Not quite everyday humor . . . but very funny.
“Dammit George, you picked up while I was doing the Internet!”
Type of joke: Feeling superior? (That is, it’s funny for the reason we laugh when someone slips on a banana peel.)
From product investment, which has other great links.
Tom commented on my earlier post on this topic:
I imagine that the lady you met must have been newly diagnosed. I have had ulcerative colitis since 1996. Most of the people that I know with u.c. take omega-3, though perhaps more commonly as fish oil. All of my gastroenterologists have agreed that it can be a useful adjunct to other therapies. In fact, one of the drug companies is developing a supplement drink that combines omega-3’s with the soft fiber found in bananas, vitamin D and some other foods that are very beneficial to u.c., but hard to get in the right propotions. In general though, doctors seem reluctant to recommend diet-only solutions. I have a relatively mild case, but have had two bad flare ups. Consequently I take two of the drugs listed in addition to fish oil. I am hopeful that one day I will get off the other meds, but for now I just take a very low dose of the drugs thanks largely, based on my self-experimentation, to the omega-3s.
The lady I met (who had ulcerative colitis) had had the problem for 14 years. She had not previously heard of using flaxseed oil. “This is your lucky day,” I told her, not because I told her to try flaxseed oil but because I could tell her a good dose (at least 2 T/day). How much is crucial information.
It is very difficult to do experiments, even self-experiments, that measure the effect of different doses of flaxseed oil on ulcerative colitis. I’m sure they haven’t been done. It was her lucky day because I’m pretty sure I was the only person in the world who could have told her with confidence what dose to take. (Which I could do because of the optimize brain –> optimize body principle.) The gastroenterologists who recommend omega-3 as useful additions — they couldn’t say what the best dose is. The drug company making a supplement drink can’t say what the best dose is.
Until you know the best dose of a drug or nutrient — the one that delivers the largest possible effect — you are very likely to underestimate its effectiveness. If Tom starts using a large-enough dose of flaxseed oil he may no longer need other medications.
About 10 years ago, a UCSD psychology professor named Ben Williams, who is in my area of psychology (animal learning), managed to successfully cure his own terminal cancer by self-experimentation. He wrote a book about it called Surviving Terminal Cancer. As this WSJ story shows, his approach — which can be summed up think for yourself — is spreading.
Just as my dermatologist was irritated by my acne self-experimentation (”Why did you do that?” he asked), Ben’s oncologist, a University of Washington med school prof named Marc Chamberlain, was against what Ben did. Chamberlain now tells the WSJ that Ben’s self-treatment “probably contributed” to saving Ben’s life. Which is like a math professor saying 2 + 2 “probably equals” 4.
A long essay by Williams about his experience.
Addendum: Williams’s book, which had an amazon rank of about 1,000,000 when the WSJ article appeared (Dec 15), is now (morning of the 18th) ranked about 29,000.
The press release had a curious title: “Omega-3 fatty acids protect against Parkinson’s.” The certainty suggested an experiment, but Parkinson’s is too rare to study prevention experimentally. The press release turned out to be about a rat study that used a drug called MDPT to cause brain damage that resembles Parkinson’s. Rats given a high-omega-3 diet suffered much less damage — apparently none — from the drug.
Rats given the high omega-3 diet had much less omega-6 in their brains than control rats — one more reason, in addition to the Israeli Paradox, to think that omega-6 may be just as bad as omega-3 is good. Omega-3 may act by displacing omega-6 (they are almost identical physically).
The results could have been taken to suggest both (a) eat more omega-3-rich foods, such as fish and (b) eat less omega-6-rich foods, such as most nuts and vegetable oils, but only the first recommendation reached the public.
From an excellent interview with Gary Taubes:
Martin: You write that the “enterprise” of diet, obesity and disease research “purports to be a science and yet functions like a religion.” In what ways?
Taubes: Simple. The researchers and authority figures in this business seem utterly uninterested in finding out whether what they believe is true or not. It’s as though their God, whichever one that might be, told them that obesity is caused by eating too much — by gluttony and/or sloth — and so they believe that unconditionally, and no amount of contradictory evidence, no failure to explain the actual observations can convince them to question it. They have unconditional faith that they know what the truth is, and there’s no place for this kind of faith in the pursuit of science. Science requires skepticism to function. Religion requires faith.
