Michael569

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Posts posted by Michael569

  2. Posted · Edited by Michael569

    I like this post. Simplicity, practicality and down to earth. 

    I don't know if you are a video game person; I've been on and off throughout my life. There is a game called Project Zomboid, which is a game where you are basically trying to stay alive and healthy while keeping your mental health in check, in a world dominated by walking corpses.

    The head stomping of zombies and all the crafting aside, the video game character has to train to stay healthy, stay strong, and maintain good stamina, keep his mental health in check, maintain energy levels, healthy digestion, healthy immunity, stick to a good sleep routine, and interact with his environment in a way that does not deplete him too much. I am saying this because I find the mechanics of that game perfectly match the theme of your question: How do I stay healthy and well in a world that seems overwhelming?  But perhaps instead of zombies, you have been fighting with depression. 

    Let's get started.

    I will deliberately keep this response vague enough not to get lost in rabbit holes but on point enough not to turn this into poetry. 

    Same as the Zomboid game, there are a few things you need to keep your eyes on, if you want to be able to withstand the challenges of the world: 

    • Your diet - needs to give your body everything it needs. Without going into too much detail, you should know how much protein you need, eat sufficient amount of healthy carbohydrates, keep your eyes on daily fibre intake and eat some healthy fats to keep your immune and hormonal system happy. Do your best to minimise the amount of processed food and learn some practical ways to make cooking easy and economical for yourself such as batch cooking, shopping in bulk and learning up to 10 recipes you can rotate. 
    • Your fitness - According to the wider research, the main predictors of longer healthspan are your V02 Max (your peak stamina), and your strength (as measured by grip strength and lower body strength). These two factors you must maintain across your life at a reasonable level. They not only slow down ageing process but protect you from a variety of metabolic problems, keeping your immune system vital. On top of that, you should put a little bit of focus into your mobility, joint health and some explosiveness to protect your fast twitch muscle from atrophying as they are the first one to go in ageing people. You can google how to train all of this or just throw this whole comment into chat GPT.  
    • Your psychological well-being - this may mean different things to different people, but it is about being able to match the demands of your environment without being overwhelmed and without being locked in a sympathetic drive (fight or flight) all the time. Whatever the tool is, this needs to be managed carefully. Regular meditation habit helps a lot of people keep this in check. Sleep is also essential 
    • Mental occupation - this is a 4th factor that is important. There needs to be something in your life that gives you a sense of inner stability and a sense of purpose. Something that pulls you out from bed in the morning and that helps you fall asleep at night knowing your life is making the world a better place, at least for someone, or something (the planetary wellbeing, the animals, the climate, the education of the youth ...whatever it is) 
    • Social component - Project Zomboid does not have this and it is one of the reasons why managing the character's mental health gets progressively harder as the game goes on. If you spend most of your time alone in a "cave" your mental health will tank. Nobody is protected from this. So figuring out a way to invite people in life will go a longway. 

    Anyways, this is for some basics. You could add more categories and go elbows deep in each of them but if you stay on top of these 5 you'll be doing better than 90% of the population; happiness-wise and health-wise. 

  3. Posted

    On 10/03/2024 at 7:59 AM, shree said:

    @Michael569

    After reading Mark Sisson's books and noticing a significant drop in my energy levels over the last few years, I decided to explore the keto diet.

    I have a "skinny fat" body type, and when I relax my belly, it appears as though there's a big ball inside, leading me to suspect a fatty liver.

    Additionally, my mood and focus have deteriorated. Considering my lifelong diet has been rich in unhealthy carbs, I thought it was time to give my body a break from them.

    I've also read that intermittent fasting is most effective when one is fully adapted to keto, which further influenced my decision to start this dietary change.

    I am also struggling much with building muscles. This was so easy when I was in my twenties. Now I am 33. There might be more reasons behind my choice, but these are the primary ones that come to mind.

     

    Hey, thanks for sharing this. 

    Loss of energy and fatigue can be caused by lots of different things and radical change of your diet might not always be the most viable solution, although sometimes it does help. 

    Mood & focus deterioration are both closely tied to your energy levels. I have seen this over and over in guys I worked with. You fix one, the other follows pretty much instantly. 

    What was your past diet like? 

