Category: self-experimentation

Butter and Arithmetic: How Much Butter?

Seth Roberts25 Comments

I measure my arithmetic speed (how fast I do simple arithmetic problems, such as 3+ 4) daily. I assume it reflects overall brain function. I assume something that improves brain function will make me faster at arithmetic.

Two years ago I discovered that butter — more precisely, substitution of butter for pork fat — made me faster. This raised the question: how much is best? For a long time I ate 60 g of butter (= 4 tablespoons = half a stick) per day. Was that optimal? I couldn’t easily eat more but I could easily eat less.

To find out, I did an experiment. At first I continued my usual intake (60 g /day). Then I ate 30 g/day for several days. Finally I returned to 60 g/day. Here are the main results:

The graph shows that when I switched to 30 g/day, I became slower. When I resumed 60 g/day, I became faster. Comparing the 30 g/day results with the combination of earlier and later 60 g/day results, t = 6, p = 0.000001.

The amount of butter also affected my error rate. Less butter, less errors:

Comparing the 30 g/day results with the combination of earlier and later 60 g/day results, t = 3, p = 0.006.

The change in error rates raised the possibility that the speed changes were due to movement along a speed-accuracy tradeoff function (rather than to genuine improvement, which would correspond to a shift in the function). To assess this idea, I plotted speed versus accuracy (each point a different day).

If differences between conditions were due to differences in speed-accuracy tradeoff, then the points for different days should lie along a single downward-sloping line. They don’t. They don’t lie along a single line. Within conditions, there was no sign of a speed-accuracy tradeoff (the fitted lines do not slope downward). If this is confusing, look at the points with accuracy values in the middle. Even when equated for accuracy, there are differences between the 30 g/day phase and the 60 g/day phases.

What did I learn?

1. How much butter is best. Before these results, I had no reason to think 60 g/day was better than 30 g/day. Now I do.

2. Speed of change. Environmental changes may take months or years to have their full effect. Something that makes your bones stronger may take months or years to be fully effective. Here, however, changes in butter intake seemed to have their full effect within a day. I noticed the same speed of change with pork fat and sleep: How much pork fat I ate during a single day affected my sleep that night (and only that night). With omega-3, the changes were somewhat slower. A day without it made little difference. You can go weeks without Vitamin C before you get scurvy. Because of the speed of the butter change, in the future I can do better balanced experiments that change conditions more often.

3. Better experimental design. An experiment that compares 60 g/day and 0 g/day probably varies many things besides butter consumption (e.g., preparing the butter to eat it). An experiment that compares 60 g/day and 30 g/day is less confounded. When I ate less butter, I ate more of other food. Compared to a 60 g/0 g experiment, this experiment (60 g/30 g) has less variation in other food. Another sort of experiment, neither better nor worse, would vary type of fat rather than amount. For example, replace 30 g of butter with 30 g of olive oil. Because the effect of eliminating 30 g/day of butter was clear, replacement experiments become more interesting — 30 g/day olive oil is more plausible as a sustainable and healthy amount than 60 g/day.

4. Generality. This experiment used cheaper butter and took place in a different context than the original discovery. I discovered the effect of butter using Straus Family Creamery butter. “One of the top premium butters in America, ” says its website, quoting Food & Wine magazine This experiment used a cheaper less-lauded butter (Land O’Lakes). Likewise, I discovered the effect in Berkeley. I did this experiment in Beijing. My Beijing life differs in a thousand ways from my Berkeley life.

The results suggest the value of self-experimentation, of course. Self-experimentation made this study much easier. But other things also mattered.

First, reaction-time methodology. In the 1960s my friend and co-author Saul Sternberg, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, introduced better-designed reaction-time experiments to study cognition. They turned out to be far more sensitive than the usual methods, which involved measuring percent correct. (Saul’s methodological advice about these experiments.)

