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What are your unpopular opinions about health / fitness?

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Replies

  • stevencloser
    stevencloser Posts: 8,911 Member
    But that's far from the only reason. From that same source:
    Scientists and researchers rely on mice and rats for several reasons. One is convenience: rodents are small, easily housed and maintained, and adapt well to new surroundings. They also reproduce quickly and have a short lifespan of two to three years, so several generations of mice can be observed in a relatively short period of time.

    Mice and rats are also relatively inexpensive and can be bought in large quantities from commercial producers that breed rodents specifically for research. The rodents are also generally mild-tempered and docile, making them easy for researchers to handle, although some types of mice and rats can be more difficult to restrain than others.

    Most of the mice and rats used in medical trials are inbred so that, other than sex differences, they are almost identical genetically. This helps make the results of medical trials more uniform, according to the National Human Genome Research Institute. As a minimum requirement, mice used in experiments must be of the same purebred species.

    So, besides the reason you quoted above, they're cheap, easy to house and maintain, adaptable, short-lived, malleable, and frequently inbred. I don't think these other factors irrelevant, if @stanmann571 is correct in stating that
    animal trials. especially mice, have almost zero correlation or relevance to human metabolic behavior.
    .

    Yup.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2642860/
  • theresejesu
    theresejesu Posts: 120 Member
    Here is something interesting about salt. Evidently a higher salt intake can trigger fat burning. I read a news article recently where cosmonauts who were being given salt tablets in space to decrease fluid intake, were finding they were outputting more water in their urine than they could account for with intake. They were also finding they needed a higher caloric intake to maintain their weight.

    This was extremely puzzling until it was realized that the ingestion of salt at that level was triggering the burning of stored fat, which released the water stored with it, which then was adding to their hydration.

    NOT FAT burning. Change in water weight. That's it. I actually looked at the study. Not the Dailynews.uk clickbait article.

    If salt intake is high enough, the production of glucocorticoid hormones increase, which influence metabolism and immune function. This was one of the hypotheses offered in the article:

    INCREASED SALT CONSUMPTION INDUCES BODY WATER CONSERVATION AND DECREASES FLUID INTAKE

    published in JCI April 17, 2017

    In followup animal studies on mice by Titze, one of the authors of the study above, he found that as he increased salt in their diet, the less water they drank, and discovered they were increasing production of glucocorticoid hormones which then broke down fat and muscle releasing water.

    I'm not saying people should start drastically increasing their salt intake, as there are potential problems with increased glucocorticoid homrmone increases, such as type 2 diabetes, etc.

    I do find this to be very interesting however.

    None of which was supported by the human data.

    The hypothesis was indeed supported by the human data, it which it was stated:

    "In addition, increased rhythmical glucocorticoid action may increase metabolic water production by promoting protein, fat, and sugar breakdown."


    You seem to have significant issues with critical thinking and reading comprehension.

    If you say so.

    Maybe read everything I said again?

    The hypothesis was verified in animal models. There is significant concern regarding this effect in the human population as well due to the adverse effects such an increase in glucocorticoids can have on health. However, you are welcome to your opinion, as unfounded as it may be. ;)

    animal trials. especially mice, have almost zero correlation or relevance to human metabolic behavior. If you had done the appropriate background, you would know this.

    By the way, the effect of increased salt intake on glucocorticoids was measured in humans as well as mice In the study I referenced. The glucocorticoid excretion in humans was quantified by 24-hour cortisol excretion.
  • theresejesu
    theresejesu Posts: 120 Member
    WinoGelato wrote: »
    Bry_Lander wrote: »
    JerSchmare wrote: »
    My unpopular opinion is that being fat has nothing to do with sugar.

    Not even proximately? Doesn't sugar tend to make food more delicious, increasing the tendency to consume greater quantities of it, and potentially resulting in consuming more calories than one burns?

    Sure, if you interpret it that way then being fat is also related to dietary fat, salt, spices, herbs, aromatics, maillard reaction, yeast, flavorings, packaging, coloring agents, texture agents, strategic shelf placement, peer pressure, and more. All of these make food more appealing, so singling out sugar makes no sense.

    So you're saying sugar DOES contribute to making one fat?

    There is only one thing that definitively causes someone to be overweight/obese/morbidly obese. Eating too many calories for their individual energy balance (CI > CO). These excess calories can come from foods which contain sugar (rarely do people eat straight table sugar but some insist it happens), but more often than not, the foods contain myriad other ingredients so the point is, why single out sugar? Still others have pointed out that they gained weight eating a lot of non-sugary foods, I myself am one of those. I got fat from eating a little too much, of a lot of different foods, and becoming much more sedentary, but don't have a particularly strong sweet tooth.

    People tend to focus more on sugar because the recommended American diet is so high in carbs which convert to glucose much more easily than say protein.