    Mark Sisson does bring forward lots of interesting ideas and I agree with some of his propositions around the negative effects of processed food and high-flour ingredients like processed carbs. But I don't think he fully appreciates the nuances between different types of carbohydrates. He sort of throws out the baby with the bathwater when recommending keto. Lot of his beliefs about carbohydrates and saturated fat are incredibly naive and show a complete ignorance of wider nutritional evidence. 

    The difficulty with gain of muscle might be linked to low energy & mood and might be linked to diet missing certain components - enough calories, protein, carbohydrates etc. 

    I am deliberately being vague because I don't want to break my ethics and give you generic advice based on little information but at the same time I am almost certain that keto is not the answer. A form of moderate carb, lower fat, moderate protein would probably be the way to go. However without more specifics I can't tell you where to begin. 

  4. Posted · Edited by Michael569

    hey, 

    Can I ask what led you to keto? Is there a desirable outcome you're following? Weigh loss or something of that sort? 

    On 3/8/2024 at 5:29 PM, shree said:

    I read that doing some light exercise helps use up muscle glucose,

    I have heard this theory before on low carb forums but it not the full story.

    If your muscle glucose was permanently depleted, say on low carb diet, you would end up paralysed due to complete ATP depletion. Your heart, being  a cardiac muscle, would probably stop as well so your body would not want to do that. It is like wanting to deplete your lungs of oxygen.

    Your muscles will source glucose through gluconeogenesis via other pathways even if you deprive yourself of carbohydrates, in that case it will be sourced from fat or amino acids. it will then be deposited into muscles during sleep and during periods of rest. You can't reverse this. 

    Its basically evolution of species. Humans move by using the leverage between muscle and a bone, all of that being orchestrated through the electrical impulses of your nervous system. For muscles to work, they need glucose derived from food or stored glycogen. 

    Your body will always replenish intramuscular glycogen no matter how deprived (unless extremely starved) even if it has to break down your muscle mass to use amino acids. The failure to supply muscles with glucose would probably be the last thing before heart failure 

    On 3/8/2024 at 5:29 PM, shree said:

    but I'm feeling really weak.

    Keto can definitely be done but it needs to be approached carefully with a lot of planning otherwise the most common reason for people to quit is exreme fatigue to the point of depression. Seen it with a few of my past clients. 

    You could start by tracking your caloric intake a see if you're getting everything you need. Gradually, if you do it well and your body can adapt effectively you will start slipping in an out of ketosis. How efefctively that happens is also derived from your genetics but also how long you have been doing this. 

    Some people like to use blood ketone meters or urine ketone strips that you pee on - these can be fairly reliable to tell you how effectively your body is using ketones to meet metabolic demands. There are also breath tests but those can be a bit costly. 

    But again before all of this, please be clear on the "why" before fully embarking on keto. Not everything shared in keto communities is alligned with the principles of human biology and a lot of it is a bit dangerous. 

    A balanced diet with moderate carb intake is an option as well while you transition 

  5. Posted · Edited by Michael569

    14 hours ago, Jason Actualization said:

    I'm submitting that oxidized cholesterol (oxysterols) is the unifying factor and that in fact, it's our own immune system responding to this oxidation that renders the chronic inflammation that lays down plaque in the end.

    I want to explore this theory a bit because to me this is where the rubber meets the road. I like your reasoning and I think we can take the nerdy theory one step further :D

    What you are describing is indeed pathophysiology of atherosclerosis which I am no expert in but from literature on CVD I have read, this is roughly how it works. 

    Given that, here is the next question: 

    The penetration of ApoB containing particles (namely - LDL, VDLD , LP(a))  through tunica intima is, to my understanding, partially unavoidable as it is one of the imperfections of the human body.It is not the penetration itself that is the problem (they can escape back in the flow and this happens all the time same way electrolyte particles penetrate between extra and intracellular space inside the axon of the nerve cells) but it is their irreversible binding to the proreglycan structures, (these proteins hanging around between tunica intima & tunica media) that cause those particles to stay there. Once they are locked, they are fucked. 

    So then

    • Is it that ApoB particles (LDL, VLDL, Lp(a) ) get oxidised before they enter the subendothelial space?
    • Or is it that they get oxidised after they get in there through their immobility? - I dont' understan the mechanism tho
    • Is there something that makes oxidative particle more prone to entering the subentothelial space? 

