Pretty longish video with JH and Prof Tim Spector. I have saved it to my play list to watch leisurely. https://youtu.be/XO-7irGCaTA

I skimmed it listening to the bits I was interested….pretty good/interesting chat!

Interesting video. Nothing new for most of us. The main points are : - Coffee is healthy and contains more soluble fibre than people think. - Drink coffee the way we would like to drink - Does affect sleep and caffeine can stay in our blood for more than 5 to 7 hours. - Decaf is good and is not definitely a cheaper drink. JH avoids caffeine after 3 pm. - Adding milk to coffee is ok and probably less reason to add it in light and medium light roasts as they are not bitter -Coffee from shops are generally bitter and hence milk-based drinks are popular -It will be good if people can experiment drinking coffee without milk to get a real taste of it!

My phone suggested this to me today: https://phys.org/news/2023-06-unsustainable-coffee-production-people-sick.html

@"MediumRoastSteam"#p46792 I guess the use of agrichemicals (especially the banned ones) is not great. One thing though, if they weren't employed in the coffee industry and making money etc.. What else would they be doing, living in poverty, growing cocaine, or poppies (which is what they usually do instead of coffee). It could be argued that more people will get ill and die from the alternatives at the moment? I know one thing for sure…when the west steps in and (helps) interferes many years later, it's hard to see the positive effects of that help. I'm thinking of Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, even Iran (where USA ) interfered big time to remove the then Shah….dunno

Is there any correlation, or recommendation in the video as to how much coffee is healthy, or a tipping point where it generally becomes unhealthy?

99% of our daily lives are bad for our health, from the stuff we wash in, eat, drive, breathe etc I enjoy coffee. If it kills me I'll die happy

@"Cuprajake"#p46798 - same here. I am a firm believer that it’s fine to have things in moderation. As you say, I enjoy coffee and won’t stop drinking unless my doctor tells me to. Same with beer, same with wine, red meets, cured meats, etc, etc etc.

Funny but it seems that whatever we eat or drink if over done it can cause us harm. Even scientists say that a vegan diet is not altogether healthy and there are elements in meat which we need that a plant based diet just cannot give you. Plus, I have seen a lot of overweight vegetarians/vegans, so whatever it is they are eating cannot be that good for them surely or like us meat eaters are they just greedy. I guess the answer for everyone including the vegetarians and vegans is 'a little bit of what you fancy does you good' A lot does not. I remember seeing this programme, where this large lady was complaining about being overweight and couldn't understand it as she said she ate healthily, and produced her normal breakfast bowl of fresh fruit berries etc to prove it. Trouble was, the bowl was piled high with all this lovely sweet sugary fresh fruit and what does sugar have lots of…calories. To me, the biggest problem we have especially in the west, is lack of both self control and personal responsibility (and yes to a certain extent I put myself in that bracket, especailly as I've gotten older). We smoke and drink and pig out on stuff, can't be arsed to exercise then moan when we fall ill.

@"Pompeyexile"#p46814 Absolutely spot on. Also like with everything it’s hard to know which studies/research/reports are fact and which have been paid for by an organisation with a stake in the discussion. I’ve been vegan almost three years and I’m in the best shape of my life by a country mile. However it takes the same discipline as with any other diet to not reach for the sugary snacks and processed c**p. I could just as easily be overweight on a vegan diet as I could with any other. Interestingly that Tim Spector in the vid above has a company called Zoe which targets gut health. It revolves around the idea that each of us are entirely unique and one diet/food/drink that affects one person doesn’t automatically affect the next in the same way. This seems to contradict the ‘one size fits all’ approach to nutrition and health that we’ve been used to for hundreds of years. All about listening to you body and doing what feels right for you. I think it also changes with age. I would happily consume 6 coffees a day when I was younger without issue. Doing that now would have me truly on edge. Whereas I know plenty of people who drink more than that, or can’t even have 3.

