Comment by giantg2
1 year ago
We aren't talking about unequivocal proof. If someone asks what they can do to increase longevity, it's perfectly reasonable to tell them about studies that show strong correlations and mention the way the confounding factors play a role.
You might be interested to look into some of the twin studies that put twins on similar exercise regimens and differening diets. They seem to be the strongest evidence possible for this sort of thing. Hardly what I would call junk science.
The exercise part I can believe as we have somewhat better quality evidence there. But if you have seen dietary studies on twins that actually meet evidence-based medicine criteria then I would greatly appreciate a citation as those would be interesting to read.
You can search for your own. This should be just as rigorous as any exercise studies.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38032644/
As I suspected, another low-quality study which changed a bunch of variables in a small study group for only a few months and found a minor change in a few blood tests (no actual measured change in longevity or other health outcomes). The most obvious flaw in the study design is that the two diets weren't isocaloric, which basically invalidates all of their conclusions. It's really disappointing to see junk "science" like this make it through peer review. I mean this is the kind of garbage that an undergraduate journal club could rip apart without any advanced statistics.
And I have searched on my own before. Never found much of anything reliable or actionable.
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