Second, personal science (science done to help yourself). I benefited from the results. Normal science is part of a job. The self-experimentation described in books was mostly (or entirely) done as part of a job. Before I collected this data, I put considerable work into these measurements. I discovered the effect of butter in an unusual way (measuring myself day after day), I tried a variety of tasks (I started by measuring balance), I refined the data analysis, and so on. Because I benefited personally, this was easy.

Third, technological advances. Twenty years ago this experiment would have been more difficult. I collected this data outside of a lab using cheap equipment (a Thinkpad laptop running Windows XP). I collected and analyzed the data with R (free). A smart high school student could do what I did.

There is more to learn. The outlier in the speed data (one day was unusually fast) means there can be considerable improvement for a reason I don’t understand.

The Genomera Buttermind Experiment.

Assorted Links

Seth Roberts11 Comments
  • Scientific heresy, a lecture by Matt Ridley mostly about climate change. “Jim Hansen of NASA told us in 1988 to expect 2-4 degrees [of warming] in 25 years. We are experiencing about one-tenth of that.”
  • The continuing influence of Jane Jacobs. “Rouse spoke first, recalling the words of Daniel Burnham, “Make no little plans, for they have no magic to stir men’s blood,” he said. Jacobs followed and began, “Funny, big plans never stirred women’s blood. Women have always been willing to consider little plans.””
  • A self-experimental study of lactose intolerance. ” I came across an article that pointed out that levels of [lactase, the enzyme that digests lactose] peak in the morning and evening hours. So I experimented with having either ricotta products or a half cup of milk with my supper. It worked like a charm, and sure enough, if I tried having any between 11 AM and about 4 PM, I would get sick.”
  • A rather dramatic Google bug. Google the phrase “first let them get sick”. You will be told there are hundreds of thousands of results — perhaps 250,000. Look through them and you will see the correct number is much less (recently, 47).
  • Lorrie Moore reads one of my favorite short stories, “Day-Old Baby Rats” by Julie Hayden. “[In a confessional:] ‘I have missed Mass.’ ‘How many times?’ ‘Every time.’”

Thanks to Dave Lull and Nile McAdams.

Dr. Eileen Consorti and Patient Power

Seth Roberts30 Comments

My alternative to Testing Treatments (199 pages), I said recently, is three words: Ask for evidence. Ask your doctor for evidence that their recommendation (drugs, surgery, etc.) is better than other possibilities. A few years ago, I asked Dr. Eileen Consorti, a Berkeley surgeon, for evidence that the surgery she recommended (for a hernia I couldn’t detect) was a good idea. Surgery is dangerous, I said. What about doing nothing?

To reread what I’d written about this (here and here), I googled her. I learned she has a blog. It contains only one post (June 21, 2011). That post is only seven words long. I also learned she has two very similar websites (here and here). Both use her full name and title where most people would use she. Perhaps I caused the blog and websites.

Here’s what happened:

1. In 2008, during a routine physical, my primary-care doctor finds that I have a hernia, so small I hadn’t noticed it. He says I should see Dr. Consorti. Do I need surgery for something so small? I ask. Ask her, he says.

2. Dr. Consorti examines my hernia. She recommends surgery (that she would perform). Why? I ask. It could get worse, she says.

3. Eventually I realize that’s a poor reason. Anything can get worse. Influenced by Robin Hanson, I speak to Dr. Consorti: Surgery is dangerous. What about doing nothing? Is there evidence that the surgery you recommend is beneficial? Dr. Consorti says, yes, there is evidence supporting her recommendation. She says I can find it (studies that compared surgery and no surgery) via Google.

4. I try to find the evidence. I use Google and PubMed. I can’t find it. My mom, who used to be a medical librarian at UC San Francisco, is an expert at this. She has done thousands of medical searches. She too cannot find any studies supporting Dr. Consorti’s recommendation. Moreover, she finds an in-progress study that compares surgery for my problem with doing nothing. Apparently some researchers think doing nothing may be better than surgery.