    This is what I am not clear about, maybe you have some insights to share.

    Are we 100% sure that oxidation does not happen inside subentothelial space rather than inside the circulation?

    Purely because those particles, after attaching to proteoglycans trigger immune response - macrophages enter the subendothelial space, trigger chemotaxic response, more immune cells are called on for, and all of that and they trigger inflammation. Inflammation is prooxidative - oxidation creates fallout and increases the odds of ApoB particle oxidation (those that are locked to proteoglycans because they can't escape).

    Macrophages gobble up the dead oxLDLs, they grow, turn in foam cells, get too "fat" and get stuck in the subendothelial space, they die & accumulate like a puss but in this case the puss can't get out - plaque starts building up - typical atherosclerosis right? Its kinda like a cyst but it builds in a space where it obstructs blood flow and can kill a person. 

    Maybe this is the greatest imperfection of the human body and the reason most of us die as  a result of heart disease? Because it is not 100% avoidable? 

    So what if, the oxidative ApoB particles are actually the ones that are already locked in to proteoglycan structures?

    • Are we really looking at the right space when we are testing patients for oxidated LDL through standard blood test
    • Shouldn't we instead be looking at oxLDL content inside the subendothelial space? -  where you would be more likely to see oxidated particles? (for obvious reasons that would be extremely hard to test without arterial biopsy which would be difficult, dangerous, unethical and expensive as heck). But isn't that what we see from tissues of post-mortem studies? Docked in oxidised ApoB particles inside subendotheliual space? @undeather might know more about this form his clinical practice & research
    • Given that maybe the total LDL count that common tests are looking at is indeed the correct way to study this? Plus you want to know how many VLDLs and LP(a) you have so testing for ApoB and for LP(a) is a good idea for those who want to go deeper

    Interestingly this connects us to Pomegranate juice. To my knowledge, there are not very successful medication that can dislocate ApoB particles from proteoglycans but I think Punicalagins in PJ actually can. I have been toying around with idea of starting that consumption as well so I absolutely agree with you that there is somethign going on there which helps offset this damage. Maybe PJ is part of the answer. I don't think it can reverse plaque but maybe there is a timespan, say 72 hours (made that up) before those locked particles can still be dislocated before they trigger an army of macrophages? 

    But what if that's not the right perspective to look at it? What if looking at it through the lenses of oxidative theory is again looking at consequence and not the cause? 

    Maybe we need to be looking at , what increases the risk of ApoB particles (LDL, APoB, Lp(a) penetration into subendothelial space in the first place? Since it is not 100% avoidable, how can we minimise it? 

    I would say, it starts with reducing the volume of ApoB particles in blood. There are 3 of them: LDL, VLDL & LP(a). 

    • Lp(a) is mainly driven by genetics to my knowledge so that one is hard to control without medication & strict lifestyle management (weight control etc.) I am not sure to what degree LP(a) is derived form diet. Maybe you know? 
    • LDL & VLDL are more likely to be impacted by diet and genetics for peope with familila hypercholesterolaemia.

    So then the ways to control isn't just to focus on antioxidant status but to focus on the penetration factor (as quirky as that sounds

    • Blood pressure is an obvious one - control for blood pressure and you reduce the force driving the APoB particles through the arterial walls into subendothelium. Exercise, stay lean, don't smoke. Helps protect the arterial walls from stiffening, that's good and that's important. 
    • Reduce the total ApoB in diet mainly by reducing highest sources of APoB containing lipoproteins - animal foods with highest saturated fat content. (might be more complicated) 
    • control for total bodyweight, waist circumference and common antropomethric factors associated with hypertension 
    • take medication if diagnosed with FH 

    I appreciate that this theory has holes but it makes sense to me that this is they key trigger and this is where it starts. Oxidation should be minimised through diet and I think we should actively be researching substances that help dislocate APoB particles from proteoglycans (such as pomegranate juice), I think PCSK-9 Inhibitors can do that too (and frankly I think this is where the future of cardiovascular medicine lies). 

    Statins are helpful fro people who are unable to take control or who have genetic disorder - they prolong life but they do cause other issues, I'm with you on that and don't love them. 

