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Gym myths are my favorite. The best past is the extreme prevalence of survivorship bias, with most of the bad advice coming from people who have succeeded but are themselves mistaken about why.
i.e. Massive bro is adamant that everyone should be taking BCAAs, beginners are inclined to believe it because it looks like he knows what he’s talking about.
I think the fitness industry makes most of its money this way tbh
My wife is one of these consumers. She shes all these influencers pushing working out products and she uses everything she can get her hands on. Then she wonders why when she trains for, and runs a full marathon, she doesnt lose any weight. Well you take thousands of calories of supplements… just run
Yeah you can’t run off a bad diet, you do need to make sure you are getting enough protein aligned with your goals, and some fats, but outside of that, you just need to eat less than you burn.
Running might help increase the deficit a bit, or give you some extra food, but you’re probably going to struggle to cover thousands of additional calories.
Right. I walk like 5km a day and I lost 30kg. Secret eat less than you burn.
Yeah but supplements are fun and sometimes delicious. Running is neither.
I like Lyle McDonalds advice on running: Don’t, unless you’re being chased.
running is sometimes fun (the rush you get from beat your PB) and let’s you eat things that are delicious. I’m in a perpetual calorie debt because I run so much and I’m poor 😭
I’m not sure supplements are ever fun … but they can help with getting enough protein if you’re lifting or an additional energy boost via creatine … protein powder can taste nice but you need to watch out for macros if it’s too delicious, I’ve never had a nice creatine.
Or by fun do you mean preworkouts? I think there’s limits to preworkout value when what you really need for workout energy are easily digestible carbs over caffine or other cruft.
They like BCAAs because they think it causes gains.
I like BCAAs because they taste good.
We are not the same.
I like BCAAs because they taste good.
They might be somewhat right, but you’re objectively wrong
All the more for me then!
My brother it isn’t BCAAs you like, it’s methyl anthranilate.
I like a whole bunch of flavours, I was just too lazy to google for multiple flavour images.
Is BCAA different from normal protein powder?
Also, why does it taste better for you?BCAA’s are essentially bullshit 99% of the time because if you’re getting adequate complete high quality proteins from food (including whey or quality plant protein shakes) they contain all the amino acids your body can use.
Honestly, the flavor is all down to the brand. But water just gets boring as shit if you’re drinking a lot.
Basically just seconding what Delphia said; if you’re getting adequate protein from food sources than BCAAs are a waste.
I just tend to drink >2L of plain water a day as a baseline, so when it comes to the gym — I’d rather have something with flavour. It’s best to just think of it as gymbro-cordial, with added caffeine on occasion!
Brilliant, thanks ! To both of you.
It’s like the cosmetics industry. Keep shifting what products will give you the look you want, whether it be beautiful hair or massive pecs. Tell you all the lies about what the product might do for you, then tell you to accessorize the product with whatever fringe benefit you’re looking for, and constantly keep changing the “science” so you jump from product to product for the latest and greatest thing that will make you look good.
Don’f forget to add fucked up exercises, grips, and positions to your workout, too, that place you at a greater risk of injury. Broscience.
The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) is a blight upon the USA supplement scene.
It’s no surprise it was sponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah. That state is the proud inventor of just about every worthless vitamin and nutritional supplement out there.
I’ve once overheard a conversation in the train where someone said “but cholesterol is good, right? Or are those proteins?” completely unironically. It got a good chuckle from me and several other people in the train.
I eventually learned he was becoming a PE teacher who made diet plans for schools. That was less funny.
Perhaps surprisingly, dietary cholesterol has less an effect on blood cholesterol than a handful of other things. Saturated fat intake/balance in diet correlates more strongly, and vitamin D levels negatively correlates (vitamin D deficiency positively correlates).
Dietary cholesterol is used for a lot of key things such as hormone production, so some people might actually want to increase their cholesterol intake (super active lifestyle people like endurance athletes - can help combat RED-S aka Female Athlete Triad), but the elephant in the room for bad lipid profiles is saturated fats, refined sugars, and sedentary lifestyle
afaik from youtube, HDL is good, LDL is bad.
Yes.
You also need cholesterol in cell membrane structures, hormone synthesis (steroids like testosterone & estradiol), vitamin D, bile acids for digesting fat, and insulating neuron sheaths.
Yes, but dietary cholesterol is still unhealthy. Your body makes it’s own cholesterol, getting it from your diet is like pouring water into an already full cup: the cholesterol “overflows” from your cells into your blood and clogs everything up. Video on how cholesterol is unhealthy Who Says Eggs Aren’t Healthy or Safe?
