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
Well, biochemists do know the structure of amino acids, so it's technically correct. The fact they know more makes this situation even more probable.
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
Also, cholesterol is one of the main ingredients our cell membranes are made of.
a PE teacher
The old gag:
Those who can, do
Those who can't, teach
Those who can't teach, teach Phys Ed
Those 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.
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 " 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?
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.
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
Everyone starts somewhere.
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.
the "sad" reality of fitness is that it just boils down to "do exercise, eat 2 hours before an intense workout, creatine helps give a little strength boost".
There's no magical thing you can do to make things easier/faster other than just going harder or, you know, steroids (which has obvious downsides). And everything else that people tend to worry about, like the precise amount of protein to eat, is just.. like yeah it has an effect but if you just do shitloads of workouts and eat when you're hungry it's basically impossible to not get stronger.
Fundamentally you're right. If you get absolutely everything 100% scientifically perfect for you, your circumstances, your genetics, etc you will always see better results than the person eyeballing it. But its like 200% more effort for an extra 25% gains, the minutiae of this shit goes as deep as you care to look and thats what drowns a lot of new enthusiasts.
I personally take it a step further and question whether the extra 25% is worth it at all.
Even creatine has its downsides, in that it’s a powder you have to pay for and remember to choke down every day. And in the end, all you get is the same progress you would have gotten anyway, just a bit faster.
For me, who cares if what took you 5 years could have been done in 4 if everything was “optimal”? Why are we so obsessed with “optimizing” everything, when in reality this mindset just results in 90% of people giving up?
*I should add I have no critique of someone who wants for themselves every possible advantage, or educates others about it. But presenting these things as being synonymous with the gym is a huge public disservice. It would be like aggressively trying to funnel every single person who wants to buy a car into becoming an F1 driver
Gym bro is just trying to distract the giant standing off camera to the right
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
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.
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
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Rules
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