Quality of this study aside, and n of 1 here, my own state of mind, clarity of thought, and sleep are all noticeably better when I'm eating 2 or 3 eggs a day, 3 to 5 days a week. (I might go 7 days, but an independent value placed on dietary variety prevents that--perhaps foolishly when I notice what I'm eating on off days instead of the eggs.)
Regardless, this whole eggs-are-evil thing has probably done more to harm the health of Westerners than any other dietary advice, with the possible exception of the fat-is-evil nonsense.
Given that a great number of Westerns are overweight, it's probably appropriate for them to act as though "fat is evil" due to calorie density. Plus: saturated fat should be avoided; this is another thing Westerners are likely to be getting too much of.
Do you think the eggs are causing the better sleep, or are you more likely to have the energy to make eggs in the morning if you’d had a good night’s sleep?
It seems the eggs improve the sleep, because after poor sleep, eggs the following day seem to have an effect on breaking the poor-sleep doom loop (which is: poor sleep elevates cortisol, adrenaline, heart rate, junk-food cravings, and the need for caffeine--all of which contribute to another night of bad sleep). Not sure if it's the choline, which eggs have a lot of, or the egg-generated satiety that helps prevent eating too much. I think it may be the choline because when I'm otherwise eating high-choline foods such as red meat, my sleep is also better.
I know you’re joking, but possible causal path here:
People with Alzheimer’s lose ability to use stove -> eat simpler less involved breakfasts -> eats less eggs
You can, but people don't as a general rule. It's a traditional food prepared traditionally. And importantly, another thing early Alzheimers cases don't do is learn new cooking hacks.
> In addition, to evaluate potential bias because of unmeasured systematic differences between consumers and nonconsumers, we conducted a sensitivity analysis excluding vegans. Vegans comprised a substantial portion of the zero egg consumption group, which could disproportionately influence this group, and they often differ in other lifestyle or health-related characteristics.
So they eliminated vegans from the sensitivity analysis despite them comprising a substantial portion of the no-egg group.
If the analysis doesn’t hold with vegans included, it’s probably saying a lot about dairy rather than eggs.
Adventists are okay with meat as long as it’s kosher generally.
I think the bigger factor is that they’re teetotalers.
My data points, though: two of my vegetarian teetotaling Adventist family members died of Alzheimer’s. The lifestyle is clearly not a cheat code for defeating dementia.
I grew up SDA. We ate eggs. Meat (beef, chicken, fish with scale and fins) was not forbidden but it was looked down upon. Potlucks were the worst since i was (am) a picky eater. No meat in sight. Mostly grey lumps in white gravy-ish sauce. I would survive on shells and cheese, mashed potatoes, and fruit salad.
It's possible we were just bad SDAs though. I've met some hardcore SDAs. I imagine how I felt about them was how "regular" Christians felt about me.
Sorry, this is way more information than you asked for...
They do. These days generally the main prohibition is pig derived products, but plenty of SDAs still choose to be vegetarian. I'm not an SDA, but my daughter is.
A core part of the scientific method is that you attempt to isolate a single variable at a time. If anything, all this suggests is that this was a better diet-controlled sample population for measuring the correlation of eggs and Alzheimer's than the general public. That said, the methodology of this study does not allow for inferring a relationship between Alzheimer's and meat consumption in either direction.
There could be an interaction with the diet though. For example, what if the nutrient in eggs that prevents Alzheimer's is something that also occurs in meat?
Also, it seems likely that among this population many of those who don't or rarely consume eggs are vegan or almost vegan, so it might be more accurate to say that veganism is correlated with Alzheimer's.
Not necessarily. Looking before crossing the street is inversely correlated with getting hit by a truck. Getting trucked is inversely correlated with getting mauled by a lion (most places with wild lions are light on road traffic). Doesn't mean that looking both ways will increase your odds of becoming lion chow though.
I’m copying this comment from discussion two months ago
> Caveat:
> > Funding [...] The analyses in this study were supported by an investigator-initiated grant from the American Egg Board. [...]
So one of those egg council creeps got to you too huh?
(Sonic voice) Foiled your plans again, Eggman!
Quality of this study aside, and n of 1 here, my own state of mind, clarity of thought, and sleep are all noticeably better when I'm eating 2 or 3 eggs a day, 3 to 5 days a week. (I might go 7 days, but an independent value placed on dietary variety prevents that--perhaps foolishly when I notice what I'm eating on off days instead of the eggs.)
Regardless, this whole eggs-are-evil thing has probably done more to harm the health of Westerners than any other dietary advice, with the possible exception of the fat-is-evil nonsense.
