Category: Shangri-La Diet

Science in Action: Omega-3 (materials)

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Self-experimentation is for everyone just as blogging is for everyone. You don’t need fancy equipment to be an interesting blogger and you don’t need fancy equipment to do interesting self-experimentation — at least I think my recent omega-3 results are interesting. Here are the easy-to-find materials I used:

1. To measure my balance, I used a bamboo cutting board ($15), a 0.5-inch pipe plug ($1), a booklet with about 20 pages (free), and a stopwatch ($10). Here they are:
Balance-measurement equipment

This shows the size of the pipe plug:

The pipe plug up close

I put the booklet on the floor and put the pipe plug in a cut-out hole in its center. The hole goes about halfway into the booklet (e.g., 10 pages out of 20).

Assembly of the balance-measurement equipment: Step 1

Then I balance the cutting board on top of the pipe plug:

Assembly of the balance-measurement equipment: Step 2

I stand on my right foot on the cutting board; the measure is how long I can balance on it before my left foot touches the floor.

2. To vary the amount of omega-3 in my brain, I used these oils:

The oils I used

Walnut oil and flaxseed oil are high in omega-3 fats; sesame oil is low.

If you are interested in doing similar experiments, feel free to contact me.

Science in Action: Omega-3 (balance results)

Seth Roberts6 Comments

Because many SLD dieters reported better sleep, I wondered if omega-3 improved sleep. I increased my omega-3 intake by switching from olive oil, which has little omega-3, to walnut oil and flaxseed oil, which have much more — especially flaxseed oil. The amount of oil stayed roughly the same. The night after the change, my sleep got better. To my surprise, so did my balance. The next morning, I found I could more easily put on my shoes while standing up. I had been putting on my shoes standing up for 2-3 years and it had never been this easy. (I put on my shoes standing up because I thought it might improve my balance.)

I devised a simple measure of balancing ability. I stood on one foot on a platform balanced on a small metal cylinder (a pipe plug). (I will post pictures.) The parts were easy to find. I tried cylinders of different sizes until the balancing was neither too easy nor too hard. The measure was how long I could stand on one foot on the platform, which measured with a stopwatch. I made these measurements in blocks of 20 (the first 5 were warmup, leaving 15).

My early attempts had two problems: (1) The dose was too low. I had been taking the flaxseed oil as capsules (10 1000-mg capsules/day). I started taking 1 T/day in liquid form (much faster). Then I increased the amount of flaxseed oil/day from 1 T to 2 T. My sleep improved: I woke up more rested. Because the sleep effect was now perfectly clear, I thought measuring the effect on my balance would be a good idea. (2) Practice effects were too large. How well I could balance depended on how often I measured my balance. To avoid practice effects, I measured my balance no more than once/day.

I did a baseline period of several days; then I replaced the walnut oil and flaxseed oil with the same volume of sesame oil, which is low in omega-3. I continued this period until the effects seemed beyond doubt. Then I did another baseline period with the original amounts of walnut and flaxseed oil.
Effect of Type of Fat on My Balance
Here are the balance results. Each point is a geometric mean over 15 trials. The bars are standard errors. After one day, my balance got worse with sesame oil. When I returned to the high-omega-3 oils, my balance returned to its baseline level. To measure the clarity of the effect, I compared the 17 baseline days with the last 4 sesame-oil days. This gave t (19) = 4.1. A very clear effect.

I made this graph in a cafe. The person sitting next to me asked what I was working on. I showed her the graph. I explained that I measured my balance as a way of measuring how well my brain was working. The results suggested that the type of fat in my diet affected how well my brain worked. She said the results were very interesting because most people will have diets closer to sesame oil than walnut oil and flaxseed oil. Many people will be interested in these results, she said. I hope so, I said.

I will post later on the background of these results, the questions they raise, and procedural details. If you can’t wait, read the posts in the omega-3 category. If you are interested in doing a similar experiment, please let me know.

Economics and SLD

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I got a phone call today from a woman in Los Angeles who had some questions about the theory behind the Shangri-La Diet. It was an unusual book, she said.

“What did you like about it?” I asked.

“The cover. It’s warm and inviting,” she said.

I said that was the publisher’s doing, not mine. She also said that it was unusual in that it paid attention to how much things cost. Most diet books don’t, she said. I think my mom would be pleased to hear that.

The Benefits of Theory: Crazy Spicing and B. F. Skinner

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Someone has written me that she is doing well with the Shangri-La Diet by doing only crazy-spicing — adding random spices to everything. She’s not doing anything else — no oil, no sugar water, etc. My reaction is: Take that, B. F. Skinner!

In 1950, Skinner published a paper called “ Are Theories of Learning Necessary?” which revealed that he did not understand the value of theories. In 1977, he wrote a similar paper called “ Why I am not a Cognitive Psychologist,” which showed he still did not understand their value. In the later paper he wrote:

I am equally concerned with practical consequences. The appeal to cognitive states and processes is a diversion which could well be responsible for much of our failure to solve our problems.

