[sph]

Intermittent fasting is so over-hyped. What it means is usually skipping breakfast. Big deal.

I've been intermittent fasting, eating only around 2pm for lunch, and 7pm for dinner, for more than 10 years and I've managed to get quite overweight. Not IF's fault, just pointing out that it's neither worse nor better for your diet.

Eating one fewer meal doesn't stop one from making bad food choices, or doesn't change how much energy you burn through and hunger you feel. Only OMAD might be a little worthy of that hype because it is often physically impossible to overeat your daily caloric expenditure in one sitting, but as a recovering binge eater, I've seen first hand how ultra-processed hyper-palatable food makes it very easy to eat >3000 kcal in one meal.

That said, I agree that breakfast is a silly idea for us office workers. I personally do my best work in the (16) fasted hours between waking up and lunch, so much that I tend to have lunch as late as possible these days. You certainly don't need to eat 3 times a day for sitting on a chair 12 hours. Let alone that most idiotic, first-world idea of needing to eat "at least 5 small meals" around the clock never to feel hungry. Well, stop eating low-fat carby food and you won't feel hungry 5 times a day.

[profstasiak]

My grandma never smoked and still got cancer. Not smoking is so overhyped

[peoplefromibiza]

it actually is in some way.

first of all, Worldwide, 15–20 percent of men with lung cancer are non-smokers while over 50 percent of women with lung cancer are non-smokers [1], so if you are a woman, chances are similar.

Secondly, former smokers and current smokers have similar risks of getting lung cancer.

Last, but not least, once you get it, survival rates are similar for non smokers, former smokers and current smokers (in similar groups of course).

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7431055/

EDIT: it is overhyped because not smoking is in the public discourse treated as a cure, but it's not, especially if you are a woman.

In USA, for example, black men have higher chances of getting lung cancer than white men, but black women risk much less than white women.

So it's like saying that being a black woman saves you from lung cancer.

Risks are expressed as probabilities, people too often don't get it.

[wlesieutre]

> Worldwide, 15–20 percent of men with lung cancer are non-smokers while over 50 percent of women with lung cancer are non-smokers

50% seems like a big number but it's a pretty meaningless statistic if women overall smoke less than men. It just means that when you have few smoking-related cancer cases, the other cases make up a larger percentage. Using that ratio to justify "you might as well smoke, 50% of women with lung cancer were non-smokers" is... not a good use of the statistics.

As a thought exercise with made up numbers, suppose that you have 10 people, 1 will naturally get lung cancer, and everyone who smokes will get lung cancer.

If 4 men smoke and get cancer, that's 5 with cancer and 1 of them was a non-smoker. 20% are non-smokers.

If 1 woman smokes and gets cancer, that's 2 with cancer and 1 of them was a non-smoker. 50% are non-smokers.

In this scenario you can say the exact same statistic about "50% of women with lung cancer are non-smokers" and brush it off as not a big deal even though 100% of smokers are getting cancer.

That's not a useful number to be looking at to judge the risk of smoking vs not smoking.

[peoplefromibiza]

> 50% seems like a big number

I don't know why I thought that linking a scientific paper reporting accurately all the data would be helpful to the discussion.

Not my opinions my friend.

> but it's a pretty meaningless statistic women overall smoke less than men

That's not how epidemiology works.

The fact that black men in USA have ~20% higher risk of getting lung cancer, despite being less than white men, says anything to you?

No, they don't smoke more.

No, risk of getting cancer is not linked to how many cigarettes you smoke in a lifetime, once a smoker, the risk gets higher and stays higher for as long as you live, even if you quit.

> even though 100% of smokers are getting cancer

they are absolutely not!

See why I say non smocking is over hyped?

Because it leads to ideology, which is not the same thing of being informed.

[wlesieutre]

> I don't know why I thought that linking a scientific paper reporting accurately all the data would be helpful to the discussion.

Right, but you cherry-picked the most uninformative statistic possible out of the whole thing to make it sound like smoking isn't a major factor.

