- Moldy yogurt claimed unsafe, later turns out to be safe.
- Brain repair during sleep
- Surprising effects of a high-carb diet, a Quantified Self talk by Greg Pomerantz. His l ow carb diet — that is, his previous diet — was red meat, eggs, butter and green (non-starchy) vegetables. Low-carb paleo with butter. His HbA 1c went from 5.6 (low-carb) to 5.5 (high-carb).
- Speaking of “ doctors hurt you“, a letter to The New Yorker says that a herb common in Traditional Chinese Medicine causes liver cancer. “The traditional [medicinal] use of this family of highly nephrotoxic and carcinogenic herbs represents a significant problem for global public health.”
- Financial incentives increase C-sections
- Positive correlation between Alzheimer’s and cleanliness. In its use of principal component analysis and transformations (e.g., square root transformation), this paper is more sophisticated than most epidemiology.
Thanks to Alex Chernavsky.
I read somewhere that the explanation for highter HbA1c is
Low Carb -> Lower Blood Glucose -> Longer RBC lifespan -> Higher HbA1c
Here is an article explaining why HbA1c levels may be elevated by a low-carb diet, even if blood glucose levels are not:
https://chriskresser.com/why-hemoglobin-a1c-is-not-a-reliable-marker
Pomerantz’s experiment showed little change most health markers between a low and high carb diet. His carbs came mostly from white rice and he eschewed gluten so I infer he ate little if any powdered carbs. It would be very interesting to see a follow-up experiment replacing the rice with bread to see if results correlated with this study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22863169
“little change most health markers between a low and high carb diet”: humph. Eat a mixed diet that includes plenty of fish, and a modicum of wine and beer. That’s probably the way to bet.
Hi, thanks for the interest in my talk. I agree a1c is not a terribly reliable marker. I just reported it because the low carb advocates all said it was supposed to go up and it didn’t.
I wouldn’t put much faith in that mouse study. For example, the C57BL/6N mice they used are known to get fat on a high fat diet. This doesn’t usually happen to humans who eat high fat diets, so I’m a bit mystified why this mouse is considered a standard animal model for human obesity. I don’t really pay much attention to animal studies any more unless the model they are using has been validated to be an accurate in humans (which is virtually never the case).
I would not be surprised if bread had a different effect than rice — for one, it is much lower in water content, which likely affects the rate at which you can eat and digest it (the fact that rice is hard to eat fast may be one reason why it seems healthier than other carbs). Although I’m not gluten sensitive as far as I can tell, I don’t eat much bread, so I’m not likely to try this experiment with bread. If you do though please let us know what happens.
https://blog.ted.com/2013/06/06/tackling-sickness-at-its-source-an-interview-with-ted-book-author-rishi-manchanda/