I went vegan, very strictly, Aug/sept 19, near 18st by the end of first lockdown in what march 2020 I was 12:4 I did it to cut out all my processed and junk food. You can buy just as bad vegan stuff now I'm now an omnivore, as in I may have a piece of meat once a month, I eat mainly fish, and lots of veg pasta, cut out milk too, I've always been a big water drinker 4l plus a day I'm not stable at 13st 4 my body seems happy here, General rule is a little bit of what you like does you good, too much of what you like makes you fat 😂😁

Is Coffee healthy ?

chlorox

Grahamsphillips

Granted those factors you mentioned may exacerberate the condition, but it must be remembered that even in ancient times there was cancer and arthrosclerosis and dementia though the lower life expectancy in earlier times and societies meant that people died of other causes before they sometimes could manifest thereby leading to the fallacious conclusion that such issues did not exist in ancient times. So even when there were no PUFA oils and no highly processed foods and no refined sugar in existence, those health problems bedevilled humanity even then…

Grahamsphillips

chlorox Granted those factors you mentioned may exacerberate the condition, but it must be remembered that even in ancient times there was cancer and arthrosclerosis and dementia though the lower life expectancy in earlier times and societies meant that people died of other causes before they sometimes could manifest thereby leading to the fallacious conclusion that such issues did not exist in ancient times. So even when there were no PUFA oils and no highly processed foods and no refined sugar in existence, those health problems bedevilled humanity even then…

Actually cancer and ASCVD were virtually unknown until 120y ago. The first report of an MI (heart attack) in the entire world literature was published in 1912 by James Herrick. But no one was interested because heart disease was vanishingly rare. So ask yourself “Why has a disease virtually unknown till 1912, become the world’s single largest killer”?

Go back to the 1900s: cancer, type2 diabetes, dementia were virtually unknown and obesity was incredibly rare. What changed?

LMSC

Popped up 2 days ago!

chlorox

LMSC

Could “The Hoff” be a reader of coffeetime? 😀

Grahamsphillips

chlorox He was on Tim Spector’s ZOE podcast recently. I suspect that was what stimulated this

Ernie1

Has anyone tried ZOE? I turned down a job with them fairly recently but got a good insight to their product during the interview process. Seems like a really interesting concept.

I’ve not actually tried it though.

Grahamsphillips

Ernie1 Has anyone tried ZOE? I turned down a job with them fairly recently but got a good insight to their product during the interview process. Seems like a really interesting concept.

I’ve not actually tried it though.

Yes I know Tim Spector pretty well.. we’ve presented together and I’ve followed his progress. For those unfamiliar, Tim studies twins- a controlled human experiment. The Van Tulleken’s are his best-known identical twins. Chris just published a book on the dire consequences or our junk food diet. I think there’s a lot to what Tim is doing, albeit I don’t agree with him on everything. Would I recommend his program? Quick answer YES … more nuanced answer “it depends” I highly recommend his two early books The Diet Myth and Identically Different. He’s a great communicator

whinmoor85

Ernie1 I haven’t tried ZOE and after seeing Tim Spector’s what I eat in a day video I won’t be signing up. I’m sure the health advice is sound but I also get the feeling it’s cashing in on people who have eating disorders. I could be totally wrong about that.

Grahamsphillips

chlorox Yes quite right the modern day INUIT who have adopted significant aspects of the Western lifestyle have paid a price. Same is true of the Okinawans on an even grander scale.

On the Masai - you are right there IS a debate. Yes they found atherosclerosis but the point is it didn’t kill them unlike those eating a Western diet. Since cardiovascular disease is essentially an inflammatory process something in their diet was dampening this and stopping them from dying from strokes and heart attacks. One theory is that they have a vey high % omeaga-3 fat in their diet and that dampens inflammation. I agree they are not extremely high MEAT eaters but that wasn’t my point. The point I was making is that they have a very high % of Sat Fat in their diet which (per Ancel Keys) should kill them. Clearly it doesn’t. There’s a debate, too, about how much they walk. I’m not convinced the 19km/day is correct

Not we turn to life expectancy: another misnomer. The argument is “people died before they developed diabetes and other western diseases”. NOT SO. In the case of the MASAI as with our hunter-gatherer forbears, there were HUGE death rates in child birth and before age 5. But if you lived beyond that life expectancy was not that much less than today.

