kpfleger

BTW, serious scientists in the aging field are concerned about micro- & nanoplastics. Eg this recent LinkedIn post from a Buck professor: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/furmanbios_the-potential-impacts-of-micro-and-nano-plastics-activity-7177242451944828928-nnS0?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

Do crooked teeth have negative long-term health consequences? Crooked teeth cause more tooth chipping, but the rate of these tiny chips even with very crooked teeth, and even with grinding, isn't so high that one is going to wear teeth away to the point where their cease to function. Thus, is orthodonture actually a health issue or mostly one of aesthetics? Aligners (metal braces alternatives the best known of which is Invisalign) are made of plastic & are known to leach micro- & nanoplastics (MNPs) into the mouth and are worn for 12-24months essentially continuously except during meals. And those & usually most metal braces are typically followed by plastic or metal + plastic retainers overnight for life. MNPs are known to accumulate in arterial plaques & higher amounts in their plaques are associated with higher CVD risk. MNPs also cross into the brain. There's insufficient research yet to quantify absolute risk rise from plastic aligners or retainers, so it's an unknown but likely nonzero risk vs an aesthetic issue + what other risk on the crooked teeth side? Thoughts? PS It is possible to use metal or ceramic braces without any plastic and use bonded lingual retainers aka fixed retainers that are essentially similar to lingual braces (braces that are put on the inside of the teeth so that they can't be seen). All of these options make flossing & keeping the teeth clean more difficult (flossing because one has to use a floss threader & general cleaning because food gets stuck more due to the metal wire & the less smooth surface due to the bonding & other material to connect that to the wire) so there is either a time penalty or a higher risk of decay. So that's a different set of trade-offs vs the unknown plastic risk. (And these are the reasons people often choose removable aligners & retainers.) PPS To go back to the original question about crooked teeth: Some sites suggest crooked teeth make cleaning harder & thus are more likely to lead to decay and/or gum diseases and certainly crookedness can make flossing a bit harder than having straight perfectly spaced teeth, but relative to the increase in cleaning difficulty of having braces or lingual braces slightly crooked teeth doesn't make flossing nearly as hard & the braces/permanent-retainers are more likely to trap food. Plus, I suspect most of the web sites that come up when asking Google about the health consequences of crooked teeth are not unbiased sites.

I worry about heated water & the plastic of the aeropress & I'm clearly not the only one judging by the number of threads about it. With the new quantification of microplastics found in BPA-free water containers I think the worry is justified until proven otherwise by specifically quantifying the amount of microplastic in a cup brewed in it vs all-metal/glass/porcelain options. I got my wife pour-over equipment that is all porcelain & metal. I myself favor cold brewed coffee which is then heated to taste. I absolutely love to drink mine in an Ember mug at the perfect temperature each sip. If you think the aerpress is quick, my regular 2.7-3oz mini-cup of cold-brewed coffee is ready at 130F in about 45sec (fridge to lips) each morning.

What's the threshold for human CR? For animals CR's def'd wrt adlib cals but that's a noisy approx to a ref intake for its genes. We shouldn't view gene twins as at diff CR lvl if 1 ate more b4. CR thresh should be a function of tot Cals (& maybe hght) or weight or BMI achieved. Where should the line be? On Cals, BMI, or other func? Should a big % of BMI< 22/22.5 be considered in (at least mild) CR? 2500 Cal/d for men (2000 women) cited as norm. Not sure origin but quoted in papers, eg https://"For the average male to maintain his body weight, he should eat 2500 calories per day" So could take anything below this as CR. Eg male 2000 = 20%CR. CALERIE study 2467cal baseline tx group achieved ~2175 2yr avg & was called ~12%CR. It was 1987 ie 20%CR 1st 6mo then 2233 ie 9% for 1.5y. Tx grp achieved BMI 22.3 @ 12mo, 22.6 @ 2yr so 9%CR stabilized at BMI ~22.5. But cohort 70% female so these numbers diff v above 2500/2000 ref. 1900s Okinawans estimated to eat 1785 cal. BMI 21. Biosphere 2 male BMI 24.6 -> 20.4 female 21.4 -> 19.0 Some papers say 1750-2100 cal. Others 2200. My notes of Fontana's papers on CRSociety members say 1800 cal 15yrs BMI 24.5 -> 19.5 What other cohorts are relevant? Should human CR threshold be based on calories or BMI or other? Where do you think the line should be? (Clinically drs can test other markers of course, but I'm talking here primarily about an easy to judge test.)

Cronometer tells me that 30 calories of Navitas, Organic Cacao Powder would be 7.5g. Are you consuming that little? Is the amount of chocolate-specific polyphenols in that little really likely to move the needle on health by a lot? I'm skeptical that the effect size is such that the dose response gives that much benefit from such a small amount. Cronometer also tells me the 30 calories would come with 0.5g of saturated fat. If I added that to a 2250 calories day of high-nutrient WFPB food with 3.8g of total sat fat, those 30 extra calories would be equivalent to about 1% of the rest of the calories but would have more sat fat than 1/8th of the other calories. Maybe something about the kind of saturated fat makes that kind less bad as was also just suggested, but the data suggesting this kind of fat is less bad seems somewhat thin/preliminary, not like a firm fact that can be trusted completely.

