NPR Interview: The BS that is health research

aceattorney

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Sep 11, 2013
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I happened to tune into NPR last night in the car and found this interview to be eye-openingly shocking.

Interview of an NPR Journalist who authored a book "Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions":

An award-winning science journalist pulls the alarm on the dysfunction plaguing scientific research--with lethal consequences for us all

Give it a listen:

http://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/bringing-rigor-back-to-health-research/
 
As much a problem as this is, it's partially a cultural one as well I think. Society in general will typically want results in a timely manner. Which doesn't always coincide well with science. Sometimes things take just take a long time.
 
Health and nutrition is tricky to research because it's hard to isolate variables in humans who have access to almost any type of food at any time. Studies tend to focus on surveys, which are notoriously unreliable. People either lie, forget, or don't realize they're eating certain things.

You'd have have to set up a seriously unethical experiment that kept several people trapped inside a biodome or something for years, some genetically similar, and feed them an exact regimen to get real results.
 
I know I used to believe what I heard from Doctors a lot more than I do now, now it seems that while most of them mean well they are given bad info. I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in January and if I had gone by the diet that the American Diabetes Association says to go by I'd probably still be on medication and not be getting any better. Just by eating low carb/high fat and also intermittent fasting my blood sugars are always in the range of what a healthy non diabetics would be without taking any medication since very early Feb. This works for a lot of people yet Doctors aren't told to tell patients to give it a shot, they'd rather throw a ton of medication at you that has been proven to actually cause other problems just to lower your blood sugar. Something needs to change or people are just going to keep getting sicker and sicker all while thinking they are taking something that's supposed to save them.
 
Health and nutrition is tricky to research because it's hard to isolate variables in humans who have access to almost any type of food at any time. Studies tend to focus on surveys, which are notoriously unreliable. People either lie, forget, or don't realize they're eating certain things.

You'd have have to set up a seriously unethical experiment that kept several people trapped inside a biodome or something for years, some genetically similar, and feed them an exact regimen to get real results.
... except treating symptoms with food and herbs has been around a lot longer than modern science itself. Too bad the FDA considers it unlawful to even print a food item or herb as treating any illness. All you have to do is follow the money to understand that we have a system in place of patents for drugs that equals dollar signs.
 
... except treating symptoms with food and herbs has been around a lot longer than modern science itself. Too bad the FDA considers it unlawful to even print a food item or herb as treating any illness. All you have to do is follow the money to understand that we have a system in place of patents for drugs that equals dollar signs.

So true, hell they put me on a statin to lower my triglycerides and after I saw what that did I stopped taking it, was only on it for a few days. I started taking a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar mixed with 8 ounces of water twice a day and my triglycerides dropped 40 points from mid January to early April. Instead of a drug company getting paid a bunch of money to lower one score on a blood test while causing me all kind of other harm I spend a few dollars on a bottle of Bragg's that'll last me 5-6 weeks.
 
... except treating symptoms with food and herbs has been around a lot longer than modern science itself. Too bad the FDA considers it unlawful to even print a food item or herb as treating any illness. All you have to do is follow the money to understand that we have a system in place of patents for drugs that equals dollar signs.

Oh, I agree. I just meant nutritional science has a history of funkinness. For one thing, demonizing saturated fat for decades was one the biggest blunders we've seen in the U.S. There's no compelling science that shows it comes anywhere near to actually causing heart disease, only very loose correlations.
 
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Oh, I agree. I just meant nutritional science has a history of funkinness. For one thing, demonizing saturated fat for decades was one the biggest blunders we've seen in the U.S. There's no compelling science that shows it comes anywhere near to actually causing heart disease, only very loose correlations.
Yep, they like to pick a nutrition boogeyman that lasts for about a decade, yet they somehow let artificial sweeteners in that show definitive proof of addiction and hazardous health issues, which are clearly banned in other countries. That's our Food and Drug Administration.
 
So true, hell they put me on a statin to lower my triglycerides and after I saw what that did I stopped taking it, was only on it for a few days. I started taking a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar mixed with 8 ounces of water twice a day and my triglycerides dropped 40 points from mid January to early April. Instead of a drug company getting paid a bunch of money to lower one score on a blood test while causing me all kind of other harm I spend a few dollars on a bottle of Bragg's that'll last me 5-6 weeks.
For me, plant sterols dropped my cholesterol by 50 points. It was initially well within range. Due to family history they wanted me to get it lower and wanted to put me on a station. I didn't want it and I said I was going to try a different method. I didn't tell them what was going to be. When I went to six months later it had dropped down to 50 points.
 
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... except treating symptoms with food and herbs has been around a lot longer than modern science itself. Too bad the FDA considers it unlawful to even print a food item or herb as treating any illness. All you have to do is follow the money to understand that we have a system in place of patents for drugs that equals dollar signs.
We have the opposite issue here. We have the "gypsy tonic" thing happening.

A chick made bank recently from her diet that rid her of breast cancer without resorting to treatment. Turns out, she never had cancer, and heaps of people made choices in regards to treatment that were not in their best interest...


There does need to be a middle ground. I always I form my doctor about migraine related stuff whenever I see him. Mainly because I know he's as dumb as a box of hammers, and he doesn't give a fig.
 
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For me, plant sterols dropped my cholesterol by 50 points. It was initially well within range. Due to family history they wanted me to get it lower and wanted to put me on a station. I didn't want it and I said I was going to try a different method. I didn't tell them what was going to be. When I went to six months later it had dropped down to 50 points.

Isn't it crazy how so many doctors don't at least give people the information and let them make their choice? the first thing they go to is to put you on a statin and if you read up on them a bit they seem to be pretty bad. I do take other supplements so I don't know if I should give all of the credit to the apple cider vinegar but I do know I eat a lot of fatty meats, butter, eggs, bacon, avocado etc and my total cholesterol dropped 12 points but was always well within the normal range, my HDL and LDL were in the normal range and stayed the same, my VLDL dropped and my triglycerides dropped a lot. Going by what Doctors usually tell us the way I've been eating should have raised all of those markers. I do think doctors need to be more open minded or at least keep up to date on what's going on. I'm sure a great many of them do but I've run into mostly old school thinking types who just want to throw drugs at a problem before trying anything else.
 
Oh, I agree. I just meant nutritional science has a history of funkinness. For one thing, demonizing saturated fat for decades was one the biggest blunders we've seen in the U.S. There's no compelling science that shows it comes anywhere near to actually causing heart disease, only very loose correlations.

They've been pushing low fat high carb type stuff for decades and what has happened? type 2 diabetes is shooting through the roof and even showing up in children when that used to not be the case and people are less healthy now than they were before.