So in the last 100years AVERAGE life expectancy HAS grown enormously. But that disguises the very high rates of death in the young and very young. Life expectancy AT BIRTH was much less. True! But the life expectancy of a 20y old 100years ago wasn’t much less than that of a 20y old today

This BBC article explains it rather well:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181002-how-long-did-ancient-people-live-life-span-versus-longevity

chlorox

Grahamsphillips

Unfortunately the inuit appears to have evidence of commonly having heart disease even in the 1940s and of course the mummified remains of 2000 year old inuit corpses show arthrosclerosis. So it appears not only a modern issue but it has alwaya been an injit problem which would explode the myth of inuit invulnerability to heart disease as being something arrived at erroneously by anti ancel keys people?

On the masai, it is apparently true that there is high infant mortality though reporting of death is complicated by the masai social custom of not mentioning rhe dead. However aa this study shows l, the story on mortality doesn’t end there because adult mortality is also very high as well. Among others they have very high rates if mothers dying in childbirth, among the worlds highest hiv infectioj rates due to their serial promiscuity and the dangers of their pastoral lifestyle such as stepping on land mines! So it appears that the 42 to 45 year mortality rate is not caused just by infant mortality rate but by adults dying too early as well…

https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/264/

The same poor and inaccuratereporting of death would also constain and loqer the rate of accurate report of death due to heart attacks etc. Anyway whatever it is about the masai that causes them to have lower reported rates of each due to heart disease despite having much evidenceof arthrosclerosis, is it translatable to other people of other cultures and ethnicities? Either it is due to their extremely high levels of moderate cardiovascular exercise of walking 19 km a day more than modern Americans m (which BTW is similar to Mediterranean shepherds in blue zone lifestyles) or it is due tl a genetic adaptaiton due to their diet iver thousands of years, it is not able to be reproduced and enjoyed by others…

chlorox

Grahamsphillips

The conclusion that heart attacks, etc were unknown in ancient times is firstly hampered by the fact rhat ancients had vastly different and much more inexact approaches and understandingto describe and diagnose accurately such ailments and would report them to be attributed to different things. As well the ancient civilisations differed in the care at which they examined physiology- the ancient egyptians and Indian and Chinese and greek civilisations were better at it than some others. As well the ancients may have known and practised some things thta were not preserved in the textsthat have survived extant to this day.

Yet despite that there appears to be significant evidence of heart attacks in ancient times - ancient Egyptian texts show clear descriptions of angina pectoris and possibly heart attack whicj are unsurprising since 34 per cent of Egyptian mummies that were examined were found to have evidence of arthrosclerosis…more evidence is surveyed from ancient Arabia and and the 17th to 19th century Europe - long before the advent of modern processed foods …

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5501035/

Heart disease was well known to the Chinese of thoisands of years ago with various herbal remedies prescribed for it in Chinese medical texts whicj r followed to this day. Here is an examination of a corpse of a lady who died in ancient China and it was found she had a severely occluded artery that likely caused her death…https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3405812/

Cancer has been known from ancient times as seen in this website https://canceratlas.cancer.org/history-cancer/

The book emperor of all maladies also details some of this history if I recall correctly…

Here is a link that details ancients knowing about diabetes and their remedies for treating it….https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317484#early-science

On dementia among the ancients here is a link https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10072-018-3501-4

Ultimately i am no expert on this topic but my own feeling as an observer to this debate is that while ancel keys may have been found to be incorrect in his thesis that linked dietary cholestrol to blood cholesterol and heart disease and dietary saturated fats have been wrongly demonised, some of his detractors may be making a similar mistake as his to go to the other extreme to lionise meat based saturated fats as being totally safe to the extent of even advocating for meat only or carnivorous diets. There was a tweet by nina telchotz where she entertained rhe idea of adopting such a diet. While it may be helpful for certain auto immune conditions (most famously jordan and Michaela peterson), for otherwise healthy people to adopt such a diet may be as unwise as adopting the pufa rich oxidised fats and processed diet thar many people have currently adopted because yet again it is not borne out by any of the traditional cultures that are famed for producing a populace of general good health and extremely long longevity…

DavecUK

The only problem is, everything kills you in the end!