These ones would have painted a different picture:

> In a study performed in the United States, roughly 19 percent of women with lung cancer were non-smokers, and only 9 percent of men with lung cancer were non-smokers.13 As this data has shown, lung cancer in non-smokers tends to be more common in females

> Importantly, there is also an increased risk for those non-smokers that have a spouse that is a smoker. In a meta-analysis that included 55 studies, it was found that women who were married to a smoker had a 27% increase in risk of lung cancer.

So a pretty good chunk of those non-smoker cancer cases are caused by smoking, it's just someone else's. And that 27% is just spouses who smoke, another chunk of that will be waitstaff with workplace smoke exposure (an occupation which skews female) since restaurants were one of the last public places people where kept smoking all the time. Indoor smoking bans will reduce those cases, but we're a long way yet from seeing the long terms effects of that.

> they are absolutely not!

I'm aware. As I said in my comment, that was a hypothetical scenario with made up numbers to illustrate how the 50% statistic on its own could give you the wrong impression of the safety of smoking.

[peoplefromibiza]

> Right, but you cherry-picked the most uninformative statistic possible out of the whole thing

in your opinion.

> In a study performed in the United States

I specifically wrote Worldwide, USA is only 4% of the World's population.

Who's actually cherry picking?

USA population is in particular quite shielded from all the other very numerous factors that can lead to lung cancer.

Smocking is only the most obvious and self inflicted

For example: China has the heaviest lung cancer burden, representing 36.98% of cases and 39.21% of deaths globally [1]

By choosing the USA as a reference, you're highly skewing the stats.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7797233/

> that was a hypothetical scenario with made up numbers to illustrate how the 50% statistic on its own is uninformative

so, basically, a strawman to sell opinions as facts.

[decafninja]

I’ve seen many couples where the woman is a nonsmoker but the man is a relentless chain smoker. Does second hand smoke play into this statistic?

I know second hand smoke has been downplayed in recent years, but in this case we’re not talking about occasionally being exposed to smoke, but rather sharing and breathing the same smoke filled air with a smoker.

This also seems to depend on country and culture. In some cultures, it seems most nonsmoking women would instantly disqualify a smoking man as a partner, but in others it doesn’t seem to be quite the same dealbreaker.

[peoplefromibiza]

> Does second hand smoke play into this statistic?

second hand smoke is a known risk factor.

still it doesn't explain the difference, which is rather large.

the most probable explanation is that women are more exposed or more susceptible to some other risk factor than men.

A wild guess, for example, could be: women are in charge of cooking and are exposed to the fireplace wood smoke. There are studies associating fireplace wood smoke to an increase of breast cancer. [1]

Indoor pollution is also thought to be harmful for respiratory system health.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5744698/

[seanw444]

Do people focus on lung cancer when it comes to whether they should smoke or not? I'd say the significantly reduced lung capacity and constant coughing are faster-acting, more problematic issues.

[peoplefromibiza]

agreed.

also second hand smocking, realizing that you are making the life of the people around you, especially kids, a living hell should be enough.

[mrguyorama]

Do you not know how to spell "smoking"?

[peoplefromibiza]

To be precise, as an Italian, the Italian dictionary in my browser doesn't.

But I actually don't care.

I'm quite sure my English is way better than your Italian, Spanish, some French and some German, will ever be.

[kqr]

This is not at all what I expected. Before cigarette smoking was common, I was under the impression lung cancer was extremely rare. Is there something else that gives people lung cancer these days?

[peoplefromibiza]

> Is there something else that gives people lung cancer these days?

the usual suspects

- older population, surviving the most common disease that once killed millions of people at younger age

- pollution

- toxic substances (asbestos for example)

- radiations

- exposure to highly carcinogenic substances (nickel, cadmium, radon, vinyl chloride, benzidene, and benzene, etc.)

- DNA

[pieter_mj]

Radon victim?

[User23]

I believe smoking increases your risk of getting lung cancer by about 20%[1]. It's definitely significant, but plenty of regular smokers manage to die from something else. I'm pretty happy about the repression of public smoking though, because I find the odor of cigarette tobacco revolting and also prefer to not have my risk of lung cancer even moderately increased by second-hand smoke.

