Men don’t seem to benefit as much from a healthy diet as women
Lifestyle Health Wrap #2
The goal of these Substack posts is to concisely summarize five peer-reviewed research articles about lifestyle health, making them easy to understand and therefore easy to learn from.
Nutrition
Sex differences in association of healthy eating pattern with all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality | DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-19883-y | Publication Date: August 30, 2024 | N = 39,567 U.S. adults1 | Method: prospective2
This study essentially found that men don’t seem to benefit as much from a healthy diet as women do. Here’s what they say in the results section of the abstract:
Compared to the lowest quartile of [Healthy Eating Index], the all-cause mortality rate of females and males in the highest quartile array decreased by 34% (HR3 0.66 [95% CI 0.55–0.8]) and 15% (HR 0.85 [95% CI 0.73–0.99]), respectively.
This means that for females who were among the top 25% in terms of how healthy their diet was, their risk of death was 34% lower than for females who were in the lowest 25% based on Healthy Eating Index (HEI) scores. Whereas for men, the healthiest 25% were only 15% less likely to die than the unhealthiest 25%, again, based on HEI scores.
They go on to say:
In the adult population of the U.S., there are more opportunities for females to reduce the risk of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular mortality from the same dose of healthy dietary intake than males. These findings could reduce the risk of death by motivating the population, especially females, to consume healthy dietary components, especially vegetables and dairy products.
Sorry ladies…
Edit: Well, actually sorry men…
Men can't benefit as much as women from a good diet, but I originally said “sorry to ladies” because I was thinking about the fact that they can't make the excuse that a healthy diet won't benefit them that much, whereas men seemingly have somewhat of an excuse given the results of this research.
So let’s hope the findings of this study aren’t used to justify unfair gender norms, that is, these results shouldn't be used to justify holding women to a higher dietary standard. Either way, when it comes to sexual attraction, men are generally still going to care more about the weight of women than women care about it for men4, and weight is something that is somewhat controllable, whereas women are generally going to care more about the height of men than men care about the height of women5, and height is something that is not controllable.6
Exercise
Effects of Interrupting Prolonged Sitting with Light-Intensity Physical Activity on Inflammatory and Cardiometabolic Risk Markers in Young Adults with Overweight and Obesity: Secondary Outcome Analyses of the SED-ACT Randomized Controlled Crossover Trial | DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.3390/biom14081029 | Publication Date: | N = 17 | Method: randomized controlled trial
This study is pretty complicated and also secondary to this primary study, which perhaps I’ll cover in a future wrap, so I’ll keep things pretty concise, obviously if you want to learn more, the link to the paper is above.
Essentially what they found in this study is that compared to an 8-hour workday of continuous sitting, a work day with intermittent or continuous walking resulted in improved biomarkers related to inflammation and cardiometabolic (read: heart and metabolism) health at the end of the day. The study doesn’t seem to have been single-blinded7
Sleep
Association between sleep quality and living environment among Chinese older persons: a cross-sectional study | DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41105-023-00510-z | Publication Date: January 17, 2024 | N = 62118 | Method: Cross-sectional survey
“This study explored the relationship between sleep quality and living environment of older persons in China to provide a theoretical basis for therapies to alleviate sleep disorders in older persons.”
They found that “living alone and living in a rural area were significantly associated with a high incidence of sleep disorders in older persons.” They also found that “living near a park or foot paths suitable for exercise or walking was significantly associated with a lower incidence of sleep disorders in older persons” and “female sex and depression were also associated with sleep quality in older persons.” They phrased that last part in a confusing way as it suggests that female sex and depression are positively associated with sleep quality, but the odds ratios9 they list suggest that they correlate with poor sleep quality. Because this paper is pay-walled I’m not sure how to look into this.
The rural area finding here is surprising to me, you’d think living in an urban area would be correlated with worse sleep because of a greater likelihood of sleep disturbances from noise and light pollution. I guess not though. I need to dig into this more. Also the sex-linked association is quite curious, this is another topic I'd like to dig into.
The association between depression and sleep quality had the largest odds ratio, meaning compared to the other things mentioned, being depressed was most likely to pre-dispose someone to poor sleep.
I’m not sure how generalizable these findings are given the selected population (people 60 and older in a particular province of China) and the full paper is pay-walled so my ability to dig or recommend digging into the results is limited.
