Is Coffee healthy ?

Grahamsphillips

I have read some criticism of the blue zones but i thought some of the criticism was really overstated (for example the idea thta records in some societies was poor and parents could be mistaken for children - it cannot be seriously accepted that parents could be mistaken for children in okinawan society which was so highly interconnected and where even outside family, it was customary for okinawans to be part of non familial friendship groups of 5 on average that lasted their whole lives)…

On inuit, modern day inuit have poor health compared to other Canadians with life expectancy 10 years at least less than he national average. This is likely contributed to by modern life factors but even for inuit living 2000 years ago, i found this article that pointed out that their mumified remains ahowed evidence of high levels of arthrosclerosis - which indicates that reports of them being free of heart disease may be wide of the mark …

https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2015nl/apr/eskimos.htm

On the masai, I found an article that referenced an autopsy of 50 masai men which found extensive arthrosclerosis in their blood vessels corresponding to far older American men. Althoigh they did not die of heart attacks it was also found that they had abnormally large blood vessels which was probsbly why the gathering plaque had not completely occluded those vessels. The possible cause of such abnormally large vessels could be the fact that masai men walked 19km a day more than modern Americans would, which in fact caused them to be in caloric deficit and which caused almost all of them to be very slim and thin. As well it also turned out masai only ate meat 1-5 times a month nd that they got most of their calories from milk which doesn’t comfortably place them in the category of almost purely meat eating humans.

https://nutritionstudies.org/masai-and-inuit-high-protein-diets-a-closer-look/

Thus article in fsct also presented historical references that showed that the inui did commonly suffer from heart disease.

Furthermore the masai life expectancy is among the lowest in the world - 42 for men and 45 for women! Even if it is assumed that their high fat diet is not the cause, they could be dying of other causes before the gathering plaque finally causes the heart attacks that were impending…

Perhaps the true situation is more nuanced than our current understanding can tell us…

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…

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…

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….

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

On paucity in the literature, I was referring to what you said “There were FIFTY reports of AMD in the world literature upto 1930. Now its the world’s leading cause of blindness…”

I trust your work is helping many people indeed. I am merely commenting on the dangers of going to the opposite extreme to go all meat in one’sdiet instead.

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.

Amberale 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.

There’s considerable debate about how well “The War on Cancer” has worked. Truth is there have been some great successes (breast cancer; leukaemia etc) but solid tumours? VERY little progress. And how much of a benefit is a 3 month life extension if the QUALITY of life is atrocious?

This begs the bigger question of WHY has cancer gone from a vanishingly small cause of death (see eg from Boston above) to the No2 killer after ASCVD..

This by Szofia Clemens is compelling

Grahamsphillips

Do you think there’s a causal link between meat consumption (regardless of type) and cancer?

I have no opinion either way nor the slightest level of expertise to have an educated guess, just curious.

DavecUK I agree Dave but what is the primary driver? Why has cancer gone from extremely rare to incredibly common in 120y during which town air is cleaner and smoking rates have dropped massively? There’s a fascinating book called RAVENOUS by Sam Apple. It’s about the theory of cancer and the life of Otto Warburg. He of the Warburg effect. He discovered that cancer cells have a different metabolism and originated the idea of cancer as a metabolic disease. More here

Grahamsphillips

With the deepest respect, i think the basic assumption underneath your premise that cancer in ancient times was vanishingly rare, is flawed. Cancer and heart disease were with the ancients too all the way to the present day and the rates were not appreciably lower - especially for heart disease. We just don’t have enough historical data to support your hypothesis…on the contrary historical writings show that ancient medical texts were well acquainted with tumours and had extensive explicit references to cancerous tumours…if canxers were not common this would not.be the case…https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ijc.29134

Further, the evidence of traditional societies throughout the world show that there is no society famed for producing longevity that subsists predominantly on meat. Instead plant based diet is the predominant source of calories. If we ignore that, it will be at our peril…

Grahamsphillips

You said “in many ways it’s a statement of the bleedin obvious! Two million years of evolution. We are designed to consume animals and specifically red meat. Why would it kill us! Evolution isn’t stupid!!”

However human teeth, jaw and digestive tract were designed to be omnivorous, not carnivorous.

https://www.biologyonline.com/articles/humans-omnivores

Furthermore chimpanzees have the nearest teeth to us (though their canines are far more pronounced) and though they do eat meat and can even be cannibalistic on other chimpanzees, meat typically only forms 6 per cent of their diet with insects forming another 4 per cent. Plant based foods form the other 90 per cent! Figs alone account for 50 per cent of their diet…

https://a-z-animals.com/blog/what-do-chimpanzees-eat/

So if chimpanzees that have more carnivorous type teeth than humans only eat meat as 6 per cent of their diet, how can humans be assumed to be designed to eat predominantly meat based diets?

@chlorox

In addition, are we not the only ‘carnivorous’ species that requires meat to be appropriately treated, stored and prepared to avoid harmful (potentially fatal) ill effects that our bodies aren’t capable of tolerating/neutralising naturally?

Grahamsphillips I agree Dave but what is the primary driver? Why has cancer gone from extremely rare to incredibly common in 120y during which town air is cleaner and smoking rates have dropped massively?

Well the reasons are for pretty much everything I mentioned, but especially diagnostics. How common were PET scanners 40 years ago, or cat scans 60 y ago, X-ray machines 100 years ago. When did they start testing for blood markers, or genetic predisposition.