    Guess whose diets are also high in carbs, even higher than the US? The blue zones, the healthiest and longest living places on earth.

    Which carbs do they eat?
  • theresejesu
    theresejesu Posts: 120 Member
    Issues with raised cortisol can inhibit fat burning, and this has been an observed effect that has been talked about on these boards before.

    Many people report anecdotal incidents of losing weight after vacation, for example, or there are plenty of stories from the pressure-filled world of contest-prep where a "binge" will lead to the scale suddenly moving again. The reason? Reduced stress.

    However, the inverse of lowering stress from a baseline normal rather than elevated back to normal doesn't hold true to my knowledge and I doubt you'd find anything to back that up in human studies.

    You're welcome to try, though.

    If that's what you're not asserting, forgive me if I've lost track of the point you're trying to make here.

    Cortisol is the only glucocorticoid they measured in humans. My understanding is that because it responded to increased salt by elevating, other glucocorticoids may also be elevated, hence the suggestion in the elevated glucocorticoid hypothesis given.
  • GottaBurnEmAll
    GottaBurnEmAll Posts: 7,722 Member
    Bullying is such a strange topic for me. I was bullied mercilessly in school. I was the fat, short, effeminate kid all the way through school, with glasses, braces, and a bad haircut my mom gave me at home once a month. Every day was torture but I still went to school. I maintained a 4.0 and went off to college as soon as I could.

    I could have easily shut down but I didn't. I learned to draw a very detailed map of Hell, hand it to my hecklers, and tell them to begin their journey forthwith. And no, I'm not just talking about name calling. I was locked in rooms, thrown in trash cans, physically assaulted, even spit on. I didn't post about it on MySpace. Did I cry about it? Sure, every goddamn night. Did I write *kitten* emo poetry about it? Sure did. But I got through it.

    I never thought of offing myself. I never thought about blowing up the school. I just thought about surviving...and I did. So it kind of puzzles me when others can't. Maybe it's because social media makes everything so much more immediate. Maybe it's some other factor. I just tend to agree that there is something making people unable to shrug things off as easily and get on with their lives. We only have one after all.

    I'm sure for every kid offing themselves, there are plenty more out there who are like you were.

    They just don't make for good clickbait and viewing figures.

  • SiegfriedXXL
    SiegfriedXXL Posts: 219 Member
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    Bullying is such a strange topic for me. I was bullied mercilessly in school. I was the fat, short, effeminate kid all the way through school, with glasses, braces, and a bad haircut my mom gave me at home once a month. Every day was torture but I still went to school. I maintained a 4.0 and went off to college as soon as I could.

    I could have easily shut down but I didn't. I learned to draw a very detailed map of Hell, hand it to my hecklers, and tell them to begin their journey forthwith. And no, I'm not just talking about name calling. I was locked in rooms, thrown in trash cans, physically assaulted, even spit on. I didn't post about it on MySpace. Did I cry about it? Sure, every goddamn night. Did I write *kitten* emo poetry about it? Sure did. But I got through it.

    I never thought of offing myself. I never thought about blowing up the school. I just thought about surviving...and I did. So it kind of puzzles me when others can't. Maybe it's because social media makes everything so much more immediate. Maybe it's some other factor. I just tend to agree that there is something making people unable to shrug things off as easily and get on with their lives. We only have one after all.

    I didn't kill myself or commit violence either (obviously) -- and it goes without saying, I'd hope, that I consider killing other people inappropriate, period, especially but not only complete innocents.

    But to say -- as the other poster was -- that back in the day we just shrugged it off or weren't bothered by it, or it didn't hurt us, so everything was good then and is bad now (that people take it more seriously) seems to me totally inconsistent with what I saw and experienced back in the day and to how I saw people react.

    That I ended up a pretty successful person and got past it doesn't mean that people who don't are just weak and we are coddling them. It means that maybe I don't know all they were experiencing and that people are different.

    And people did kill themselves back when I was a kid too, so this idea that it's because kids are coddled now is nuts.

    I'm not saying I had it worse than anyone else, who could say (and I do think lots of people had it a lot worse than me). But I was not unbothered by it, which is why I brought it up; I don't think it was unimportant or good for me, and that the culture of the time (or my school or my family -- obv the latter had a lot to do with it) was such that I said nothing about it and felt like it must be because there was something wrong with me (and still have a suspicion of that in the back of my head such that I usually would never admit to anyone that it happened) is screwed up and not a sign of a better way, IMO. That was the point I was trying to make.

    I never implied that actually. In fact, I mentioned social media as a possible culprit. I also think that mental illness plays a role in what the bullying causes re:escalation.

    I wouldn't want to give the impression that I am unsymathetic. I'm just genuinely puzzled as to what makes some people take severe, actual, bullying and get past it, and what makes other resort to violence, either towards themselves or others.
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