Month: May 2012

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts1 Comment
  • Anti-cancer effect of ginger in mice experiment.
  • Food safety in China.
  • An egregious error in the New York Times. The correction issued by the Times is funny. It says a certain survey, whose results were used, “was not based on a representative sample”. If that is the standard, then no number in the NY Times should be there. They are never based on representative samples. GNP, heights, distances, etc. Plus journalists select what to report — and not in a representative way. Perhaps the paper should consist entirely of blank pages, ads and what are called “thumbsuckers” (fact-free opinion pieces)? I wrote something for Spy that included a representative description. My editor changed it to be funnier.

Thanks to Song Chen and Edward Epstein.

Surprising Predictions From Self-Measurement

Seth Roberts2 Comments

Patrick Tucker, an editor at The Futurist, posted a request on the Quantified Self Forums for “astounding” predictions based on self-quantification. He is writing a book about using data to make predictions.

Here are examples from my self-measurement:

1. Drinking sugar water causes weight loss. The self-quantification was measuring my weight. It began when I found a new way to lose weight, which pushed me to try to explain why it worked. The explanation I came up with — a new theory of weight control — made two predictions that via self-experimentation I found to be true. That gave me faith in the theory. Then the theory suggested a really surprising conclusion, that loss of appetite during a trip to Paris was due to the sugar-sweetened soft drinks I had been drinking. If so, drinking sugar water should cause weight loss. (The nearly-universal belief is that sugar causes weight gain, of course.) I tested this prediction and it was true. More.

2. Seeing faces in the morning improves mood the next day (but not the same day). This is so surprising I’ll spell it out: Seeing faces Monday morning improves my mood on Tuesday but not Monday. For years I measured my sleep trying to reduce early awakening. Finally I figured out that not eating breakfast helped. There was no breakfast during the Stone Age; this led me to take seriously the idea that other non-Stone-Age aspects of my life were also hurting my sleep. That was one reason I decided to watch to watch a certain TV show one morning. It had no immediate effect. However, the next morning I woke up feeling great. Via self-measurement of mood, I determined it was the faces on TV that produced the effect, confirmed the effect many times, and learned what details of the situation (e.g., face size) controlled the effect. More.

3. One-legged standing improves sleep. Via self-measurement I determined that how much I stood during a day controlled how well I slept. If I stood a long time, I slept better. Ten years later I woke one day after having slept much better than usual. The previous day had been unusual in many ways. One of them was so tiny that at first I overlooked it: I had stood on one leg a few times. Just for a few minutes. Yet it turned out that it was the one-legged standing that had improved my sleep. Without the previous work on ordinary standing I would have ignored the one-legged standing — it seemed trivial.

4. Butter is healthy. I found that butter improved how fast I can do arithmetic problems. No doubt it improves brain function measured in other ways. Because the optimum nutrition for the brain will be close to the optimum nutrition for the rest of the body — at least, this is what I believe — I predict that butter will turn out to be healthy for my whole body, not just my brain.

5. Mainstream Vitamin D research is all messed up. Via self-measurement I confirmed Tara Grant’s conclusion that taking Vitamin D3 in the morning (rather than later) improved her sleep. It improved my sleep, too. When I had taken it at other times of day I had noticed nothing. Apparently the timing of Vitamin D — the time of day that you take it — matters enormously. Take it at the right time in the morning: obvious good effect. Take it late in the evening: obvious bad effect. Vitamin D researchers haven’t realized this. They have neither controlled when Vitamin D is taken (in experiments) nor measured when it is taken (in surveys). Because timing matters so much it is as if they have done their research failing to control or measure dose. If you fail to control/measure dose, whatever conclusion you reach (good/no effect/bad) depends entirely on what dose your subjects happened to take. And you have no idea what dose that is.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts3 Comments

Thanks to Tucker Max.

Vitamin K2 Deficiency Linked To Parkinson’s Disease

Seth Roberts2 Comments

Parkinson’s disease often runs in families and some of the genes responsible have been identified. One is called PINK1. A new fruit fly model uses fruit flies with a similar genetic defect.

Patrik Verstreken and his team used fruitflies with a genetic defect in PINK1 or Parkin that is similar to the one associated with Parkinson’s. They found that the flies with a PINK1 or Parkin mutation lost their ability to fly.

Upon closer examination, they discovered that the mitochondria in these flies were defective, just as in Parkinson’s patients. Because of this they generated less intracellular energy – energy the insects needed to fly. When the flies were given vitamin K2, the energy production in their mitochondria was restored and the insects’ ability to fly improved. The researchers were also able to determine that the energy production was restored because the vitamin K2 had improved electron transport in the mitochondria. This in turn led to improved energy production.

The obvious conclusion is that some Parkinson’s patients may benefit from eating more Vitamin K2. Less obvious and less certain is that our diets contained more K2 in the past (so that the various genes that now cause Parkinson’s were rendered harmless). Warren Buffet famously said about risk exposure: “”It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked”. Likewise, changes in diet (such as reduction in K2 intake) expose disease-causing genes. I have made this point several times. It is counter-intuitive that disease-gene linkages suggest bad environmental changes.

