How Not to Die
From the physician behind the wildly popular website NutritionFacts.org, How Not to Die reveals the groundbreaking scientific evidence behind the only diet that can prevent and reverse many of the causes of disease-related death. The simple truth is that most doctors are good at treating acute illnesses but bad at preventing chronic disease. The 15 leading causes of premature death -- illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, Parkinson's, high blood pressure, and others -- claim the lives of 1.6 million Americans annually. This doesn't have to be the case. By following Dr. Greger's advice, all of it backed up by strong scientific evidence, you will learn which foods to eat and which lifestyle changes to make to help prevent or fight these diseases and to live longer. In addition to showing what to eat to help treat the top 15 causes of death, How Not to Die includes Dr. Greger's Daily Dozen, a checklist of the foods and activities we should try to incorporate into our daily routines. Full of practical, actionable advice and surprising, cutting-edge nutritional science, these doctor's orders are just what we need to live longer, healthier lives. - Jacket flap.
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What Hacker News says
- Dr. Michael Greger's "How not to die" is interesting.
- A lot of CO2 is bad for thinking.
CO2 is just a tip as office or home is toxic environment anyway. Plastic (e.g. carpets), formaldehyde in furniture, air fresheners… add home office and cooking at home (-> small carcinogenic particles)…
If you start reading How not to die by Michael Greger, you find out that dust, soda and sitting - not CO2 - are real killers…
It's similar to how people think sharks and airplanes are the biggest killers - when in reality it is coconuts, mosquitoes, and motorcycles.
- with regards to who you follow in nutritional circles, just beware that there's a lot of social media content out there by people who are really good at business (seo, social media content gen, etc) but haven't read much nutritional research. Meanwhile the real scientists who know a great deal, have very little social media content, if any at all.
Personally, I follow the advice of Dr Micheal Gregor, one of his most recent books has over 13,000 citations! Their team has read over 20,000 nutritional papers!! And he'll tell you that whole grains and beans are an excellent staple of a healthy diet.
And with regards to Saturated Fat and even dietary cholesterol, he said, to make a really long story short, that they're really bad for you. There's way too many specifics to list but his 500+ page book (How not to age, and How not to Die) goes into great details and backs it up with a ton of research.
- I haven't read the CELL paper yet (would love to, if somebody has a PDF to share).
But I'm surprised I yet haven't seen a mention of Dr. Michael Greger's book [1] How Not to Die, which does an excellent job of elaborating how various diseases -- including cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, etc -- result in death.
I found it immensely helpful in plugging a lot of holes in my understanding of my own health (FWIW: 40s, no chronic diseases, but tendency towards high(er) A1C, cholesterol)
He has subsequently released other books -- How Not To Age, How Not to Diet, etc -- which one might call as capitalizing on the trend, not to put too fine a point on it. [However, I do find his books, videos and discussions quite informative, and not too technical, without going into the hyper-masculine, pseudo-science-y word salad territory waded into by, say, Huberman.]
There's a brief video [2] on side effects of metformin as a life extension drug, which seems relevant to the CELL paper above.
[1] https://nutritionfacts.org/book/how-not-to-die/ [2] https://nutritionfacts.org/video/side-effects-of-metformin-a...
- Yes, Most people don't know why. But nutritional researchers like Micheal Gregor (he and his team have read over 20,000 research papers! just for one book - how not to die) know why. The problem is all the people who get the most views on youtube, TV and social media are the people who are best at operating businesses and SEO. they often don't know all the research (and even give bad advice sometimes) and hence we get all this back and forth that we see all over the place. Meanwhile, the real researchers who know what they're talking about and are very knowledgable about nutrition and health don't have time for SEO and running a successful media empire. they're content doesn't get viewed very much.
- Science doesn't support keto as an optimal diet for most cases, which I wouldn't call a weird stigma. The book How Not To Die is a good primer on nutrition, major diseases and longevity, and includes references to all the scientific studies references. Meat and dairy have causal or correlations with a lot of terminal diseases, which is bad news for the keto diet. Whole-food plant-based diets fare best in most scientific trials, which is fairly incompatible with keto.
Research into optimal diets for longevity also found whole-food, mostly plant-based was what folks that live the longest eat.
WFPB has also been used successfully in to address Alzheimer's and diabetes.
