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Comment by pmiller2 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what the psychology behind believing heart disease is preventable vs cancer being unpreventable.

No deep psychology needed.

With hearts, you open up and you see clogged arteries, for example. It doesn't get much simpler than "too much fat is bad for your heart".

With cancer? It could be anything. And there are tons of different types, seemingly hitting all kinds of people, fat smokers and lean non-smoking vegans alike.

I've heard recently that the causality for heart disease actually goes the opposite way than everyone assumed. The body's response to inflamed arteries is to lay down a layer of fatty plaques to protect the arteries from further damage. The fat deposition is the effect of the inflammation, not the cause, and now researchers are trying to understand just what the real cause is.

...which just goes to show how complicated causation vs. correlation is in real science. It was a pretty obvious conclusion that clogged arteries would cause heart disease...except that it's both obvious and wrong.

> I've heard recently that the causality for heart disease actually goes the opposite way than everyone assumed.

This "Assumption" would be a good case study of the infection of common knowledge with charlatanism.

Better scientists than Ancel Keys already knew that polyunsaturated oils were not appropriate for human consumption. Soybean oil and Linseed oil were used to make paint & stain, because they're good 'drying oils'.

But Dr. Key's theory was picked up by the mass media and used to demonize butter, and to promote garbage like "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter"...

People are easy to swindle.

I think often the line between correlation and causation is not very clear except in textbook examples. Does poverty cause corruption, or corruption cause poverty? Maybe most of the actual phenomena could be feedback loops, vicious cycles etc.

...except fat isn't necessarily responsible for heart disease. High blood glucose and inflammation are much more likely to be responsible.

Doesn't matter though (for our question). The mere impression that it does, explains why people think heart disease is more at their hand to prevent.

Have you any (peer reviewed) evidence of this? There is a lot of Internet hype about "carbs are bad, fat is fine" these days and other conflicting health guidelines. I am not saying its wrong, but I would like to see some proper evidence of it.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20071648

http://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/science

> With hearts, you open up and you see clogged arteries, for example. It doesn't get much simpler than "too much fat is bad for your heart".

The fat clogging our arteries doesn't necessarily come from dietary fat.

A lot has changed when it comes to heart disease. For example, not even the USDA supports the claim that excessive dietary cholesterol is linked to heart disease anymore. Their new official stance is that you shouldn't worry about it at all, no upper limit, eat as much as you want.[1]

Contrast that with the last 50 years we've all spent having conversations and making comments about how dangerous egg yolks and meat are because of the cholesterol, and all the foods promoted for being cholesterol-free or low-cholesterol. Cocoa Puffs getting the American Heart Association checkmark on the box because they're low-cholesterol.[2]

It's very difficult to get good information on this because the food industry spends billions selectively funding research to muddy the waters and spread misinformation the same way tobacco companies did in the '50s and '60s. Their 2 biggest goals on this front are:

1. Defend refined sugar and carbohydrates against claims that they're unhealthy/toxic. These are the most profitable commodities because they're the most shelf-stable, they're easy to shape dye and flavor into just about anything, and they're extremely cheap because of food subsidies.

2. Promote the idea that our health and well-being as it relates to nutrition, is entirely determined by one's ability to balance calories in vs calories out. If that's all it is, then all of their products are exonerated from all negative health effects, and they can shift the burden of blame onto their own customers.

I'm all for personal responsibility and companies having the right to produce delicious junk food and consumers having the right to purchase and consume as much of it as they want, but I think we'd all be better off if the food industry stopped funding nutritional research.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/07/gover...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/21/health/nutrition/beware-fo...

I've been reading a few recent papers about cardiology, but I didn't find a lot, could you list some references ?

ps: I tried to get off processed food for raw veggies and fruit, but most cities are flooded with utterly shitty ones. It's still a huge increase in terms of health (sugar really is like a drug), but way suboptimal.

It's not my experience that cities have bad raw veggies and fruit (I've lived near Boston and in NYC). Be that as it may, if you cannot find raw produce, you may want to look for the frozen stuff. http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/frozen-vegetables-are-hot

"Nutritionally speaking, frozen veggies are similar to -- and sometimes better than -- fresh ones. This makes sense, considering that these veggies are usually flash-frozen (which suspends their 'aging' and nutrient losses) immediately after being harvested. Frozen veggies were often picked in the peak of their season, too."

I have a fruit (blueberries, cherries, mango, banana) and greens smoothie almost every morning. The banana is the only thing that's not frozen. It seems healthy, although I admit, it's not low-carb.

Never heard of this, gonna give it a look. Maybe I live in a bad neighborhood, but the amount of barely edible oranges, apples, carrots .. It's like eating plastic. I take comfort in thinking that at least there's no additives.

You might want to look into a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)

http://www.localharvest.org/csa/

Stress is often a factor in health related issues. I imagine that believing it is preventable will lead to less stress.

I think it's a much simpler disease to understand.

Many forms of heart disease are easy to understand. My heart is blocked up with a fatty deposit because I ate too much junk food? Makes sense, I could stop doing that.

Some of my skin cells are dividing uncontrollably because I sat in the sun too long 20 years ago? And somehow it's spreading to totally unrelated organs? I don't get it.

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