EXERCISE: GOOD OR BAD?

To my feeble brain, the first report below seems to be contradicted by the two reports following it

Sedentary jobs negate benefits of exercise: study

Thirty minutes of exercise a day is not enough to prevent obesity and diabetes in people who spend long periods doing nothing. New research shows that sitting in front of a computer all day may negate the health benefits of exercise. Ever since Norm and his "Life Be In It" ads encouraged us to get off the couch and do some sport, Australians have been told that 30 minutes of exercise a day is good for our health.

Researchers at the International Diabetes Institute in Melbourne studied more than 8,000 people over the age of 35 who did not suffer from diabetes. The study found that the recommended 30 minutes of exercise a day is not enough to prevent obesity and diabetes in people who also spend long periods doing nothing.

Associate Professor David Dunstan from the International Diabetes Institute led the research. "Using objective measurements of physical activity, that is, using an accelerometer, [we found] that people are spending up to six or seven hours in a seated position or doing nothing during the day," he said. "So what this research is showing is that possibly our modern environment, whereby we're required to sit for prolonged periods, may be contributing to the diabetes and obesity epidemics."

Assoc Prof Dunstan says even if people exercise for the minimum of 30 to 150 minutes each day, if they sit down for several hours they might not be reaping the health benefits. "Even in those people that are achieving that level [of exercise], if they are watching, for instance, television for greater than three to four hours a day, then watching the television increases the risk of diabetes and obesity," he said. "So we're not entirely sure at the moment because this is a fairly new area, maybe going out to the gym and doing the 30 minutes of exercise may not be enough to offset any potential bad effects of sitting on their rear ends for the rest of the day."

The study, which was first published in the US journal Diabetes Care in March, has been followed up with more research by University of Queensland scientists. Assoc Prof Dunstan says this new research shows if people break up their sitting time with a simple walk around the office, they are more likely to increase their metabolic rate. "People who break up their sitting time ... those that are intermittently obtaining what we call incidental physical activity, that is the light activity, those that are breaking up more throughout the day have a lower risk of diabetes," he said. "Those that are getting up and moving about the office, for instance walking to a colleague rather than emailing a colleague, getting up and walking to the photocopier."

Source




Fat and Fit? New Research Rebuffs Obesity Activists' Weight-Obsessed Food Crusades

"You can't tell just by looking at someone if they are fit. You can certainly be fat, even obese, and still be fit . Often the public discussion stops with fatness, but we tried to go beyond that." That's health professor Steven Blair, co-author of a new study published today in JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association) that puts the fat-fixated dogmas of the nation's food activists to the test. What did Blair and his colleagues at the University of South Carolina find? Regardless of body weight, adults over 60 who are physically active live longer than their couch-bound counterparts. As lead researcher Dr. Xuemi Sui put it to the AFP: "We observed that fit individuals who were obese ... had a lower risk of all-cause mortality than did unfit, normal-weight, or lean individuals."

This JAMA study is just the latest entry in a long line of scientific research showing that physical inactivity, not excess food consumption, is the real culprit behind many of the health problems associated with obesity. And, as we've been saying for years, what's really unhealthy isn't weight itself, but the activist-driven public obsession with weight -- which redirects energies away from programs that encourage exercise and toward ineffective legal controls on food choices.

Today's news makes the message in our new report on how physical activity has been engineered out of modern life even more important. Everyday conveniences make it all too easy to stay stationary. So if you're looking to get healthy, small changes to ordinary behavior that get you moving are the way to go. Constantly fretting about your waistline isn't.

Source




Exercise can prevent Alzheimer's

Regular exercise can cut the risk of Alzheimer's disease by a third while a lack of physical activity can lead to depression and dementia, according to scientists. A study by the University of Bristol, based on 17 trials, found that physical activity was associated with a 30-40 per cent reduced risk of developing Alzheimer's. Separate evidence presented to the British Nutrition Foundation conference linked a lack of exercise to depression and dementia.

