Cardiovascular diseases don't kill as many people as stupidity

"I've already trod on dangerous ground; we're on dangerous ground right now because of our secrets and our lies. They're practically what define us. When the truth offends, we... we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes:... Lies." — Chernobyl by HBO.

Prelude

Good morning, reader. Statistics show us that the number one killer worldwide is ischaemic heart disease — an entirely preventable condition in most cases. Tens of millions of people die of it every year. Billions of dollars are spent trying to patch this issue by doing anything but what works. We now know why it develops and how to revert it — yet we do not prevent these things. Why?

Stupidity.

Unfortunately, it is the primary disease that humanity must fight against — yet we are losing the battle. Our IQ is rising rapidly due to advancements in medicine, sociology, statistics, and other fundamental sciences. However, these jumps seem insufficient for us to prosper — and this is because they are done despite humans' attitudes, not because of them.

Stupidity traveled with the speed of sound before the Internet, and now it travels with the speed of light with never seen before information dissipation capabilities. Like a meme, it is viral — because stupidity is the proliferation of ideas, often very harmful.

Stupidity is sometimes called "conventional wisdom." Unfortunately, "conventional wisdom" is rarely correct. Most of the time, it is spit out by someone called an "expert" on TV or the Internet without any scientific ground. They mostly make up a number that "sounds correct" or "seems logical" and roll with it. The media then picks it up and says it repeatedly until people start believing it. The media, the experts, and the people don't care whether the "facts" are correct. They've heard it "on TV" and believed it. "Millions of flies can't be all wrong; there is something in that pile of shit they're feeding on."

Now, here's the saddest part of it all: no amount of evidence or logic can remove this stupidity from people. "Conventional wisdom" is often comforting, and people feel personally attacked when you're questioning it. See, you're not proving that a particular fact is fake. You're trying to challenge the intellect of the person you're talking to! I know you don't. I know you mean well, but the people you're talking to don't know that. They are more eager to die of a heart attack than be wrong for 5 seconds and question their beliefs for another 10 seconds.

If you think you're not like "them people," keep reading the article. If you disagree with anything I write below or even rage quit the article, you are a part of the problem. What's that feeling you're getting? "You can't always be right!" Yes, I can, and in this article, I am right in 100% of the claims I'm making. I carefully selected them and checked the science. Hell, I wrote and published a book on most points below!

"But where are the sources? There are no links!" Of course, there are no links. Didn't you read the previous paragraphs? No amount of evidence or logic will ever change your mind. You have pre-selected your opinions, and this action shut down both your critical thinking and openmindedness in one quick strike. The correct way of approaching any question is to find and read the data for and against a specific point of view and then decide. When was the last time you did this? "I did it last week!" Stop lying. You know you didn't. You can't talk to me. There is no comment section here. You're speaking to yourselves right now and lying only to yourselves. Why? Because being open-minded and challenging your beliefs is uncomfortable.

You physically cannot do this. You're a part of the problem. This article will be fully read by like a dozen of people who are my close friends. Hell, even my family members will quit it. They probably already have! And even the ones that will finish this article will be like, "Yes, but..." No "buts," stupid. These things below are all true, whether you like them or not. In fact, your attitude towards facts does not change the facts. This is why knowing the truth does not change the truth. You should always opt for truth because truth can't hurt. What, you disagree? Or maybe you simply don't like what I'm saying?

So how to fix this? The answer is so simple yet so unattainable. We need to educate people systematically. We must foster critical thinking and resilience to shutter our fragile egos and identities. This will not happen, so we must learn to live with it. Firstly, people actively avoid being educated (for the above reasons). Secondly, the institutes that can overcome this inertness benefit from an uneducated populace and will do anything to keep the status quo (unless you're Norwegian or Icelandic, in this case, kudos to you!)

