Category Archives: Around the Web - Page 11

Here’s what caught my eye this week:

[1] Interesting posts this week: Do people biangulate? Chris Highcock gives us more reason to use a standing desk. A question I never would have seen before reading PaleoHacks:  “Do you brush your teeth with bacon?” Peter notes mice that become obese on a “high-fat diet” can lose weight rapidly if their diet gets even fattier.

Dr. John Briffa discusses the link between HbA1c and mortality (also discussed in our book) and the vast scale of publication bias in medical journals. The issue of publication bias has a counterpart among the public which we might call readership bias. Once people become convinced something is good, they are reluctant to credit evidence that it may be bad. So, for example, the genuinely good evidence in favor of omega-3s can retard acceptance of evidence for harmful effects in some contexts.

Emily has a great post on the links between diet and violence . Mark’s Daily Apple has a nice overview of some things I’ll be talking about in the months to come – traditional cooking herbs.

Via O Primitivo, a Mediterranean diet reduces risk of cancer by 4%. I think we can do better than that.

Last week, when Gary Taubes reported his cholesterol, he also reported his diet:

I do indeed eat three eggs with cheese, bacon and sausage for breakfast every morning, typically a couple of cheeseburgers (no bun) or a roast chicken for lunch, and more often than not, a ribeye or New York steak (grass fed) for dinner, usually in the neighborhood of a pound of meat. I cook with butter and, occasionally, olive oil (the sausages). My snacks run to cheese and almonds.

This week, Anthony Colpo disapproves — twice.

Via Craig Newmark, pro surfer Laird Hamilton has a health tip:

One of my favorite things to do in the morning is to stand on golf balls and roll them along my arches. You have seventy-four hundred nerve endings on your feet, so you stimulate your whole metabolism when you do that.

[2] Is the DHA-cancer connection drug-driven?: Via Dennis Mangan, I’m informed of a helpful comment on the Brasky study by commenter Karl at FuturePundit. Key points: Half of the subjects in the study were on the drug finasteride (Propecia, Proscar). The finasteride arm had 78% more high-grade cancers than the placebo arm.

While tissue DHA levels were strongly associated with high-grade cancer, EPA levels weren’t. On the one hand this is consistent with our idea that high tissue DHA drives cancer via the DHA-angiogenesis mechanism we’ve been discussing: only DHA, not EPA, produces high-grade cancer.

However, normally tissue DHA and EPA are obtained from food and levels go up or down together. Few people in the study supplemented DHA alone; so DHA and EPA levels should have been high or lower together and both should have shown the association.

A plausible explanation would be that the drug was raising DHA levels artificially, and triggering high-grade cancers.

Unfortunately the study doesn’t report the level-response relationship between DHA and high-grade cancers separately in the finasteride and placebo arms – only in the two groups combined. I see this as a failure of the reviewers and an embarrassment to the authors.

Taking Propecia for an enlarged prostate may be much more dangerous than eating salmon.

This plausible hypothesis makes me more comfortable maintaining our recommendation to eat a pound of cold-water marine fish per week.

[3] Vanishing symbol of love: Will the turtle dove disappear?

[4] At least we’ll still have kittens:

Via Yves Smith.

[5] Heh, heh: Denise Minger says we “make DHA seem a little fishy.”

[6] Stabby hearts Denise!: They’d make a cute couple. I can see them 20 years from now:

[7] Because the purpose of government is to harass the citizenry: Feds sting Amish farmer for selling raw milk locally. Via Liberation Wellness.

[8] Carbs for weight loss: Barbra is worried that adding carbs to her very low-carb diet to fix her dry eyes might prevent weight loss. The experience of NourishedEm at Mark’s Daily Apple forum may reassure her:

I find it really interesting that a lot of us who’ve been at this for 6 months or more are finding that we do better with more starch.

When I started PB, I was all about the sub 30g of carbs as my main aim was to lose weight. Well, 7 months of that saw me lose precisely nothing. In the last 6 weeks (after having read PHD), I have added potatoes, rice, taro and sweet potatoes to my diet; in addition I have started eating in a 6 hour eating window. I’ve been losing 2-3lbs a week ever since, it’s like a magic formula for me!