I agree with Taubes about the facts: Obesity “authority figures” do “seem uninterested in finding out” etc. Yes, it resembles religion, not science. Taubes’s summing-up, however, is one-sided. To say “science requires skepticism” is to miss the point that science also requires paying attention — finding, noticing, thinking about facts you can’t explain. Religion doesn’t. The Atkins Diet caused millions of people to lose plenty of weight in a way that mainstream weight-control theories could not explain. No one powerful in obesity research managed to notice this was a puzzle worth trying to explain.
Science isn’t just about testing ideas (Taubes’s “skepticism”); it also requires generating them. I’m hoping if I blog about this often enough I will find a humorous way to say it.
Thanks to Dave Lull.
Because of reading Jane Jacobs, I could begin to understand this fascinating post by E. M. Risse about trade vs import replacement. I hadn’t before heard his point that between-region trade tends to favor people at the top of the economic food chain. I’m not sure I completely understand Risse’s post but I am intrigued enough to want to look at his (four-volume!) book, The Shape of the Future, shape meaning settlement pattern.
Last year this commercial was everywhere in Japan:
Tarako means cod roe, a popular flavor in Japan. Here is a long version.
Thanks to Pearl Alexander.
At the November meeting of the Psychonomic Society, a group of experimental psychologists, I gave a 15-minute talk (PowerPoint) about my omega-3 research. (Anyone know how to add audio to a PowerPoint file?) Almost all the data in the talk I’ve posted here, but it had one not-blogged idea, which I summarize like this:
optimize brain –> optimize body
The intake level of a nutrient that optimizes brain function should be close to the level that optimizes the function of everything else. In particular, the omega-3 intake that makes the brain work best should be close to the level that makes the rest of the body work best. This is because the brain and the rest of the body are bathed in the same blood.
It is easy to see why this is so. I have many electrical appliances: clock, telephone, TV, microwave, refrigerator, laser printer. In spite of vastly different innards and functions, all of them run best when their electrical supply is very close to house current. The electric current that makes my laser printer work best is very close to the electric current that makes my refrigerator work best. Of course, this is by design. LIkewise, the different parts of our body, although doing vastly different things, have all been adjusted by evolution to work best with the nutritional equivalent of house current. Just as we might study laser printers to learn what current to use with our refrigerator, we can study the brain to learn what nutrients optimize immune function.
This is a new idea in nutrition (at least, new to me). It is supported by and explains some of the most interesting data I’ve posted. It explains why Tyler Cowen’s gums got so much better so quickly — because he was taking almost exactly the best amount of flaxseed oil for his gums. Tyler chose his intake of flaxseed oil based on my behavioral data, which suggested the best amount was between 2 and 3 tablespoons/day. The gums and the brain could hardly be more different, but the best level for the brain turned out to do a wonderful job of healing his gums. Same thing with Anonymous and sports injuries.
By the way, this shows the scientific value of blogging. My gums got better, too, but not as impressively as Tyler’s. I didn’t have a lot of injuries to heal. The big improvements noticed by Tyler and Anonymous were “accidents” (unintended consequences). Science thrives on accidents; blogging, it turns out, is a new way to generate them.
The year isn’t over, but we have a winner:
I am going to learn Russian.
I feel so enchanted when I gaze into his handsome face. His eyes are so commanding. I cannot look away.
Should I try the Shangri-la diet?
“He” is a co-worker. She has tried many other diets without success.
Here’s a nice post about dietary puzzles in which a group of people who should have a high or low rate of heart disease don’t. For example,
Spanish paradox. Those naughty Spaniards are eating more fat and less carbs and getting LESS heart disease, now there’s a surprise. Good thing their medical system is so marvelous.
Sri Lanka paradox. In Sri Lanka they eat <25% calories from fat and still get lots of heart disease. Tut tut.
I have blogged about the Israeli Paradox. These paradoxes go away, the author notes, “when you realize saturated fat is not the cause of heart disease.”
Elsewhere on his blog he discusses studies that found that eating less fruits and vegetables improved health. Thanks to Dave Lull.
Not unrelated to all this, Ken Carpenter, a co-author of mine and an excellent speaker, is giving a talk next week in the Nutrition Department at UC Berkeley titled “When Nutritionists Go Wrong”. It is on Wednesday, December 19, 2007, at 4:10 pm Room 114 Morgan Hall. Ken has written wonderful books and articles about the history of nutrition and I am eagerly awaiting this talk.