The worst part is that there is no way to fix the issue's root. Eradicating stupidity will never happen unless we start educating people correctly, which means it will never happen. The best we can do? Help select individuals by educating them because we care about them. However, remember that even if you love the person more than anyone else, statistically, they will still reject your evidence in favor of "conventional wisdom." You're right to be angry — but not at them, at the world and the system.

Let's recap before we head into the main section:

• "Conventional wisdom" is mostly random facts made up by "experts" on the spot to sound more intelligent.
• These random facts are mostly wrong and harmful. They either actively harm people by making them do stupid things or prevent them from doing smart things by diverting the only limited resource — time — from what matters.
• These random facts are comforting and rapidly become a part of one's identity. Any evidence contradicting "the fact" becomes a personal attack when you believe "the fact." Even if "the fact" is complete and utter nonsense. Knocking on the wood much? What, you feel personally offended?
• No matter how much logic and evidence you present to a person that believes some "conventional wisdom," they will not change their mind. Feel free to quit citing the sources.
• If you think this doesn't happen to you (i.e., "I'm not stupid"), keep reading this article. You are a part of the problem. Statistically, you are also avoiding education because it hurts your feelings, you special snowflake.
• The best thing we can do is change the educational system. But this will never happen. The second best thing is to try to educate people around you. But this will statistically fail more often than not. Everyone who has tried to change a loved opinion on anything knows this.

Let's begin the cleansing. Prepare your anuses because they will be enraged in the holy flame. Sharpen your pitchforks and light your torches — alas, you can't use them because the author of this article is well-prepared and too lazy to turn on comments.

The easy part

Some "conventional wisdom" is absurd enough for you to search the Internet to debunk it quickly. It shouldn't offend you too much, my special snowflake. You have deeper issues than I can cover in one article if it does.

• 10,000 steps a day is a lie. 3800 steps per day is enough to reap benefits.
• 8 glasses of water a day is a lie. Drink when you feel like it.
• Nicotine and tobacco don't have a safe dose. They cause cancer. Stop smoking cigarettes, cigars, and vaping. Yes, even occasionally, don't smoke or vape.
• Sugar is terrible for your health. Evaporated can juice is sugar. Honey is sugar. Agave is sugar. Maple syrup is sugar. Pop/soda is sugar. Anything sweet is sugar (except berries, eat as many as possible).
• It is crucial to get enough protein per day. It doesn't matter when. 1.4g of protein for 1kg of body weight per day should be enough.
• You must do health checks at least annually. Check your hormone levels and do the usual bloodwork.
• Do genetic testing. It is way cheaper on Black Friday. You're looking for the most obvious genetic disease markers.
• Most fitness trackers nowadays are accurate enough, even the cheapest ones. There are no consumer devices that measure sleep accurately enough.
• Wear sunscreen. Modern sunscreen does not hurt you. It doesn't hurt your vitamins or the essential things you get from the Sun. You will still get all the benefits of sunlight without all the cancers.
• Caffeine after noon kills good sleep. Caffeine comes with coffee, tea, soda, chocolate, cocoa, etc.
• Willpower does not work. If you don't want to do something, make it impossible in your environment (e.g., don't buy sugar if you don't want to eat sugar, not eating sugar starts when grocery shopping). If you're going to do something, make it easy in your environment (e.g., if you want to go to the gym 3 times a week, move to an apartment next door).

The important part

Now, the most crucial things you must be educated on are hard to accept. And even if you do fully accept them, you will question yourselves daily because everyone (I'm not exaggerating — everyone!) will tell you how wrong you are. You will not be able to change people's minds on these points. The best thing you can do is to research and educate yourselves and your loved ones. You have a very slim chance that your environment will be healthy and productive. An oasis amongst this desert of inertness with scorching Sun that's actively trying to kill you.