Given that a great number of Westerns are overweight, it's probably appropriate for them to act as though "fat is evil" due to calorie density. Plus: saturated fat should be avoided; this is another thing Westerners are likely to be getting too much of.
Do you think the eggs are causing the better sleep, or are you more likely to have the energy to make eggs in the morning if you’d had a good night’s sleep?
It seems the eggs improve the sleep, because after poor sleep, eggs the following day seem to have an effect on breaking the poor-sleep doom loop (which is: poor sleep elevates cortisol, adrenaline, heart rate, junk-food cravings, and the need for caffeine--all of which contribute to another night of bad sleep). Not sure if it's the choline, which eggs have a lot of, or the egg-generated satiety that helps prevent eating too much. I think it may be the choline because when I'm otherwise eating high-choline foods such as red meat, my sleep is also better.
Why would having alzheimer's reduce people's desire to eat eggs?
I know you’re joking, but possible causal path here: People with Alzheimer’s lose ability to use stove -> eat simpler less involved breakfasts -> eats less eggs
You can make eggs in a microwave (critically so long as you don't do it in the shell)
You can, but people don't as a general rule. It's a traditional food prepared traditionally. And importantly, another thing early Alzheimers cases don't do is learn new cooking hacks.
Some previous discussion 2 months ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48038873
> In addition, to evaluate potential bias because of unmeasured systematic differences between consumers and nonconsumers, we conducted a sensitivity analysis excluding vegans. Vegans comprised a substantial portion of the zero egg consumption group, which could disproportionately influence this group, and they often differ in other lifestyle or health-related characteristics.
So they eliminated vegans from the sensitivity analysis despite them comprising a substantial portion of the no-egg group.
If the analysis doesn’t hold with vegans included, it’s probably saying a lot about dairy rather than eggs.
Since the study was done on Seventh Day Adventists, it's worth noting that they are all vegetarian, so no meat based protein options here...
Adventists are okay with meat as long as it’s kosher generally.
I think the bigger factor is that they’re teetotalers.
My data points, though: two of my vegetarian teetotaling Adventist family members died of Alzheimer’s. The lifestyle is clearly not a cheat code for defeating dementia.
I guess I gotta be the one to ask -- so do you recall if they ate eggs ?
I grew up SDA. We ate eggs. Meat (beef, chicken, fish with scale and fins) was not forbidden but it was looked down upon. Potlucks were the worst since i was (am) a picky eater. No meat in sight. Mostly grey lumps in white gravy-ish sauce. I would survive on shells and cheese, mashed potatoes, and fruit salad.
It's possible we were just bad SDAs though. I've met some hardcore SDAs. I imagine how I felt about them was how "regular" Christians felt about me.
Sorry, this is way more information than you asked for...
They do. These days generally the main prohibition is pig derived products, but plenty of SDAs still choose to be vegetarian. I'm not an SDA, but my daughter is.
About half of the study participants were non-vegetarian, IIUC. I wonder if they found any correlation after slicing by vegetarianism?
A core part of the scientific method is that you attempt to isolate a single variable at a time. If anything, all this suggests is that this was a better diet-controlled sample population for measuring the correlation of eggs and Alzheimer's than the general public. That said, the methodology of this study does not allow for inferring a relationship between Alzheimer's and meat consumption in either direction.
There could be an interaction with the diet though. For example, what if the nutrient in eggs that prevents Alzheimer's is something that also occurs in meat?
Also, it seems likely that among this population many of those who don't or rarely consume eggs are vegan or almost vegan, so it might be more accurate to say that veganism is correlated with Alzheimer's.
It is very difficult to do that in biological systems where doing A in isolation can have the opposite effect of doing A while also doing B.
eggs are a highly concentrated natural source of choline. meat does contain choline but nowhere near as much as eggs.
drawing the connection between cholinergic activity and alzheimers is left as an exercise for the unaware reader.
Now do dairy products.
I tried to look, but the google captcha wouldn't let me, finally gave up trying.
Cancer is also inversely correlated with alzheimer's.
Phrased another way, egg consumption is correlated with cancer.
Not necessarily. Looking before crossing the street is inversely correlated with getting hit by a truck. Getting trucked is inversely correlated with getting mauled by a lion (most places with wild lions are light on road traffic). Doesn't mean that looking both ways will increase your odds of becoming lion chow though.
I'm not sure what this strawman is going on about, but the cancer-alzheimer's inverse correlation is a well known phenomenon
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41514-026-00442-1
Correlation is not causation