Month: October 2009

Effect of Animal Fat on Sleep?

Seth Roberts19 Comments

Recently I listened to Robert Spector discuss his book The Mom & Pop Store: How the Unsung Heros of the American Economy are Surviving and Thriving. He had a personal connection to the subject: His father was a butcher. “As I watched him trim the meat . . . ” he said at one point. I thought: Oh-oh. To “trim” meat is to cut fat off of it.

Last spring, I bought $80 of organic grass-raised pork from a farmer near Berkeley. My order included a variety of cuts. I cooked the ones I was familiar with, leaving one I’d never seen before: pork belly. Pork belly is used to make bacon. I’ve never seen it for sale in America. Ugh, I thought. Fat. It’s 80-90% fat. I too trim the fat off meat. It sat in my freezer for a long time. Finally I decided I shouldn’t waste it. I cut it into chunks which I put in miso soup and had for lunch.

That night I slept much longer than usual (8.3 hr) and woke up feeling unusually well-rested. Here is a graph that shows my sleep duration for that night and several preceding nights:

Sleeping 8.3 hours was less common than this graph may suggest. I’d moved back to Berkeley in January and from then until the miso soup had measured how long I slept on 130 nights. I’d slept more than 8.3 hours on 2 of them (2%). Even rarer was how energetic I felt the day after the miso soup. I couldn’t quantify it, but it was very rare — once in 10 years?

Was it a coincidence — that on the very day I ate far more animal fat than usual I also slept much longer than usual and had much more energy than usual the next day? Or was it cause and effect? Here’s why the second explanation — which implies that for best health I need much more animal fat than I usually get — is plausible:

1. As Spector said, butchers cut the fat off meat. The odds that our Stone-Age ancestors, living when food was sometimes scarce, did the same thing: Zero. Perhaps our meat is unnaturally low in fat. If for a long time in our evolutionary past we ate a lot of animal fat it makes sense that our bodies would be shaped to work best with that much fat.

2. Many video games, which boys enjoy, resemble hunting. I think this reflects an evolutionary past in which men hunted. If so, for a long time humans ate meat. That they ate a lot of meat is suggested by the fact that when big game went extinct (probably due to hunting) human health got worse.

3. American culture demonizes animal fat. The conclusion that animal fat is bad rests on epidemiology. Once something becomes heavily recommended or discouraged, a big problem for epidemiologists arises: the people who follow the advice are likely to be different (e.g., more disciplined, better off) than those that don’t (the healthy-user bias). As I blogged yesterday, an example is vaccine effectiveness: Those who get vaccinated are different than those who don’t.

4. Fat tastes good. Which implies we need it. We like whipped cream, butter on toast, milk in tea, and so on. Butter vastly improves toast even with my nose clipped. Long ago, when this fat-pleasure connection evolved, dietary fat was mostly animal fat and fish oil.

All this makes it plausible that animal fat is good for us. That’s not surprising. Based on Weston Price’s observations plus these four arguments, I already believed this. Many people believe this. The interesting idea suggested by my data is the possibility of measuring its benefits quickly, by measuring brain function. My experience suggested that animal fat improves brain function quickly. Brain function is easier to measure than the functioning of other parts of the body. By measuring my sleep, my energy, or something else controlled by the brain, maybe I can figure out the optimal amount of animal fat. This is what happened with omega-3. The idea that omega-3 is good wasn’t new; the novelty was the ability to measure its benefits quickly. (At first I measured my balance, later other things controlled by the brain.) With a fast measure I could determine the optimal amount. It’s likely that what’s optimal for the brain is optimal for the rest of the body, just as all the electric appliances in your house work best with the same house current. If you figure out the best current for one appliance, you are probably simultaneously optimizing all of them.

The Campaign Against Medical Hypotheses

Seth Roberts13 Comments

Dennis Mangan writes here about the campaign to destroy the journal Medical Hypotheses because its editor dared to publish an article by Peter Duesberg and others questioning that HIV causes AIDS.

The campaign is associated with AIDSTruth.org, which says it is about “the scientific evidence for HIV/AIDS.” A dead giveaway. When I was a senior in college, I wrote a paper called “The Scientific _______” in which I said that use of the term scientific is a sign that the writer or writers don’t know what they’re talking about. Calling this or that “scientific” amounts to calling something else “unscientific” — which isn’t an argument, it’s abuse. The term scientific is often just a way to sneer at other people. Like the word nigger and many other derogatory names and adjectives.