Your body makes it’s own cholesterol, getting it from your diet is like pouring water into an already full cup
I don’t think your analogy is right, tbh. For most people dietary cholesterol does not alter their blood cholesterol much because it’s tightly controlled with the pancreas and the liver. If your body detects too much it’ll absorb less and pass through your butt and it’ll synthesize less in your gut. It’s about a 20%-80% ratio of absorbed vs internally synthesized. This means our bodies are able to process, create, store (liver, tissues), release and excrete a reasonable amount of cholesterol with a balanced diet. It’s only when you intake a lot of other fats that it causes the “bad” cholesterol LDL to be delivered to the cells. (Low Density Lips means it’s not just the cholesterol being transported in there.) Curiously enough, some people are more susceptible to cholesterol-related diseases than others, particularly those with higher genetic risks or those with comorbidities.
your cells into your blood and clogs everything up
You’re thinking of atherosclerosis, an inflammatory disease. High LDL cholesterol in the blood is only a factor and not a direct cause. The full cause of the disease isn’t known, so it’s not that simple. It’s not like cholesterol is freely floating in the blood plugging holes, but rather packaged with other fats and proteins into water-soluble droplets precisely so that fats don’t plug anything up. That’s LDL, HDL, chylomicrons, etc. There’s something more going on with the body for cholesterol to play a role.
Interesting video. Definitely not what I was expecting, but mostly because I was expecting the science. Instead, this is a video about a marketing department dealing with red tape around their food products, and it uses that as the evidence for why cholesterol is bad in an ominous “they know they truth”. Dun dun dun. To be honest, I think its approach is deceitful.
Please note that, although Dr. Michael Greger seems pro-science, he is criticized for pedaling a moderate amount of pseudoscience, claiming that veganism cures illness. I think his content about cholesterol is closely linked to his personal views and is therefore quite biased.
Dietary cholesterol has little to no effect on blood cholesterol, so indeed cholesterol is good or at least not bad
False. Here’s a short 4 minute video with several referenced studies by a renowned lifestyle medicine doctor debunking this myth: Does Dietary Cholesterol (Eggs) Raise Blood Cholesterol?. TL;DR: Even 90% of egg industry funded studies show eggs raise cholesterol.
I also wrote the below, on how bad studies funded by industry interests can be cherrypicked by journalists who want to conclude “<unhealthy food> is healthy, actually” such that these myths arise in the first place. I explored this particular example of “dietary cholesterol is good” by scrutinizing the first PubMed study I found on the subject, as an example of what to look for in good study design.
Saying that dietary cholesterol is good is factually insane, eating dietary cholesterol absolutely raises your cholesterol. However, it’s common to hold these false narratives about nutrition. The issue is that it’s incredibly easy to create a faulty study design if you go in trying to prove “eggs are healthy,” for instance. Take, for example, the egg industry, which has something to gain by convincing people that the massively high cholesterol in eggs isn’t bad for you, and oftentimes funds these biased study designs.
What does a biased study look like?
- Some examples of biased study design is taking 20 year olds, having them healthy salads vs massive steaks for lunch, then checking back and saying “none of them have heart disease, so steak is healthy” (because they’re 20, the age cohort was too young to be drawing those conclusions).
- Read a study that compared the intelligence of kids in Africa who got “meat” via an actual meal or “vegetables” via giving them straight vegetable oil (obviously unhealthy); the vegetable oil group still won despite the handicap. Aka choosing to compare something that is unhealthy with also unhealthy alternatives so you can say there was no difference -Even the traditional “a bit of wine is healthy in moderation” bit came from faulty studies which grouped “people who had to quit drinking after developing liver disease” with “people who have never drunk a single drop” in the “never drinkers” category, which made it appear as if drinking no wine was somehow less healthy than drinking some wine.
What does an unbiased study look like? The best study design, imo, is a meta-analysis of several randomized double-blind placebo-controlled intervention studies.