(I.e., what's the best evidence to weigh against the evidence for low-fat WFPB eating, eg Ornish's many papers.)

I stopped eating chocolate in all forms sometime in the past year in order to reduce overall fat (& sat fat) intake to improve LDL & apoB, & peripherally to reduce overall calories. Chocolate is calorie dense, almost all from fat, and quite a high portion of the fat being saturated: ~60% of the fat is sat, which is 3-6x higher than most other plant foods (other than coconut, which I also avoid). I know chocolate has some beneficial chemicals, and I fully believe that relative to the background of a standard-american-diet, replacing 50-100 calories of SAD with high quality 100% cacao/chocolate could well be net health beneficial. But I think the case that replacing 20-50 or 100 calories of WFPB or CRON diet w/ nibs/powder is less clear. It clearly has less micronutrients or fiber per calorie vs veggies or most other whole plant foods. So what's the best evidence that adding it for its unique chemicals provides meaningful health benefits relative to the baseline of a CRON or low-cal WFPB diet?

Mike, I posted here just for completeness. I don't check these forums often but above in this thread you wrote, "Arguably the most important data in that study is that the DunedinPACE test is the only epigenetic test to identify a biological age reduction for people on CR, relative to other epigenetic tests" which gives the impression that only DunedinPACE was "good" (if one believes in CR, as many here do), so I thought it was important for those here to have a pointer to that Twitter thread in which these issues were well hashed out. Twitter thread forks make it hard to find the exact right Tweet to link to so I did best I could linking to one where the key points were right below but one could scroll up for full context. The key points in the next few Tweets from the one I linked were Olafur agreeing with the Tweet I linked that PCGrimAge wouldn't be able to detect a real CR effect in this trial design, me saying 'So doesn't that invalidate the "I think the fact that PC GrimAge was not improved by 24 month of CR is strongly indicative of that clock not being good" sentiment?' in response to an upthread Tweet and then him agreeing. That was the main point.

The idea that only the DunedinPACE test detected the benefit is wrong or at least misleading. The effect size was so small that detecting it via point-estimates (the kind of other tests used) was within the noise. Ie, such a small benefit is not detectable by point-estimate tests. One would need a bigger effect size (eg by doing the intervention longer or using higher % CR or using a better intervention). See this thread on Twitter (which Mike was also a participant in):

Great first post. I agree that this paper is good. I've been linking it on Twitter since it was featured in a news story by Lifespan.io. As you say, the difference between 18.5-20 vs 20-25 isn't huge, but this should be a good counter-argument to those studies implying that overweight (25-30) is healthier than "normal weight".

DXA (aka DEXA) scans from cosumer-facing outfits like BodySpec are inexpensive and don't generate very much radiation so reasonable to do annually or even a few times per year and while they are disparaged to some extent by doctors who declare that prescription-ordered DXA is much better (I think primarily for bone health assessment) the consumer-facing machines are probably much better than calipers for measuring body fat %, lean %, & specifically visceral fat.

This thread demonstrates some of the diversity of opinion on vitamin D. To drive this point home numerically, Ron quoted some several-year-old articles noting that some experts in the field think that the deficiency threshold should be lowered from 20ng/ml (50nmol/L) to 12.5ng/ml, while other experts have been calling for the opposite---raising recommended levels, including in peer reviewed published literature. Another example of this latter type just came out, in this case from a practicing endocrinologist (& head of their dept. in India). "A Review on Vitamin D Deficiency and Related Disorders: What is the Right Serum Vitamin D Level?" (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37355824/) argues that instead of the longstanding 30ng/ml recommendation of the Endocrine Society, instead "this review emphasizes the significance of increasing vitamin D levels to 50 ng/mL to obtain several physiological benefits". So there was already a 50% difference between the official government threshold of 20ng/ml (of most countries) vs the Endocrine Society rec of 30ng/ml and we have experts arguing for the lower one to get cut almost in half and others arguing for the upper one to go up by 2/3. 3 factual statements in the importance of this issue: Vitamin D is an essential molecule (humans die without it), its receptor (VDR) exist in nearly all cells in the body, & vitamin D is known to regulate the expression of many hundreds of genes (I think it's generally agreed to be thousands but unambiguously it's many hundreds). These 3 statements are unequivocal, well-known facts that are not in dispute even by those who argue for lowering the target serum levels. The point of these unambiguous statements is that the question of what levels are good vs bad is an important one. When such an important question has such a wide diversity of opinion amongst well-educated experts, it's probably an important topic for anyone who cares about their health to self-educate on in-depth in order to best judge for themselves. I encourage everyone here interested in this topic to do so.