The best part is no longer having to think so hard about what to eat. A lot of ‘normal’ foods have made their way back into the roster with the addition of more starch. I use rice noodles as pasta and can have carbonara and bolognaise again, a baked potato stuffed with chilli and cheese is a great, quick meal, asian stir fries, sushi, risotto, etc….

(Related: Perfect Health Diet: Weight Loss Version, Feb 1, 2011.)

[9] Kate did the wrong diet!: She ate the Dukan Diet before her wedding.

As it happens, I had a correspondent who got very sick on the Dukan Diet; it seems to have re-activated a dormant infection. I rather agree with this nutritionist:

[10] McDonald’s diet produces big baby: What strikes me about this Daily Mail story is that their measure of a baby’s health is its size:

When Suzanne Franklin fell pregnant, she was at a loss as to how she would eat for two.

The 23-year-old had suffered from extreme food allergies for years from eggs to dairy and fruit and vegetables.

Burger baby: Suzanne Franklin and baby son Harry with a Big Mac, which helped sustain both of them during Suzanne’s pregnancy

Doctors warned her that pregnancy would make the symptoms worse but that antihistamines could harm her baby.

But Ms Franklin knew she wasn’t allergic to McDonald’s burgers – so she ate a Big Mac burger everyday throughout her pregnancy.

Any worries about her unusual diet affecting her baby’s growth were unfounded – as she has given birth to her own 10 lb 2 oz whopper.

Miss Franklin said: ‘All those burgers definitely didn’t do him any harm. It was the only thing I could eat safely during my pregnancy, so I just lived on them….

Baby Harry is now three months old – and he has shown signs of inheriting Miss Franklin’s allergies too. He is already allergic to seven different types of milk.

Via John J. Ray.

[11] Has science degenerated?: Bruce Charlton, former editor of Medical Hypotheses, reflects on the negative consequences of the professionalization of science:

There is a dark side to science … in the sense that science is done for reasons of power rather than love.

There was a time when science really was done – mostly – for love; by people who loved knowledge, and were not intending to *use* it….

[O]riginally even medical science was done for love, by doctors and other clinicians, as an overflow from their practice: they wanted to understand, not to control.

As a by-product, in practice, the old medical scientists actually made more frequent, more useful, more powerful discoveries than we do nowadays …

[12] He doesn’t even need 30 bananas: This guy hasn’t stopped bicycling all day:

Via Zero Hedge.

[13] Money does buy happiness!: According to a new review in the Lancet by Bill Easterly.

[14] Another reason not to eat at the Road Kill Café:  The New York Times reports that Armadillos Can Transmit Leprosy to Humans, Federal Researchers Confirm:

Armadillos have never been among the cuddly creatures routinely included in petting zoos, but on Wednesday federal researchers offered a compelling reason to avoid contact with the armored animals altogether: They are a source of leprosy infections in humans.

Using genetic sequencing machines, researchers were able to confirm that about a third of the leprosy cases that arise each year in the United States almost certainly result from contact with infected armadillos. The cases are concentrated in Louisiana and Texas, where some people hunt, skin and eat armadillos.

[15] Ella Fitzgerald: Born on April 25, she deserves a listen:

[16] Celiacs do react to oats: This came up long ago in a comment thread. It turns out that some varieties of oats do trigger gluten autoantibodies.

[17] Shou-Ching’s photo-aphorism project: Shou-Ching likes photography and her latest art project is to combine her photograph with an apposite aphorism. Here’s one – click to enlarge:

[18] Weekly video: The Aurora by Terje Sorgjerd.

The Aurora from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

Today is Holy Saturday, the day when Jesus joined the dead; a day of sorrow as we await Easter and rebirth. Tonight, at the Easter Vigil mass at St Paul’s Church in Harvard Square, Shou-Ching will be baptized and received into the Roman Catholic Church.