    I don't yet know where seed oils come into the mix. I also agree with you that human outcome data based mainly on prospective observation isn't perect but I'd say given the complexity, is the best we have. Maybe seed oils cna be treated as doubkle edged sword? They are more likely to oxidise but because they displace saturated fats (people more likely to eat more PUFA will usually eat less SFA) they decrease the probability of excessive LDL migration into subendothelium? Just a speculation. Honest answer here is I don't know and I haven't yet come to final consensus on seed oils. 

    I'm interested to keep this debate going, this is a topic close to my heart as I, same as you, have seen people close to me, succumb to it. I think you make a lot of good and interesting points. Agree with some, disagree with some but overall I love this discussion. 

  7. Posted

    10 hours ago, Emerald said:

    There is an almost maternal instinct to want to alleviate the sufferings of the world... and yet no one takes these vulnerabilities seriously and just brush it off as "wokeness" or moralization or being a killjoy... etc.

    This is probably also why you see a divide politically between young men and women. 

    what I noticed is that there is a tendency among women (but also men) on the internet to almost try to create self-suffering where there isn't one. It is almost as if the demand for suffering has far outweighted the supply of it in western societies where the basic anxieties of survival are fully covered. Hence all the gender wars, Gaza discussions, constant cries about inquality, intolerance, opression of masculine patriarchy. 

    Its like we have run out of problems and we are trying very hard to create them so that we have something to bicker about? 

  8. Posted

    1 hour ago, undeather said:

    Why only some individuals seem to deposit such compounds in their lesions, while others don't is still up to debate. Maybe there are certain risk factors like smoking or hypertension that increase the tendency while others maybe be neutral towards it. It seems like the mononuclear phagocyte system is very much involved in this process -

    it would make sense that it happens the same way the oxidised particles do? Sheer randomness and through the pressure of the pumping. Maybe the progression is identical to the way oxLDL gets there and what happens after is exactly the same - monocyte adhesion, inflammation, foam cell accumulation etc etc. In that case the main determining factor would be, how many particles per ml of blood do you have and what are the odds of them ending up in subendothelial space.

    Do we know anything about the size and the ease of luminal penetration? That would be an interesting factor to study. 

    1 hour ago, undeather said:

    can send you the full paper next time when I am in the clinic since we have NEJM access! 
    https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2309822

    ^_^

  9. Posted

    Thank you for sharing! First time I heard about microplastics connected to anything other than endocrinology. 

    I wasn't able to find the full paper but curious is there is a chance of correlative factor? What did they control for? For example we could proabbly make the assumption that folks with worse lifestyles overall will be more "full of" microplastics due to buying a lot of takeaway drinks, heating up plastic containers, not filtering their water, eating from takeaway containers , eating more processed food etc etc. 

    Curious if that was looked at? Either way, this is scary! Dod they explain the suspected pathophysiology? 

  10. Posted · Edited by Michael569

    15 hours ago, Unlimited said:

    All supplements are bad. You should always get your vitamines and minerals from the right nutrition.

     

    15 hours ago, Unlimited said:

    Plant based diets are super unhealthy.

    To anyone who has taken the time to understand the nuances of nutrition, statements like these are just laughable because it shows your own ignorance. I don't mean that in any negative way but you just haven't explored enough. You got complacent too early. 

    Trust me I have been there when I discovered Robert More and then Veganism, suddenly everything made sense and I though I had answers to everything. I was buying herbal tinctures, doing enemas and convincing myself that iam detoxing my parasites and viruses and what have you. Then I realised all these extreme diets are mostly bs stemming from experiences of a few people who have been very sick and have found some help and then decided that they would be a wise commercial opportunity or that everyone should follow it. 

    But guess what, life isn't that black and white. Things aren't just bad or good just because a guy on the internet says so. You don't need to eat raw diet to be healthy and to stay healthy. AV had a myeloma and a few other major health problems, maybe he had to....maybe. I don't know. But most people certainly don't have to eat raw meat. In fact it would be highly detrimental to the society if that turned out to be the case. 

    You can be perfectly happy on a balanced diet and your life does not need to slide into this monotonous misery where you will just disagree with everyone and this new thing becomes an obsession that completely clouds your judgement so that you end up trying to convince the internet that it is wrong. 