It is unclear why exercise has such a great effect but it could be associated with benefits to the vascular system as well as release of chemicals in the brain. Judy Buttriss, director general at the BNF, said that given people were living longer, the implications of such studies were "enormous".

Source

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correla-tion coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

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An argument for a low calorie diet? Or an argument for committed religion?

Seventh Day Adventists and Mormons also seem to have some health advantages but in view of the in vivo results of attenuated calorie consumption, it is the total calorie intake that needs investigation in the situation below



If you want to avoid cancer, live like a monk. That is the inescapable conclusion from research into one of the world's most renowned monastic communities. The austere regime of the 1,500 monks on Mount Athos, in northern Greece, begins with an hour's pre-dawn prayers and is designed to protect their souls. Their low-stress existence and simple diet (no meat, occasional fish, home-grown vegetables and fruit) may, however, also protect them from more worldly troubles. The monks, who inhabit a peninsula from which women are banned, enjoy astonishingly low rates of cancer.

Since 1994, the monks have been regularly tested, and only 11 have developed prostate cancer, a rate less than one quarter of the international average. In one study, their rate of lung and bladder cancer was found to be zero. Haris Aidonopoulos, a urologist at the University of Thessaloniki, said that the monks' diet, which calls on them to avoid olive oil, dairy products and wine on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, helped to explain the statistics. "What seems to be the key is a diet that alternates between olive oil and nonolive oil days, and plenty of plant proteins," he said. "It's not only what we call the Mediterranean diet, but also eating the old-fashioned way. Small simple meals at regular intervals are very important."

Meals on the peninsula, which the Prince of Wales has visited regularly and which can only be reached by boat, are ascetic and repetitive affairs that have changed little over the centuries, although there are variations between the 20 monasteries. The monks sit in silence while, from a pulpit, passages from the Bible are read in Greek. They eat at speed - as soon as the Bible passage is over, the meal is officially completed.

The staples are fruit and vegetables, pasta, rice and soya dishes, and bread and olives. They grow much of what they eat themselves. Agioritiko red wine is made locally from mountain grapes. Dairy products are rare - female animals are banned from the autonomous semi-state.

Life on Athos has changed little over the past 1,043 years. Breakfast is hard bread and tea. Much of the day is taken up with chores - cleaning, cooking, tending to crops - followed by a supper, typically of lentils, fruit and salad, and evening prayers.

Some of the seaside monasteries specialise in catching octopus, a delicacy that is softened up by bashing on the rock. Fish also feeds the Athos cats, protected by the monks for their mouse-catching prowess. Of all domestic animals, only cats are exempt from the ban on females. Some of the monks live in hillside huts or cliff-side caves perched above the sea as satellites of the main establishments, perhaps the closest that modern Christianity gets to medieval hermits. They depend for their sustenance on handouts of bread and olives.

On holidays and feast days such as Christmas and Easter, when other Greeks are feasting on roast meat, the monks prefer fish, their only culinary luxury. Father Moses of the Koutloumousi monastery, one of the 20 organised cloisters scattered over the Athos peninsula, said: "We never eat meat. We produce most of the vegetables and fruit we consume. And we never forget that all year round, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we don't use olive oil on our food." The olive-oil routine, which also applies to wine and dairy products, appears to have no religious significance, but is a way of eking out their supplies.

All the monks stick to the rigorous fasting periods of the Orthodox Church, in which a strict vegan diet is prescribed for weeks at a stretch. Michalis Hourdakis, a dietician associated with Athens University, said: "This limited consumption of calories has been found to lengthen life. Meat has been associated with intestinal cancer, while fruit and vegetables help ward off prostate cancer."

The lack of air pollution on Mount Athos as well as the monks' hard work in the fields also played their part, the researchers said. There was no mention, however, of whether the absence of women had any effect on the monks' renowned spiritual calm.