• Coffee has no long-term harmful side effects below 400mg per day dose (around 4 cups). Coffee has tremendous benefits for your health unless you're amongst very few caffeine-sensitive people (then drink tea).
• Food that you derive from animals kills you. It gives you cancer, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, etc. Go vegan but watch protein intake, iron, and b12. You're probably low on protein if you don't feel well on a vegan diet.
• The bioavailability of protein is a myth. Plant protein is as good as animal protein at gaining and maintaining lean mass.
• Your diet should have fat, protein, and carbs. It should also include a variety of micronutrients like vitamins, minerals, and a lot of antioxidants.
• Keto does not work in the long term. All the benefits are short-term and live for a couple of years. That's why many people praise keto in the short term but never stick to it for longer.
• Sodium leads to cardiovascular diseases. Stop eating salt, and watch out for sodium on the nutritional labels.
• Aliens are real, and they've been to Earth tens of thousands of times. We have thousands of reports from people who only experienced negativity after speaking out. Don't believe me; go read the reports and the official responses. The "rational explanation" is sometimes absurd — e.g., a trained pilot crashing because they were "chasing Venus." Again, go read the reports.
• Alcohol kills you. There is no safe dose. Not even a glass of wine in the evening. The best thing you can do for longevity is to stop drinking any amount of alcohol. I'd suggest even changing the mouthwash to the one without alcohol.
• Fluoride is safe and does not cause harm in the dose in the toothpaste that you spit out anyway. Using fluoride toothpaste decreases cavities drastically.
• Gum health (which is why you need fluoride and flossing) is a direct proxy of overall health. Make sure your gums are healthy.
• Marijuana and psilocybin are safe. They are not gateway drugs. They do not have long-term adverse effects (unless you smoke large doses daily, believe me, you don't). Psilocybin does not affect your bodily functions; it only temporarily affects the psyche.
• Exercising when trying to lose weight helps to gain weight. Do not go to a gym or do cardio on a calorie deficit. "Skinny fat" is a myth — "skinny fat" is just fat.
• The only way to lose weight is calorie restriction. Any diet you pick will only work because when switching, you inadvertently cause a calorie deficit.
• If you count all the calories when losing weight (you should), never trust your judgment like "I know how many calories there are in this dish." No, you do not. Weigh your food.
• Intermittent fasting is safe and healthy. You don't feel hungry outside the eating window due to how Ghrelin works. You cannot get gastroenterological issues by practicing intermittent fasting.
• Exercising when sick or ill only makes your recovery period longer.
• Endurance athletes have worse cardiovascular health than people with healthy diets and habits.
• China must be punished for the genocide of the Uyghurs, specifically by Muslim communities worldwide. This case's silence and inaction tell you everything you need to know.
• Europe (in particular, Sweden) must solve its immigrant crime crisis. Look at how Canada handles refugees and learn from the countries that don't have rising crime but still offer healthy immigration programs.
• The USA must make obtaining and licensing guns similar to Canada and Switzerland. There should be no debate when school shootings happen weekly.
• All the medical care in the world should be social and paid for by the governments.
• "Paid for by the government" means paid by the citizens from the taxes. Government should negotiate with medical workers, not with insurance companies.
• All politicians are paid for by the citizens. All politicians are responsible to all the citizens. Politicians must give up personal life for the service of their people. Politicians must be the most transparent people in the world.
• Free speech must be limited by an independent agent. Otherwise, lie firehosing will win. And it wins right now. Look at how many people in the West believe Russia is somehow winning the war with Ukraine.
• No, Russia is not winning the war. Also, Russian institutes are corrupt and are strong only for shows. Saying that "but Russia does X right" is misleading. Russia does nothing right (I'm talking as a person who grew up there).
• Politicians must face jail time if they don't deliver on promises. This must be strictly enforced.
• In fact, all the laws must be strictly enforced except for formal independent processes of disputing the rulings. It should not matter who you are. You always need to follow the law and be punished for breaking it.
• Epstein did not kill himself. Stop laughing; it's not a meme. Find all people whom he sold underage sex and jail them.
• AI is here, and it's here to stay. If you don't use AI today, you will be lightyears behind in a few years.
• "Can't be evil" is always better than "Don't be evil." The systems must be designed so that institutes cannot do anything evil. If institutes could do evil things, they would, no matter what they say.
• If you're doing something (e.g., acupuncture) that has no effects in clinical trials, you're actively taking away time from doing what does help. You could have spent 30 minutes stretching rather than paying a premium to a person to crack your joints.
