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  #1   ^
Old Sat, Mar-18-17, 02:12
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Dalesbred Dalesbred is offline
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Default Tsimane, "healthiest hearts in the world"

Hmm, rather predictably the comment piece on this study uses it to promote the heart-healthiness of carbohydrate, rather than I think looking at the quality and source of the overall diet. Especially lack of processed foods.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39292389
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  #2   ^
Old Sat, Mar-18-17, 03:33
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teaser teaser is offline
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I think it's a pretty reasonable article, until, they talk to the "experts" at the end.

Quote:
Dr Gavin Sandercock, reader in clinical physiology (cardiology) at the University of Essex, said: "This is an excellent study with unique findings.
"The Tsimane get 72% of their energy from carbohydrates.
"The fact that they have the best indicators of cardiovascular health ever reported is the exact opposite to many recent suggestions that carbohydrates are unhealthy."


Context is everything. Evidence says you can make a diet healthier by lowering the carbohydrate content. Question is, which diet, for which people? Certainly the SAD, certainly insulin resistant/diabetic SAD eaters. Would you tell somebody whose child no longer has 50 seizures a day after initiating the ketogenic diet that carbohydrates don't cause seizures, if it turned out that the Tsimane have a lower than usual rate of seizures?

One thing not pointed out here--it's mentioned that 34 percent fat is eaten in the US. What's not mentioned is that purportedly to improve health, the mainstream recommendation for fat intake is 30 percent or less, there are studies looking at 30 percent fat as a "low fat" diet. When the usual fat intake is 34 percent, suggesting 30 percent fat is starry-eyed optimism at best. Just as with low carb, there are studies showing plausible therapeutic benefits at 10-15 percent fat intake. But it's a fairly stringent, and wildly unpopular diet.

And there is the exercise. 15000 steps a day is one thing for people who are motivated by the need to eat, and need to be be fairly active to do so. In our culture, being a highly motivated worker often means a lot of desk work. And there's the lack of smoking mentioned, as well is the increased rate of infection--the immune system is very much involved in heart disease, infection will affect development of immune function.

One advantage these people have is that somebody gave them coronary artery calcium scans. Traditional Masai ate a diet high in saturated fat, milk and meat, were famous for cardiovascular health--but a study in 1972 showed extensive atherosclerosis was common. But it was sort of atherosclerosis without heart disease--there was successful remodelling, uncompromised function. And few of the lesions found where calcified--which is to say, these people with very high saturated fat diets, little real heart disease, but extensive "atherosclerosis" would have gotten very low heartscan calcium scores.

https://thescienceofnutrition.files...n-the-masai.pdf
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  #3   ^
Old Sat, Mar-18-17, 06:16
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WereBear WereBear is offline
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It reminds me of the Rice Paradox. Several Asian countries did not show ill effects of a high carb diet until sugar showed up.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is also that those same Asian countries did not have all you can eat buffets. They had restricted carbs, too.
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  #4   ^
Old Sat, Mar-18-17, 08:06
andante andante is offline
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And not one word about sugar and processed foods.
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  #5   ^
Old Sat, Mar-18-17, 08:20
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Not to mention their soluble fiber. It ends up being metabolized as fat, so their energy needs might be tilted more to getting energy from fat, after digestion.
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  #6   ^
Old Sun, Mar-19-17, 00:43
M Levac M Levac is offline
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I searched for photos that showed teeth. Found a few. In one, there's a girl with lots of dental caries. Using Price's work as a benchmark, just a single example of lots of dental caries in a single individual is indication that the whole population must also suffer from the same. That's because in all the pages I read of Price's book, there's not a single exception to the rule of perfect dental health for traditional populations, nor is there a single exception to the rule of poor dental health in the same populations eating a modern diet. That girl with a mouthful of dental caries is the proverbial canary in the coalmine.

Accordingly, it's extremely unlikely that any report of near-perfect health, i.e. heart disease and such, in the Tsimane population is accurate to any degree. It's much more likely that any report on the Tsimane is given the full unbridled bias treatment.
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  #7   ^
Old Sun, Mar-19-17, 14:55
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WereBear WereBear is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by M Levac
Accordingly, it's extremely unlikely that any report of near-perfect health, i.e. heart disease and such, in the Tsimane population is accurate to any degree. It's much more likely that any report on the Tsimane is given the full unbridled bias treatment.