Source





How good is the case for fluoridation of water?

The "anti" case is seldom heard but an outline is below. See also here

This is a medical treatment which defies every rule of drug management - administrated compulsorily every day, for a lifetime, regardless of age and medical circumstances (and with little prior education or choice for the community).

McCray seeks to relegate those opposed to his views as "nutters", including me - a medical practitioner vitally interested in early intervention medicine and spokesman for more than 3000 Australian doctors, dentists, scientists and other health practitioners - and my wife, a medical professional and dedicated researcher in this subject. Presumably it also includes a third of Brisbane's population; in a community forum in 2005, Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman said he would not support water fluoridation because a third of residents rejected mass medication.

It must also include 14 Nobel Prize winners who oppose water fluoridation on scientific grounds, including Arvid Carlsson who led the successful campaign against fluoridation in Sweden, and who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2000. Is McCray's patronising argument also directed against the 12 North American scientific experts on fluoride who met regularly over three years (National Research Council USA 2006)? They concluded that communities with water fluoridation had increased rates of:

* Hip fractures - fluoride can make bones more brittle and cause joint stiffness and pain.

* Lowered IQ in children, even at low dose.

* Decreased thyroid function.

* Bone cancer - positive in animal studies and later to be seen positive in young boys by a 2006 study.

* Dental fluorosis - staining and pitting of tooth enamel.

We suggest the ADA is being negligent in not following the world's largest group of dentists, the American Dental Association, in stating clearly on its website the warning that fluoridated water should not be used for formula-fed babies.

This website should acknowledge also the research that at least 1 per cent of the population will suffer from allergic reactions from fluoride in water. Might it also include the Centre for Disease Control's acknowledgments in 1999 and 2002 that where fluoride is effective, it is in the topical (local) application to teeth? And is it unreasonable to expect the "all the facts" website be up to date and report the recent publication by the prestigious Lancet, of human neurotoxicity caused by fluoride in water - in similar concentrations now recommended by the dentists for Queensland's drinking water?

For obvious reasons, then, the following situation exists:

* Only nine countries in the world have fluoridation of more than 50 per cent of their public water supplies. Thus Queensland is presently "in step" with most of the world.

* Less than 2 per cent of Continental Europe's drinking water is fluoridated. Europe has abandoned the discredited practice over the past 30 years and with no loss to dental health.

* Japan, China, Scotland and Northern Ireland have rejected fluoridation. Israel has ceased expansion due to recent research exposing negative health effects.

Finally, less than 1 per cent of water used is actually drunk. Most water is for other household use including sewage, and for use by industry etc. Could a less efficient, more wasteful system of medication distribution ever be devised?

Source

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correla-tion coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

*********************

Widespread grief being caused by the obesity war

The girl stood at the edge of the pool, hesitating. Her family encouraged her to join them. What was wrong? She usually loved the water. But this time it was different. She was wearing a dressing-gown over her bathers. She didn't want to take it off. "Why don't you want to go in, Lily?" her mother asked. "Because everyone will laugh at my body and say I'm fat," the girlreplied. My friend's daughter Lily is six. A bigger build than girls her age, but fit and healthy, leaving others behind in school races, she was denying herself the pleasures of a swim because she thought her body would be judged.

So do many others. A Mission Australia national survey of 29,000 young people aged 11 to 24 released this week has found body image is the most important issue for them. The annual survey, asking young people to rank 14 issues in order of concern, puts body image ahead of family conflict, stress, bullying, alcohol and drugs and suicide.

The results are disturbing but not really surprising. Many girls feel disgusted by their bodies, engaged in constant self-surveillance and self-criticism. Their bodies have become an all-consuming project. One in 100 Australian girls suffers anorexia nervosa. Some estimates put the rate of bulimia at as high as one in five. Children as young as eight are being hospitalised with eating disorders. Some hospitals report there are not enough beds to cope with the numbers.