- Randomized = people assigned to the control vs the experimental group randomly
- Double-blind = both the researcher and the subject don’t know whether they’re giving/getting the placebo or the experimental (otherwise the researcher’s expectations can influence the subject to behave in a certain way)
- Placebo-controlled = giving a sugar pill with no medication control alongside an actual medicine pill, because oftentimes just the act of taking a pill can make people report less pain, that they feel healthier, happier, etc etc etc. In nutrition studies the equivalent of this may be giving tasteless supplements, shakes or muffins made with or without the ingredient to be tested, etc
- Intervention study = A study where you give group 1 thing A, group 2 thing B, and group 3 a control
In this case, I’m assuming you’re getting this false information from studies like this Dietary Cholesterol and the Lack of Evidence in Cardiovascular Disease which right off the bat raises red flags due to being written by a single author, saying ‘eggz are helthy,’ the funding section only being funded by some unnamed “institutional startup,” and finally only being a literature review (very easy to cherry pick bad data), not an intervention study of it’s own
One of the studies linked in that study, Egg consumption and heart health: A review (yet another literature review with no actual study) is mostly just saying 1) “cholesterol is often high in foods also high in saturated fats,” 2) “saturated fat is unhealthy,” 3) “ergo we can’t just conclude because something has cholesterol in it it’s unhealthy,” 4) “eggs are high in cholesterol but low in saturated fats,” 5) “eggs have all these nutrients that are useful,” 6) “therefore, eggs are healthy.”
The error in this logic is between 5 & 6. We’re starting with the (false) assumption that cholesterol isn’t necessarily unhealthy, but you can’t go from Maybe Not Unhealthy + Cherrypicked Good Components = Healthy, you have to actually test the food.
However, because everyone wants to convince themselves eating unhealthy food is healthy, faulty studies like this get reported in “health” magazines until when your doctor says “eating eggs is bad for you” you think “but I saw that study one time that says it wasn’t, maybe science just doesn’t know” (it does) and the egg industry is laughing all the way to the bank for successfully convincing you that the whole thing is too complicated for you to know or care.
Now whom to trust in this thread?
From this summary, The American Health Association still has a very modest recommendation to avoid excessive dietary cholesterol but no longer recommends a daily limit, and notes that foods high in cholesterol tend to be high in saturated fat, which does still show a link to serum cholesterol.
In other words, foods that are high in cholesterol but low in saturated fat (like shellfish, and to some degree eggs) are still fine.
I’d trust the American Heart Association over a video by a doctor who advocates for veganism through his books and media appearances. He seems to me to be more of an advocate (and isn’t very open about the fact that nutritionfacts.org is his own marketing website for promoting his specific products). And his books rely partially on data now known to be faulty, about “blue zones” where lots of people live past 100 (turns out each are hotspots for pension fraud so it’s hard to actually know how old people actually live in those places).
I would add that the nutritionfacts guy tries to sell himself as someone of science, but then extremely cherry picked quotes and then when talking about eggs, says something like penguin eggs are half as much likely to kill you.
Anyone who uses such fearmongering phrases in nutrition cannot be taken seriously in my opinion.
I think the AHA recommendations are quite reasonable, as they are more about focusing on eating foods known to be healthy less about fear mongering.
But I would like to add but AFAIK serum cholesterol levels alone are not a good indicator, you need to look at more things for example the ratio of TGL to HDL as it is a good indicator of low density vs high density LDL in your blood, but I think there are even more markers
a PE teacher
The old gag:
Those who can, do
Those who can’t, teach
Those who can’t teach, teach Phys EdThose who can’t teach phys Ed, administrate.
Based on the other responses, better to be asking the question than assume he was stupid for asking it.
High cholesterol is “bad” with too much of other fats in your diet, but you need cholesterol to live so your body makes most of it.
E: Correcting the science there, whoops.
That small amount of cholesterol you need to live can be synthesized by your own body, which is also why animal products but not plant products have cholesterol (the animals you’re eating synthesized their own cholesterol) and also why vegans aren’t dropping dead of low cholesterol all the time
Sorry, I had to get a refresher on the physiology of fats in the body. Whew, it’s been a while and I remembered it all wrong. I edited the original to reflect that.
Everyone starts somewhere.
Sometimes followed by the most cursed unit…grams per pound…
Is that actually a unit that I have just never heard of or am I being dumb and not getting sarcasm? I really hope thats a fake unit
i could see it in a dosage situation. like grams of steroids per pound of user. sure, it’s goofy to mix metric and imperial, but that’s just what those two things are commonly measured with in America. time spent doing unit conversations is time spent not lifting.
Yeah exactly it’s often used as grams of protein per pound of bodyweight for recommending protein intake.
Time spent doing unit conversions is time spent not lifting
I’m not sure how to feel about that part. But I can’t say you’re wrong. I try to stay away from anh US customary units. As most would agree, they kinda suck in comparison to SI
that’s fair, but all the equipment and scales in their gym will be labeled in pounds.