The value of crazy spicing would never have been discovered without a theory. Without a theory, you’d never try it. It would never be discovered by accident.

Ripe for Change (movie)

Seth Roberts1 Comment

Last night I saw the excellent documentary Ripe for Change, about new developments in food in California. It is part of a four-part series called California and the American Dream on PBS several months ago (to my horror, I missed it). The showing was hosted by Slow Food San Francisco; I learned about it because I am a member of Slow Food USA, “an organization devoted to preserving traditional foodways” (from their website description).

One of the producers was at the screening and spoke at length about outreach, meaning screenings. PBS misses lots of people, he said. As I say about research, no point doing it if no one learns about it. He can’t post the whole thing on Google Video because PBS owns the broadcast rights for three years. Ugh. First, PBS funds it, then prevents people from seeing it.

Edible Schoolyard

The film covers the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley (aerial photo above) and attempts in Berkeley to improve school lunches. While writing The Shangri-La Diet, I looked into school gardens as a way to help kids eat better. I visited the Edible Schoolyard, where I was sorry to learn that the ten-year-old program receives $200,000/year in grants (a crucial fact I can’t find on their website) with no end in sight. When I talked with them, they seemed uninterested in reducing this dependency. Not very sustainable, much less repeatable. The Berkeley school lunch program is also in poor shape, although you wouldn’t know it from the film, one of its few shortcomings.

Farmer's Market

In contrast, farmer’s markets are doing great. The crucial step, said the film, was legalization, which happened while Jerry Brown was governor. Farmer’s markets are spreading everywhere, supporting thousands of small farms and artisanal producers, and providing healthier food. (Not to mention their social, entertainment, and educational value.) Could this be telling us something about how to improve school lunches? I think liberalization of the school kitchen laws and allowing lots of small producers to try to make a profit by providing healthy school lunches (giving kids vouchers, say) might go a long way. The current efforts are too top-down and too few brains are involved, I believe.

Before the film there was a short clip of Naked Chef Jaime Oliver trying to improve British school lunches. In what we saw, he was having trouble: the kids wouldn’t eat the food. (Just like in Berkeley.) Jaime Oliver, meet Antonia Demas, whom I wrote about in the last chapter of The Shangri-La Diet.

Robin Hanson on Web Trials (my comments)

Seth Roberts2 Comments

Yesterday I posted Robin Hanson’s comments on web trials. My comments on his comments:

1. I think Robin is right that it would be hard to get most people to allow themselves to be randomized. But I also think it doesn’t matter much. The important thing is to improve on existing methods of evaluation. Randomization of subjects to treatments isn’t an end in itself, of course. The goal is to reach the right answer: Learn which treatment works best. I think if you have what might be called a “level playing field” or a “fair comparison” (the various treatment alternatives are presented “equally” — e.g., as equally likely to work, equally attractive, equally high on a list) it will be hard to imagine how the results will be on average worse than nothing. The site can record data about each subject (age, sex, etc.) and the results can be analyzed using those factors — another way to equate subjects across treatments and to help each person decide what would be best for him or her.

2. Excellent point that web trials could be used for evaluation of any advice. Maybe it would be better to start with a non-health problem. Something where the effects are quick and easy to measure.

3. I like the Wikipedia comparison. All-to-all institutions — institutions that help connect everyone to everyone — are ancient and have been very important. Markets and money may have been the first. If I pay Sam $5 for X, and then Sam pays Peter $5 for Y, Peter and Sam have traded X and Y. Money has made this much easier. Democratic institutions allow everyone to govern everyone. Banks allow everyone to loan money to everyone. Books allow everyone to teach everyone. Wikipedia makes all-to-all teaching much easier. Web trials allow everyone to help everyone solve any problem where data would help. As Robin says, Wikipedia suggests that people will participate in all-to-all institutions when there is no obvious reward for doing so.

Robin Hanson on Web Trials

Seth RobertsLeave a comment

I recently asked Robin Hanson, a professor at George Mason University, what he thought of web trials. Web trials are a way to learn how to solve difficult health problems (e.g., acne, obesity). By web trial I mean a web-based collection of data that compares different ways of solving a problem. People with the problem would go to a website, sign up for one of the treatments, follow the directions, and report the results in a standardized format. For example, a site might compare three acne treatments (treatments that anyone can try, such as dietary changes or over-the-counter medicines). The cumulated results would gradually show which treatment works best — a thousand times more efficiently (sooner, cheaper, more easily) than a clinical trial (which no one would finance because there is no profit to be made). Web trials are halfway between clinical trials and the data collection now going on at the Shangri-La Diet (SLD) forums, where people post their progress on SLD.

I asked Robin because he has pioneered a similar improvement: Prediction markets are often far better than what they replace. And his core political affiliation is “I don’t know.”

Here is a summary of what he said.

1. A selection effect is a big concern. Do people wait to report back until after it works? There is always going to be the issue of sampling, selection bias for people who stay with it.