Grahamsphillips

DavecUK well kind of. But for perspective by making a series of incremental lifestyle changes you could add another 10 or more healthy, vital years to your life. Now what value would you place on that?

Amberale

Grahamsphillips
Edited for relevance.
This was/is in response to your question about an extra 10 years life.
Whilst I am a beef producer in my retirement, our farm is carbon neutral and the stock are basically pets that we eat.(yep.)
We also grow our own veg and fruit and eat more fish and chicken than red meat.

That is a very individual trope.
I have a very good friend in their mid sixties who has an incurable lung disease.
They know the condition well, one of their parents died from the same disease.
They are currently questioning whether they want to proceed with a lung transplant.
Their issue is both their quality of life AND the quality of life of their partner who would/will have to nurse them for years.
Healthy, vital, years not drinking wine, eating meat/seafood etc are not necessarily years that everyone would desire.

Elcarajillo

Whilst on the subject of health. Some members may recall me mentioning in’ another place’ about the importance of regular eye tests. Glaucoma is an insidious thing that creeps up on you without you noticing. When it is found it may be possible to halt / slow its progress with eye drops or it may need invasive surgery which still may not completely halt its progress.
In addition to Glaucoma (pressure build up which damages the optic nerve) the eye test can pick up other problems which you may not notice.
After multiple eye drops and multiple lots of surgery I am now blind in one eye and only partially sighted in the other .
Get an eye test= regularly.

chlorox

Elcarajillo

Couldn’t agree more with you on the importanceof regular tests and checkups healthwise especially as we get older. I am sorry to hear about how glaucoma has affected you and thanks for caring to share to us to warn us of the dangers.

Grahamsphillips

Elcarajillo Whilst on the subject of health. Some members may recall me mentioning in’ another place’ about the importance of regular eye tests. Glaucoma is an insidious thing that creeps up on you without you noticing. When it is found it may be possible to halt / slow its progress with eye drops or it may need invasive surgery which still may not completely halt its progress.
In addition to Glaucoma (pressure build up which damages the optic nerve) the eye test can pick up other problems which you may not notice.
After multiple eye drops and multiple lots of surgery I am now blind in one eye and only partially sighted in the other .
Get an eye test= regularly.

Indeed. Now since you’ve brought up eye-health lets discuss AMD, so called Age Related Macular Degeneration. Just like cancer, dementia and heart disease it was unknown until around 120y ago. Dr Chris Knobbe *(scroll up for video). There were FIFTY reports of AMD in the world literature upto 1930. Now its the world’s leading cause of blindness. That’s right, an almost unknown disease prior to 1930 is now the leading cause of blindness and it tracks perfectly with the rise in heart disease… WHY? Because its essentially the same disease process (vascular damage and inflammation) played out in the eye c/f the vascular system. Same disease. Same root cause. Its what we eat!

Grahamsphillips

chlorox Ultimately i am no expert on this topic but my own feeling as an observer to this debate is that while ancel keys may have been found to be incorrect in his thesis that linked dietary cholestrol to blood cholesterol and heart disease and dietary saturated fats have been wrongly demonised, some of his detractors may be making a similar mistake as his to go to the other extreme to lionise meat based saturated fats as being totally safe to the extent of even advocating for meat only or carnivorous diets. There was a tweet by nina telchotz where she entertained rhe idea of adopting such a diet. While it may be helpful for certain auto immune conditions (most famously jordan and Michaela peterson), for otherwise healthy people to adopt such a diet may be as unwise as adopting the pufa rich oxidised fats and processed diet thar many people have currently adopted because yet again it is not borne out by any of the traditional cultures that are famed for producing a populace of general good health and extremely long longevity…