• Vaccines work. Do vaccinate. Stop this bullshit with side effects. If there are side effects, clinical trials show them. If there are no short-term severe side effects, chances are, there will be no severe long-term side effects. The alternative is bringing back polio and smallpox, killing 1/3 of the population and blinding or deafening a large portion of the rest.  
• There are no "alphas" or "betas," neither in human societies nor in wolf packs. This concept was made up and later debunked by the person who made it up.
• Languages and dialects are fake constructs. There are dialects so different that they could be separate languages, and languages so similar they must be dialects.
• There is no "right" language or dialect. If you're one of these "grammar-nazis," first decide what language you're trying to protect. Today's? Last century's? Previous millennia? Yeah, I thought so; you don't know nothing about your language history that you're trying to protect. That double negation I used? It was a formal way of speaking a hundred years ago.
• Gender is a fake construct. You shouldn't care if someone wants to self-identify as an apple or an Apache attack helicopter in case they aren't privileged. Call yourself a potato for what I care; if you feel more comfortable if I do so, so be it. I'm not an asshole that makes you feel bad for no reason.
• Stop caring whom people sleep with if these are consenting adults. The state should not interfere in what happens in bedrooms between consenting adults.
• Children cannot be coerced into becoming a part of LGBTQ+. If they could, one of your heterosexual friends should have switched recently. Or, in case you're heterosexual, can you imagine yourselves a part of LGBTQ+? Precisely. Sexuality is something you're born with.
• Abortions should be legal. It drastically brings down crime and increases the quality of life of everyone in the country.
• The war on drugs should cease now; it evidently doesn't work. Instead, the state should listen to science and support the transition of drug addicts back into communities. We have theories that work in other countries, and we must use them.
• People should not vote for any radical policies. The truth is always somewhere between the right and the left. Both the right and the left are more often wrong than right. Science, statistics, and sociology should propose policies.
• You don't desire anything that people in your environment didn't desire before. Choose your environment carefully.
• Death is preventable. There is no theoretical limit to how long our consciousness can last.
• No, you wouldn't get bored if you lived forever. Earth and Solar System have infinite things to do.
• No, you wouldn't be unhealthy if you lived forever. Life extension advancements will also extend the health span (amount of "healthy" years you get).
• Your religion tells you outright to never hurt any other living being. You still do. It isn't your religion that sucks. It's you who suck.
• The real battlefield isn't between races, countries, nations, regions, or nuclear warheads. The real battlefield lies between the rich and the poor. And the poor are losing fast and hard.
• Authoritarian regimes suck. People are miserable when living under them. There are no long-term benefits in authoritarian regimes, only the short-term gains that will be disastrous shortly.
• If a democracy looks like an authoritarian regime — it's not a democracy; it's an authoritarian regime. E.g., Russia, Turkey, China, Afganistan, etc.
• Democracies must stop all trade with all authoritarian regimes. Without an incentive to stop, countries won't change.
• Human rights must be enforced across the globe. If a country commits an infraction, it should be punished by sanctions or cut off from trade with any other country.
• Climate change is real. Climate change is killing people now, and the death rate will only accelerate. CO2 emissions should stop now, and all the infrastructure must be converted to green energy. It will be uncomfortable at first, but we will survive.
• We have a billion people suffering from obesity and a billion people suffering from malnutrition. Move the food from those with obesity to the hungry ones. Set up the infrastructure to make this sustainable.
• Nuclear power is safe. Germany is stupid in the decision to cease it and replace it with coal. What the hell, Germany. We must advance nuclear plants beyond the technology of the 1980s.
• Opting for natural instead of artificial is wrong. The natural banana you eat was bred to not have 80% of its content to be inedible seeds. Do you know what else is natural? Cancer, polio, stillbirths, genetic disorders, child mortality, cataract, losing eyesight, did I say cancer yet? If you had a pill that could give you a 100% chance of not dying from cancer without any side effects, you would be extremely stupid not to take it.
• GMOs are good. They do not affect your DNA. They bring no harm with infinite upsides. In fact, remember that banana that you just ate? Yes, GMO. Feeling like growing a banana from your genitals yet?
• Trust the peer-reviewed research. Yes, it isn't ideal, but it is as close as possible to the truth. The alternative is either unreviewed anecdotal evidence or no evidence at all.
• Churchill lived to be 90 while heavily drinking and smoking. He also had many strokes and was paralyzed for the last decade of his life. Wanna do the same?
• When someone tells you that "people doing X probably also did Y" in scientific research, they mean confounding variables (but for some reason, they don't know the term itself). Researchers and their peers know about confounding variables and usually correct the results to account for them. It is the most obvious, and the first question a person asks about any research.