    We had AV topics here many times and we had many carnivores and vegans and raw meat eaters. We had people drinking piss around here. We had folks gazing at sun at the midday. We had insaney crazy vegans, rude and ruthless carnivores. The forum has seen it all. This is nothing new, these topics are argued all over the internet. But for heaven's sake don't be so lazy with your health and keep digging and keep researching, you will be surprised that the further you go, the simpler the answers become and you get to a stage where you realise what you have been told by others isn't mostly all bad. 

    Wishing you well man, don't settle so easily. You only have one health, don't wreck it needlesly 

  13. Posted · Edited by Michael569

    15 minutes ago, Yousif said:

    also there are other things that also matter, like your diet, 

    Ofcourse. Diet is a paramount component of a healthy body. 

    15 minutes ago, Yousif said:

    being skinny with a perfect diet and low body mass will probably have you live longer than an athlete with more mass,

    That is debatable. For example being skiny with a low BMI does protect you more from things like cancer and heart disease (to some extend)  but makes you more prone to osteoporosis. After the age of 65, about 20-25% of people who fall and break a loading hip or a loading bone die in the hospital. Of those who make it out of hospital (often resulting in major loss of muscle mass and further loss of bone mass) about third die within 12 months as a consequence of prolonged immobiity, infection or heart problems.

    Of all those who make it past year 1, almost 100% will suffer chronic consequences such as limping, pain and higher risk of infection, falling and another fracture. 

    Falling and breaking a hip is one of the most common ways to die after 65. And the main risk factor for osteoporosis besides being female, old or postmenopausal is low body weight. 

     

  14. Posted · Edited by Michael569

    @Yousif Don't forget that the rest of your body suffers wear & tear as much as your muskuloskeletal system does. 

    Let's take an example of a person who does not exercise and they end up with hypertension (high blood pressure). Because their heart has to work harder all the time, there is more sheer pressure on the lining of their arteries and this is causing progressive damage which leads to inflammation and a deposition of a plaque (complex topic simplified). 

    On the other hand, you have a very active individual with normal blood pressure in whom this is not happening but yes, his joints are under more wear & tear and he might need surgery in his 50s or 60s for knee or pelvic joint. 

    Maybe the argument should be - which poison are you going to choose? Would you rather that your heart and vascular system works extra hard or that your mobility aparatus does. Which one is easier to reverse and repair? Which one will kill you faster? 

    What @undeather is saying is that exercise won't necessarily make you live longer (it might) but it slows down the first onset of health problems and helps you age better without less pain and less disease 

  15. Posted

    30 minutes ago, Alexop said:

    . Some were addicted to sugar products of course, but also a lot of pastry addiction, pizza and pasta. ALL the overweight clients were eating shitloads of carbs in some form especially wheat and sugar.

    That's true, overweight & obese people tend to eat a lot of processed food which is heavily based on processed wheat flour, sugar and fat. Granted, no argument at all there. But as a therapist & a professional you need to be precise and accurate when demonising major food groups for your clients otheriwise it makes you seem like an amateur. That's all I'm saying. 

    The answers are probably deeply rooted in people's environment, habit, psyche and upbringing rather than sugar addiction which is more like a consequence of somethign else. 

    Anyway, I'll let this go, thanks for the response. 

     

     

  16. Posted

    19 hours ago, MarkKol said:

    I think meat is fine not considering the ethical side of things, It’s much more important to keep your diet unprocessed and in energy balance than jumping from meat to plants and vice versa.

    Obesity will kill you much sooner than any food, whatever your opinion on that food is.

    Vegetables are probably the healthiest, my stomach has made that clear to me, that being said, you can’t just fill your entire day with vegetables no matter how many you consume, you need calories, you need protein now and you’ll need it even more in 20 years due to sarcopenia. I opted for a high-fat, moderately high-protein, and low-carb diet. Avocados, broccoli, radishes, real olive oil, chia seeds, oatmeal currently pausing eggs and beef. Protein powders are also ok if you can find one that you can actually consume that isn’t filled with shit. Again, vegetables over meat is not a power law of health, but unprocessed over processed is.

    Saturated fat found in meat will raise ApoB in most/many individuals. Higher ApoB = higher risk of heart disease. So choose lean meats preferably. Meat is not a processed food however, it has nutrients. Low visceral fat, strong grip strength, ideal weight/BMI, and muscle mass can all be ideal with or without it so don't let these YouTube gymbros fool you into thinking that animal-based or carnivore is somehow the only way, It's not. Paul Saldino's cholesterol is sky-high in his own words.

