On the search for a diet that extends lifespan (1)
I am not sure that a longevity diet is so clever, given that those most likely to benefit will have well-off Western lifestyles, so living longer will worsen their environmental impact (2 July, p 38). Should we take up smoking and dangerous sports on retirement to compensate?
A far more pressing requirement is to ensure the food security of lower-income countries and to find ways of rehoming climate refugees. With India at risk of becoming largely uninhabitable, who will house a billion people or more?
On the search for a diet that extends lifespan (2)
While reading your article on the possibility that food choices may help us to live longer, it struck me that after decades of trying, we have been singularly unsuccessful in coming up with truly effective population-level dietary rules beyond the most basic, such as eat more fruits and vegetables.
Time and again, official advice fails to account for the significant variability between individuals. For example, there is mounting evidence that no two people metabolise food in the same way.
I suspect that the age-defying diet will prove the latest in a long line of false hopes. Wouldn’t we have a better chance of addressing the very real health issues faced by millions of people in relation to the food we eat if we focused our limited research resources on developing a tailored approach to nutrition, rather than continuing the futile search for the wonder diet that will work for everyone?
On the search for a diet that extends lifespan (3)
I was dismayed to see there were recommendations based on body mass index in a box in your article. While BMI is a useful measure at a population level, it isn’t suitable to be used at an individual level for medical or dietary advice. As the father of two athletically gifted children with low body fat and high muscle mass, I have had many messages from their school lamenting their state of “near-obesity”. It is time to retire this nonsensical measure in all but the most circumscribed public health contexts.
On the search for a diet that extends lifespan (4)
Nutrition scientists seem to forget that eating is about pleasure as well as survival. Many people would trade longevity for enjoyment of life.
On the search for a diet that extends lifespan (5)
Dietary (and other) changes that extend life have a long history. There was agriculture 12,000 years ago, to feed us more efficiently. Artificial fertilisers arrived about a century ago, to feed more of us. More recently, modern medicine and the NHS arrived to keep us going for longer. Maybe with a true longevity diet, we will need another change: a new planet to accommodate us all?
Is the Higgs field just like the luminiferous ether?
You describe the Higgs field acting as “a sort of invisible gloop that slows down particles like electrons and quarks” (2 July, p 42). This description is suspiciously similar to the earlier idea of an “ether” as the carrier of electromagnetic waves, which Albert Michelson and Edward Morley disproved in their classic 1887 experiments. Recent optical resonator experiments have confirmed their conclusions.
So how does the “gloop” of the Higgs field differ from the non-existent ether? Is it a case of different terminology, but the same concept?
We can get around the edible insect yuck factor
Regarding Roger Browne’s issues with eating insects (Letters, 9 July). The yuck factor can be overcome by “processing” insects and including them in multi-ingredient dishes. Pending this development, insects are currently available for use in pet foods and livestock feed.
Airlines may need to warn us of solar storms
With reference to your article on the link between solar storms and heart attacks, it seems to me that this could imply that people with cardiac problems shouldn’t take long-haul flights during periods of increased solar storm activity (25 June, p 15). It seems that the convergence of disruption of circadian rhythms and increased solar storm activity could prove lethal.
Should airlines now publish warnings when solar storm activity is significantly elevated?
A tax could reduce fast fashion's eco impacts
Your report presented a serious environmental problem 鈥� cheap fast fashion 鈥� while the cartoon by Twisteddoodles in the same issue (p 56), looking at the cost of fossil fuels, suggests a possible solution: a new tax (4 June, p 38). If the tax on clothes purchases was increased, making them more expensive, demand would drop.
The extra revenue collected by governments could offset the reduction in fuel tax income as electric cars become more popular. Surely this would be preferable to the mileage tax on electric vehicles being discussed in a number of countries, since switching to them is a change that we need to encourage.
Battles with brain fog don't end for some
The term “brain fog” doesn’t sound as frightening as the lived experience can be for those unlucky enough to have this symptom in a severe form (11 June, p 38). People differ and fortunately for Courtney Shukis, her “fog” resolved. Many aren’t so lucky.
Brain fog was among my experiences with CFS/ME, which is very like long covid. In the ensuing decades, I have been fine, so I agree that in CFS, this symptom can be reversed. But as Julie Dumas says in the article, you do need to treat everything that can be treated.
Reasons to discount the idea of a block universe
The assertion that we live in a block universe where time doesn’t exist runs counter to two phenomena: the weather and radioactive decay (18 June, p 38). Deterministic chaos, as seen in meteorological phenomena, combined with quantum uncertainty, as exhibited in radioactive decay, mean that the fatalism (absolute determinism) implied by the block universe can’t be a good description of our universe.