Animal Farm put it well: You become what you are supposedly against. Holocaust denial is strange, yes, but then there are the people who get really really upset by it. Who would have guessed that the solution to intolerance (German intolerance of Jews) is . . . more intolerance? And that is what the campaign against Medical Hypotheses is in favor of: more intolerance.

How Effective are Flu Vaccines?

Seth Roberts4 Comments

An article in The Atlantic, based on research by Lisa Jackson, questions the conclusion that flu vaccines work. Here is the essence of her argument from a letter to the editor by Jackson and others in The New England Journal of Medicine:

In an 8-year study of a similar population of members of a health maintenance organization, we found risk reductions among vaccinated elderly persons during the influenza season to be essentially identical to those reported by Nichol et al. (Table 1).1 However, we also found even greater reductions before the influenza season.

Emphasis added. The lack of specificity suggests that those who get vaccinated are in better health to begin with than those that don’t. Other comparisons supported this conclusion.
Thanks to JR Minkel.

eConspicuous Waste

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The term conspicuous consumption got more attention but Thorstein Veblen, in the same book, also coined the term conspicuous waste. The purpose of conspicuous consumption was conspicuous waste. Show how rich you are. Fine. So what do we do now, when driving a car with hood ornaments would make you look like an idiot rather than a rich person?

The creators of Paperless Post have not taken Veblen into account:

Paperless Post takes the e-invite into a civilized age, letting you design and send custom invitations and announcements expediently online. Created by siblings Alexa and James Hirschfeld, the site cleverly allows subscribers to choose among a dizzying array of card styles, fonts and design flourishes that perfectly mimic the heft and look of elegant stationary, complete with envelopes that open with a click. In addition to feeling good about your carbon footprint, you’re also easily able to monitor as recipients receive their invitations, and manage their replies.

Fancy invitations were an example of conspicuous waste. They were expensive. Everyone could see that. Here’s my suggestion: Sell these e-invites by the card and to each card add a donation to charity per card. Stated on the card. Let’s say the donation is $2. So 100 cards sent = $200 to some charity. That way the sender shows that he or she is rich.
Via Very Short List.

Interview with Professor David Jentsch about Not Taking Drug Company Money

Seth Roberts3 Comments

Dr. J. David Jentsch is a professor of psychology at UCLA; his research area is psychopharmacology. I contacted him because Aaron Blaisdell told me that he had decided to stop accepting research money from drug companies. This is unusual; I wondered why.

1. What is your research about? What portions of it have been funded by drug-company money?

My own research over the past 12 years has focused on the etiology of mental disorders (how genetic factors influence brain chemistry and behavioral functions) and how psychoactive substances work to normalize behavior through working on those very pathophysiological mechanisms. In particular, I study the brain systems and molecular pathways in control of cognitive functions, with a very specific focus on using that knowledge to generate insights about cognitive enhancement for schizophrenia, addictions and AD/HD. I study rodents and primates.

I have received funds from drug companies for two reasons. 1) The companies appreciated my work and funded efforts to discover new mechanisms that might inform what they ultimately did. 2) The companies provided funds to my laboratory so that I could investigate how novel potential candidate mechanisms that they developed influence cognition in laboratory models.

When one does work like I do, one wants to know that information learned is moving from the bench to the real world. That always requires a connection to a drug company — they make drugs/universities do not. That being said, I’ve always been of the opinion that having the best and most rigorous academic labs undertake these collaborations is in everyone’s best interest (the quality of the work is ensured). In my case, this was always a tiny part of what I did; therefore, the quality was good, my objectivity was unquestionable and the answers were certain.

Because top scientists are increasingly withdrawing from collaborative partnerships (in part because of the negative attitudes about them), this work gets left to less competitive scientists whose objectivity may be less clear because they rely upon this type of support more heavily. I think that is quite unfortunate.

2. How does one get drug-company money for research?

Generally speaking, a company representative approaches you because of your reputation and invites you to propose a study to accomplish a mutual goal (see my answer to #1 above). A study design is drawn up, circulated and discussed and finally approved.

