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Got asked by @conways_law to help @swardley understand the argument regarding sugar making COVID worse.
First off, other than following statistics on metabolic illness and COVID (metabolic illness is a profound multiplier for COVID, for reasons still unstudied (1)
First off, other than following statistics on metabolic illness and COVID (metabolic illness is a profound multiplier for COVID, for reasons still unstudied (1)
I am not implying ultimate knowledge here. But there is plenty of information how sugar has affected the health of the planet. You can dig through the research, but the three best books about this out there are @garytaubes 'The Case Against Sugar', (2)
Robert Lustig's @RobertLustigMD book, 'Fat Chance' or 'The Hacking of the American Mind', and @bigfatsurprise 's book 'The Big Fat Surprise.' All awesome, and well-researched. (3)
I got here from 3.5 years ago with an escalating weight problem . I was 296 lbs. and gaining, while eating a healthy diet and riding my bike 1500-2000 miles/year.
I had given up on weight control, and decided I would just be a 'fit fat guy'. (4)
I had given up on weight control, and decided I would just be a 'fit fat guy'. (4)
This journey is profiled in this blog post, which contains some of the information I'll discuss in this thread. https://empathy.guru/2017/09/17/weight-loss-by-the-v-memes-iii-whats-the-v-meme-stack-look-like/
Short version -- a friend recommended @tferriss 's book 'Four Hour Body', I figured I had nothing to lose. I started shedding 5 lbs/week, and after the third week, decided to do a deep dive into understanding what the hell was going on. (6)
First off, as is documented in those books, the nutrition literature is poor. It's actually beyond poor, but it shows what happens when a psychopath manages to seize control of the funding stream for a discipline.
You fall in line, or you starve. (7)
You fall in line, or you starve. (7)
Human metabolism is a very interesting thing. For one, we evolved to run long distances at a lope, all day, with little or no inputs. We have two primary energy cycles -- glycolysis (sugar based) and ketosis (fat based.) If you're like most people, you haven't heard of #2. (9)
The easiest way of determining how much of the former, and how much of the latter you practice is how you feel hunger. If you feel faint, and get REALLY hungry, it's #1 and runs on glycogen.
If it's just a little, but you still want to eat, it's #2 -- fat burning. (10)
If it's just a little, but you still want to eat, it's #2 -- fat burning. (10)
This is obvious -- if we were always 'bonking' while chasing a deer, we'd never catch wild game. We caught wild game by running it into the ground.
Also, we weren't starving all the time -- that's programming from the society, or value meme. (11)
Also, we weren't starving all the time -- that's programming from the society, or value meme. (11)
Short version -- if you were in a tribal band, you were more collaborative with hunting. But Authority-driven systems require you to obey. And for you to obey, you have to be programmed that you're going to starve if you don't listen to the boss. (12)
Sugar was almost never available in the wild. So humans developed a metabolism that was particularly effective. We'd eat pretty much anything, and then turn it into sugar that we'd burn in our muscles. (13)
What that gave us was the ability to maintain homeostasis -- the ability to self-regulate through a variety of environments -- and be the clever predators we have evolved into being. (14)
Why does this matter? Think of a classic loss of homeostasis -- if you have hay fever during allergy season. You're not sick, but your ability to navigate is severely impaired. You sneeze, and sneeze. No homeostasis. (15)
Sugar does the same thing to our metabolism. Sugar is an inflammatory as well, and it affects the dopamine loop in the brain (see @RobertLustigMD 's work) so it delivers a triple whammy. (16)
When you are metabolically destabilized, your body starts putting on fat -- cells multiply and essentially metastasize. But sugar is a long-term effect. Not like most cancers. It takes a lifetime. (17)
That lifetime is shortening -- because metabolic syndrome is preloaded in utero. This is turning into a national health crisis in the US, as younger and younger people get fatter at a younger age. (18)
The fact that you burn sugar in your muscles (sometimes, with #1) doesn't mean you can/should eat sugar (or other refined carbs.) Saying you should is like saying you should start your car by pouring gas on the engine and lighting it. (19)
What makes understanding this particularly pernicious is in the memetics. Science doesn't do well with root cause analysis. The way nutrition research is conducted is almost always short-term, and from collected data sets. Empirical work doesn't capture dynamics. (20)
Plus, destabilization, by its very nature, means "something else is gonna get you." And that something else is related to predispositions from genes, past illnesses, etc. That's what shows up in the data. NOT the sugar. (21)
Now we get to the memetic double-whammy. All those fields have all these practitioners. They've STUDIED their disciplines. They're being honest people. But the disciplines aren't wired for looking at root cause. (22)
The answers, a la Conways Law ( @conways_law ) have to match the structure of the fields -- which are specialized and fragmented. Additionally, no one's really studying pro-health modes much. That's not where either the v-Memes, or the money is. (23)
The only other illness I know of (no broad expertise claimed here!) that works like that is the HIV virus. HIV undermines your immune system, and then something else gets you. Took forever to figure that out, but people got the disease and died in a much shorter time. (24)
Than metabolic syndrome -- which also happens to coincide with the expected aging process. Yet we're seeing disease epidemics of Alzheimer's disease, and that should worry us.
The medical community is calling Alzheimer's Type III diabetes. (25)
The medical community is calling Alzheimer's Type III diabetes. (25)
So -- sugar gives us a destabilized metabolism (the real driver of our current obesity epidemic) as well as inflammation. Cytokine storms anyone? And how are inflamed mucus membranes supposed to fight off a respiratory virus like COVID? (26)
There are likely a stack of comorbidities associated with COVID -- but the papers I've seen say "if you're old, and you have Alzheimers, you're at 2X (or greater) for death. Huh. (27)
The other unspoken problem in a sugar-saturated, dopamine-imbalanced society is the knowledge structures it primarily functions at. Dopamine is the "I-loop" and it's a disconnected "I" at that. That means people are working from their limbic brains. (28)
And this sucker requires connected, whole-brain, time-dependent thinking. It also functions at the lower v-Memes where power-and-control is ascendant. It facilitates the aggregate collapse in empathy we're seeing. (29)
It's also tokenized prophylactic measures -- like being pro/against masks. Most of the science shows this kind of thing is of limited efficacy (and sometimes not at all), requiring timing, as well as time-dependency. (30)
Dichotomous thinking is also a function of the v-Meme, and is exacerbated by the same neural processes. It's a wild, triple-threat nonlinear feedback loop that the aggregate organism of society is experiencing. We're told we can't know reality -- well, kinda true. (31)
So now we're really in uncharted waters, as far as accepted explanations. This thing that's an addictive substance (we know that) that modifies the way our metabolism works, that profoundly affects our immune systems, and is ubiquitous, is changing our social modes. (32)
Especially in times of crisis. Look -- if you've followed this all the way to the end, here's the short version. Cut sugar. Cut back on refined carbs. Recover your thought process and immune system.
Here's a big psycho-social overview. (33) https://empathy.guru/2017/12/29/weight-loss-by-the-v-memes-v-cutting-out-sugar-the-big-psycho-social-environmental-picture/
Here's a big psycho-social overview. (33) https://empathy.guru/2017/12/29/weight-loss-by-the-v-memes-v-cutting-out-sugar-the-big-psycho-social-environmental-picture/
I know, I know -- a great thread for right-before-Halloween. I don't give out sugary candies. Stop whenever you're ready. (End)
