Xodarap comments on Lifestyle interventions to increase longevity - Less Wrong
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I guess I completely failed to discuss that the studies I linked to do not constitute the entire set of studies I drew from for the recommendations. I will expand on some of the points when I have time.
Sounds good.
Just reading the wikipedia page#Health_studies) on eggs seems to indicate that evidence for their health benefits is questionable at best, (and even though you were trying to make the argument that eggs were healthy you couldn't find the evidence to do so at first) so given that you're only mentioning "the largest high level features of a diet that have positive or negative impact", I'm not convinced eggs are worth including at all.
Yeah, I believe choline is more important than the conventional wisdom suggests given its interaction with various nootropics. It's really hard to get enough without eggs. Eggs are also absurdly bioavailable compared to everything else.
How many eggs per week would you need to eat in order to avoid choline deficiency?
I eat 2-3 eggs a day. You do get a little choline from other sources.
Er, that's not what I asked; averting a deficiency presumably takes less consumption than that. Do you have evidence about choline levels, and what does that evidence say about how many eggs you'd need to eat per week to avoid it?
Averting an acute deficiency is completely different from optimal for health. I don't have a simple cite saying this amount of choline is optimal. I have an impression based on peoples response to extra choline.
Edit: to clarify, choline is not the sole reason I strongly recommend eggs. It is possible to get enough choline without eggs, but the fact that the overwhelming majority of the populace does not meet the adequate intake makes me suspect most diets don't fulfill this.
The last time I tried doing this I ended up with some constipation. It's possible I wasn't drinking enough water at the time, though.
It seems pretty easy to supplement with soy lecithin. Is there any reason not to do that?
Not particularly for choline other than my normal anti-processed-food-until-proven-otherwise heuristic, but eggs do also contain lots of b12, selenium, and a smaller amount of a ton of other nutrients.
Eggs are very high in methionine, though, and there's evidence that methionine restriction can increase both mean and maximum lifespan. Some very knowledgeable folk, like Michael Rae, have dropped eggs from their diet for this reason.
Thanks for the pointer, I am reading the rat and mice studies. So far the evidence seems weaker than the CR evidence, which is pretty bad.
Do you mean that the CR evidence is bad, or that it's bad that the evidence for methionine restriction is weaker?
"CR works in humans" evidence is bad. "CR works in primates" is bad. "CR works in mice" is shakier than it has been presented.
I don't think this is an accurate characterization of the state of the evidence. See here for a rigorous examination of the relevant issues.
Also, it seems inconsistent to dismiss the evidence for CR in humans as "bad" and yet praise intermittent fasting (IF), given that (1) IF has been studied much less extensively than CR, (2) IF hasn't generally shown health benefits comparable to those of CR, and (3) it is generally believed that the benefits that IF does confer are explained by its ability to mimic CR.