Does anyone know anybody who has been keto & died from Covid-19?

(Edith) #41

Once they’re at the hospital, they will no longer be in ketosis due to hospital food, glucose IVs, etc.

(Polly) #42

I want to give you many more than just one like for this!

(Jack Bennett) #43

That’s pretty much how I feel. I wear a mask because it’s socially expected, makes some people feel better, and gets people off your back for not wearing a mask.

But if you gave me the choice of:

  1. Never wear a mask and have excellent metabolic health
  2. Always wear a mask and have “average American” metabolic health

I know which one I would choose. Of course, it’s not really a fair comparison because health is better than a mask. But even if we consider only covid, I suspect metabolic health is far more protective than diligent mask wearing.

(Doug) #44

I was thinking of getting them early, but UGH - those IVs… :rage:

(Jane) #45

No argument there. It’s shocking how much healthier the Swedes and the Dutch are compared to us.

I’d like to strangle Ancel Keyes if he were still alive!

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #46

Other options might be

  • Never wear a mask and have “average American” metabolic health
  • Always wear a mask and have excellent metabolic health

I believe I would opt for the latter.

(Jack Bennett) #47

For sure - the either-or I set up was a very artificial thought experiment. I suspect, though can’t prove, that superb metabolic health would be more protective against covid than masks.

Of course, in a real-world game, you might as well take every advantage offered to you - masks, isolation, personal health, and whatever else you can get.

(bulkbiker) #48

If it were an “option” then I’d go for 1 every time.
Here in the UK it’s mandatory in shops (crazy I know).

(Ethan) #49

Except that it is not crazy.

(Kenny Croxdale) #50

Why

Why do you want to know?

It appears that the Ketogenic Diet may have some benefits in this area…

Ketogenic diet helps tame flu virus
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191115190327.htm#:~:text=Summary%3A,according%20to%20a%20new%20study.

Mice fed a ketogenic diet were better able to combat the flu virus than mice fed food high in carbohydrates, according to a new Yale University study published Nov. 15 in the journal Science Immunology .

They showed that mice fed a ketogenic diet and infected with the influenza virus had a higher survival rate than mice on a high-carb normal diet. Specifically, the researchers found that the ketogenic diet triggered the release of gamma delta T cells, immune system cells that produce mucus in the cell linings of the lung – while the high-carbohydrate diet did not.

Kenny Croxdale

(bulkbiker) #51

Completely ineffective then…
Unless it’s your habit to go around coughing and sneezing on other people… in my world that’s considered quite rude.

(Ethan) #52

Or talking or breathing or singing…

#53

A study published in September by the CDC compared 154 case-patients, those who tested positive for COVID-19, and a control group of 160 control-participants, those who were symptomatic but tested negative.

An interesting tidbit revealed:

In the 14 days before illness onset, 71% of case-patients and 74% of control participants reported always using cloth face coverings or other mask types when in public.

Then we have the recently published Danish study that concluded:

The recommendation to wear surgical masks to supplement other public health measures did not reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection rate among wearers by more than 50% in a community with modest infection rates, some degree of social distancing, and uncommon general mask use. The data were compatible with lesser degrees of self-protection.

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817

From my honest point of view, there is inconclusive evidence for or against wearing masks. Maybe it could just boil down to, “better safe than sorry.”

But here’s my personal experience. My boss’ wife caught COVID, and they’ve been self-quarantined since last week. Now I know for a FACT that she was very faithful about wearing her mask, almost to the point of annoyance. So how did she catch it if masks are effective? :man_shrugging:

(Polly) #54

The long awaited Danish Mask Study has been published this week.

https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817

It found no significant differences between wearing a mask and not wearing a mask.

#56

Thanks for posting this, Ethan. Breathing humans are incredibly complex and we have very sophisticated filters in our noses. It’s hard to imagine them replicating a full human breathing system with those mannequins. However, this made me think of something: mouth breathing has lousy effects on our health, and one of them might be no filtering of viruses. I wonder if they’ve done a study of mouth-breathers vs nose-breathers and COVID contagion. (Mostly joking - first, I don’t know how you would set up such a study and second, there are so many negative effects from mouth-breathing that you wouldn’t know if it were the filtering specifically that caused different results.)

Personally I’m happy to wear a mask. However, my entire community has been under various levels of shutdown since March and has had mandatory masks since July*, and blaming lack of masks on the current rise in the virus is not getting us anywhere.

*legally required except indoors among family members. Obviously I don’t know for sure how strong adherence is across my whole city, but I would say I’ve seen maybe 20 full faces of strangers (except on Zoom) since March.

(Ethan) #57

The spread is mostly driven by people indoors with their small gatherings in home now. Just let them and assign them scores based on optional risk taken. When it comes time to ration treatment, the person with a better score gets the treatment

#58

Would you include other factors in the score? Efforts to improve metabolic health, for instance?

(and I suppose we could then extend this idea more generally - that folks with T2D should get less access to health care because the disease fully preventable - what else? how far would you take this?)

#59

Also - this ^ is conjecture. There might be good reason to think that it’s true, and I know that it’s what most newspapers are reporting, but actually we don’t really know. (also there are so many variables related to the tests, to the hospital admissions, etc)

#60

Then the mask mandates make even less sense, since they’re for public places and, in some locations, outdoors.

Do you think we’re being conditioned to accept home/family mask mandates?

(Ethan) #61

This is well-likely conjecture. These gatherings guarantee spread to a large enough set of people that then further spread it within their own homes to the rest of the household. I have personally witnessed this in multiple families I know. Yes, that is anecdotal but it is pretty easy to see. That is, the spread is not DIRECTLY linked to these gatherings, but they are the trigger that causes enough of an outbreak that the subsequent infections a few generations from the event are caused indirectly.

As for scoring, I am just saying… If there is only 1 hospital bed available and you have to decide between giving it to a previously healthy 30-something adult who attended a 200-person indoor wedding and an elderly person who never left the house except for doctor appointments, both with severe COVID infection, maybe the elderly person get the best despite the lower likelihood of positive outcome.