Ron, I'm going to stop replying to you on this topic for 2 reasons: (1) You consistently refuse to address my questions and factual points. You have yet to answer despite being asked multiple times, whether you have any evidence to offer to suggest better health from being below 20ng/ml, which is by far the most important question from a decision-theoretic standpoint. The quotes you have provided from some people suggesting they'd like to lower the official government threshold are not the same thing as good data or biological argument suggesting what worse health outcomes would result from levels above 20ng/ml vs below it. (2) You have consistently mis-characterized my claims as you just did above again. (a) My main points are not "miracle" claims about vitamin D. I claim that the evidence overwhelming favors better health from being above 20ng/ml vs being below. I stand by that claim and am willing to view evidence against that claim but not quotes from people I believe are biased without the corresponding evidence/science to back up their reasoning. (b) Where did "take all the D you want" come from? I've never advocated mega-doses, only achieving the levels many qualified experts and international scientific bodies or governments already recommend. Your phrasing is unjustly mischaracterizing my position. Perhaps you are making the mistake of lumping me in with those who are at a more extreme end of the opinions on this topic, but that is inappropriate in this discussion. Address what specific objections? I don't think you've made any specific points with any good data that I've left unaddressed. I've been addressing what points you did make (such as correlation doesn't imply causation) all along but you've then retreated to hyperbole or quoting people who agree with you rather than countering any of the stuff I've cited. I will gladly engage with others here who want to talk about the science & data on this super important topic.

As we've covered in this thread already, vitamin D is a controversial topic with many experts who are strong enthusiasts who think that levels above 30ng/ml are important for a variety of health related areas (not just skeletal health) and other experts who think that it's only relevant for skeletal health or that supplements don't work or that government serum targets that the enthusiasts claim are too low should be lowered, so your ability to find experts who wrote the parts you quoted in your last message is not surprising, but those quotes are a lame thing to bring up in this thread at this point for 2 reasons: (1) The first quote at least seems to be from an April 2020 piece, and that's quite old. And (2) you quoted those experts overall skeptical summary opinions without noting what good data they are based on so those quotes aren't very useful in moving the discussion forward. Let's review what's known about who recommends what and in doing so make some incontrovertible statements with definitiveness: The minimum serum rec of 20ng/ml (50nmol/L) is advocated by all of the following: National Academy of Medicine (US, Canada), European Food Safety Authority, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Nordic Countries, Australia, New Zealand, & consensus of 11 international organizations. Several other notable groups recommend 30ng/ml: Endocrine Society, American Geriatrics Soc., & consensus of scientific experts. Several large groups recommended vitamin D for Covid: 220 international experts recommended 30ng/ml & 2000-4000IU/day. 152 Italian professors & physicians recommended 40ng/ml & up to 4000IU/day. 73 French authors & 6 national scientific societies recommended 20-60ng/ml & 1200IU/day (2x for obesity). No one that I know of, not even those suggesting lowering the current 20ng/ml government deficiency definition threshold, actually suggest population health would be improved by specifically attempting to lower levels below 20ng/ml. At the same time you did not comment on my citations & calculations of current deficiency prevalence. Drawing global stats from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4018438/ augmented with 1 other paper on China and one with a Europe wide deficiency stat, I calculated in this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vSKRRK6IOvKhemuhw8a0bjjzh2EULr-2pjQd8CGn_Qg/edit#gid=0 (which I linked earlier in this thread by linking to the Twitter post that in turn links it) that the global rate of people <20ng/ml (based on countries accounting for 2/3 of global population) is roughly 50%! Given the above recommendations, this seems crazy and like a severe public health emergency. Which part of this do you disagree with? If we take the Endocrine Society recommendation of 30ng/ml or above as a target, then the % of humans lower than this looks more like ~3/4. Even if there are some errors in this data or other papers have slightly lower numbers than the main paper I just cited, these deficiency stats are an order of magnitude above what is common for most other essential nutrients (low single digit %). These are definite statements but if you are uncomfortable with definite tone being used here, you ought to say why with specific reference to specific claims & with data or published papers to back up your arguments (not just vague skeptical quotes).

Ron, you are being annoyingly obtuse. You keep saying that my certainty bothers you but I've made several claims in this thread that I feel are clear, unambiguous, and pretty incontrovertible at this point that you have not made any attempt to dispute. I've also made a very clear decision-theoretic point that the evidence overwhelming favors that vitamin D levels above 20ng/ml are overwhelmingly more likely to be healthy than those under that level because the balance of evidence is a huge amount of science favoring the one side vs little/none favoring the other side. I invited you to suggest any quality data/science favoring the low side and you haven't offered any. Instead of disputing the clear claims or the most important high level decision-theoretic evidence imbalance you say only that much of the science is poor and then try to cast doubt on the whole area. Please don't make this scientific fallacy that is so common in social media science arguments where when there are dozens or hundreds of things favoring one side you can cherry pick one/some of the poorest / least solid pieces and then pick that apart in order and then try to extrapolate as if that proves none of the other good evidence is worthy of consideration. Of course there is crap science favoring vitamin D but that doesn't mean the evidence as a whole is. In particular, your attempt above in your most recent message to point out the correlation vs causation issue is more than adequately addressed in the Twitter threads I've linked to already such as: and the short threads it links to specifically dealing with the issue of causality, notably: and: