[qart]

> Amy Bies was recovering in the hospital from injuries inflicted during a car accident in May 2007

When an article starts like this, I instantly close it and wait for proper sources. Anyway, the phrase "metabolic syndrome" has been gaining currency for the last few years. For those who don't want to read journal papers and meta-analyses, there are plenty of doctors and fitness coaches (on YouTube) who have made videos on how to get metabolic syndrome under control or even reverse it. And many of the doctors do a good job of filtering and summarizing the research.

[epcoa]

The term Metabolic Syndrome X has been around for more than a few years, unless nearly 40 is few (and I absolutely relate to that sentiment), just saying that concept was revved up in the 90s and of course has been an academic discussion going back to the early 20th century.

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/01.atv.0000111245.75...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3056758/

[vablings]

Alongside all of these honest doctors and fitness coaches who espouse metabolic syndrome as the biggest health crisis of the 21st century there is a broad group of scammers and conmen who use the well backed science and literature to seed ground to push supplements and other crap. They seem to wrap the very basic medical truth of being overweight and inactive is horrific for your health in an onion of pseudoscience bullshit, so you buy the next best product high in "antioxidants" and "polyphenols"

The actual science is unimaginably boring. Do not be overweight on the BMI scale and do some moderate exercise for around 2 hours every week. This will drastically improve the health 1000x more than say the insane stuff that Brian Johnson is touting.

I hate modern fitness influencers and health wellness people in general. My head near about exploded when I saw a Tiktok from Jeff Nippard claiming that eggs increase your testosterone on a study with a sample size of FIVE PEOPLE.

[tsimionescu]

> The actual science is unimaginably boring. Do not be overweight on the BMI scale and do some moderate exercise for around 2 hours every week.

Don't be depressed is also excellent advice for people with depression: if they can manage that, it improves their mood tremendously. Not catching colds also greatly reduces your chances of cold-like symptoms.

By which I mean, what you're saying is a truism, not medical advice. Keeping your BMI under control is a natural no-effort thing for some people, and a grueling lifelong struggle for others. Telling fat people to stop being fat is not "advice", it is exactly as helpful as telling sick people to stop being sick.

[vablings]

Absolutely, the issue of obesity is not just getting people to exercise more I 100% agree. The actual science of having someone diet, exercise and stick to that engagement is literally endlessly complicated and part of the reason why GLP-1 drugs are a big deal they can be given to almost anyone who meet the clinical criteria and see a drastic improvement in overall health and mortality.

That doesn't detach from the reality of the objectives, getting there is difficult for people and there is more research to be done.

FYI: None of my posts are medical advice and I am not a doctor

[jeffbee]

> When an article starts like this, I instantly close it

Why? You don't believe in car crashes or what?

[gnatman]

I think they probably mean “article that’s meant to share research but mostly shares anecdotes”. It’s a common framing for this kind of thing though, so they probably have to close a lot of articles after the first sentence.

[qart]

A friend of mine told me a few days ago that he thinks LLMs are already smarter than most humans. I agreed with him instantly.

[nh23423fefe]

Someone who wants to tell you something true doesn't lead their communication with emotional distraction. Kinda like how someone who is asking a real question doesn't disguise the question as an insult.

[derektank]

>Someone who wants to tell you something true doesn't lead their communication with emotional distraction.

This seems needlessly cynical. Someone can have multiple objectives in writing, to tell you facts and also to capture your attention or to convey an emotion and motivate you to action. Very little writing is done with a single purpose in mind. We don’t expect academics drafting research papers to eschew concerns about the impact the writing will have on their career for example.

Starting a story with an anecdote that humanizes the information is simply acknowledging the reality that people want more than just facts. If the latter was all they wanted, most of us would only read encyclopedias and textbooks.

[autoexec]

In this case it really was just pointless distracting filler. The article would have been better without it. I reach for different books when I want drama or entertainment than when I want data and research. This article promises one thing and then clumsily shoves something else in randomly throughout. It really is obnoxious.

[jeffbee]

It's not emotional distraction, it establishes the reason the subject was getting blood tests, which is revealed later in the same sentence. If this is your level of reading stamina you must find yourself very poorly informed. Even a tweet would be too long for you.

[ajkjk]

it's just fucking annoying, really. just a really irritating, baity way to write

[nh23423fefe]

tldr

[qart]

You will not build reading stamina or make yourself well informed with sappy stories. Learn some basic statistics and try reading research papers directly. "I have read more words" is a measure of only that, and nothing else. Maybe also a measure of the ability to not be able to separate wheat from chaff.

[pas]

It's extremely lazy "writing".

Seems absolutely unnecessary, forced, immeasurably trite, off-puttingly boring, overused, so brazenly cliché that there has to be some kind of counter-intuitive selection going on, like with the email scammers that target those who are not immediately noticing the fraudulent intent.

... or simply our arrogance is showing, after all average minds discuss people, right?

[jeffbee]

How many major national magazines have published your superior articles?

[taproottap]

How many major national magazines publish good articles? The inverted pyramid is from newspapers and bears resemblance to scientific publishing while magazines bear more resemblance to the human interest crap between events when presenting the Olympics. Perfectly fine I suppose but then it's nice if they don't get confused about appropriate subjects.

[barfoure]

You’ve got more patience than me. I read the title and decided I won’t bother reading the rest.

[jeffbee]

And then bragged about this.

[pas]

Still more value than the headline/article!