Its a pretty common unit when it comes to discussing dietary protein around bodybuilding and fitness because 1g per lb is a super easy conversion for people to remember. Its kind of the golden number because even for people not getting the best sources of protein 1g per lb almost guarantees anyone other than edge cases and steroid users are getting more than enough to support optimum growth and recovery.
I’ve only seen g/kg which is less cursed. This is about the amount of protein you should eat relative to your body mass. But since this is a recommendation for daily intake, I would love to see gymbros use the SI version of g/kg/day, namely 1/s.
As a european, I love to hate on the imperial system. But expressing that ratio in units that you actually use when measuring the thing makes sense.
It’s not like you’re actually doing fancy maths with it, just cross-multiplication.
If you don’t conveniently know your body weight in kg, you might as well remember the ratio in relation to lbs.
You’re right, it just feels weird to me to use grams for one measurement and pounds for another
Dad was a gym rat, and it is absolutely a real thing.
My favorite stupid unit of measurement is “A gram of protein per cm of height” for protein intake for very overweight people who have no idea what their lean body mass is or should be.
It sounds ridiculous but for 90% of people it puts you within 10% of correct and usually errs on the high side.
Doesnt really sound cursed? Seems like a usefull unit. With this logic mols are also cursed(tbf they are) but its easier to explain to people so…
It’s cursed because if you’re not gonna use metric, then don’t use it.
Do drams per pound of body weight or something like that. Still cursed because it’s not metric, but less so.
Or do the thing that’ll make everyone* happy, just use metric.
(*me, personally)
Moles are somewhat cursed, but we do need some standard number of molecules, else all our chemistry would be in insanely large numbers. May as well make it something related to the gram.
Though, in fairness, I will grant, it’s one of the less metric-y units out there since atomic weights aren’t perfect round numbers anyway, other than carbon.
Perhaps we could have standardised a mole as 1x1010 molecules. Ah well
Mols should not be an SI unit. Why not make 3 an SI unit?? Or 47?? NUMBERS AREN’T UNITS!!
Yeah dipshits, gravity is pounds per gram
This pic reminds me of a ten-year-old post:
Used to take prework out as a teenager. About a year ago I’d be taking 2 scoops of the strongest shit I could get my hands on. I’d have to spend almost 10 minutes between sets sometimes to keep from puking. Then one day I just thought, what the fuck am I doing. I started lifting to get healthier. And here I am taking in God knows what from a container with a psycho clown that’s chewed half his own face off. What the fuck happened. I started with a half a scoop of c4 and now here I am. Who the fuck is this for, am I supposed to be that methhead clown, is that supposed to be appealing? Since then completely gave up prework outs and never looked back
That’s not a biochemist, memorizing the amino acids is literally biochem 1 on college. Most people with a biology undergrad take that.
Being a biochemist is more about understanding the whole system of how proteins interact, and not really about memorization of any specific protein.
I had to take a 300 level biochem class and 2 semesters of O Chem and we didn’t have to memorize the structures of all the amino acids. Like we had to know glycine and we had to know about the different amino acids like how proline has a rigid structure but we were never expected to be able to draw an amino acid from memory
This may be a university to university and course to course difference too. My intro 3000 level biochem class didn’t have us memorize structures but my 5000 structural biochem class did and certain nucleic acid structures and stuff. Can’t remember shit now but I definitely had to memorize them at some point in undergrad.
Maybe our universities handled numbers differently but 300 level classes we’re never considered intro level classes but were instead classes usually taken in your 3rd year of school with a heavy amount of pre requisites and a 500 level would be a graduate class
Sorry, just meant that for biochemistry it was the “lowest level” you could take. It was usually a 3rd or 4th year class. Anything 4000+ level for us was a graduate school level class. I was just saying I had the same experience as you to some degree but it’s possible different schools/professors have different expectations.
That makes more sense I think that 300 level was our lowest biochemistry class as well
The best way to learn something new but maybe not useful or true is to say an obviously wrong fact on an internet forum with a total confidence.
People will step over themselves to explain it like it is a supermarket opening on a Black Friday morning
It’s a never patched CVE-1980-1 in an internet nerd mind that causes a dump of the victim’s volatile memory
The most infuriating discussion I had online about proteins was with a vegan, their claim was “there is no such thing as essential amino acids”. Couldn’t get it into their head that a) there are essential amino acids but b) yes, unless you eat so horribly lopsided it’s unknown of anywhere but in horribly deprived populations or among some indigenous folks (pretty much only eating manioc or such) there’s nothing to worry about, you’ll get your essentials. Kinda like Vitamin C deficiency being unheard of in the developed world because even the most gutter-rat of diets still contains enough as an antioxidant. Still not a bad idea to pair beans with rice and lentils with noodles or bread, though, IMNSHO they just taste better that way around.