5. I tell Dr. Consorti that my mom and I couldn’t find the studies she said exist. Dr. Consorti says she will find them. She will let me know when she’s found them and make copies. I can pick them up at her office.

6. Months pass. I call her office twice. No response.

7. In August 2008, I blog about Dr. Consorti’s continuing failure to produce the studies she seemed sure existed.

8. A reader named kirk points out “ what looks like a relevant hernia study“. It concludes: “Watchful waiting is an acceptable option for men with minimally symptomatic inguinal hernias. Delaying surgical repair until symptoms increase is safe.” This argues against Dr. Consorti’s recommendation. No one points out studies supporting her recommendation.

9. Two weeks after my post, someone who appears to be Dr. Consorti replies. She’s busy. She has 30 new patients with cancer. She terms my question “scientific curiosity”. She says “I will call you once I clear my desk and do my own literature search.”

10. More than a year passes. In 2010, I receive a call from Dr. Consorti’s office. An assistant asks me to remove my blog post about her failure to provide the studies. Why? I ask. It makes her look bad, he says. He says nothing about inaccuracy. I say I would be happy to amend what I wrote to include whatever Dr. Consorti wants to say about it. The assistant asks if I have any “further questions” for her. No, I say. The conversation ends.

11. A little later, I realize I do have a question. In 2008, during the conversation when I asked Dr. Consorti for evidence, I had said surgery is dangerous. In response, she had said no one had died during any of her surgeries. By 2010, I realized that such an answer was seriously incomplete. Many bad things can happen during surgery. Death is only one bad outcome. How likely were other bad outcomes? Dr. Consorti hadn’t said. She knew about these other bad effects much better than I did, yet, in a discussion of the safety of surgery, she hadn’t mentioned them. By not mentioning them, she made surgery sound safer than it actually is. Why had she not mentioned them? That’s my question. I call Dr. Consorti’s office and reach the person who had called me. I ask my question. As I wrote ,

He tried to answer it. I said I wanted to know Dr. Consorti’s answer. Wait a moment, he said. He came back to the phone. He had spoken to “the doctor”, he said. She wasn’t interested in “further dialogue”. She would contact a lawyer, he told me.

I haven’t heard from her since then.

This story illustrates a big change. As recently as twenty years ago, the doctor-patient balance of power was heavily weighted toward the doctor, in the sense that the doctor exerted considerable influence on the patient (e.g., to have surgery). One reason, Robin Hanson has emphasized, is human nature: The more fearful we are, the more we trust. Patients are often fearful. Another reason for the power imbalance was information imbalance. The doctor knew a lot about the problem (had encountered many examples, had read a lot about it). The patient, on the other hand, knew almost nothing and could not easily learn more.

During the last twenty years, of course, this has changed dramatically. Patients can easily learn a great deal about any health problem. Google, PubMed, on-line forums, MedHelp, CureTogether, and so on. The story of Dr. Consorti and me illustrates what a difference the new access to information can make.

Personal science (science done to help yourself) has two sides. One is: collect data. My self-experimentation is an example. To improve my health, I gathered data about myself. It worked. My skin improved, I lost weight, slept better, improved my mood, and so on. The other side is: use data already collected. That’s what I did here. My search for data (including my mom’s search) showed that data already in existence (including the absence of evidence supporting surgery) contradicted Dr. Consorti’s recommendation. My search was not biassed against her recommendation. I didn’t care whether she was right or wrong. I just wanted what was best for me. As Feynman said, science is the opposite of trusting experts — including doctors. My first glimpse of the power of self-experimentation was when it showed me that one of the two medicines my dermatologist had prescribed didn’t work.

Overtreatment is an enormous problem in America. Overtreated by Shannon Brownlee and Overdiagnosed by H. Gilbert Welch, Lisa Schwartzl and Steve Woloshin are recent books about it. Overtreatment could easily be why Americans pay far more for health care than people in any other country yet die earlier than people in many countries. A large fraction of our health care may do more harm than good. A common view is that the incentives are wrong. As one commenter put it, pay for treatment, you get treatment. The solution, according to this view, is to change the incentives. That’s a good idea but will not happen soon. I believe overtreatment can be reduced now. You can (a) ask for evidence (as I did) and (b) search for evidence (as I did). The difference in lifespan between America and other countries suggests this might add years to your life.