3. How much easier is it to get drug-company money than to money from other sources (for the same research)?

It’s hard to say. Fewer people receive drug company funds. If a company is interested in your work and approaches you, it’s not that difficult to obtain the funds. But it is difficult to be recognized to do this kind of work.

4. When did you start getting drug-company money for your research? If you’re comfortable saying how much it has been over the years (per year), that would help clarify the implications of your decision.

As a graduate student, the laboratory in which I trained participated in some studies. As a faculty member myself, I have participated in two such efforts. The total amount of funding I have received from pharmaceutical companies in all my years at UCLA (a total of 8 years) is less than the budget I obtain in a single year on my RO1 grant. It is not an immense amount, and it certainly is not the kind of funding that I would need to sustain my research program.

Because of the negative perception of these sorts of activities, it is not worth continuing to engage in them. I don’t require those funding sources. That being said, I find it a bit unfortunate. Again, it’s in everyone’s best interest if the TOP scientists did those collaborations to ensure their quality and rigor. When I don’t do them, it is possible that a less objective party does. Second, every concept I have about novel treatments that isn’t pursued because of lack of such a relationship is a potential delay in moving basic science to real use.

5. What are some examples of how the animal-rights activists publicized and complained about your use of drug-company money?

After the bombing [his car was bombed in March 2009], statements were made on the web and in the press by animal rights groups saying that people such as me used animals needlessly in a drug-company-fueled manic process of animal killing in order to get rich. As I already mentioned, this is not the case, if only because people like me often have relatively few such grants, and their size is not large (again, usually not larger than a single year of funding on an RO1 grant). Because of this, I simply decided not to take any such grants in the future.

6. The car bombing (on top of other attacks) led to the decision to stop taking drug company money?

As you can discern from the fact that I only have accepted two such awards in 8 years, I already placed a good number of criteria on accepting them. I wanted them to be only projects that I considered to be of very high scientific merit, and I wanted them to be logically and obviously related to our broader research projects.

Additionally, there is already a good deal of “negative perception” of research funded by drug companies within academic circles, and so I had already batted around the question in my mind about whether I should accept further awards. When the extremist attack on me happened in March of this year (2009), I had not had such an award in some time. That was not because I had taken a decision about the matter – simply that I hadn’t found a situation I wanted to pursue. At that point, the decision solidified.

7. Your decision to not take drug company money — what effect do you think it will have or hope it will have?

I am certain a situation will arise where I will have an idea about a novel therapeutic based upon my research that I will be unable to pursue without such a relationship to a company. What is more, the compounds in development by companies are not being evaluated by me, so they may well be evaluated by someone with a little bit less rigor and objectivity.

I believe strongly that the academic enterprise gives a crucial “objective” check on novel therapeutics when leading scientists who are not “dependent” on drug company money examine them. The alternative is that others who are more dependent, and therefore less objective, will do it.

Cosmic Radiation Makes Trees Grow Faster

Seth Roberts5 Comments

Trees grow faster during periods of greater cosmic radiation from the sun:

During a number of years, the trees’ growth also particularly slowed. These years correlated with periods when a relatively low level of cosmic rays reached the Earth’s surface. When the intensity of cosmic rays reaching the Earth’s surface was higher, the rate of tree growth was faster. . .

Cosmic rays are actually energetic particles, mainly protons, as well as electrons and the nuclei of helium atoms, that stream through space before hitting the Earth’s atmosphere. The levels of cosmic rays reaching the Earth go up and down according to the activity of the Sun, which follows an 11-year cycle.

As someone pointed out, this may be another example of radiation hormesis. Although some examples of hormesis may be due to immune-system stimulation, you can also see hormesis with single cells, which don’t have an immune system, of course. They do have repair mechanisms.

From my point of view this is interesting because it helps to show what a big effect hormesis is. I’m sure we need daily stimulation of our repair systems to be our healthiest but this isn’t a part of standard teaching about health. It goes against what people are usually taught (e.g., all germs are bad, all air pollution is bad, keep from getting sick by avoiding contagion) roughly as much as does the Shangri-La Diet. The scientists who discovered the tree effect appear to not know about hormesis (“As for the mechanism, we are puzzled”).

