Author: Seth Roberts

Great Moments in Magazine Journalism

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In his Entertainment Weekly TV Watch synopsis of Tuesday’s American Idol, Michael Slezak wrote:

Can we all raise our lighters in unison for the most convincing rocker chick to ever grace the Idol stage? Yes, it’s Allison Iraheta, who took ”Give in to Me,” a completely obscure album track from Jackson’s Dangerous album and delivered it with such passion and confidence, I felt like I should call Ticketmaster and let them retroactively charge my credit card a couple hundred bucks just for the privilege of hearing her.

That’s a critique. Which I agree with. I can’t imagine reading something like this in print — it’s too heartfelt about something too small — but online, it is possible.

Oral Health, Heart Disease, and Fermented Foods

Seth Roberts6 Comments

From the abstract of a 2007 paper about oral health and heart disease:

The high prevalence of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and infections of the mouth has led to the hypothesis that these disease entities [are] connected. Oral biofilms contain numerous micro-organisms with more than 700 identified species. . . . These micro-organisms cause dental caries and periodontal disease of which the majority of humans suffer during their life. Oral bacteria are presumed to gain access to the blood circulation and are postulated to trigger systemic reactions by up-regulating a variety of cytokines and inflammatory mediators. Infection and inflammation play a role also in atherogenesis. Furthermore, traces of oral micro-organisms, such as the gram-negative anaerobic bacterium Porphyromonas gingivalis, have been detected in atheroma plaques. This bacterium seems to be potentially atherogenic in animal models. Epidemiologic data have shown a statistical association between periodontal disease and coronary heart disease and stroke. In a meta-analysis, the odds ratio increase for CVD in persons with periodontal disease was almost 20%. Poor oral health also seems to be associated with all-cause mortality.

Emphasis added. As I blogged earlier, during my last trip to the dentist I was told my gums were in great shape, better than the previous visit — and the only intentional change since the previous visit was a huge increase (a factor of 50?) in how much fermented food I eat. So perhaps fermented foods improve oral health. A reason to suspect that fermented foods reduce heart disease is that Eskimos, with very low rates of heart disease, eat lots of fermented food. If both these ideas are true — fermented foods improve gum health and reduce heart disease — it would explain the observed correlation between gum disease and heart disease.

A vast number of people believe that sugar and refined flour are bad for us. In large amounts, sure, because they cause so much dysregulation (e.g., high blood sugar) and in ditto foods cause obesity. But what about average amounts? Here I’m not so sure. The shift to a diet high in sugar and refined flours has usually happened at the same time as a shift away from traditional diets. In other words, the increase in sugar and flour wasn’t the only change. I suspect there was usually a great reduction in fermented foods at the same time. Maybe the reduction in fermented foods caused the trouble rather than the increase in sugar and flour. The reduction in fermented foods is almost always ignored – for example, by Weston Price and John Yudkin (author of Sweet and Dangerous).

Probiotics and oral health. An experiment about probiotics and oral health.

Hey, What Happened to My Brain? (part 3)

Seth Roberts3 Comments

The data I posted that showed a sudden improvement in my arithmetic ability is among the most interesting data I’ve ever collected. Not because it revealed something wildly new — I was already sure flaxseed oil helped — but because it revealed something intriguing and new (the time course of the improvement is puzzling).

I collected the data in an unusual way — watchful waiting. I didn’t do an experiment, the way experimental psychology data is usually collected. I didn’t do a survey, the way epidemiological data is collected. In the emphasis on one person it resembles a case report in medical journals — but I didn’t have a problem to be solved and the data is far more numerical and systematic than the data in a case report.

And this rarely-used scientific method paid off. Hmm. I think the scientific methods currently taught have a big weakness: They focus almost entirely on idea testing, whereas idea generation is just as important. Tools that work well for idea testing work poorly for idea generation. The effect of this imbalance — a kind of nutritional deficiency in intellectual diet — is that scientists don’t do a good job of coming up with new ideas.

What should scientists be doing? I would like to find out. My watchful-waiting data collection is/was part of trying to find out. That it paid off pretty quickly is a good sign. It’s the third step in a long process. Step 1. When I was a grad student, my acne self-experimentat led me to realize that one of my prescribed medicines didn’t work — a surprising and useful new idea. Step 2: Later self-experiments had the same effect: Generated surprising and useful ideas. At a much higher rate than my conventional experiments. Why? Perhaps because it involves cheap frequent tests of something important. Step 3: Arrange such a situation — cheap frequent tests of something important — and see what happens.

Antibiotic Foods?

Seth Roberts8 Comments

Just as there are probiotic foods — that encourage digestive bacteria — perhaps there are antibiotic foods that kill them off. Stacy Ashworth writes:

The flip side of the good-bacteria-stimulates-the-immune-system theory must be that bacteria-killing-foods-weaken-the-immune-system theory. Could this be why I come down with a cold within a day or so of indulging junk food cravings, food that is chock full of bacteria-killing preservatives? . . . I’m also looking at food preservatives in a new light: if they are added to food to kill bacteria to keep the food fresher, then I suppose it stands to reason that they are also going to kill off some of the immune-system enhancing bacteria in my body.

Do some popular foods kill a significant amount of internal bacteria? I don’t know.

I’m sure you need to eat lots of bacteria to stimulate your immune system; the ones already in your body are not recognized as new. New bacteria must come from outside. Then the problem with preservatives is not that they kill bacteria in our bodies but that they have made the preserved food unusually low in bacteria.