I would like to find out what happens when people ask for evidence and/or search for evidence. Please send me your stories or post them in the comments.

More Two days after I posted this, Dr. Consorti replied to this post and the earlier one with essentially the same comment, which is here.

Seth Roberts Interview With Pictures

Seth Roberts12 Comments

This sidebar appeared in an article about self-tracking (only for subscribers) by James Kennedy, who works at The Future Laboratory in London. The top photo is at a market near my apartment. Below that are photos of my sleep records, my morning-faces setup, my butter, and my kombucha brewing jars. Back then I was comparing three amounts of sugar (each jar a different amount). Now I’m comparing green tea/black tea ratios.

Testing Treatments: The Authors Respond

Seth Roberts2 Comments

In a previous post I criticized the book Testing Treatments. Two of the authors, Paul Glasziou and Iain Chalmers, have responded. I have replied to their response. They did not respond to the main point of my post, which is that the preferences and values of their book — called evidence-based medicine — hinder innovation.

Sure, care about evidence. Of course. But don’t be an evidence snob.

The Willat Effect: More Consequences

Seth Roberts24 Comments

A month ago I bought three identical tea pots to compare tea side by side. I hoped to take advantage of the Willat Effect (side-by-side comparisons create connoisseurs) to become a tea connoisseur.

It worked. Side-by-side tea comparisons are fun, easy, and have taught me a lot. When I drink tea I notice more and like it more. I do about three comparisons per day. I blogged about the first results here. The most useful idea about these comparisons came from Carl Willat himself: Compare the same tea brewed differently (e.g., different amounts of tea, different brewing times, different water temperatures). Most of my comparisons vary amount of tea or brewing time.

These many comparisons have had several effects:

1. Yeah, I’m a snob. No more cheap tea. Yeah, I’m more nerdy about it.

2. I bought a scale (Camry EHA901, $12 in America) with a precision of 0.01 gram. No more heaping teaspoons. Mostly I use 1.5 grams of tea with about 170 ml water. For dense tea, 1.5 grams is roughly 1 teaspoon. Standard-size teabags contain about 2 g of tea.

3. Much different brewing times than recommended. The black tea I have now is Ahmad Tea English Tea No. 1 (in spite of the name, not expensive). The tin says “infuse 4-6 minutes.” I used to brew it (and all black tea) 5 minutes, now I prefer less than 3 minutes. I found that 2.75 minutes is better than 3 minutes. Around 3 minutes it starts getting bitter — I never noticed! Another example is American Tea Room‘s Choco Late, which contains cacao husks, vanilla, and rooibos. The package says brew 5 minutes. I prefer 30 minutes — 30 minutes tastes better than 20 minutes, I have found several times.

4. To make the comparisons as sensitive as possible I want to start with equal tea pots, so I need to clean them well after each use. This became boring. I could eliminate cleaning by using tea bags. I bought ordinary-size empty tea bags. Side-by-side comparisons (same tea, bagged versus loose) showed they made the flavor much worse. Too bad I’d bought 200. I bought much larger tea bags to use as liners rather than bags. That worked fine — no cleaning needed, taste just as good. However, they are too large, so I shorten them. The concept of a disposable tea liner (instead of tea bag) seems to be new. I cannot find any for sale. My connoisseurship has not only caused me to spend much more on tea, it has made me want an interesting new product. Tea pot makers could sell liners specially designed for their pots. Continuing revenue, like razor blades.