A recent report found one in five 12-year-old girls regularly used fasting and vomiting to lose weight. One in four Australian girls want to get plastic surgery. Women's Forum Australia recently produced a YouTube film clip about our new magazine-style research paper, Faking It. In it, a 10-year-old girl says women's magazines make her want to be thin. She plans to go on a raw fish diet.

Too many girls are trying to imitate half-starved celebrities and airbrushed models in a quest to be hot and sexy. We have allowed the objectification and sexualisation of girls in a culture that is becoming increasingly pornographic. The embedding of sexualised images of women in society has become so mainstream, it is hardly noticed. Everywhere a girl looks, she sees sexualised images of her gender. She's expected to be a walking billboard for the brands of the global sex industry. Playboy make-up, porn star T-shirts, padded bras and pole dancing for little girls: they're being groomed to turn tricks in their stripper chic.

Source





Sex, chocolate and meat 'boost brain power'

What "incorrect" advice!

Plenty of sex, dark chocolate and cold meats are the latest keys to boosting your brain power, according to a new book published in Britain. Authors Terry Horne and Simon Wootton believe those who want to stop their brain deteriorating should avoid watching TV soap operas, smoking cannabis and mixing with moaners.

While sex, dark chocolate and eating cold meats for breakfast top the list for the best ways to keep the brain fit, cuddling babies, cheating at homework, doing a business degree and reading out loud are also recommended. "People can make lifestyle choices that will constantly increase our cognitive capacity throughout our adult lives lives," Horne, a university lecturer, told the Daily Mail. "Mix with people who make you laugh, have a good sense of humour or who share the same interests as you and avoid people who whinge, whine and complain as people who are negative will make you depressed."

Horne and Wootton say they base their theories, contained in their book Teach Yourself: Train Your Brain, on research carried out by experts around the world. Many of their recommendations are based on various chemical reactions within the body brought on by certain activities.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correla-tion coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

*********************

Birth date can affect personality

This is an old controversy but there does appear to be something in it. Update: Prof. Brignell is very skeptical

ASTROLOGY may usually be dismissed as harmless superstition, but scientists are discovering that the date we are born can affect our later lives. Research has revealed the time of year a person is born can influence his or her personality, health and even whether they are male or female. But rather than being written in the stars, studies are showing that it is the season of birth that predisposes individuals to different traits.

In the northern hemisphere, women born in May will display more impulsive behaviour while those whose birthday falls in November will be more reflective. Men born in the spring will show greater persistence than those born in winter. Other research has shown that people born in the autumn will tend to be physically active and excel in football while those born in the spring will be more cerebral and may be better suited to chess. Those born between September and December are more prone to panic attacks while there is growing evidence that schizophrenia is higher among those born in the late winter and early spring.

"It is exactly what you would expect if it were temperature related," said Richard Wiseman, a professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, who has examined the link between luck and the season of birth. "Many of the effects reverse in the two hemispheres." Professor John Eagle, a psychiatrist at Aberdeen University who has studied the relationships between season of birth and mental health, added: "The two main culprits are diet and the seasonal fluctuations in nutrition, and the increase in infections during the winter."

Astrologers have seized on the findings as evidence that the stars influence personality. But scientists insist there are biological reasons behind the effects.

Source






Obesity rates have leveled off

They have probably now reached a plateau that reflects the reduced level of physical activity which is now typical -- which makes the very common alarmist projections of vastly increased future obesity levels look predictably silly. Straight-line projections of trends in biological phenomena should be the province of morons but sadly they are not. Attention-seekers just find them too useful for their purposes.

Obesity rates in U.S. women seem to be staying level, and the rate in men may be hitting a plateau now, too, according to a new government report released Wednesday. With more than 72 million Americans counted as obese, adult obesity rates for both sexes seem to be holding steady at about 34 percent, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

The rates are still too high, said Mark Swanson, a researcher who studies childhood obesity and school nutrition at the University of Kentucky's College of Public Health. "Until the numbers start to go the other direction, I don't think we can consider this a success at all," he said.