Yes its true that cancer, heart disease and dementia WERE known hundreds of years ago the point is they were vanishingly rare. And yes they COULD accurately diagnose these conditions not least by performing autopsies. Have you read the work of Weston Price? A dentist who became fascinated by the deteriorating health of the Americans, he toured many parts of the world. In areas where American Junk Food had gained a foothold the local population became fat, sick and had terrible teeth. Where the traditional diet was followed, this did not occur.

The US city of Boston is an interesting case in point. They have amazing cause-of-death records for the entire population going back to the 1800s. For example in 1811, the population was 34,737 and there were 942 deaths. Records show 5/942 Cancer deaths (0.53%); Heart Disease ZERO; Apolplexy (Possible stroke) 13/942. Death by drowning (!) 13/942 I could go on. The MAJOR causes of death were infections and death in and around childbirth.. we’re back at life expectancy AT BIRTH

As for “going carnivore” I’m neither in favour nor against. As you note its a bit extreme but certainly works for some people. But the key point is that there’s been a world wide DROP in red meat consumption while there’s been a RISE in CV death. So its pretty hard to argue that eating red meat gives you a heart attack. There’s also no correlation between all cause mortality (dying of anything) and red meat consumption.

Nina Teicholz Book “Big FAT Surprise” is well worth reading if you want to understand the history of the seed oils. She spoke at the PHC conference recently

https://phcuk.org/phc-conference-2023/

chlorox

Grahamsphillips

The paucity of references to AMD appears to hve been complicated by the lack of understanding of the disease to the point when evne describing it was a protracted issue - different names were used at different periods and it’s mechanisms were very poorly understood along with the tissues of the eye itself.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5091095/

This study tracks the history of research into AMD.

So paucity of literature refernces to AMD doesn’t mean that there was no AMD in earlier times - it would just be called going blind….

chlorox

Grahamsphillips

The problem is that what you describe is an argument from silence. Firstly there are usually not available demographic records in ancient times surviving till now and secondly even for Boston in the 19th century, the diagnoses of causes of death in an age without autopsies for every death nor the complete medical kmloweldge to give dependable findings. Thirdly how many would have died before cancer would have struck them down in a time when they’re was lower life expectancy? In 1700, the average age when men died in Virginia was at the age of 48! https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/six-unbelievable-but-true-facts-about-colonial-life/

On the rate of death on going all meat diet or carnivore, there may be insufficient data on this as there are no substantial human populations that I am aware of who are purely meat eating except for the inuit ans the latter was by necessity not choice due to their environment. The evidence of every civilisation producing positive health outcomes and longevity having a predominantly plant based diet with comparatively less meat to supplement it does tend to militate against the advisability of such a lifestyle choice. Furthermore it is a rich man’s lifestyle choice as going all meat in diet is considerablymore expensive than eating plant based food predominantly…

But even so, there are studies that seem to show negative results for those choosing a predominantly meat based protein source as opposed to plant protein…https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27479196/

Suggesting that the rate of meat consumption has gone down while the rate of death has gone up would at best only point to something else contributing to the mortality rate more than meat - it doesn’t give meat a pass since exposure of meat would be dropping. In other words that is a logical fallacy to make that argument.

However are u sure there has really been a drop in meat consumption globally? According to this website there has actually been a very substantial RISE in global meat consumption since 1961 in accordance with rising prosperity all over the world…

https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production#:\~:text=As%20a%20global%20average%2C%20per,the%20rate%20of%20population%20growth.

If so then if there is rising mortality rate then meat consumption is part of the problem?

Grahamsphillips

chlorox There’s no paucity of references.. Knobbe’s book on AMD has literally hundreds of them:

https://amzn.eu/d/bM3cxen

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