“You Can’t Change Something Unless You Love It”: The Case of Dr. Gilmer and Dr. Gilmer

May 19, 2013March 14, 2024 Seth Roberts6 Comments

“It’s a funny thing,” Jane Jacobs told an interviewer in an interview I cannot find, “you can’t change something unless you love it.” (By “change” she meant improve.) She had seen that people who disliked cities gave poor advice about improving them and understood that it wasn’t just cities. To improve something, it isn’t enough to have a good idea. You also need to (a) pay close attention and (b) overcome obstacles. (a) and (b) aren’t easy. You are unlikely to do them without strong motivation, such as love.

Jacobs’s point is at the heart of the success of my personal science. My personal science is hugely different from professional science, but different may or may not be better. It has succeeded, I’m sure, because of what Jacobs says. How did I manage to find new ways to sleep better, lose weight, and so on? I had good ideas, yes, but so do many people, including professional scientists. One reason for my success: I observed myself closely. Now and then I noticed outliers (e.g., nights when I slept unusually well, days when I lost my appetite). These gave me ideas to test. In professional science, this rarely happens. For one thing, they can’t wait for outliers. They are under pressure to get results soon. Another reason for my success: I persisted. For many years, I measured my weight, sleep, mood, and so on. Unlike a professional scientist, I had no required output. I could spend as much time as necessary.

I keep coming back to this because Jacobs’s point is absent from conventional American thinking, such as New York Times op-eds. But it is illustrated again and again. A recent episode of This American Life, titled “ Dr. Gilmer and Mr. Hyde“, is about two doctors named Gilmer: Dr. Benjamin Gilmer and Dr. Vince Gilmer (who are unrelated). VG kills his father and goes to jail. BG replaces him at a rural clinic. His patients tell him what a nice man VG was. This puzzles BG: Why would such a nice man kill his father? The legal system had ignored this question or at least not provided a convincing answer. BG, on the other hand, actually cares. (Spoiler alert.) He gathers information about the case and visits VG in prison. With the help of a psychiatrist friend, he comes up with a new idea: VG has Huntington’s disease, whose symptoms include aggression (such as murder). In prison, VG has been far too aggressive. His hands shake some of the time; this had been called “malingering” (faking) by a psychologist. When tested, it turns out VG does have Huntington’s disease, in the sense that he has the gene for it. When VG was given medication appropriate for Huntington’s disease, he got much better.

BG, who cared about VG, managed to improve his condition. The legal system, which did not care about him, did not. The implication for all health care, including research, is straightforward: Empower those who care.

Acne Club: A New Way to Fight Acne

May 1, 2013March 14, 2024 Seth Roberts11 Comments

Recently I posted that my work resembles the work of the artist Hong Yi. Her work shows that profitable beautiful art can be made from the cheapest materials; my work shows that non-trivial useful science can be done by anyone. A reader named David commented:

Your work and discoveries, just like Hong’s, are very inspirational. . . . They send a message that every individual has the potential to contribute something to society even with no or limited budget.

This hadn’t occurred to me. It should have. I could have made this point in talks, for example. Beyond the obvious point, David was saying that the more your personal science could help others, the more likely you would be to do it. The prospect of helping yourself and others will surely be stronger motivation than the prospect of helping only yourself.

How can one person’s personal science help others? This doesn’t happen automatically, it has to be arranged. My Journal of Personal Science and the Make Yourself Healthy Meetup group are two ways of facilitating this. What about other ways?

David’s comment made me think of another way: Acne Club, that is, a high school club for people with acne. The purpose of the club is to promote personal science about acne. Members of the club try to find the causes of their acne, partly by self-experimentation. They meet to share results and ideas (e.g., treatments to try, how to measure acne) and encourage each other. The discovery of two groups of “primitive” people who have no acne suggests that all acne has environmental causes. If a high school group could identify even one environmental cause, it would be a huge contribution to human well-being — especially the well-being of high-school students. I think this is quite possible.

I had acne as a teenager. If you start such a club, I would be happy to help you however I can. For example, I could give advice about measurement and experimental design and could publicize what you learn.

