Comment by blaurenceclark | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blaurenceclark | Hacker News Reader

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Then why is asthma medication less effective on Latino's and African Americans? And why did my friend have to visit 5 doctors and it wasn't until he found the Black doctor that his skin condition (which is common to only African Americans regardless of weight) was properly diagnosed and treated?

I'm not saying weight is not a problem, I come from a black family where unhealthy diets are a tradition (but that leads back to the fact that traditional african american diets come from the slave food which was unhealthy but taken in as cultural meals, much longer discussion there), but that does not mean that taking out weight in this discussion solves all or even most of the issues at hand.

As well using your same logic, why do Asians who typically have a lower BMI than white individuals have higher incidences of Diabetes? It's not one size fits all

https://health.usnews.com/wellness/articles/2016-03-11/asian...

> that leads back to the fact that traditional african american diets come from the slave food which was unhealthy but taken in as cultural meals

Is this really true? What foods did slaves in the US eat that are still regularly eaten today? What about black Americans that didn’t descend from slaves, are they not affected?

Is it not more likely that this effect is due to economic reasons (ie in recent years low quality food is significantly cheaper to obtain)

> Asians who typically have a lower BMI than white individuals have higher incidences of Diabetes?

Perhaps I missed it but where in that link does it say Asians have "higher incidences of Diabetes" than whites?

It is an indirect correlation. BMI is a factor related to the likelihood of having diabetes, and what's considered a safe range for white people is an unsafe range for Asians. Thus if you have a white person at a 25 BMI and an Asian person at 25 BMI, the Asian person has a higher likelihood of getting diabetes.

"The educated [Asian] population knows that they're getting diabetes and hypertension and all these things at a much lower BMI, but if you're in a culture where everybody's really fat and you're thin, you tend to go around and think, 'Well, I'm protected,'"

oh its mentioned in the linked research

> However, the impact of increasing BMI on risk of hypertension and diabetes was significantly greater in Asians. For each one unit increase in BMI, Asians were significantly more likely to have hypertension (OR 1.15; 95 % CI 1.13–1.18) compared to non-Hispanic whites, blacks, and Hispanics.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10900-013-9792-...

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