Thanks to Melissa McEwen.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts3 Comments
  • Probiotics reduce/prevent diarrhea caused by antibiotics. News article. The abstract says “The pooled evidence suggests that probiotics are associated with a reduction in AAD [antibiotic associated diarrhea].” It should say that the evidence suggests — very strongly, in fact — that probiotics cause a reduction in AAD (because there is no plausible alternative explanation of the association). This mistake is so elementary it is like saying 2 + 2 = 3. And JAMA is one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals.
  • Living without money. The author was much healthier than when he lived with money. Among the many possible explanations is that dumpster food, old enough to allow microbes to grow on it, is healthier than fresher and therefore more sterile food.
  • Not just farms. Children who grow up on farms have fewer allergies and less asthma than children who grow up in cities — important support for a modified version of the hygiene hypothesis (and my umami hypothesis). This study finds that living near other sorts of biodiversity provides similar benefits.

Thanks to Brody, Jazi Zilber and Mark Griffith.

“How Ignorant Doctors Kill Patients”

Seth Roberts4 Comments

I have already linked to this 2004 article (“How Ignorant Doctors Kill Patients”) by Russell Blaylock, a neurosurgeon, but after rereading think it deserves a second link and extended quotation.

I recently spoke to a large group concerning the harmful effects of glutamate, explaining it is now known that glutamate, as added to foods, significantly accelerates the growth and spread of cancers. I [rhetorically] asked the crowd when was the last time an oncologist told his or her patient to avoid MSG or foods high in glutamate. The answer, I said, was never.

After the talk, a crowd gathered to ask more questions. Suddenly I was interrupted by a young woman who identified herself as a radiation oncologist. She angrily stated, “I really took offense to your comment about oncologists not telling their patients about glutamate.”

I turned to her and asked, “Well, do you tell your patients to avoid glutamate?” She looked puzzled and said, “No one told us to.” I asked her who this person or persons were whose job it was to provide her with this information. I then reminded her that I obtained this information from her oncology journals. Did she not read her own journals?

Yet, this is the attitude of the modern doctor. An elitist group is in charge of disseminating all the information physicians are to know. If they do not tell them, then, in their way of thinking, the information was of no value.

The incentive structure of modern medicine in action. If you do harm, you are not punished — thus the high error rate. If you do good, you are not rewarded — so why bother to think (“no one told us”)? The similarity to pre-1980 Chinese communism, where it didn’t matter if you were a good farmer or a bad farmer, is obvious. It is a big step forward that the rest of us can now search the medical literature and see the evidence for ourselves.

A Beijing Bystander Inaction Story

Seth Roberts3 Comments

Long after the famous Kitty Genovese story — supposedly many people watched her being murdered without doing anything — doubt was cast on its accuracy. In the meantime, John Darley and Bibb Latane, two professors of psychology, it as the starting point for a series of experiments on what they called the bystander effect — the more bystanders, the less likely that each one will help. They concluded there was “diffusion of responsibility” — the more people that witness something, the less each witness feels responsible for doing something.

In China the problem is much worse. A few years ago a woman was hit by a car. A second car stopped to help her. The woman told the police that the second driver had hit her. The second driver was furious, gave many interviews, and eventually a witness was found who said it was the driver, not the injured woman, who was telling the truth. Someone I spoke to attributed her behavior to the need to pay hospital bills. The driver who hit her would never be caught, she reasoned. Maybe the second driver could be forced to pay.

My Chinese tutor, who is Korean, told me a story that illustrates the depth of Chinese bystander inaction and suggests another reason for it. A friend of hers was visiting from Korea. When this friend was in Wangjing (in the Chaoyang district of Beijing), she saw a person lying on a busy street, bleeding but still alive. Apparently the bleeding person had been hit by a car. Three hours later, the friend returned — and the accident victim was still there! Now dead. So, with difficulty — she doesn’t speak Chinese — she called the police.

The police treated her as a suspect. She was forced to come to the police station five times, for hours each time.

What a deterrent to calling the police! I cannot believe the police were so stupid as to consider a Korean tourist on foot who calls the police a serious suspect in the death of someone lying in the middle of traffic. I believe that by causing her a lot of trouble, they wanted to send a message: Leave us alone. The fewer calls they get, the less work they have to do. No wonder everyone ignored the bleeding victim.

“I am afraid I am scaring you,” said my Chinese teacher. “You are,” I said.

 

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts4 Comments

Thanks to Hal Pashler and Bryan Castañeda.

What Koreans Know About China That Many Chinese Don’t Know

Seth Roberts5 Comments

Everyone knows that Chinese media is heavily censored. I recently learned from my Chinese tutor, who is from Korea, that the South Korean media delights in spreading China-is-scary-and-weird stories, which tend to be censored in China. Here are examples:

1. A frozen dumpling made in China contained part of a cigarette. Someone took a picture and posted it. Someone from Korea noticed before it was censored. News of this spread all over South Korea.

2. Someone in China took a picture of the Yangtze River in Jiangsu Province full of pill containers (e.g., blue/green capsules) floating on the surface. Censored in China, the picture was publicized widely in South Korea. I saw it on my teacher’s cell phone.

Along similar lines, on May 2, a Korean journalist reported that she secretly entered a factory where medical pills were being made and found that among the ingredients were human baby parts. It sounds impossible, yes, but that is what was reported. (I wrote this several days ago, I should have posted it sooner.)

“I never take Chinese medicines,” said my teacher. I asked her why the Korean media like these stories so much. “They show that something impossible is happening in China,” she said.