Standing Improves IBS Symptoms

April 27, 2013March 14, 2024 Seth Roberts2 Comments

At least in one case. A 23-year-old woman, who lives in Manchester UK and works as a typist, wrote me:

I’ve recently been trying out a standing desk, partly due to reading the posts you made about them. For the past few weeks, I have been tending to stand instead of sit when at my laptop, normally for more than 3 hours a day. I sit down when I get bored of standing and I walk around lots.

I was looking out for mental clarity effects but I’ve not seen a clear effect in that direction. What I did find surprising, though, is that my chronic but mild IBS symptoms have abated. I get heartburn/acid reflux regularly, and gut cramping, but since standing more these have all but stopped. I think it’s because standing up puts less pressure on my stomach and gut and leaves them more opened up.

I asked how long she’d had the symptoms (heartburn/acid reflux, etc.):

I think the last 3-4 years, but it’s hard to say when. I think my IBS probably started happening when I started having problems with anxiety but I wasn’t keeping track back then. I’ve suffered from recurring depression for 10 years now, but severe anxiety for me is relatively new. I think it would make sense if it coincided with the anxiety – I’ve heard of Citalopram (an anti-anxiety medicine) also being prescribed in a low dose for IBS, and some of my friends who have taken Citalopram + who have had IBS have had it go away. I never actually got a diagnosis for IBS, but it seems a fair description. The symptoms are heartburn, gut cramping (sometimes very painful) and my stool being quite variable in solidity.

I asked how long had she been standing more than usual:

4 weeks, when I’ve been able to. At work I have to sit, often with bad posture, but the last two weeks I have been on holiday. When I stand, I notice an improvement on the same day that I’ve been standing more. Part of what motivated me to stand with using my computer was when I recently spent a day walking around Manchester (where I live). I noticed that my energy levels were much smoother even though I hadn’t eaten very much and that my gut and stomach felt more OK than usual.

I asked what other remedies she’d tried:

About a year after I started regularly getting heartburn, a friend told me about antacids, so I started taking them when I needed them, but they weren’t always effective and they don’t help with gut cramping. Peppermint tea worked to some extent but would give me strange headaches and made me feel bloated. Peppermint oil capsules were an improvement – no bloating but still giving me headaches. I’ve also tried various dietary changes. I find that dry carbs (like toast or potato crisps) tend to bring on or make worse heartburn and cramping so I sometimes avoid those. Also when I’m hungry I get heartburn quite badly, so I’ve tried to eat things that level out my blood sugar over time more (e.g. eating more fat and protein, fewer sugars and carbs). I tried probiotic soy yoghurt (I’m vegan) to see if that would help but it doesn’t agree with my stomach. I also have tried probiotic supplement but I’m not sure that I’ve seen improvement from that either.

She added, “I haven’t had IBS symptoms on days that I have been standing yet!” So it is perfectly clear that this is cause and effect — standing reduces IBS symptoms.

Cheap Good Science

April 24, 2013March 14, 2024 Seth Roberts7 Comments

Last weekend I attended EG, a TED-like conference in Monterey. One of the speakers, a woman named Hong Yi, made representational art from cheap materials – a portrait from coffee-stained napkins, for example. The most stirring talks were by Matt Harding (dancing video) and Jo Montgomery and Chuck Johnson (circus school) but she, more than anyone else, seemed to have done something with big implications. Her art was attractive, profitable, very cheap, and diverse (many materials, many representational styles). If anyone else has ever done this, I don’t know about it. She is an architect in Shanghai and her art began because she was in China. At a wholesale supply store, she came across very cheap candles. She realized she could buy enough of them to make a picture with one candle = one pixel. I imagine people will be watching Harding’s video a hundred years from now and the underlying point of Montgomery and Johnson’s circus school will be valid forever, but both were enormous expensive unique efforts. Hong’s work was much easier and cost almost nothing. The benefit/cost ratio was very high and millions of people could do something like what she did.

I realized that my work resembled hers. She had discovered how to make cheap good art — not just once but many times, using a wide range of materials (e.g., different foods) and representational styles. I had figured out how to do cheap good science, answering not just one question (e.g., how to sleep better) but many questions (how to sleep better, how to lose weight, how to be in a better mood, etc.). My science cost almost nothing, so I could do a lot of it (do thousands of experiments) and managed to discover many things. In both Hong Yi’s case and mine, the Internet was not needed to do the work but was essential for publicizing it. It didn’t fit the usual channels.