Uncomfortable with something in the list above? Of course, you are. Again, you are a part of the problem! I can guess exactly what you will do after reading the points above, one of the following:

• If you don't like science, you will dismiss one or more points above and keep living as usual, killing yourselves and dying of preventable diseases.
• If you're into science, you will find a paper that contradicts one of the points above (without trying to prove that point because you don't like it), and you will be satisfied: "The point debunked, in your face, author!" What's even worse, your brain will "debunk" one point, but you'll equate this to all the points being false.

And you know what, I'm fed up with this. The worst part is that people don't silently disagree. They try to ridicule the person who wants to set the facts straight. And we can't blame these people; even the most brilliant people in the world (including Einstein in his time) cannot change their minds. Science advances one funeral at a time — the new scientific truth only becomes accepted when all the proponents of the old status quo die and are replaced by the new generation that grew up with an alternative. If the institute that must bring enlightenment to the masses is itself corrupted by stupidity — how can we have any hope?

In fact, all hope is already lost. People were stupid, are stupid, and will always be stupid. People will keep dying from preventable causes. Governments will keep doing nothing against it (except Norway and Iceland; good job, Norway and Iceland — but also, your weather sucks).

Conclusion

So what can we do? Nothing. We can keep telling our loved ones that they are making mistakes. Having these long discussions that exhaust both parties. It is difficult, but it must be done if you want your loved ones to live longer healthier, more productive lives. They will reject you repeatedly. They will laugh at you. They will be angry with you. It will not work statistically, and you will spoil your relationships. But it is worth it.

As for the other people around you? Screw them. Guess what? They are so ignorant and ridiculously up their asses that they didn't even read till this point in the article. That's why I can openly insult them. It's you and me here alone now. You cannot change them. The only change that takes hold is negative. Look at how Jordan Peterson coerced millions of men into being misogynistic bigots by ridiculing a small part of the "liberal left." So if you want to cause damage — go ahead, do so. It is apparently elementary to do so.

But if you want to make the whole world better, don't try. You will lose your life in the battles. Move to a better country with better democratic institutes, job opportunities, and government. There are no ideal countries, but some are closer to healthy communities. If you live in Iran, just move to Canada. Living in Russia? Move wherever. Living in North Korea? Damn, stop reading; your police officer is already on his way to arrest you for reading this article.

Breath in. Breath out. I know, I know, believe me, I know. It's outrageous and ridiculous. People are stupid. People are dying. You cannot do anything about it.

Now, forgive them for killing themselves and wasting their time. Stop talking to them. Talk to the people who will listen. Focus on your loved ones. Your time is finite.

Stupidity is infinite.