The adult obesity rate has generally been climbing since 1980, when it was 15 percent. The entire adult population has grown heavier, and the heaviest have become much heavier in the last 25 years. Obesity is major risk factor for heart disease, certain types of cancer and type 2 diabetes.

The CDC's new report is based on a comprehensive survey by the federal government that includes physical examinations. The results are based on what was found in about 4,400 adults ages 20 and older in 2005 and 2006. About 33 percent of men and 35 percent of women were obese. The new rates were slightly higher than the 31 percent and 33 percent reported in 2003-2004 surveys. However, in generalizing the results to the U.S. population, researchers calculated a margin of error that swallows up the differences between years. In other words, the increases were not considered statistically significant. The obesity rate for women has been about steady since 1999-2000, at around 33 percent. But the male rate trended up, from 27.5 percent in 1999-2000.

The new CDC report compared data over four years. While it looks like the male rate is leveling off, more years will be needed to confirm a trend, said Dr. William Dietz, a CDC expert. If there is a trend, perhaps women are having an influence on the eating and exercise habits of men, Dietz added. Childhood obesity rates for 2005-2006 have not been released yet. Through 2003-2004, they were rising.

So what might be behind leveling adult rates? Increased exercise is one possibility. Last week, the CDC released results of a national telephone survey that found that about half of men and women reported getting regular physical activity in 2005, an increase from the rates reported in 2001. Physical activity prevents new cases of obesity, but it's not clear that explains the new findings, CDC officials said.

Experts believe reducing consumption of high-calorie and fatty foods have an impact. Some restaurants cut back their super-size servings in recent years and that may be helping, said J. Justin Wilson. He's a senior research analyst for the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit coalition of restaurants and food companies.

In the new report, obesity was most common in adults aged 40 to 59. There were large differences by race for women - the female obesity rates in the 40 to 59 age group were 39 percent in white women, 51 percent in Mexican-American women and 51 percent in black women. However, there were no racial or ethnic disparities in the male obesity rates, the CDC said.

The report also found that about a third of obese adults had not been told by a doctor or health care provider that they were overweight. That statistic has held about steady from earlier years, said Cynthia Ogden, a co-author of the report.

Source

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correla-tion coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

*********************

THE OLD ACRYLAMIDE SCARE REVIVED

Smokers, barbecuers and coffee-drinkers watch out! They are after you! Yet another stupid epidemiological study based on self-reports and no way of excluding confounding factors -- such as obesity and poverty. The middle class are healthier and also much less likely to report consumption of unprestigious fast food and that alone could account for the small differences observed. See here for the much stronger evidence that acrylamide is NOT harmful.

I might also remark in passing that the differences found below were in rare cancers, were found in very old ladies and were found only between extremes of supposed acrylamide consumption. The use of extreme quintiles for analysis also tends to suggest that there was NO overall correlation between consumption and cancer. Throwing away three fifths of your data is not a persuasive analysis. Attention-seeking medical researchers often do it, though. Popular summary and journal abstract follow:

Fresh fears have been raised over the safety of cooked foods as a wide-ranging study found for the first time that a common chemical caused by frying, roasting or grilling can double the risk of cancer in women. Five years ago, scientists sparked a worldwide alert when they disclosed that many household foods contain the substance acrylamide, which was thought to be a probable cause of the disease. Now a study involving 120,000 people - half of whom were women - has established a direct link between consumption of the chemical and the incidence of ovarian and womb cancer.

Research has shown that acrylamide is found in cooked foods such as bread, breakfast cereals, coffee and also meat and potatoes which had been fried, baked, roasted, grilled or barbecued. The Dutch study found that women who absorbed more acrylamide were twice as likely to develop ovarian or womb cancer as those who ingested a smaller amount. The higher amount eaten by the women involved was the equivalent to a single packet of crisps, half a pack of biscuits, or a portion of chips a day.