For a long time, I called my work self-experimentation. It’s true, but misleading, because almost all self-experimentation you’ve heard of isn’t like mine. The book Who Goes First? The Story of Self-Experimentation in Medicine is full of self-experimentation quite different than mine. Most of it is by doctors, designed to show that a new treatment is safe. The scientist tries the treatment himself to protect others. The self-experimentation in Who Goes First? is closer to demonstration than experiment. In contrast, the treatments I’ve studied (e.g., butter, morning faces, standing a lot) are perfectly safe. My work is about finding new ideas. It is about changing my own beliefs, not trying to convince other people of what I believe.

More recently, I might describe my work by saying it’s an example of the Quantified Self (QS) movement. Again, this is true, but also somewhat misleading. My work does involve self-quantification and self-tracking. Like many QSers, I do hope to become healthier as a result. What’s misleading is that the tracking is only part of the effort, I don’t measure many things, and my tracking isn’t high-tech. I’m trying to discover new cause-effect relationships (e.g., new ways to improve sleep). This is not a large part of the QS conversation.

If I describe my work as cheap science, on the other hand, what you automatically think of is pretty accurate. Scientists look for cause-effect relationships (it is central to science); I look for cause-effect relationships. Scientists do many experiments; so do I. Scientists pay great attention to the scientific literature (what has already been done, what is already known); so do I. When something becomes much cheaper (e.g., photography or computing becomes much cheaper), everyone understands that the activity can be done by many more people. That is inherent in my work. I am doing science that many people can do — many more people than can do professional science. The terms self-experimentation and quantified self do not convey this.

Like the term cheap travel, the term cheap science suggests freedom. That too is a big part of what I do. I have vastly more freedom than professional scientists. I can test treatments they can’t. I can entertain ideas (“crazy”) they can’t. I can spend longer on one project than they can. So if I describe what I do as cheap science, the rest of what I say (“I’ve discovered new ways to sleep better, lose weight, etc.”) makes more sense. And maybe the whole activity sounds more accessible, whereas self-experimentation and quantified self seem like the sort of activities that caused the word geek to be invented.

Assorted Links

April 4, 2013March 14, 2024 Seth Roberts2 Comments

The state of self-tracking by Ernesto Ramirez and Gary Wolf
Schizophrenia (the negative symptoms) improved by folate and B12 supplementation but only in patients with impaired folate metabolism
Why more Type 1 diabetes in Finland than neighboring Russia?
A scientist tries to cure his own cancer
Resveratrol disappointment
Where do allergies come from? ”Foreign-born children residing in the United States had half the risk of developing allergies than those who were born here.”

Thanks to Peter McLeod, John Batzel and Joseph Sinatra.

Make Yourself Healthy: Diverticulitis

March 30, 2013March 14, 2024 Seth Roberts3 Comments

You have diverticulitis when “diverticula in your digestive tract become inflamed or infected. Diverticula are small, bulging pouches.” A man in his forties named Tuck had a serious case:

In my twenties I got really sick; lying in bed for 5 days, bleeding from the lower part of my digestive tract: not pretty. . . Delirious days later and ten pounds lighter and I was recovered, except for one problem: I had diarrhea for the subsequent 14 years. . . . Two years ago [2008] I passed out on the toilet on a ski weekend. The emergency room at Bennington Hospital [Vermont] told me it was a stomach flu.

Four weeks later I got cramps at work. I had to lie on the floor until it passed. Then I drove to my doctor’s office, and he told me that I had diverticulitis, and I had to go to the emergency room. I drove myself, and barely made it. I was in agony; I nearly passed out again while they were interviewing me to see if it was “serious”. . . . I had a perforated colon. . . . I spent the next four days in the pre-operative ward, so if it got worse they could cut me open immediately. I lost 10 pounds. Then I started bleeding, and I realized these were all the same symptoms that I had had 14 years before. My blood pressure got so low that the automated blood-pressure machine wouldn’t work . . .

I mentioned to all three of the doctors I saw that I had had constant diarrhea for the last 14 years, since the first attack, and they shrugged. They told me to eat more fiber, and whole wheat, even though that was what I had been eating for the last 20 years. So I avoided surgery, started eating salad with salad dressing (containing industrial seed oils) and lots of whole wheat. . . . But the more salad and whole wheat I ate, the worse it got. I couldn’t understand why. Finally had to have eight inches of my colon removed. The diarrhea continued, so obviously the cause remained.

