WIL Weekly #46
Eat more fat live longer, Artificial sweeteners, clubbing and more...
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1. What if eating more fat made you live longer?
The PURE study from November 2017 is an epidemiological study that followed 135,335 people from 18 different countries for about 7.4 years and checked to see how fat intake affected their chances of dying or having heart attacks. They concluded:
“High carbohydrate intake was associated with higher risk of total mortality, whereas total fat and individual types of fat were related to lower total mortality. Total fat and types of fat were not associated with cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction, or cardiovascular disease mortality, whereas saturated fat had an inverse association with stroke. Global dietary guidelines should be reconsidered in light of these findings.”
Translation: Higher carb intake was linked to higher risk of death but higher fat intake was linked with lower risk of death. Total fat or types of fat didn’t have anything to do with heart disease, but saturated fat protected people from stroke. Global dietary guidelines are sus.
2. Massive consumption of artificial sweeteners messes up your thyroid?
A 2018 case report by some doctors out of New York City describes how a woman put her autoimmune condition into remission by quitting artificial sweeteners. Unfortunately, they don’t say exactly which sweeteners - just that she had been using a very high dose of them for about 14 years. The woman suspected they were making her gain weight, so she stopped using them and her thyroid marker levels became normal.
To put this in perspective, her TSH (reference range 0.4-4.5) was very high at 12.2 . A hypothyroidism medication successfully brought her TSH down to the range of 1.23-2.16. Then, after she stopped using all sweeteners, her TSH went too low down to .005. After discontinuing the medication as well, her TSH went to a normal, healthy level.
The authors hypothesize that the sweeteners sucralose and aspartame are bad for the gut microbiota and this may have something to do with the woman’s case.
3. Trial suggests severe autism can be reversed when treated at a young age
A June 2024 paper claims that a parent-driven intervention achieved “reversal of autism symptoms” in twin toddlers. The intervention involved “a variety of licensed clinicians focusing primarily on addressing environmental and modifiable lifestyle factors was personalized to each of the twin’s symptoms, labs, and other outcome measures.”
The twins were diagnosed with Level 3 severity ASD “requiring very substantial support” at approximately 20 months of age following concerns of limited verbal and non-verbal communication, repetitive behaviors, rigidity around transitions, and extensive gastrointestinal symptoms, among other common symptoms.
Dramatic improvements were achieved within months. Autism Treatment Evaluation Checklist scores went from 76 to 32 in one twin and from 43 to 4 in the other. Improvements remained stable for six months at last assessment.
A number of dietary supplements, including omega-3 fatty acids, a multivitamin, vitamin D, carnitine, 5-methyltetrahydrofolate, and bio-individualized homeopathic remedies, were taken by both girls.
Parents were instructed to feed the girls “a diet rich in tryptophan to upregulate serotonin production, as well as consume foods rich in vitamins B12, B6, and folate [as well as] foods that are high in betaine and choline, as well as to supplement with lion’s mane mushrooms and resolvins. …Advice was provided to support glutathione production.”
This case revealed a reversal of the Level 3 Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnoses among dizygotic toddler twin girls that was achieved primarily through environmental and lifestyle modifications over a two-year period. The twins’ dramatic improvements and diagnosis reversal have persisted for over six months with no signs of regression.
4. The Sky isn’t falling (yet): The Great Barrier Reef
Another great tweet by Bjorn Lomborg:
Today, the Great Barrier Reef is better than ever. But 12 years ago, we were told about the “Great Barrier Reef Catastrophe” and how the reef would be almost gone today. Moral of the story': Don’t always believe the scare stories.
5. Clubbing
Page 55 of The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology and Romantic Relationships illustrates the obvious answer to the question of what it suggests when a woman is dressing in revealing clothing and going clubbing. While she may indeed have a different motive, we all know that women will “consciously use clothing to signal their sexual desire and to attract sexual attention from men” and that “men perceive more sexual intent in women who do so.” Further, women are more likely to wear high heels if they expect to interact with attractive men that day.
I suspect that podcasts like whatever or FreshandFit give a skewed perspective on how often western men are running into this issue of their girlfriends wanting to dress provocatively and go to the club. I don’t run into this issue in Japan - what’s it like where y’all are?
This poll about clubbing makes no sense. There isn't a no option.
I’m boycotting your survey of what topic in the article I like best until you put it at the end as this only makes sense. I do like the autism study though and find it interesting that they didn’t use high dose thiamine. Derek Lonsdale used this therapy and even wrote a book on it with Chandler Marrs that I highly recommend. It’s been shown to work wonders before but it’s good to see that they are trying to address this situation. Wonder when they’ll start looking into poisoning our children with vaccines not to mention the chemical laden fake foods we give them before they can even speak.