I find your arguments persuasive.
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  #8   ^
Old Sun, Mar-19-17, 03:41
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teaser teaser is offline
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That may be a changing diet story, though. Like with traditional groups in Price's time, some Tsimane have been more exposed to "modern" food than others.

Quote:
Mortality experience of Tsimane Amerindians of Bolivia: regional variation and temporal trends.

Gurven M1, Kaplan H, Supa AZ.
Author information
Abstract
This paper examines regional and temporal trends in mortality patterns among the Tsimane, a population of small-scale forager-horticulturalists in lowland Bolivia. We compare age-specific mortality in remote forest and riverine regions with that in more acculturated villages and examine mortality changes among all age groups over the past 50 years. Discrete-time logistic regression is used to examine impacts of region, period, sex, and age on mortality hazard. Villages in the remote forest and riverine regions show 2-4 times higher mortality rates from infancy until middle adulthood than in the acculturated region. While there was little change in mortality for most of the life course over the period 1950-1989, overall life expectancy at birth improved by 10 years from 45 to 53 after 1990. In both periods, over half of all deaths were due to infectious disease, especially respiratory and gastrointestinal infections. Accidents and violence accounted for a quarter of all deaths. Unlike typical patterns described by epidemiologic transition theory, we find a much larger period reduction of death rates during middle and late adulthood than during infancy or childhood. In the remote villages, infant death rates changed little, whereas death rates among older adults decreased sharply. We hypothesize that this pattern is due to a combination of differential access to medical interventions, a continued lack of public health infrastructure and Tsimane cultural beliefs concerning sickness and dying.


The calcium score article mentioned Tsimane in their 70s, like in other traditional groups, once you get past a certain age, life expectancy is comparable

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/ar...al.pone.0006590

Journal article on peripheral artery disease in Tsimane from 2009.

Quote:
We report the first systematic study of peripheral arterial disease (PAD), hypertension and cardiovascular risk factors in a population with both high infectious and parasitic burden but low adiposity and robust physical fitness. The Tsimane are a population of 9,000 forager-horticulturalists in the Bolivian Amazon. Their recent life expectancy at birth of 43 years resembles much of Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, with half of documented deaths by infectious and parasitic disease [1]. The Tsimane have only in the past decade begun an epidemiological transition to increased life expectancy.


I wonder what the calcium scores of Europeans in the 19th century would have been like? We have data for ancient mummies, but not for them. We do know that they already had a problem with cavities.
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  #9   ^
Old Sun, Mar-19-17, 14:59
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WereBear WereBear is offline
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That's a really high level of infection deaths they are trying to handwave away, there.

I seem to remember that infection rates rise with the Industrialized Diet; high carb, processed food. It was tough to tease out, because people gathering in cities, with poor sanitation, grain diet, and overcrowding all contributing.

I seem to remember surveys of the literature where aboriginal peoples would survive from some pretty heinous wounds, suggesting a much lower susceptibility to infection; compared to say, Industrial Age Europeans, who could (like the discoverer of King Tut's Tomb) die from a shaving cut.
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  #10   ^
Old Sun, Mar-19-17, 15:34
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teaser teaser is offline
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Yes. I'm not sure if it was in the original article that started this thread, or another one, but somewhere there was mention of "restrained calories" or some such. A few years ago there was a rhesus monkey calorie restriction study, and it worked--calorie restricted monkeys had a lower rate of death from "age-related disease," like cancer, heart disease etc. But they only lived longer once you weeded out those that died from infection--more calorie restricted monkeys died, at a young age, due to infection. That raises a few questions--did the calorie restriction make the monkeys more susceptible to infection? It certainly seems plausible. Does it work the same way in humans? Lots of studies with names like

Quote:
Exercise-Induced Immunodepression in Endurance Athletes and Nutritional Intervention with Carbohydrate, Protein and Fat—What Is Possible, What Is Not?


are to be found in PubMed. And it makes sense for younger people to be more susceptible to nutritional stress. I've seen the suggestion in various places that there's sort of a trade-off--better-fed populations having stronger immune systems, but increase susceptibility to auto-immunity issues.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3475230/
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  #11   ^
Old Mon, Mar-20-17, 05:27
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WereBear WereBear is offline
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There were worm studies that indicated carbohydrate restriction worked much better than straight calorie restriction:

'Spoonful Of Sugar' Makes The Worms' Life Span Go Down

Which was good enough for the lead researcher to go low carb. Good enough for me! That, in fact, it was the carb restriction, inevitable with calorie restriction, that sparked the good results.

High carb foods don't tend to be the most nutritious items around, either. A piece of meat makes them look pathetic, and they are not only low on micronutrients, they can block the body's absorption of same.

High infection rates might come down to malnutrition.
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  #12   ^
Old Mon, Mar-20-17, 14:30
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Baylor1 Baylor1 is offline
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My guess is the the obvious difference in these people and the rest of the world is the lack or FF places and doritos.
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  #13   ^
Old Wed, Mar-29-17, 07:22
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JEY100 JEY100 is offline
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https://www.dietdoctor.com/dr-harco...ed-heart-health

Dr. Harcombe on the Tsimane Study and Why Carbs Are Not the Answer to Improved Heart Health


Zoe Harcombe's response:
http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2017/03/...-heart-disease/

Partial quote

Quote:
South American tribe & heart disease
March 27, 2017

The headlines on Friday 17th March were effectively “Call off the search – we’ve found the healthiest hearts in the world.” They had been found in the Tsimane people of Bolivia. The headlines came from a study in The Lancet, the summary of which can be seen here. I’ve got a copy of the full PDF to save you the bother.

The study

This was an impressive study – at one level anyway (the nutritional/diet part was another matter, as we’ll see). Researchers had examined the people of Tsimane – a Bolivian population living what was described as a “subsistence lifestyle of hunting, gathering, fishing, and farming…” The researchers managed to study 705 Tsimane people and compare them with 6,814 participants in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA) to contrast a subsistence population with men and women from six communities within the American population. The main measurement was Coronary Artery Calcium (CAC), as an indication of coronary atherosclerosis. CAC scores higher than 100 were considered representative of significant atherosclerotic disease.

I say “managed to study” because that was one of the aspects that most impressed me – the Tsimane Health and Life History Project team (THLHP) has been working with this population since 2002. The researchers explained that the high participation rate was due to: i) long term trust established; ii) free access to medical specialists who helped with other ailments; iii) free food, travel and lodging while attending the assessments; and iv) compensation for the participants in the form of tools, needles and yarn – high value items when living off the land.

The results of the CAC scans were that 596 (85%) of the 705 Tsimane had no CAC; 89 (13%) had CAC scores below 100 and 20 (3%) had CAC scores higher than 100. This was a five-fold lower prevalence than the industrialised populations studied. The researchers reported other findings: mean LDL and HDL cholesterol levels were 2·35 mmol/L (91 mg/dL) and 1·0 mmol/L (39·5 mg/dL) respectively. Additionally obesity, hypertension, high blood sugar, and regular cigarette smoking were rare.

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  #14   ^
Old Wed, Mar-29-17, 08:44
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teaser teaser is offline
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Zoe talks about wild rice having 15 percent protein--I don't see where it says that the rice was wild, these people do have some exposure to our culture. Rice has less than half the protein of wild rice. Manioc root is about 3.5 percent protein, plantain about 4 percent--I don't think the numbers fail to add up as badly as she's saying. At any rate--things could be off, but probably not to the point where these people aren't eating a high carb diet by our standards. I remember the excitement over the Kitivan diet--and people in the low carb community saying that the Kitivans must be sneaking out back and living on coconut and fish, and less sweet potato, when the research team wasn't looking. I think it's fair game to discuss what the observation might mean, but it's a very slippery slope when you get to "this doesn't fit my world view, so probably it didn't happen."

I also wouldn't dismiss their high levels of activity too quickly. 17 000 steps does seem like a lot. Zoe calls it 7-8 hours of physical activity. A step is supposed to be about 1/2000th of a mile, so that's 8.5 miles a day. I read a book in the library, printed sometime in the 60's or 70's, the premise was that factory workers walked an average of 7 miles per day just going about their day at work--and office workers were a few short, it wanted them to make these up. At any rate--averaged out, you'd be talking slightly over a mile an hour. It's a ridiculous prescription for somebody who's very overweight--intensity goes up with load. A lot of people are probably a half hour, or an hour, away from matching Tsimane, step for step (assuming a speed closer to 3 or 4 miles an hour).
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  #15   ^
Old Wed, Mar-29-17, 14:20
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WereBear WereBear is offline
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What is undeniable is that WE -- from a variety of ethnic and geographic and genetic -- backgrounds, cannot thrive on a high carbohydrate diet. No matter how much we exercise.

Are we not people? We are not Devo!

I found any food reporting, in the light of Zoe's information on where they got the data from, immaterial. When we tried eating like these people, it did not work.
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