Then something happened that, before blogging, wasn’t possible:

Someone sent me a post that Stephen Guyenet did about how dental problems were pretty much all due to diet, not genetics, as I’d been told. As someone who’d had a ton of cavities, and 8 teeth pulled, and was determined to spare his daughters the same fate, I found this of interest.

I started reading the blog. 6 months later, I decided to stop eating seed oils, which eliminated my carb cravings, hence no wheat. Two days later, [unexpectedly] my diarrhea stopped. A good bit of trial and error, some accidental, ensued. [I learned that both] wheat and seed oils cause distress, but different types. The two combined can cause me to pass out. If I eat wheat by accident, then eating saturated animal fats (like cream) causes things to settle down.

He found that “traditional” oils (palm, coconut, olive) are okay. Industrial oils (corn, canola, cottonseed) are not. Animal fats (butter, lard, beef tallow) are best.

After 16 years my symptoms are now completely under my control. . . . I read the ingredients on everything. I make a big mistake once every 6-9 months. [Other benefits:] I’m much more resistant to sunburn, for instance, and my vision improved a bit.

So his problems were due to (a) wheat and (b) too much omega-6. His doctors had no idea.

The Mayo Clinic recommends a “ diverticulitis diet” that is clear liquids and low-fiber foods. According to the Mayo Clinic, “mild cases of diverticulitis can be treated with rest, changes in your diet and antibiotics. But serious cases of diverticulitis may require surgery.” The Mayo Clinic, it appears, has no idea what causes diverticulitis.

Tuck added:

It really pisses me off when people dismiss this, because it really makes a difference. I had a colleague who was in the hospital for a colon resection for diverticulitis. When he heard my story, he had the hospital put him on a gluten-free diet. Four days later, instead of having surgery as scheduled, he checked out: cured. He’s symptom-free on a gluten-free diet to this day.

I agree. As someone on the Shangri-La Diet forums put it, “you are handed a GIFT.” A story like this is a gift.

Does Scientific Research Cause Economic Growth?

March 29, 2013March 14, 2024 Seth Roberts5 Comments

Many scientists say that science should be funded because it leads to economic growth. Today’s discovery, tomorrow’s new product, that sort of thing. It’s certainly plausible that more research will produce more growth.

Terence Kelley, a biochemist who was vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, points out that some facts do not support this argument:

Two key pieces, one British, one American. The British one is very simple. The British agricultural and industrial revolutions took place in the 18th and 19th centuries in the complete absence of the government funding of science. It simply wasn’t government policy. The British government only started to fund science because of the Great War [World War I]. The funding has increased heavily ever since, and there has been absolutely no improvement in our underlying rate of economic growth.

But the really fascinating example is the States, because it’s so stunningly abrupt. Until 1940 it was American government policy not to fund science. Then, bang, the American government goes from funding something like $20 million of basic science to $3,000 million, over the space of 10 or 15 years. I mean, it’s an unbelievable increase, which continues all the way to the present day. And underlying rates of economic growth in the States simply do not change.

I believe the connection between research and economic growth is complicated. Veblen was certainly right, “pure” (= useless) research is high-status, “applied” (= useful) research is low-status. In the long run, this is a good way to allocate effort because although almost all the “pure” research is useless, a tiny fraction is not. And that tiny fraction might never have been done if pure research weren’t high-status.

Yet after pure research turns up useful stuff, professional scientists have serious difficulty making something useful from it. Almost all of my discoveries, such as the Shangri-La Diet and the effect of morning faces on mood, relied heavily on pure research. Without the pure research, I couldn’t have made them. The “pure” discoveries I used were well-known yet professional scientists were unable to grasp how they could be turned into something useful. I was able to go further than them for three reasons: 1. I was willing to spend a long time (decades) on a one problem. Professional scientists can’t wait that long. 2. I was trying to find a useful solution. Professional scientists tend to think useful research is low-status, as I said. 3. Studying myself instead of other people made me much more sensitive to unexpected effects.