Annoyingly, it's hard to find good figures on relative risk for smokers and non-smokers, probably because of the current public health fad of dissembling to attempt to encourage desired behaviors. All I can find is that for the total population lifetime chance is 1/15 for men and 1/17 for women[2], with some weasel words about smoking increasing risk, but no actual quantification.

Edit: I appreciate the replies, but note that none of the sources cited actually list any meaningful quantifiable data. So I dug a bit more and found this[3]. It indicates that the effect is largely dose dependent and only really shows up in smokers of ten years or more. While p=.05 might fly for psychology studies, it's not a convincing bar for serious science. On the other hand the decade and longer smokers show a very respectable p=.001. For the heaviest smokers it looks like a bit over a 5x increase. Assuming continuity, there also exists some level of moderate smoking where my proposed 20% increased risk is accurate and even more limited levels of smoking where the risk is not appreciably higher than not smoking. In fact the data indicate that former smokers who quit for more than ten years actually have lower risk of lung cancer than never smokers! Surely that's some kind of noise, but it still goes to show.

[1] It's true that most people with lung cancer are or were smokers. But it's also true that most people with lung cancer are over 65, and they're from a period where most everyone was a smoker or exposed to smoke regularly. That's a pretty major confound. Over the next few decades we should get better data due to the relative decline in smoking making the effects of choosing to smoke clearer.

[2] https://www.cancer.org/cancer/lung-cancer/about/key-statisti...

[3] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

[goda90]

I think you misinterpreted 20x as 20%. CDC say smoking increases your chances of getting lung cancer by 15-30 times[0] vs someone who doesn't.

[0]https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/basic_info/risk_factors.htm

[tayistay]

Dunno where you got the 20% stat, but it’s totally wrong. From cancer.org:

> The risk of lung cancer for people who smoke is many times higher than for people who don't smoke. The longer you smoke and the more packs a day you smoke, the greater your risk.

MANY TIMES

[bryans]

Nobody ever said that intermittent fasting would prevent you from becoming overweight. If you still overeat, you will still gain weight. It's not magic. You're being hypercritical for no reason and without knowledge of the topic.

[taylodl]

> Intermittent fasting is so over-hyped. What it means is usually skipping breakfast. Big deal.

Not quite. Intermittent fasting is, typically, eating in a restricted time range in the day, usually an 8 hour period. As you point out, most practitioners skip breakfast. As you also point out it's also possible to overeat.

Eating between 11am - 7pm works well. You can have a late morning snack, a mid afternoon snack, and a normal dinner. No snacking at night. No consumption of alcohol outside of this eating range.

What IF isn't about is gorging yourself during the window when you're able to eat. The goal then isn't just about when you eat, but also paying attention to what you eat, and how much you're eating.

[rybosworld]

"Intermittent fasting is so over-hyped...I've managed to get quite overweight. Not IF's fault, just pointing out that it's neither worse nor better for your diet."

This is a strange take. For one thing, intermittent fasting is not a diet.

IF is also not about eating less than you did before. You can, and many people do, eat the same number of calories as they did before. Eating more or less calories should be a separate decision made in the context of what you are trying to achieve.

[Existenceblinks]

So many non-conclusion in nutrition. My father has subscribed to 3 cardiologists they are somewhat 70% overlap and left 30% non-consensus. Read some papers (only read abstract mostly). When I read all of these I only treat it as raw data, listen to your own body is closer to the truth. Debugging your body is kinda not fun since it takes a lot of time in iteration.

I found my brain burn a lot of energy even if I just sit for a couple hours. So breakfast is needed.

[aulin]

IF works while it's a stressor. Does it still work if you've been doing it non-stop for 10 years?

[verdenti]

OMAD (one meal per day) genuinely works with the only caveat being that you need to make sure you’re getting all your nutritional requirements for the day. This means having a larger single meal and taking multivitamins for me. Also I avoid all processed foods, especially processed meat. I’ve been doing it for two years now.

[1270018080]

What does "genuinely works" mean?

[verdenti]

Lose weight for the most part with tangible results over a relatively short time. This is in contrast to something like just skipping breakfast.