Especially infuriating as it was a vegan. If you choose to have a diet that requires nutritional knowledge to get right then don’t suck at it, and call your fellow travellers out when they’re spewing BS. I really doubt vegans are keen on yet another “I stopped being vegan and it fixed my anaemia” story. Take an apple or two. Either eat them, there’s your iron, or make a sauce that works with a sour/sweet accent (i.e. chunks of apple) and prepare it in an iron skillet, there, even more iron. It’s not hard but you gotta stop pretending that vegans can get by without understanding nutrition.
I agree but I think they cared about something else. Calling them essential creates an emotional argument against being vegetarian. As you say, there is usually no deficiency, so they are ‘literally’ not ‘essential’.
Like the usage of literally, people don’t care about being technically correct.
There’s not a single nutrient you can’t get from plants or fungi, that wasn’t the issue. But yes it’s literally essential for vegans to know what they need as unlike the rest of us, they are way less covered by simply grabbing something from the supermarket shelf.
I agree again with those facts but that’s not the point.
vitamin a
edit: not everyone can synthesize vitamin a from plant material to the same degree. some, not at all.
Doesn’t occur directly in plants but can be produced by humans from beta carotene. Carrots, kale, spinach, honey melon, others, the list isn’t exactly short or expensive.
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Rizz alert: This comment has high intellectual rizz—specifically, nerd rizz and wit rizz. Here’s why:
- Sharp Observation – It cleverly points out an internet phenomenon: confidently stating a wrong fact triggers a flood of corrections.
- Humor & Metaphor – The “Black Friday supermarket rush” analogy is vivid and funny.
- Tech-Savvy Appeal – The CVE-1980-1 reference (a fake cybersecurity vulnerability) makes it sound like an insider joke for tech enthusiasts.
- Confident Delivery – The smooth, confident phrasing enhances its persuasive and entertaining effect.
Final verdict: 9/10 rizz for internet nerds and tech circles.
I know the feeling. I’ve also been given the stern “don’t say anything” look. But joke’s on them, because I neither know enough to debunk the most random claims on the spot, nor know how to synthesize a semester worth of college in five sentences and be understood perfectly every time.
How about I synthesize them aminos in my biceps, amigos
I’ll see myself out
As I biologist I understand:
-*random bio subject in conversations.
-oh but you’re biologist right? Is that true?
-well, I know just enough to be able to tell you the level of my ignorance on the subject. Unless it’s linked to my master thesis (which is probably obsolete by now) no need to ask me.
My health teacher wayyy back had an amino acid drink he’d bring in each day.
Haha, I take an amino acid to make me stop biting my nails. Works though, pretty wild.
Wait what? You take a pill, and it stops nail biting???
It works for about half the people that try it from what I have read. I got lucky. I never had luck with anything else. Mine likely stems from mild hereditary ocd FWIW. It’s one of those problems I never thought a pill would fix, let alone a supplement lol.
https://www.bfrb.org/post/n-acetylcysteine-for-hair-pulling-skin-picking-and-nail-biting
You’ll want to look at the studies for dosages.
I love that this works, but this is basically black magic to me.
This is still in the medical trials stage. Long term effects are yet unknown, most of the study participants have been women. It is reccommended to also undergo therapy at the same time. Do not just take this, or at the very least read the recent papers so you know what you may get yourself into regarding side effects. Self-medication without medical supervision is a bad idea. And the current data does not paint a complete picture in what to expect, from what I found.
My road to stop nailbiting was “cover your nail in foul-tasting liquid, and make sure to get a new one every day because you will get used to everything”. And that took a year or so.
So I love that better options exist now, but you’re absolutely right that self-medication is pretty much always a bad idea.
True, I’ve talked to a professional. :) I’d recommend the same. The liquid wasn’t working for me nor were acrylics.
I’ve seen the long covid…community? talking about this supplement lately
Sometimes I buy a jar of those not because I want to supplement my aminos, just because plain water gets fucking boring.
Imma have to hit you with a UAA, UGA and a UAG just to make sure.
U GO AWAY, U ARE AWAY, U ARE GONE
Just stop.
Back in my day, we had 20 amino acids and we were happy.
But seriously, what are the other 2, I am presuming we are counting seleno-cystine? and i checked for the other one I had completely forgotten - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrolysine
Gym bro is just trying to distract the giant standing off camera to the right