    ^ nice comment 

  18. Posted · Edited by Michael569

    2 hours ago, Alexop said:

    And wheat is addictive! There is no debate here

    It seems like you have already decided that you would not accept counterarguments. Was this post supposed to be more like a journal entry? We have a Journalling section for that. 

    You could further distil your arguments if you want the forum to comment. Start with why you believe wheat is unhealthy. You seem to hint back to wheat repeatedly, which makes me assume that there is something in wheat that, if removed from processed food, would render the processed food....healthy? Less unhealthy? 

    So the question is, Why is wheat bad? What is the evidence? What is the argument? 

    Otherwise, the tone & the overarching theme of this post seem rather childish. "I am angry at the world because the world does not bend to my will; I blame evil corporations, greed and sugar."  

  21. Posted · Edited by Michael569

    It is but you need to calibrate it precisely by filling in the customizable section in your profile (not sure if this is a feature of 3.5 too) otherwise it remains fairly basic. 

    GPT4 can do really in depth analysis with whatever variables you give him even for thinks where it has to imagine hypothetical concepts, time & space orientation or where your descriptions remain fairly vague, I found it is extremely intuitive even if given brief promt only. It also works well with photos, printscreens, drawing, videos and giving it simplistic instructions and combine them with hypothetical and vague instructions. For example I use it to help me practice copywrighting for very theorectical scenarios giving it tons of random variables and asking it to critically assess not just things like grammar but style of voice, tone of voice,syntax, word repetition, consistency wth certain branding guidelines that I gave him previously like tense, wording, language, the way I write things compared to the way I used to etc. I find it can detect extremely subtle things and feed those back to me. I even tell him what to focus on during feedback and it still does that very well. 

    Given enough instructions, you can learn it to talk certain way, respond certain way, perceive situations through the lenses of your instructions but again that depends on what you do with it. it still has a tendency to use a lot of sales & cheesy language so that needs to be paid attention to. The limit is is a downside but it is like 50 messages in 3 hours, I've never come even close to that. I also like Dall-E and it is fun to play around with but not something I use for professional use as the results still look too AI-ish compared to Midjourney for example. 

    Overall it is worth the price and you can unsub anytime. Again, depends on what it does for you. Don't upgrade if you are using it to answer basic questions only if you want to do a lot of speculative workor type of work that require subtlety and precision. 

     

  23. Posted

    10 minutes ago, Javfly33 said:

    In the previous year ive gone out enough times to see that even the most social dudes i met where more cohibited and less free than me on a 15mg oxycodone.

    Sounds like you are trying to justify avoiding the gap you need to bridge through significant amount of personal development to be where they are. 

    10 minutes ago, Javfly33 said:

    I would like to see how many people can match sober the carefree and inner stillness of a good oxy flowing the system

    Very few, that's true. Until that oxy is out of your system. And what happens if you ever get into a situation where you have nothing outside of yourself to depend on anymore? 

    I am not bashing on anyone, the response was an attempt to add subtle humour into what I thought was an unreasonable way to approach something as simple as going out,. But you do you, don't let me or anyone else tell you what to do. Every being has a unique way of how they are approaching their life. Maybe for some, this is indeed a must, maybe I'm just too old to understand it :)

  24. Posted · Edited by Michael569

    You know back in the days when I was a teenager (I'm 33 now), I'd just hit the gym and get a massive pump, smash an extra-chicken kebab, and that kinda spiked my confidence and mood :D

    sounds like you're trying to medicate a major social anxiety there. Treat the root cause and you'll be good when meeting women without needing to rely on brain-chemistry altering stuff 

  25. Posted

    4 hours ago, Bandman said:

    anxious paranoia energies constantly surging through my body when i'm with people

    Could you unwrap this a little bit. Would you say you have been avoiding other people in fear of ....conforontation? exposure? 

    4 hours ago, Bandman said:

    interfacing with the outside world is extremely difficult

    Somehow that pattern of your email keeps bouncing back to this theme. Tell us a bit more, especially about your typical day, your interractions with other people, the social component of your life and maybe hint a bit to your childhood.