Comment by maxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

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I would recommend trying it yourself. I always had problems with my knees, wrists and elbows to the point where pretty much any kind of exercise caused lot of pain. Then I spent a month at a yoga ashram where all food was made fresh without any sugar. After two weeks the joint pain was almost completely gone.

I am now on a low-sugar diet and my joints are still doing well. When I eat some sugar after half an hour my wrist and elbow start to hurt again.

I have tried this a few times and the effect is totally reproducible. This experience makes me wonder how many people who have arthritis and other inflammatory diseases could reduce their symptoms with a low/no sugar diet.

Keeping weight off is also much easier with low sugar.

My advice is: Keep it a try. Stay off sugar for a month and see if you notice any changes. There is nothing to lose (besides a few pounds).

Re-read your comment and tell me it doesn't sound like an informercial testimonial. It worked for you. That's great. Placebo is a hell of a drug. Staying off sugar is a huge pain in the ass because it's in everything, it's delicious, and it makes me happy when I eat it. If I told you that I gave up tap water and strictly drank bottled water for a month, and my knees felt better and I had more energy and I was able to reproduce the effect, would you take it on faith and try drinking bottled water for a month?

Dude, why so much hate? What use would be an infomercial recommending to stop eating sugar?

In the abstract you're right, however in this case there are actually links between eating sugar and inflammation in the body. Sugar affecting arthritis is not a new concept; there's plenty of studies on the topic already out there and the relationship between sugar and cytokines in the body. I'd say that's fairly far from a placebo effect.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, this is just a placebo effect. Does it really matter? If it provides a noticeable, reproducible result that improves someones life, who cares? Is it guaranteed to work for you? No, but there's no guarantee with a double blind tested, well researched method either.

It's giving up sugar, not ingesting plutonium. Worst case scenario you don't get the 'infomercial results', but it most likely will still improve your overall health

I'd think about it carefully and see if it had some plausible scientific explanation. I'd look at the cost of trying it and the cost of not trying it. And then I'd try it for a month or not. It's a month! In a lifetime, it's not a long stretch of time. If there's a real benefit you win, if there's no benefit you learned something. (Keep in mind the above line on considering costs and whether I'd do it in the first place -- that's meant to put a bound on costs.)

There are probably places in the US where switching to bottled water would be a great idea, sadly. Northern Iowa, for instance, is struggling to remove nitrates from its drinking water (nitrates affect oxygen transport by blood), and in parts of Pennsylvania fracking has led to flaming tap water. If you live there, it might not be a bad idea to try your example of a silly experiment.

How can I tell somebody about my personal experiences without sounding like an infomercial? And why do you call it placebo? I have gone back and forth several times with the same results every time.

Maybe my body is different from anybody else's body and my results apply only to me. That's obviously a possibility.

That sugar is inflammatory sounds pretty likely, though. Actually, the Wikipedia article on sugar states that food with a high glycemic load cause inflammation.

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