The EU has now advised people to avoid burnt toast or golden brown chips because they contain higher levels of the substance acrylamide. They have also recommended eating home-cooked meals which contain much lower amounts of the chemical than processed products, fast food and restaurant meals.

The Food Standards Agency welcomed the report and called on consumers to heed the EU's advice. However, a spokesman said it was not possible to avoid the chemical entirely. "This new study supports our current advice and policy, which already assumes that acrylamide has the potential to be a human carcinogen," a spokesman said. "Since acrylamide forms naturally in a wide variety of cooked foods, it is not possible to have a healthy balanced diet that avoids it."

The findings from the University of Maastricht, published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, came only a month after the public was warned about the increased risk of cancer from eating bacon and ham. It also came as the Government launches a five-year strategy to combat the disease.

The Dutch report relied on the Netherlands Cohort Study, which involved 120,000 people aged between 55 and 70, about 62,000 of them women. At the start of the study, participants completed a questionnaire that was used to estimate their acrylamide intake. The participants were followed up through the Dutch cancer registries and after 11 years, 327 had developed endometrial (womb) cancer, 300 were diagnosed with ovarian cancer and 1,835 suffered breast cancer. The study found that women who had eaten 40 micrograms of acrylamide a day (found, for example in a 32g pack of crisps) had double the risk of endometrial cancer and ovarian cancer than women in the lowest category. There was no link found to breast cancer.

Janneke Hogervorst, at the Department of Epidemiology at Maastricht University, said that "this is the first observation of an association between dietary acrylamide intake and cancer in humans". But she warned: "It is important that these results are corroborated and confirmed by other studies before far-reaching conclusions can be drawn."

About 6,400 women are diagnosed with womb cancer in Britain each year and 7,000 with ovarian cancer, one of the highest rates in Europe. The FSA said people should try to have less fried and overcooked food in their diet. "People should eat a balanced healthy diet which includes plenty of fruit and vegetables, bread, other cereals and potatoes," a spokesman said. "They should also limit the amount of sugary and fatty foods they eat, including fried food such as chips and crisps."

The EU called on people not to overcook their food. "General advice, resulting from this project, is to avoid overcooking when baking, frying or toasting carbohydrate-rich foods," it recommended. "French fries and roast potatoes should be cooked to a golden yellow rather than golden brown colour and bread should be toasted to the lightest colour acceptable."

Dr Lesley Walker, of Cancer Research UK, tried to calm fears over the link, suggesting that other factors could have a greater impact on the chances of cancer. "Women shouldn't be unduly worried by this news," she said. "It's not easy to separate out one component of the diet from all the others when studying the complex diets of ordinary people. "And as acrylamide levels are highest in carbohydrate containing foods - such as chips and crisps - other factors need to be firmly ruled out, especially being overweight or obese, which we know is strongly linked to womb cancer and probably linked to ovarian cancer."

A Food and Drink Federation spokesman said: "The food manufacturing industry has made huge efforts to reduce the formation of acrylamide in manufactured foods using a variety of techniques. "Considerable progress has already been made in reducing levels - for example potato crisps 30-40 per cent, potato fries 15 per cent, crispbread 75 per cent - but more work is needed on coffee."

When the alarm was raised in 2002, the FSA tested a number of products, including Walkers Crisps, Ryvita crackers, Kellogg's Rice Crispies and Pringles crisps. They found higher levels of the chemical occurring naturally in the food than international safety limits permitted in the packaging of the product. Although people fry less food at home, the popularity of fast food means increasing levels are being consumed. In 2000, charred meat and blackened toast were condemned because other chemicals formed on the burnt food were found to contribute to the risk of cancer.

Source

A Prospective Study of Dietary Acrylamide Intake and the Risk of Endometrial, Ovarian, and Breast Cancer

By Janneke G. Hogervorst et al.