2. How could you get people to allow you (the website) to choose for them which treatment to do? That would be the hard thing. Perhaps the website could say: “would you like to see what our advice for you is?” At most you could get randomization for your advice.

3. It doesn’t have to be restricted to health problems. It could be used to test all sorts of advice. You could just get data about what happens when people do or don’t follow some advice — romantic advice, for example. Very rarely do we have randomization in choices. When we do, we call them natural experiments. In medicine, researchers have used practice variation (variation from one doctor to the next) to look at effectiveness.

4. Perhaps you could get people to commit to this the way they do to Wikipedia. The goal would be: Let’s understand humanity — a noble cause. Let’s be part of a grand project to do this.

Robin blogs at Overcoming Bias. Tomorrow I will comment on Robin’s comments.

From the SLD Forums

Seth Roberts1 Comment

Today paulkimelman posted this:

I reached my target weight and have easily held it for >4 months now. I dropped the amount of oil to 1 Tbs from 2, but otherwise it is the same. Many people have been shocked more by the fact that I have effortlessly held the weight than that I lost it (23 pounds in 4-1/2 months). I do note that it is now effortless, as I do not worry about food at all (I eat what I want and when I want, except in the 2 hour window). Sometimes when I am snacking on almonds, I think I really should cut back, but it does not affect my weight, so I am learning to stop worrying. One interesting thing I have found in maintenance is about a 3 pound variance. What is nice, is that when it jumps up 2 pounds, I do not do anything different, as I know it will be down the next day. The other is that I know that if I have a few drinks of alcohol, my weight will be up 1 to 2 pounds the next day (1 if I drink enough water, 2 if I do not). But, again, it just drops off by the next day. I think it is simply retention of water. The calmness of not worrying about what the scale says has been a great feeling. At some point, I may shoot for losing another 6-7 pounds (I am at the top end of normal BMI, and this would take me to the low end). As you can guess, I have got a lot of people started on this diet, most have been successful (so far). So, for anyone who is not sure, I can report that I have been fully successful on this.

I now return to regular blogging…

Near-Celebrity Near-Endorsement

Seth Roberts3 Comments

People have often told me that what the Shangri-La Diet needs is endorsement from a celebrity. I agree. From the current (2007-01-15) issue of Star magazine, here is a step in that direction. Not quite an endorsement but close; and on the same page as two celebrities.

Shangri-La Diet in Star magazine

I am giving a talk tonight (Tuesday, January 9, 7:30 pm) at PARC (Palo Alto) about self-experimentation that is open to the public. Audio and PowerPoint will be posted.

Methodological Lessons from Self-Experimentation (part 4 of 4)

Seth Roberts1 Comment

6. Curiosity helps — because it provides a wide range of knowledge. Pasteur made a similar point when he said luck favors “the prepared mind” by which he meant the well-stocked mind. To come up with my theory of weight control you needed to know both obesity research and animal learning because the theory is based on basic facts about weight control and basic facts about Pavlovian conditioning. I knew the weight control facts because I had taught introductory psychology and lectured on weight control. I knew the basic facts about Pavlovian conditioning because my graduate training was in animal learning. It was unusual to know both sets of facts. Few obesity researchers knew much about animal learning; few animal-learning researchers knew much about weight control. The same thing happened with my mood research: Facts that I had learned from teaching introductory psychology showed me that my findings made sense and were important. I had taught introductory psychology because I was curious about psychology.

These two examples (weight control, mood) surprised me. I may have heard this point made a few times but I didn’t know any examples. Since then, however, I have come across examples not involving me that make the same point. Luca Turin is a biophysicist who has come up with a far better explanation of how the nose works than any previous theory. His recent book The Secret of Scent tells the story. “In order to solve the structure/odor problem,” he wrote, “you need to know at least three things: (a) biology, (b) structure and (c) odor. Each of these three things taken individually is not difficult” (p. 166). The problem had gone unsolved because no one before Turin knew all three.

7. Publish in open-access journals. Because my long self-experimentation paper was published in an open-access journal, anybody could read it within minutes. My friend Andrew Gelman blogged about it, which caused Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution to mention it. This brought it to the attention of Stephen Dubner, who with Steven Levitt wrote about it in their Freakonomics column in the New York Times. That led to a contract to write two books — one about weight loss, the other about self-experimentation in general. That anyone could download my paper made it spread much faster. In the old days, with photocopies and libraries and mailed reprints . . . no talk tonight.

A summing-up, if you want to figure something out via data collection: 1. Do something. Don’t give up before starting. 2. Keep doing something. Science is more drudgery than scientists usually say. 3. Be minimal. 4. Use scientific tools (e.g., graphs), but don’t listen to scientists who say don’t do X or Y. 5. Post your results.

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. You no longer need to register to comment. My talk Tuesday night (tomorrow Jan 9) 7:30 pm at PARC (Palo Alto) is open to the public.