The success of the Shangri-La Diet teaches that the obesity epidemic is due to eating too much food that has exactly the same flavor (smell) each time — from one can of Coke to the next, for example. In practice, this too-constant food is food from a package (food made in a factory) and food from a restaurant. My umami hypothesis says that the epidemic of autoimmune diseases has the same source. Food in a package is more sterile than other food because bacteria reduce shelf life so preservatives are added and/or manufacturing steps (e.g., pasteurization) kill bacteria. Food from a restaurant has usually been freshly cooked (killing bacteria) and all sorts of precautions (“food safety”) are taken to make sure it remains low in bacteria.

Thanks to David Cramer.

Med School Interview Questions

Seth Roberts1 Comment

Here is what Brent Pottenger was asked during a recent interview at USC medical school:

  • What drives/motivates you?
  • Describe a challenge you overcame?
  • Describe a fulfilling experience that made you want to be a physician?
  • Why USC?
  • What do you bring to the entering class?
  • What area of medicine are you interested in?
  • What would you do for health reform?
  • What do you do outside of school for fun?
  • If you could improve something about yourself, what would that be?
  • What are you looking for in a medical program?

The Bike: X Invented It. Y Perfected It.

Seth Roberts3 Comments

The bicycle is far from the most influential invention ever — that would be the printing press — but it might be the most perfect, at least where I live. As I rode home last night I reflected how curiously great it is (where I live):

1. Low cost. A friend gave me hers for free. Perhaps it would have sold for $5. A new bike costs as little as $20.

2. Durable. They never wear out, although parts need replacing. I could have the bike I have now 20 years from now.

3. Ages well. Unlike almost all commercial products, bikes improve with age. They look less and less desirable so the probability of theft goes down. My bike, which looks worthless, will never be stolen. (As my students confirmed for me today.) I took to fake-locking it because I couldn’t get the key out of the lock. One day someone managed to get the key out leaving my bike locked and possessing the key. Whoever did that didn’t bother to take the bike. I got the lock sawed off a block away for $1. I bought a new lock for $2.

4. Great service. When something goes wrong, I can bring it to a bike shop that will fix it in minutes. There are lots of bike shops in my neighborhood.

5. Convenient. You can always park your bike close to where you’re going.

6. Green. Zero pollution, zero fossil fuel.

7. Exercise.
8. Quiet. The Tsinghua campus is full of bikes yet is always quiet. Because of the bikes, cars are banned from large chunks of the campus.

9. Safe. My neighborhood, like elsewhere in Beijing (but unlike some Chinese cities), has plenty of bike lanes. It feels perfectly safe to ride in them. In Berkeley I wear a bike helmet but at least in my neighborhood I haven’t been able to see the need — it would be like wearing a helmet while walking.

10. Facilitates exploration. Most of Beijing is no fun to walk in — things are too far apart. But it is fun to bike around. You can easily bike from one interesting place to the next and whenever you get somewhere interesting you can get off your bike and walk around it.

What Do Officer and Anchorage Have in Common?

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Anchorage, of course, is the title of Michelle Shocked’s great song — one of her great songs. She writes to a childhood friend and the answer comes back from Anchorage: I’ve got a husband, two kids, a house . . . Anchorage: state of being anchored.

Yesterday I asked one of my Chinese students what his parents did. “They’re officers,” he said. He meant they worked in an office.

Fire Your Doctor!

Seth Roberts1 Comment

I came across Fire Your Doctor! How to Be Independently Healthy by Andrew Saul while searching for info on natural hygiene, mentioned in a comment. I liked this story:

I had acne . . . It peaked when I was seventeen. . . Then I went overseas to study, was more than a bit stressed, and took my already considerable chocolate, sugar, meat, and greasy-food eating habits to new heights. My broken-out skin broke out still worse. Eventually, having failed to see any improvement otherwise, I changed my diet, and the acne went away.

Of course I support this non-gatekeeper approach to health. What about the book? Pro: Well-written, a reasonable amount of evidence. Con: No discussion of actual cases. What actually happens when you treat problems this way (often with vitamins and other supplements) is very important to know.

I found nothing about fermented foods, omega-3, or sleep (neither sleep problems nor the value of sleep for health). This isn’t really a weakness of the book, which is about a certain way of doing things; it’s a weakness of the way of doing things.