[1] Interesting posts this week: Bix at Fanatic Cook finds another study showing that calcium supplements increase risk of heart attack and stroke. Ned Kock discusses why older Inuit had lower bone mineral density. Stan the Heretic links to a study showing that if you have heart disease and want to eat a BIG meal, you should make it fatty. Jimmy Moore discusses the rising cost of coconut oil. Jimmy recounts his 7 day fast here. Jamie Scott provides background on the epigenetics of obesity, and a recipe for shrinking pig brains. Mark Sisson explains how to breathe. CarbSane finds that exercise is highly under-rated for fat (not weight) loss. Earlier, CarbSane engaged her critics on insulin. From Kit Perkins, a correspondent of Richard Nikoley, comes a good line indicating the link between hunger and fat regulation:  “for me and a lot of others, we felt the most hungry when gaining fat and the most satiated while losing fat.”

The New York Times “Think Like a Doctor” series is getting to be like an episode of House. Test your analytical skills: The puzzle. The solution.

Finally, Don Matesz gives us more evidence from the China Study. Rice, fish, meat, and green vegetables are good. Wheat, other grains including corn, legumes, and light-colored vegetables are bad.

[2] Aw Maa!:

Via Yves Smith.

[3] Autism and Diet: “Best of Emily” continues at Psychology Today with two posts on the links between opioid peptides, leaky gut, and autism, and evidence in support of two possible fixes:  a gluten-free casein-free diet and low dose naltrexone.

LDN enhances bacterial and viral immunity, and there are links between autism and viral infection, so we consider LDN as a highly plausible frontline therapy for autism.

Emily has a third post that mentions evidence that maternal malnutrition contributes to autism. In it she links to a free review of maternal nutrition and birth outcomes.

[4] 10 Years of Weight Loss: My favorite post this week was from Seth Roberts, reporting 10 years of weight measurements from one of his readers:

Low-carb dieting worked great for a time – Alex lost 50 pounds in his first year on low-carb – but over the second year his weight bottomed at 200 pounds and went back up to 220, at which point he gave up on low-carb.

Alex went to the opposite extreme, vegetarian and vegan dieting, but gained more weight.

Then he began walking. As with the low-carb diet, he lost weight rapidly for a time and then regained some of it.

Finally, on Seth’s Shangri-La Diet he lost weight rapidly for a time, then plateaued in the 190s.

A long data series like this is instructive on the difficulties of returning to slenderness; and the tendency for weight – yes, even on low-carb low-insulin diets – to reach a plateau and then rebound.

[5] Fraud revisited: Last week (#13) I mentioned the arrest of a leading autism researcher for stealing research funds, and problems with research fraud.

This week John Hawks hints at another fraud problem in biomedical science: dishonest grant applications. This is a problem two ways:  (1) Only 15% of grants are funded, so even if a small fraction of the proposals are fraudulent, frauds may get most of the money if the “best” (read: too good to be true) proposals are funded. (2) Reviewers defend against fraud by awarding money only to people they know – their friends and the “big name” groups. So the field becomes inbred and un-innovative.

The best solution, I argued last week, would be to decentralize funding to patients and taxpayers. An Amazon-like system letting people rate researcher performance and review public records of proposals and results would be enough, I think, to guide funds to productive groups and institutions such as hospitals and universities, while enabling innovators and outsiders to get a share of funds.

[6] Preserving the Serengeti: JS Stanton has an appeal to protect migration ways of Serengeti wildlife by stopping construction of a highway through the park. (Depressing and covering the highway would be another solution.)

He provides some video as well as photos from a Guardian picture gallery:

[7] Do you know your bug type?: The New York Times reports that humans have four blood types, but only three “enterotypes” – gut microbial ecosystems. The story is based on this Nature article.

[8]  Dr Steve Parker unearths a good line:

Diet has always generated passion, and passion in science is an infallible marker of lack of evidence.

That sentence is from a review of diabetic diet cycles over the last 150 years, published in Diabetologia (2009, vol. 52, pages 1-7).

[9] The key to healthy shoulders: The Boston Globe reports that the leading cause of shoulder injuries may be misaligned shoulder blades.

This doesn’t surprise me, as the two things that most helped my shoulders were:

1. Strengthening exercises, such as push-ups and the reverse fly, that promote shoulder blade retraction.
2. Mobility exercises for the shoulder which retract the scapula. I like the following, which someone dubbed “shoulder dislocations”:

[10] REMOVED DUE TO DISGUST BY CO-AUTHOR. Do not watch the video linked by Stabby here.