5. I stopped adding artificial sweetener (e.g., Splenda) to black tea. Now I prefer it without sweetener. I continue to add cream to black tea. This is the most surprising and intriguing change. Maybe sweetness is a distraction from the complexity of the flavor (which I now notice more and derive more pleasure from), but creaminess is not. I imagine the same thing is behind Richard Stallman’s “If it is tea I really like, I like it without milk and sugar.” And maybe the same thing is behind all sorts of artistic expression that strike outsiders as harsh and unpleasant. A few years ago I went to a BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) concert and was stunned how unpleasant it was. Yet the composer (who performed it) surely enjoyed it.

Regular readers know I think connoisseurship evolved because it increased technological innovation. My experience so far supports this. Thanks to the Willat Effect, I am more of a connoisseur. As a result of this change, I am spending more on high-end artisanal goods (expensive tea) and precision manufacturing (precision scale) and I want a new product (disposable tea liners).

People think of connoisseurs as having higher standards. The word connoisseur seems to mean exactly that. Iin some obvious ways, they do. Yet the sweetener change (I no longer want sweetener) is in a way a lowering of standards. Sweetness is pleasant. I no longer require, or even want, my tea to be sweet. As far as I can tell, something like this is true throughout the arts. Connoisseurs make unusual demands, yes, but in some ways they are easier to please than non-connoisseurs. Indie films are less pleasant than mainstream films. Yet film connoisseurs like them more. To most people, indie films are also much cheaper and more experimental than mainstream films. By supporting them — by preferring them — film connoisseurs are supporting innovation. The connoisseurs have lowered their standards for film in the sense that they can enjoy cheaper films. A friend of mine attends the San Francisco International Film Festival each year. He enjoys it. I wouldn’t. The SF film festival films don’t cost much, yet they have a certain innovative quality. (I”m not a film connoisseur, I barely understand it.) The source of pleasure has shifted from conventional sources (plot, music, dialogue, gorgeous actors, sets, and landscapes) to something else, perhaps novelty and complexity.

 

 

 

Testing Treatments: Nine Questions For the Authors

Seth Roberts14 Comments

From this comment (thanks, Elizabeth Molin) I learned of a British book called Testing Treatments (pdf), whose second edition has just come out. Its goal is to make readers more sophisticated consumers of medical research. To help them distinguish “good” science from “bad” science. Ben Goldacre, the Bad Science columnist, fulsomely praises it (“I genuinely, truly, cannot recommend this awesome book highly enough for its clarity, depth, and humanity”). He wrote a foreword. The main text is by Imogen Evans (medical journalist), Hazel Thornton (writer), Iain Chalmers (medical researcher), and Paul Glaziou (medical researcher, editor of Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine).

To me, as I’ve said, medical research is almost entirely bad. Almost all medical researchers accept two remarkable rules: (a) first, let them get sick and (b) no cheap remedies. These rules severely limit what is studied. In terms of useful progress, the price of these limits has been enormous: near total enfeeblement. For many years the Nobel Prize in Medicine has documented the continuing failure of medical researchers all over the world to make significant progress on all major health problems, including depression, heart disease, obesity, cancer, diabetes, stroke, and so on. It is consistent with their level of understanding that some people associated with medicine would write a book about how to do something (good science) the whole field manifestly can’t do. Testing Treatments isn’t just a fat person writing a book about how to lose weight, it’s the author failing to notice he’s fat.

In case the lesson of the Nobel Prizes isn’t clear, here are some questions for the authors:

1. Why no chapter on prevention research? To fail to discuss prevention, which should be at least half of health care, at length is like writing a book using only half the letters of the alphabet. The authors appear unaware they have done so.

2. Why are practically all common medical treatments expensive?

3. Why should some data be ignored (“clear rules are followed, describing where to look for evidence, what evidence can be included”)? The “systematic reviews” that Goldacre praises here (p. 12) may ignore 95% of available data.