Make Yourself Healthy: Crohn’s and the SCD Experiment

March 28, 2013March 14, 2024 Seth Roberts6 Comments

In 2010, a Chicago woman named Johanna was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. She was 27 years old. Doctors told her to take drugs. She resisted. Here’s what happened, from a 2011 interview:

What do you do for living?

I’m an IT project manager. I’m on disability now because of flare-ups of my Crohn’s. I’m just getting a portion of my paycheck until the doctor thinks I’m healthy enough to work. When my flare up was bad, I had horrible joint pain, horrible cramping in the morning and throughout the day (pain was 8-10 on a 10-point scale). Chronic diarrhea, maybe 5-10 times/day. I’d be in meetings and doubled over in pain. My GI said I had one of the most inflamed colons he’d ever seen.

When were you diagnosed with Crohn’s?

April 2010. My symptoms started in January 2010. Bad gas, got worse. Diarrhea. In March, pooped my pants at work. Never happened before. Ran home and changed. Went to the ER 5 or 6 times from January to March because I was in so much pain. They thought it was Irritable Bowel Syndrome. One doctor said it was stress. “You need to manage your stress better.” I didn’t know what doctor to see. Only when I went to the Northwestern University ER did they say you might have a GI problem. Then I got a colonoscopy and was diagnosed with Crohn’s.

How was it treated?

With Prednisone, a steroid with horrible side effects. It caused me to have a big swollen moon face, a big belly, facial hair, cold sweats all night, I gained 15 pounds (from 120 to 135). I started taking it in April 2010. I took it until August 2010. I stopped taking it because I still had the same amount of diarrhea. It wasn’t working. I told my GI at the time. He gave me bad info about how to stop taking it. I did stop taking it and found a new GI. The new GI put me on Humira, an immunosuppresant, a TNF [tumor necrosis factor] blocker. I started it August 2010. No one told me about diet — “eat whatever you want” [she was told]. It was a shot I would get every 2 weeks. At first I got 4 shots. Within days of the first shots, I felt much better. I was a completely normal person. The Crohn’s symptoms were completely gone.

What happened next?

Led a totally normal life, worked at my company with success, everything was good. At the end of July 2011, I started having pain. In early August, I went to a new GI at Rush University Hospital. They have a really good GI and nutrition team. They are among the first studying the SCD [Specific Carbohydrate Diet]. I told him I had stomach pain, etc. He said to double the dose of Humera. That wasn’t a bad call. I doubled the dosage of Humera and got much worse. That’s when I started developing the joint pain and mouth sores. Cramping, horrible horrible pain. I had diarrhea for about two months.

Now we’ve reached the place where your blog starts? [She started a blog called The SCD Experiment]

Correct. I couldn’t absorb any nutrients. I had to quit work. From 31 August to 3 September I had a 102-3 degree fevers every day. I hoped it would pass. I stayed in bed the whole week. Then I started vomiting. I decided to go the hospital. I had lost 10 pounds in a week or two. I went to the hospital 4 September. In the hospital I lost even more weight. It turned out I had both an infection and antibodies to the Humera.

The first hospital I went to on 4 September was St. Francis Hospital. They were meticulous with my diet, gave me gluten-free lactose-free meals. I was very well taken care of there. All types of specialties to figure out what was going on. I had an infectious disease specialist. The infectious disease specialist was adamant I had an infection.

How did you learn about SCD?

I was in St. Francis hospital trying to figure out what to do about my future. I was looking at all the treatment options. I was researching Remicade. It had been recommended. The next logical step. I went to a ton of forums. Wide range of outcomes. Even if it worked, I would be tied to it. Always a chance of infection. You have to go to a hospital every 8 weeks, at best. I want to start a family. I don’t want to be tied to a drug. I didn’t want to do it.

My sister sent me a link to the Amazon reviews of Breaking the Vicious Cycle. You should really try this, she said. I thought there’s got to be something to this. These people made it work, why couldn’t I? What did I have to lose by trying it? I wanted to try a natural solution before blasting my body with something else. My last day at St. Francis I started to do the SCD.

I left St. Francis after 5 days because I had an appointment with the top GI doctor at Rush, Dr. Keshavarvian. He told me my problems were due to a flare-up of the Crohn’s. Including the fever. He said nothing about my suppressed immune system and the way it makes you more vulnerable to infection — although to be fair I knew this. To his credit, he said to eat a lot of yogurt.