[11] I hate when that happens: A bank in India opened a vault to find termites had eaten through millions of rupees.

[12] Beth Mazur is giddy: Beth points out a new way high-carb, high-vegetable-oil diets may promote obesity.

It turns out that insulin upregulates an enzyme that turns omega-6 fatty acids into an appetite stimulating hormone called anandamide, “which is a chemical that affects the same receptor in the brain that THC does … you know THC, it’s the active ingredient in pot. And when people smoke pot they often get … the munchies.”

Beth goes on to give a reason why American food works better than pot at causing obesity.

[13] Pesticides impact IQ: The most pesticides in the mother, the lower the IQ of the child, says The Scientist reporting on new research in Environmental Health Perspectives.

[14] Mozart: Two guys, one guitar:

[15] Another upright blogger: Emily Deans has a fancy new (hardwood!) standing desk.

[16] Ooh! Ooh! Can I have one?: If Jamie Scott’s walking desk doesn’t raise your HDL enough, consider a Dutch HDL-raising closet:

[17] Weekly video: Director Krzysztof Kie?lowski produced for Polish television a magnificent, dark but moving and inspirational, series called The Decalogue , consisting of 10 hour-long dramas each dealing with one of the Ten Commandments. The videos are on Youtube with English subtitles.

For those who have an hour to spare, in honor of Passion Week, here is Dekalog I part I:

The remainder of Dekalog I: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6.

Here’s what caught my eye this week:

[1] Goodbye, Walter, and God bless: We’ve closely followed Walter Breuning’s career as the world’s oldest man, since he so well exemplifies our dietary practices. (See Happy Birthday, Walter Breuning!, Sep 21, 2010; What Makes a Supercentenarian?, Aug 18, 2010). Sadly, he passed away on Thursday. Hat tip, Chris Highcock.

[2] Interesting posts this week: Tom Naughton. Egyptian mummies. Enough said.

Jamie Scott considers the optimal training strategy in 10 hours per week – and whether Goldilocks training (not too hard, not too easy) has any merit. Emily Deans thinks doctors should be able to write prescriptions for grass-fed steak and wild-caught salmon. I’m all for that – we would actually get some value out of our health insurance! I can see it now: “I’m doing great on the Kobe beef and lobster, doc. What’s my co-pay?”

Prague Stepchild offers Staffan Lindeberg in a nutshell. (Note: human salt needs are higher on low-carb diets.) Life’s Little Mysteries reports that the leading cause of death after age 65 is falling down. Ned Kock reviews what the China Study shows about effect of foods on appetite.

Stephan critiqued the “drink less, pee more” theory for treating edema. Gary Taubes had a New York Times piece, “Is Sugar Toxic?” which starts slow (you won’t miss much if you start on page 4), but picks up. Bix at Fanatic Cook gave a high-carb dieter’s response. Chris Masterjohn reviewed an Experimental Biology conference. Some great photos there!

[3] I know what you’re thinking, Buttercup! You need a Robb Wolf spoof! Chris Highcock of Conditioning Research has you covered.

[4] I know what else you want! Penguin tickling!

[5] Long Fasts: Jimmy Moore is doing a 7-day total fast.

I would caution him to drink lots of water and take electrolytes (salt for sodium and chlorine, plus potassium and magnesium, maybe mineral water with calcium). Personally, I would ease any long fast a bit with coconut oil or MCTs. And if any troubles develop, cut the fast short.

I myself will soon be doing my longest fast of the year, from Holy Thursday evening to Easter Sunday, about 64 hours.

[6] Is It Like This Every Day?:

Victoria Falls on the Zambia/Zimbabwe border. Via Babel’s Dawn.

[7] Our national drug problem just keeps getting worse: The New York Times reports that the number of people hospitalized for medication side effects is up 50% in just 4 years, to 1.9 million.

I wonder how many people have been hospitalized for Paleo dieting?

[8] Females Rule!: Last week we had bear vs bison, and the bear was winning. This week, it’s bear vs milch cow:

Check out Richard Smith’s post for the full photo series, and the outcome that was happy – for the cows.

[9] Shhhhh, don’t tell anyone: John Durant has dandruff, and asks for tips.

