alt Hacker NewsAhem...
"Vegans and vegetarians may have higher stroke risk" - https://www.bbc.com/news/health-49579820
"Vegans had a 43% higher risk of fractures overall compared to nonvegetarians, as well as higher risks of hip, leg, and vertebral fractures." - https://sniglobal.org/plant-based-diets-and-fracture-risk/
"The Impact of a Vegan Diet on Many Aspects of Health: The Overlooked Side of Veganism" - https://www.cureus.com/articles/138315-the-impact-of-a-vegan...
"..people who followed a vegan diet had noticeably low levels of iodine in their bodies, an element that is essential for growth, bones, and brain function. In addition, vegans had lower bone health scores..." - https://www.bfr.bund.de/en/press-release/vegan-vegetarian-be...
Replies
This isn't really the place for this, nor does it matter to my analogy.
But I was more getting at, say, staying out of the sun or being skinnyfat as a vegan, and suddenly you look "sickly"/"frail" when you'd be given the grace of looking like most people otherwise.
A similar analogy would be someone saying "well, of course you do" if you have any malady while having been vaccinated. My point being to bring up the thought terminating cliche of it compared to doing the necessary further analysis to link the malady with the suspected cause.
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> "Vegans and vegetarians may have higher stroke risk"
It was a lump vegetarian + vegan group with a weak CI bounded at 1.02 for 3/1000 cases over a decade. The same group also had a more robust benefit of less heart disease than meat eaters. The stroke outcomes aren't replicated in other cohorts either, afaik. But the heart disease benefits are.
> "Vegans had a 43% higher risk of fractures overall compared to nonvegetarians, as well as higher risks of hip, leg, and vertebral fractures."
The study used a single baseline questionnaire for 17+ years and looked at vegans with correctable nutrition deficiencies to see +15/1000 hip fractures over 10 years. I'll grant that a poorly planned diet, especially 30 years ago with less nutritional understanding, has worse health outcomes. Just like I wouldn't use the average American's diet to lambast an omnivore diet (compared to, say, the "Mediterranean" diet).
> "vegans had lower iodine, bone health scores" (RBVD study)
On bones: p=0.02 in 72 people with 5% less QUS score in their heel bone (not DXA nor bone density tested). No body weight mediation nor data about health outcomes like fractures, osteoporosis, and no time dimension since it was just a snapshot (cross-sectional).
On iodine: It's a surrogate biomarker from a single pee test. Study didn't look at iodine-related health outcomes like thyroid dysfunction, goiter, or clinical consequences.
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There are a lot of nutritional blind spots in vegan diets. It is a diet that requires exceptional planning and intentionality to be at a baseline of health similar to a balanced omnivorous diet.
So indeed, the "it must be veganism" is not an unfounded concern when health complications arise, in a very similar way to "it must be the AI" is a valid concern when software issues arise.