, ultimately the only study that matters is the n=1, yourself - only you can find out what works for you.