4. The book says: “Patients with life-threatening conditions can be desperate to try anything, including untested ‘treatments’. But it is far better for them to consider enrolling in a suitable clinical trial in which a new treatment is being compared with the current best treatment.” Really? Perhaps an ancient treatment (to authors, untested) would be better. Why are there never clinical trials that compare current treatments (e.g., drugs) to ancient treatments? The ancient treatments, unlike the current ones, have passed the test of time. (The authors appear unaware of this test.) Why is the comparison always one relatively new treatment versus another even newer treatment?

5. Why does all the research you discuss center on reducing symptoms rather than discovering underlying causes? Isn’t the latter vastly more helpful than the former?

6. In a discussion of how to treat arthritis (pp. 170-172), why no mention of omega-3? Many people (with good reason, including this) consider omega-3 anti-inflammatory. Isn’t inflammation a major source of disease?

7. Why is there nothing about how to make your immune system work better? Why is this topic absent from the examples? The immune system is mentioned only once (“Bacterial infections, such as pneumonia, which are associated with the children’s weakened immune system, are a common cause of death [in children with AIDS]“).

8. Care to defend what you say about “ghostwriting” (where med school professors are the stated authors of papers they didn’t write)? You say ghostwriting is when “a professional writer writes text that is officially credited to someone else” (p. 124). Officially credited? Please explain. You also say “ghostwritten material appears in academic publications too – and with potentially worrying consequences” (p. 124). Potentially worrying consequences? You’re not sure?

9. Have you ever discovered a useful treatment? No such discoveries are described in “About the Authors” nor does the main text contain examples. If not, why do you think you know how? If you’re just repeating what others have said, why do you think your teachers are capable of useful discovery? The authors dedicate the book to someone “who encouraged us repeatedly to challenge authority.” Did you ever ask your teachers for evidence that evidence-based medicine is an improvement?

The sad irony of Testing Treatments is that it glorifies evidence-based medicine. According to that line of thinking, doctors should ask for evidence of effectiveness. They should not simply prescribe the conventional treatment. In a meta sense, the authors of Testing Treatments have made exactly the mistake that evidence-based medicine was supposed to fix: Failure to look at evidence. They have failed to see abundant evidence (e.g., the Nobel Prizes) that, better or not, evidence-based medicine is little use.

Above all, the authors of Testing Treatments and the architects of evidence-based medicine have failed to ask: How do new ideas begin? How can we encourage them? Healthy science is more than hypothesis testing; it includes hypothesis generation — and therefore includes methods for doing so. What are those methods? By denigrating and ignoring and telling others to ignore what they call “low-quality evidence” (e.g., case studies), the architects of evidence-based medicine have stifled the growth of new ideas. Ordinary doctors cannot do double-blind clinical trials. Yet they can gather data. They can write case reports. They can do n=1 experiments. They can do n=8 experiments (“case series”). There are millions of ordinary doctors, some very smart and creative (e.g., Jack Kruse). They are potentially a great source of new ideas about how to improve health. By denigrating what ordinary doctors can do (the evidence they can collect) — not to mention what the rest of us can do — and by failing to understand innovation, the architects of evidence-based medicine have made a bad situation (the two rules I mentioned earlier) even worse. They have further reduced the ability of the whole field to innovate, to find practical solutions to common problems.

Evidence-based medicine is religion-like in its emphasis on hierarchy (grades of evidence) and rule-following. In the design of religions, these features made sense (to the designers). You want unquestioning obedience (followers must not question leaders) and you want the focus to be on procedure (rules and rituals) rather than concrete results. Like many religions, evidence-based medicine draws lines (on this side “good”, on that side “bad”) where no lines actually exist. Such line-drawing helps religious leaders because it allows their followers to feel superior to someone (to people outside their religion). When it comes to science, however, these features make things worse. Good ideas can come from anybody, high or low in the hierarchy, on either side of any line. And every scientist comes to realize, if they didn’t already know, that you can’t do good science simply by following rules. It is harder than that. You have to pay close attention to what happens and be flexible. Evidence-based medicine is the opposite of flexible. “ There is considerable intellectual tyranny in the name of science,” said Richard Feynman.

