There's quite a bit wrong with this stance. What is "health"? What do we mean by "control" or "prevention" (cf endless sophistry about free will)? There are clear risks to people like Dr. Sinclair (cf Linus Pauling, Didier Raoult, etc.)?
But the problematic part of this thread that I think is most important is analogous to the Disease Model of Alcoholism and, more generally, the shaming of people with behavior or cognitive problems. Now, I'm not an advocate for the disease model of alcoholism. But in moving that way, we've progressed from blaming alcoholism on a person's moral failings to understanding the physiological reward system that drives much of our behavior. The claim that obesity and/or a large share of type 2 diabetes is preventable/controllable is clearly a problematic claim ... a bit like my dad breaking my nose and telling me to "suck it up". If you're fat, you must simply be a loser. Pull yourself up and do the work. Now, thank me for giving you my tough love wisdom. Pfft. One further issue lies in the privileges most of us (on this list) enjoy. Most of the people I know who eat highly processed food are low income. Not only is their diet exceedingly difficult to manage because it costs MONEY to eat well, but many of them have more than 1 job and often work off hours (like night shifts or weekends). Such schedules make it difficult to stick to any regimen. And it's not merely diet that suffers but exercise too. I'm just barely disciplined enough to exercise 4-5 days per week for about 1.5 hours each session. But I exercise in the morning. If I sleep past 5am, or have a Zoom meeting before 8am, my exercise session is screwed up. If I speed through it, I end up hurting my back, putting me out of commission for at least several days. Etc. So, if you are one of the LUCKY ONES, lucky enough to have haphazardly fallen into your life of privilege, good for you. But don't accuse others of moral failings just because they don't behave the way you behave. That road, however it's paved, leads you straight to hell. On 8/8/21 11:31 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote: > Prof David West, just confirming, I'm not speaking in absolutes. > > My point is simply that for most of us you can significantly reduce future > health problems by following a healthy lifestyle. This is not limited to but > includes severe health problems if you are infected by the covid virus. > > P > > On Sun, 8 Aug 2021 at 19:15, Prof David West <profw...@fastmail.fm > <mailto:profw...@fastmail.fm>> wrote: > > __ > Not Pieter, but ... > > Some small percentage of _*Type II *_diabetes is not > preventable/controllable with diet and exercise. > > Similarly, of the 42% of the US population that is obese (9.2% morbidly > obese), some small subset is not preventable/controllable with diet exercise. > (My guess is less that 20-25%). > > I am pretty sure Pieter was not speaking in absolutes. > > davew > > > On Sun, Aug 8, 2021, at 8:46 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com > <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> Pieter, >> >> >> >> I am interested in your assertion that metabolic disorders like diabetes >> and obesity are preventable. >> >> >> >> N >> >> >> >> Nick Thompson >> >> thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> >> >> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ >> <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> >> >> >> >> *From:* Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com >> <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> *On Behalf Of *Pieter Steenekamp >> *Sent:* Sunday, August 8, 2021 5:16 AM >> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group >> <friam@redfish.com <mailto:friam@redfish.com>> >> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] off-label technologies, exaptatiion and >> exponential technological growth. >> >> >> >> The CDC reports that among 4,899,447 hospitalized adults in PHD-SR, >> 540,667 (11.0%) were patients with COVID-19, of whom 94.9% had at least 1 >> underlying medical condition. >> https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2021/21_0123.htm >> <https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2021/21_0123.htm>. >> >> >> My reading of this is that it is mainly preventable conditions and my >> simple conclusion is that if you live healthy you are well protected against >> covid. >> >> My wife and I got a wake-up call with loved ones that died of covid. >> They were all obese. Our focus is now to live healthy. It not only gives >> additional protection against covid, but against many other causes of >> illness and poor quality of life too. >> -- ☤>$ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