I was the only one who suggested eating starch and supplementing minerals for anti-fungal immunity, since dandruff is usually caused by the fungal pathogen Malassezia whose growth is promoted on a zero-carb mineral-deficient diet. The consensus among his commenters: go more Paleo by giving up shampoo and hot water. Yes, John Durant is insufficiently Cro-Magnon.

[10] It is smart to drink: We’ve previously considered this question (Is It Smart to Drink?, Sep 9, 2010). Via Instapundit comes Repeated Ethanol Exposure Enhances Synaptic Plasticity in Key Brain Area, Study Finds. “Drinking alcohol primes certain areas of our brain to learn and remember better, says a new study …”

[11] Bill Murray Has a New Role as “Braco”: Via Seth Roberts we learned that looking at human faces is therapeutic for circadian rhythm disorders (Seth Roberts and Circadian Therapy, Mar 22, 2011). Now via Richard Fernandez, a Croatian man who heals by having people gaze at his face.

[12] Angst I: Richard Nikoley is getting bored.

[13] There Ought to be Angst: The Danish scientist who led a CDC-funded study that purported to disprove links between autism and vaccines has been indicted for stealing $1 million in research funds.

You’ll recall that Andrew Wakefield, the British scientist who first claimed to find an autism-vaccine link, was a fraud.

With frauds and thieves leading research on both sides of this issue, parents of autistic children must be frustrated.

As I’ve argued many times, we need patient-and-taxpayer-directed funding for biomedical research. Government-and-pharmaceutical-company-only funding stifles innovation, rewards established cliques, and directs research toward ineffective but patentable drugs over effective dietary, nutritional, and antimicrobial therapies.

[14] Angst II: Pål Jåbekk speaks a truth:

Most often when we find obvious contradictions in the same texts in scientific journals I think there are two main reasons: Lack of balls and lack of brains.

A third reason is that the scientist (often, correctly) believes that his career will be advanced by propounding error, and values his career above truth. I might call this lack of integrity.

He goes on to discuss his disappointment with Staffan Lindeberg’s “Food and Western Disease: Health and nutrition from an evolutionary perspective”:

[A]t closing the book after reading its last page I felt a strong sense of disappointment. Lean meat! LEAN MEAT! Come on, Staffan.

I have the same disappointment with all the “Paleo 1.0” writers. I’ve written before (Art de Vany’s New Book and Video, Dec 11, 2010; Old Diets, New Knowledge: For Auld Lang Syne, Dec 31, 2010) of how grateful I am to Art de Vany for introducing me to Paleo, but also that I became malnourished and my infections progressed eating what I considered to be a version of his diet. I’ve criticized Robb Wolf’s “lean meat and vegetables” meal plans. I was recently at a talk by Gary Taubes and afterward he said that he would eat a zero-carb diet if his wife would permit it. Gary has done the world a great service in helping defeat fat-phobia, but I can’t agree with this particular conclusion.

In our case, disappointment with others’ errors led us to write the book and start this blog. As Shou-Ching can attest, my attitude is rather like that of this cartoon character:

Alas, Pål’s disappointment is leading him to take a break from blogging. It’s a big loss for the blogosphere.

[15] Anti-Angst: Razib Khan writes:

[T]oo much focus on the “meta” aspects often get in the way of my main aim: learning as much interesting stuff as is possible before I die. Life is basically a race against the clock, I’m not a person who is much afflicted with the need to “kill time.”

That’s how I feel too. It’s why I spend little time on this blog, and none in our book, refuting error. The pursuit of truth can fill more than one lifetime. Getting distracted by error would take time away from interesting truths.

[16] Song of the week: Emily Deans often puts music in her posts, and she’s a rising star of the blogosphere, with a great gig at Psychology Today.

Now, I’m not saying correlation implies causation, but I’m thinking that if we show off our musical taste, maybe we’ll get picked up by My Weekly Reader:

[17] Not the weekly video: UPDATED! (was this, via Richard Nikoley’s comment section) This is for cat lovers:

[18] Weekly video: Gross! If you have to teach your 8-year-old about biology, you may be able to learn from Julia Sweeney’s experience:

(Via Craig Newmark)