Testing Treatments has plenty of stories. Here I agree with the authors — good stories. It’s the rest of the book that shows their misunderstanding. I would replace the book’s many pages of advice and sermonizing with a few simple words: Ask your doctor for the evidence behind their treatment recommendation. He or she may not want to tell you. Insist. Don’t settle for vague banalities (“It’s good to catch these things early”). Don’t worry about being “difficult”. You won’t find this advice anywhere in Testing Treatments. If I wanted to help patients, I would find out what happens when it is followed.

More Two of the authors respond in the comments. And I comment on their response.

Flaxseed Oil Heals Bleeding Gums, Again

Seth Roberts15 Comments

In response to this post, which went up three months ago, a reader named Tara has just written:

I started taking 2 TB of flax oil daily about four days ago and now my gums are barely bleeding at all after I brush and floss. My gums were red, swollen and would bleed after I brushed and flossed and are now pink and healthy looking.

I’ve had this problem for years and I could not understand why it would keep happening even though I was consistent with my dental routine. I take the berry flavored Barlean’s flax oil mainly because it tastes good and so I look forward to taking it- if it was gross I would not be consistent with taking it.

Anyhow, thanks for the information! I wish dentists would look into this but they probably won’t so I’m glad that you do.

I agree about the Barlean’s, by the way. Their Omega Swirl flaxseed oil does taste good. The Omega Swirl webpage does not list healthy gums as one of its benefits. Instead it lists a bunch of benefits, such as “Heart Health” that are nearly impossible to verify.

Someone recently told me something fascinating about flaxseed oil: It made it much easier to kneel on the floor. Before he started taking it, his knees would hurt after a few seconds. Now they don’t. I don’t remember my knees hurting quickly but I consume 66 g/day of ground flaxseed (= about 2 T flaxseed oil) and can kneel without pain for minutes.

The tiny fact reflected in Tara’s comment — an easily-available supplement (flaxseed oil) quickly cures a common problem (bleeding gums) but hardly anyone knows this — is a devastating comment on our health care system.

1. Dentists haven’t managed to figure this out. Flaxseed oil is not an obscure supplement. Dentists are not making money giving people much worse advice (“floss regularly”).

2. Nutrition professors haven’t managed to figure this out. Omega-3 is not an obscure nutrient. Nevertheless, the 2010 USDA Dietary Guidelines says omega-3 fats are “essential” but says nothing about how much you need. Inflammation is believed to be the cause of many diseases, including heart disease. By getting this one thing (minimum omega-3 intake you need to be healthy) right, the USDA could do a world of good. Instead they tell people to eat less animal fat (“consume less than 10 percent of calories from saturated fatty acids”).

To be fair, professional researchers are starting to figure this out. A 2010 study of 9000 people found that “participants in the middle and upper third for omega-3 fatty acid consumption were between 23 percent and 30 percent less likely to have gum disease than those who consumed the least amount of omega-3 fatty acids.” With the right dose, I believe gum disease becomes 100% less likely. But at least they noticed a connection.

 

Vitamin D, Sunlight, and Sleep: More

Seth Roberts18 Comments

In the comments on yesterday’s post (“Can Vitamin D Replace Sunlight? A Stunning Discovery”), two commenters (John and Aaron Blaisdell) noted that Nephropal had said something similar. They’re right. Here’s what Nephropal said in 2009:

Vitamin D taken at night causes insomnia. This is a complaint of a few of my patients. Moreover, when they switch to morning dosing, the insomnia subsides. Thus, Vitamin D should be taken in the morning.

That’s a great observation, but not the same as Primal Girl’s. Here is her observation, shortened for clarity:

I usually took my supplements mid-afternoon. I vowed to take them first thing every morning. I tried it the next day and that night I slept like a rock. And the next night. And the next.

The two observations support each other. Both support the idea that the timing of Vitamin D matters. But there are also big differences. Paleo Girl had been taking her Vitamin D in mid-afternoon, not at night. She shifted to first thing in the morning, which is more specific than morning. I changed the title of yesterday’s title to make clearer what is new here: the idea that Vitamin D can substitute for sunlight.