As soon as I saw him, he admitted me to Rush right away to begin Remicade infusions. Remicade is another immunosuppressant, very similar to Humera.

I asked a lot of questions about Remicade. I asked a lot of questions about diet. They said just do the Remicade, and eat whatever you want. It’s a big hospital. Huge overwhelming swarm of lab coats pushing Remicade on me. More than five doctors told me to take Remicade. All of them worked for the GI doctor I’d seen in the morning. They were part of his team. I told the nutritionist I had Crohn’s. They sent me a lunch tray with processed turkey meat, a ton of gravy, and a brownie, and tomato bisque soup. Not one thing I could eat or digest. My husband brought me SCD-safe food I could eat. Once I saw that brownie, I decided to refuse Remicade. You’re going to tell me what I eat has no effect on my body, I’m going to tell you you’re wrong.

They were trying to set up the Remicade infusions. I said I needed one more night to sleep on it. The next morning, the 10th, I said thanks but no thanks. I’m going to try this diet and see what happens. They made me sign a waiver and I went home. At St. Francis they put me back on Prednisone, at lower doses. I’ve been tapering off.

The first week I was super-scared. Is this diet going to work? I was very weak, couldn’t stand up in the shower. I still had major Crohn’s symptoms. Every Thursday I got/get blood work. The first Thurday after I started SCD, the blood work results were better [see website for details], but I still felt bad. The second week, amazing. I felt like a new person.

On 23 September I had a follow-up with Dr. K at Rush. I gave him all my blood work and told him what I was doing. He was concerned. He said the diet was hard to stick to and that the legal/illegal list — what you can and can’t eat — was different for different people. He said that the diet fails for 3 out of 4 people. When you’re on the diet, you can have a flare-up so bad that you need to have your colon removed. These are the risks that you are facing by not taking the Remicade or Imuran. However, he’s one of the people spearheading the study of SCD at Rush. He told me we don’t have any studies showing that this diet works so I can’t in good faith recommend it.

By Week 5 she was much better. By Week 19 she was cured, in the sense of feeling normal and having normal lab results. ”I don’t even THINK about Crohn’s disease,” she wrote. “Unless it’s to reflect on how so very thankful I am that my sister Angela discovered this diet and talked me into trying it. I owe her my life back.” She started her blog at the same time she started SCD. Doctors told her the diet has a 70% failure rate. As the lab results and experience reported in her blog show, the diet worked.

Introduction to Inside Tracker

March 26, 2013March 14, 2024 Seth Roberts1 Comment

Inside Tracker sells blood panels — for example, 20 things measured in your blood (e.g., hemoglobin, magnesium, Vitamin D). It was founded in 2009 in Boston, Mass., by Gil Blander, a biology Ph.D., and two other people. They started offering the service in late 2011. Their main customers are athletes (20% professional, 30% amateur) and many Quantified Selfer’s (20%). I recently interviewed Dr. Blander:

What have you learned from the data you’ve collected?

Around 60% of the population has low Vitamin D.[What’s low Vitamin D?] As of today, if you look at the ranges of the diagnostic companies, they are saying that everything below 30 ng/ml is low Vitamin D. We are giving you your optimal zone based on age, gender, athletic activity and ethnicity. We also compare you to your peers.

What else?

More than 50% have high cholesterol (total and LDL). With folic acid, about 40% of the population have high folic acid. This is because of supplementation.

High creatine kinase (CK) is another common problem. When you exercise, some of the muscle cells break down and this protein leaks into the blood. An example is a marathon runner. Before the marathon it’s below 200 U/L. After the run it can be as high as 10,000 U/L. If you over exercise the level might be above 1000, and you have a much higher chance of getting injured. A bit more than 30% of our customers have high CK. It has a half life of 5 days. Your steady state CK should be less than 1000. Some supplementation can lower it, such CoQ10 and others.

