But if I stuff my craw full of veggies then I’ll be strong as a moose!
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Not going into details about my people’s diet. Just saying, the worst part is having to set up a new identity every three or four decades so as to fake one’s death and leave everything to a “younger distant relative” living in another town.
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IIRC the superfood cycle really started in 1904 when Bulgarian Yoghurt was the elixir of immortality. Or so I heard from relatives. Naturally I don’t remember it in person.
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When prior to c1700 could the scots get so many sweets! Sugar is not abundant in their climate. My cousin, at 18, bragged of her first dentures!! Full. Set.
I have a few fillings too! But I grew up with pretty good dentistry.
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I’ve heard that, too. Probably the biggest for decades was the 50s-era hype around the Hunza Valley and their supposedly eternally-youthful cancer-free lifestyle that included lots of exercise, a healthy diet, a lack of sugar and pollution, and their habit of snacking on apricot pits. Of course, people decided it was the apricot pits keeping them young and preventing cancer, but then they realized that eating too many apricot pits could give you lethal doses of cyanide.
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it is dizzyining. so now, since I don’t eat fish (I’m a veggie), I don’t need this supplement? hrmmm…
From what I understand, Omega-3s are still good, but they’re something most people get through their diet. Getting zero Omega-3s is a bad idea, but you likely don’t have to supplement on top of what you’d get naturally.
If you don’t eat fish, you can get plenty of Omega-3s if anything you eat has flax seed in it.
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This is why I take vitamins - I’ve seen conflicting studies on whether vitamins are helpful, but I’ve never seen a study find them harmful. For a few cents a day it’s worth it IMHO
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Assuming they’re ground, though, right? (Because the whole ones mostly pass right through you. Whole flaxseeds being mainly useful for their laxative properties.)
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But you don’t want to overdo it. Taking too much of some vitamins can be harmful.
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Exactly, it’s the oil in the seed that has Omega-3s. Ground flaxseed in bread or cereal does the trick.
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Those who favour fish oil will tell you that plant omega-3 is the wrong kind, being alpha-linoleic acid, as opposed to the eicosapentaenoic acid and/or docosahexaenoic acid found in fish oil.
I have no opinion on this, but most of the medical studies seem to use the fish oils.
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Interesting! It definitely could be; I eat enough sardines and herring and things that I’ve never really even compared supplements, to be honest.
George Burns broke the century mark on a diet consisting primarily of gin and cigars.
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Maybe. It’s possible that the old folks in this study about the benefits in old age of cardio are just folks lucky enough to have genes that enabled them to stick around longer than now-dead schoolmates.
Still, I’m not sold on the idea that trying to take care of yourself isn’t likely to help you live longer (let alone better).
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Yeah, there is still that basic level of “healthy living” that’s going to improve your chances, at least. There are things that might kill you prematurely, even if their absence doesn’t guarantee you’ll live an abnormally long time. But I’m increasingly skeptical of the “eat X” kinds of advice. I keep thinking of the Michael Pollan quote as a better guide, which I’ve misremembered as: “Eat a variety of food, not too much, mostly plants.” (The “variety” bit was not part of his quote but was an important part of the context, I think.)
That, and if you’re looking at people who are physically active, you’re also weeding out the people who aren’t healthy enough to exercise - as one gets older, one has to be in good shape in order to exercise in the first place. There are a lot of age-related ailments that make it difficult-to-impossible to be physically active. At the same time, I can see the physical and cognitive decline in my grandmother that happened when her small town’s only exercise class got shut down and she suddenly became more sedentary. She was lucky enough to be in good enough shape to exercise, which had demonstrable positive impacts on her health. (On the other hand, my other grandmother lived to be 100, and she’d been totally inactive for at least 50 years.)
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Not to play devil’s advocate, but my doctor had me try fish oil supplements for my sky-high triglycerides count, instead of going directly to statins. Blood tests proved it was working, and now I’m the only one in my family not on statins.
My actual cholesterol count was fine, so who knows how special a case I am. But my doctor is a mainstream, old-school guy, not a holistic nutball. I wasn’t easy to convince, but regular testing proved it to me, so I’m not complaining.
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