Hey, What Happened to My Brain? (part 2)

Seth Roberts7 Comments

As I blogged earlier, my arithmetic performance suddenly improved about a month ago (close-up above). How fast the change: On February 2 at 8 am I took the test; my scores were roughly the same as they had been the past month. At 2 pm the same day, I took the test again and was about 50 msec faster. (In reaction-time experiments, a surprising 50-msec effect is huge.) I remained faster for at least several weeks. Comparing the last 30 sessions before the shift to the first 30 sessions after the shift, t (38) = 11, p = extremely small. In an experiment, comparing treatment and baseline, t> 3 is very good and t > 4 is extremely good.

What might have caused this?

I moved to Beijing in October. Eventually I ran out of the Spectrum Organic flaxseed oil I’d brought with me and started drinking a Beijing brand called Joyful Organic. When I returned to Berkeley I brought a few bottles of it with me and continued to drink it. In late January I ran out; the evening of January 29 I started drinking Spectrum Organic again. Four days later my arithmetic scores sharply improved.

It’s really plausible that the improvement was due to the change in flaxseed oils. Flaxseed oil had made a difference (versus nothing) with a very similar task. A few weeks before the shift, a friend had asked how I knew if my Chinese flaxseed oil was good; I’d said I’d find out when I switched back to Spectrum Organic.

But why was the improvement delayed four days? I started studying flaxseed oil because one evening I took several capsules and the next morning noticed my balance was better. And if the improvement is going to take that long, why would it happen so sharply after the delay? I can’t even begin to answer these questions.

Language and Netbooks

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I believe language evolved because it facilitated trade. If you wanted X, being able to say “X?” made it a thousand times easier to find someone with excess X. This efficiency required prior language learning, of course. Language learning happened in the background, so to speak, then paid off in the foreground by making one of human life’s biggest tasks (trading) much easier.

After reading this excellent article about netbooks, I realized they’re like language. All sorts of tasks become much easier for your computer if the heavy lifting is done by a server. You no longer need Word or Photoshop, for example. Just as using language to trade required prior language learning, using netbooks this way requires prior software development.

Lie to Me

Seth Roberts5 Comments

The new TV show — I like it. It is based on the work of Paul Ekman, a psychologist who lives in Berkeley. It is a new sort of reality show. It isn’t a 50% reality show (as most reality shows are), it is a 10% reality show. Perhaps 10% of the show involves discussion and illustration of actual research. You learn about it painlessly.

When I was in college, I tried to learn about stuff by finding fun-to-read books on the subject. Genetics, for example. TV was worthless. Educational TV (opera concerts, televised lectures) was dreary and ordinary TV was completely non-educational. Since then, the gap between educational TV and ordinary TV has narrowed a lot: the History Channel, the Food Channel, the Weather Channel, not to mention Frontline, are moderately entertaining and Top Chef and Survivor are mildly educational. But it is still easy to put all these shows on one side or other of the education/entertainment divide.

Lie to Me bridges the gap. Although meant to be seen as entertaining, it’s undeniably educational. I wish there was an entertaining show I could watch to learn Chinese. There isn’t even an entertaining book!

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Buy direct sat tv

Hey, What Happened to My Brain? (part 1)

Seth Roberts4 Comments

For a few months, I’ve been measuring how well my brain is working using arithmetic problems. Each test session includes 100 simple problems (3+4, 7-0, 4*8) divided into 5 blocks of 20. I type the last digit of the answer as quickly as possible. I got the idea from Tim Lundeen, who got better on a similar task when he increased his DHA intake. My performance on an earlier version of this task was improved by flaxseed oil.

I’ve blogged about this. The virtues of this test include: 1. Fast. Takes only a few minutes. 2. Portable. Requires only a laptop. 3. Many possible answers (1, 2, 3, etc.). This reduces anticipation errors. 4. Many numbers (reaction times) per test. This allows me to get a measure of variability for each session and can correct for the difficulty of the problem. Aspects with room for improvement include: 1. Speed/accuracy tradeoff. Accuracy isn’t fixed. Depending on how accurate I want to be, I’ll go faster or slower. (I aim for 95% correct.) 2. No complex actions. The most enjoyable games have a motor-skill aspect that this task does not.

Here’s the data so far.

The big gap happened because I moved from Beijing to Berkeley. The most fascinating result, of course, is the sudden drop on February 2. Here is a close-up.

The drop was easy to notice. All of a sudden I was faster (and only slightly less accurate). The first test with better performance took place while my landlady, who lives upstairs, was practicing piano. Usually it’s quiet when I test myself. My first thought was that the music had caused the improvement. But it persisted so long after the music had stopped that the music couldn’t be the cause.

Part 2: I think I know what caused it. But there is a big problem with my explanation.

Polyphasic Sleep

Seth Roberts3 Comments

I heard about polyphasic sleep — such as sleeping 20 minutes every 3 hours — many years ago. But now I can learn about it in much more detail — and with much more suspense. For example:

[Before starting] Having always been a night-owl, and never having a sleep pattern that fits with others, I feel drawn to try it. I foresee a problem in that I have always felt that I need 8 hours of sleep per day, but on the other hand I can stay up until 5 am without a problem when I am mentally engaged, so it has seemed to me for quite some time that a 28 or 29 hour day is what my system is tuned for. . . . I can feel it energizing me already.

[Day 15] Yesterady was a disaster. Sleep is a funny thing – sleep deprivation had been accumulating and I wasn’t really noticing it. I was just happy to be awake and productive so many hours in a day that I ignored the weird feeling in my head, just going with it, thinking I would adjust and it would be all ok. Well yesterday morning I blew up at my SO for a ridiculous reason. . . . What went wrong? I was following all the sleep patterns pretty much to the letter.

More examples listed here.