Lots of things cause insomnia if you take them in the evening. Caffeine and other stimulants, for example. A comment on yesterday’s post said that B vitamins and calcium cause insomnia if taken in the evening. This is why Nephropal’s observation, although very important, is not a stunning surprise. You stop taking X in the evening, your sleep improves — I won’t be astonished, no matter what X is.

Vitamin D is not a stimulant or is at best a mild stimulant. Taking Vitamin D in the afternoon should not cause trouble sleeping. Yet Primal Girl had trouble sleeping. And she was getting little morning sunlight. It is a real insight that first-thing-in-the-morning Vitamin D could have the same effect as first-thing-in-the-morning sunlight — in other words, could substitute for missing sunlight. Against all odds, the results supported this idea.

One commenter on yesterday’s post said Primal Girl’s results were both unproven and obvious. Vitamin D is technically a hormone! Melatonin is a hormone, said the comment. I have not heard anyone propose taking melatonin first thing in the morning to improve sleep. It is standard to take melatonin in the evening. The accepted view among circadian rhythm researchers is that sunlight produces its effects on circadian rhythms via nerves, not blood. For example, hundreds of experiments have found that destroying the suprachiasmatic nucleus of rats destroys their circadian rhythms. The suprachiasmatic nucleus receives neural input from the eyes — that’s why these lesions were first made (by Irv Zucker, a Berkeley colleague of mine).

Lots of people think Vitamin D improves sleep. That’s not new. Here’s what one of them said, in a post promisingly titled “ When is the best time to take your Vitamin D supplement?“:

In an effort to boost absorption of vitamin D, individuals were asked to take their vitamin D supplements with the largest meal of the day. After 2-3 months, vitamin D levels were checked again.At the end of the study period, vitamin D levels had risen to an average of 47.2 ng/ml (118 nmol/l) – an average i ncrease in vitamin D levels of about 57 per cent. . . It seems sensible, I think, for individuals who are currently supplementing with vitamin D to take this with their largest evening meal.

 

Can Vitamin D Replace Sunlight? A Stunning Discovery

Seth Roberts44 Comments

Primal Girl is a stay-at-home mom. I met her at the Ancestral Health Symposium. Her sleep was bad. I made recommendations. One of them was to get an hour of sunlight soon after you wake up. She can’t do that — too busy being a mom. So she decided to take Vitamin D early in the morning. After all, sunlight exposure produces Vitamin D. Here’s what happened:

One day as I was taking my supplements, I was thinking about how many units of Vitamin D your skin produces in 30 minutes of sun (20,000 I believe). I looked aghast at the 10,000 units of Vitamin D I was taking. It was 7 o’clock at night! I was essentially giving my body 15 minutes worth of bright sunlight energy. No wonder I was waking up in the middle of the night! I was telling my body that it wasn’t really time for bed, it was still the middle of the day. I wondered what would happen if I only took my Vitamin D first thing in the morning. It wouldn’t be an hour naked in the sun, but 15 minutes is better than nothing. That night I slept like shit. Worse than normal.

I usually took my supplements mid-afternoon. I vowed to take them first thing every morning. If I forgot, I would not take the Vitamin D at all that day. I tried it the next day and that night I slept like a rock. And the next night. And the next. Days I forgot and skipped the D3, I still slept great. That was the only change I made to my lifestyle and my sleep issues completely resolved. [emphasis added]

OMG! Double OMG! Like Primal Girl, I have never heard anything like this. Even I am stunned that such a simple safe easy change could have such a positive effect. (Taking Vitamin D at sunrise is a lot easier than standing on one leg four times!) I’ve read lots about circadian rhythms. Many studies showed that a drug would be much more powerful at certain times of day. Most of these studies were with rats. It never occurred to me that the time you take a vitamin could matter so much.