Stress Management
Understanding Resilience: Lifestyle-based behavioral predictors of mental health and well-being in community-dwelling older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic | DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-024-05251-3 | Publication Date: August 12, 2024 | N = 896 | Method: Longitudinal cohort study with mixed-methods10
This study examined how the COVID-19 pandemic affected older adults' mental health, well-being, and lifestyle. Results showed significant changes in mental health and behavior. Certain factors, like being male, never smoking, and better pre-pandemic sleep and computer habits, were linked to better mental health during the pandemic. The study highlights the importance of addressing social support, sleep, physical activity, and sedentary behaviors to promote resilience during future crises.11
Connection
Social relationships and mortality risk: a meta-analytic review | DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316 | Publication Date: July 27, 2010 | N = 308,849 participants accross 148 studies | Method: Meta-analysis12
“These findings indicate that the influence of social relationships on the risk of death are comparable with well-established risk factors for mortality such as smoking and alcohol consumption and exceed the influence of other risk factors such as physical inactivity and obesity.”
I think that quote from the study does the job. The scale of this study and the significance of it’s findings are profound and warrant a much deeper dive, which I plan to do eventually, probably when I write the article that is devoted to this category.13
Addendum
In the first of these posts, last week, I wrote:
I’ll treat these categories as the tentative foundations for healthy living. I say tentative because I’m only just starting this thing, and with good reason, I could be convinced to change these categories. I’ll explain the reasoning (and lack thereof) for choosing these categories in a future post.
Well I’ve already changed my mind about these categories and begun to re-write the post I had already drafted with my reasoning for them, so stay tuned for that and for next week’s post to have a different list of headers.
I kind of rushed to get this post out, so please respond via email, message me, or comment if you notice any errors.
Disclaimer: This newsletter provides health information and research for educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult a healthcare professional before making any health-related decisions. We are not medical professionals.
The scale of this study is quite impressive. The data come from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2003 to 2018, which they say is “a continuous, stratified, complex, multi-stage sampling survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States.” It’s not often that researchers get to work with data from tens of thousands of people that took 15 years to collect.
A prospective study follows a group of individuals over time to observe how particular factors (in this study, Healthy Eating Index (HEI) scores) relate to the development of specific outcomes (such as disease or mortality). Google Gemini produced this definition, though I made some edits to it.
“HR stands for hazard ratio. In this context, it's a measure of how often a particular event happens in one group compared to how often it happens in another group, over time. For example, an HR of 0.66 for females in the highest HEI quartile means that they experienced all-cause mortality 34% less often than females in the lowest HEI quartile, over the same follow-up period.” - Google Gemini’s response to “What does HR mean in this context?” I can confirm that his definition is correct, however, I do not understand why “Food 4 Thought Issue 64” was cited in this answer though I’ve kept the hyperlink to it anyway for full transparency and because given the topic of this study it is kind of serendipitous and ironic.
Here’s at least one study that points to this difference in preference: Short-term and long-term mate preference in men and women in an Iranian population. I’m almost certain there are more.
Though a small population of desperate and rich men are getting surgeries to increase their height. Look it up. It’s crazy, but apparently financially rationalizable.
This means that only the investigator doesn’t know which treatment group is which when they’re looking at the data. Because it’s an exercise study, there’s not really a way to blind the participants of their “treatment” (i.e., they know what group they were assigned to and there’s no way for them not to know).
A total of 6211 subjects > 60 years of age in Anhui Province, China, were evaluated using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index and a self-reported questionnaire.
This article explains Odds Ratio quite well.
What is a longitudinal cohort study? It’s a study that collects data from a group of people (cohort) over a period that is typically longer than a year (longitudinal). What does it mean for something to be mixed-methods? It means that both qualitative and quantitative measurements are taken. For example, qualitative measurements, like measuring mood using a psychological survey, and quantitative physical measurements, heart rate, and blood pressure. Learn more here.
Running out of time to get this published before my sister-in-laws birthday party, this summary was entirely the genius of Google Gemini working with the abstract of the study.
This is when the data from a group of studies that fit particular inclusion and exclusion criteria are analyzed as a whole. For this particular meta-analysis, 148 studies were included.
I plan to write a collection of longer pieces on the categories that I’m using as headers in these wrap newsletters.