Another marker we measure is hemoglobin. It measures the amount of iron in your blood cells. If you have low hemoglobin you compromise your athletic ability and decision making. About 30% of our customers have low hemoglobin. Another marker related to Iron is ferritin (protein that binds to free Iron), If you have low ferritin, take iron supplementation or eat iron rich food, that will increase both ferritin and hemoglobin. If you have normal ferritin and low hemoglobin, there are limited interventions to help you increase your hemoglobin, you may need to go to a high altitude place. Women below 50 tend to have low ferritin. The percentage is 10% among non-athletes, jumping to 30% among athletes. We also find it in athletic males. When you exercise, you have microbleeding from your gut. Among male athletes, 10-12% have low ferritin. The major concern is that they don’t know this.

What have you learned about how to increase Vitamin D?

When we started, we looked at the literature, it said you should take 400-800 IU/day. We found that even if you just take 1000 IU/day you will just maintain the level you already have. To increase it you need to consume at least 2000 IU/day. I started by testing myself. I found I had pretty low Vitamin D. At first I tried just food — fatty fish and mushrooms. I ate fish twice/day and a lot of mushrooms for a couple of months. Then I measured it again. It hadn’t changed. Then I took 1000 IU/day. I tested my blood again and it still hadn’t gone up. Then I went to 4000 IU/day and this brought me to the optimal level. And we saw the same with some of our customers.

Testosterone is a very interesting hormone. It’s hard to measure. When you overexercise, it’s low, because of the stress. It’s strongly influenced by amount of sleep, if you don’t sleep well, it will go down. We found if you look at the average consumer, around 10% have low testosterone, and none of them knew it. It’s an expensive test. Insurance companies won’t pay for it unless there is a reason.[What’s low testosterone?] The adult male: below 348 ng/dl. Women have about 20 times less testosterone. Only a tiny percentage of women, about 1%, have low testosterone.

TO GET 10% OFF ON INSIDE TRACKING TESTS, USE THIS CODE: SHANGRILA10

“Most [Scientists] are Trapped”

March 20, 2013March 14, 2024 Seth Roberts20 Comments

We need personal science, I say, because professional scientists lack freedom and have goals (e.g., status) other than progress. Art Robinson agrees:

“Most [professional scientists] are trapped,” [he said.] Trapped by government money. Filling out grant requests, politicking to be well-liked, serving on grant review boards, going to the meetings to be seen by others, will take half your time. The project itself had better be popular. “You’re only going to get the money for something that everyone has heard of and thinks is the coming thing,” he said. As for politically sensitive areas such as global warming, “your research had better come up with the results they want.” At private research institutions, where half the money may come from private endowments, the research is nonetheless still held hostage. “Professors in these [institutions] who are candid with you will say, Well, we can’t really do what we want here because half of our money comes from the government so we can’t afford to put it at risk.”

He also agrees with me about the importance of hormesis.

In the 1970s, when he worked at the Linus Pauling Institute, Robinson did a mouse experiment that found at certain doses Vitamin C increased cancer. This was contrary to what Pauling had claimed, and he reacted badly. As Robinson tells it,

Pauling responded to the unwelcome news by entering Robinson’s office one day and announcing that he had in his breast pocket some damaging personal information. He would overlook it, however, if Robinson were to resign all his positions and turn over his research. When Robinson refused, Pauling locked him out and kept the filing cabinets and computer tapes containing nine years’ worth of research. They were never recovered. Pauling also told lab assistants to kill the 400 mice used for the experiments. Pauling’s later sworn testimony showed that the story about the damaging information was invented, while experiments by the Mayo Clinic conclusively proved that the theory about cancer and Vitamin C was wrong. . . . When he found himself locked out of his own office, Robinson sued Pauling for breach of contract, slander, and fraud. . . . The case was settled out of court with Pauling paying Robinson $575,000.

Pauling wrote a book saying that large doses of Vitamin C shortened colds and another book about Vitamin C and cancer. Long ago, I took large doses of Vitamin C when I got a cold. It was hard to tell if it helped. Later I tried zinc, which definitely helped. After I improved my sleep, however, I no longer got unpleasant colds. I stopped taking zinc. For me, Pauling’s belief that megadoses of Vitamin C reduce colds was a dead end. (And dangerous. It isn’t reassuring that Pauling’s wife, who took megadoses of Vitamin C for many years, died of stomach cancer.) Improving sleep isn’t hard, and I suspect a much better way to improve immune function than megadoses of Vitamin C.

Seth Robert's Blog Mirror

Personal Science, Self-Experimentation, Scientific Method

Category: personal science