Background: Acrylamide, a probable human carcinogen, was detected in various heat-treated carbohydrate-rich foods in 2002. The few epidemiologic studies done thus far have not shown a relationship with cancer. Our aim was to investigate the association between acrylamide intake and endometrial, ovarian, and breast cancer risk.

Methods: The Netherlands Cohort Study on diet and cancer includes 62,573 women, aged 55-69 years. At baseline (1986), a random subcohort of 2,589 women was selected using a case cohort analysis approach for analysis. The acrylamide intake of subcohort members and cases was assessed with a food frequency questionnaire and was based on chemical analysis of all relevant Dutch foods. Subgroup analyses were done for never-smokers to eliminate the influence of smoking; an important source of acrylamide.

Results: After 11.3 years of follow-up, 327, 300, and 1,835 cases of endometrial, ovarian, and breast cancer, respectively, were documented. Compared with the lowest quintile of acrylamide intake (mean intake, 8.9 mg/day), multivariable-adjusted hazard rate ratios (HR) for endometrial, ovarian, and breast cancer in the highest quintile (mean intake, 40.2 mg/day) were 1.29 [95% confidence interval (95% CI), 0.81-2.07; Ptrend = 0.18], 1.78 (95% CI, 1.10-2.88; Ptrend = 0.02), and 0.93 (95% CI, 0.73-1.19; Ptrend = 0.79), respectively. For never-smokers, the corresponding HRs were 1.99 (95% CI, 1.12-3.52; Ptrend = 0.03), 2.22 (95% CI, 1.20-4.08; Ptrend = 0.01), and 1.10 (95% CI, 0.80-1.52; Ptrend = 0.55).

Conclusions: We observed increased risks of postmenopausal endometrial and ovarian cancer with increasing dietary acrylamide intake, particularly among never-smokers. Risk of breast cancer was not associated with acrylamide intake.

Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2007;16(11):2304-13





Honey is better than children's cough syrups for a silent night

It is true that most cough mixtures are pretty useless most of the time

Natural honey is a more effective remedy for children's coughs than over-the-counter medicines, researchers say. A dose of buckwheat honey before bedtime easily outperformed a cough suppressant in a US study. Honey did a better job of reducing the severity and frequency of night-time coughs. It also improved sleep quality for children and their parents.

Dextromethorphan (DM), the active ingredient in many cough mixtures sold in chemists and supermarkets, had no significant impact on symptoms. Honey has been used in medicine for centuries, not only to treat coughs and bronchitis but also to assist the healing of wounds. For coughs it is often mixed with lemon, ginger or brandy.

Ian Paul, who led the researchers from Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania, said: "We hope that medical professionals will consider the positive potential of honey as a treatment, given the lack of proven efficacy, expense, and potential for adverse effects associated with the use of DM." DM can cause severe involuntary muscle contractions and spasms, the researchers said. Cases of teenagers using the drug to get "high" were also common, they said.

Dr Paul's team observed 105 children and teenagers with respiratory tract infections. The study ran over two nights. On the first, none of the participants was given any treatment. On the second, they were divided into groups who received either honey, an artificial honey-flavoured DM medicine or no treatment, about half an hour before bedtime. Parents answered questions about their child's symptoms and sleep quality, as well as their own ability to sleep. They rated honey as significantly better for the relief of symptoms. The findings are reported today in the journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correla-tion coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

*********************

Cancerous night-shifts?

I suppose we should be thankful that the article below admits that the conclusions it offers are speculative

Like UV rays and diesel exhaust fumes, working the graveyard shift will soon be listed as a "probable" cause of cancer. It is a surprising step validating a concept once considered wacky. And it is based on research that finds higher rates of breast and prostate cancer among women and men whose work day starts after dark. Next month, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization, will add overnight shift work as a probable carcinogen.

The higher cancer rates don't prove working overnight can cause cancer. There may be other factors common among graveyard shift workers that raise their risk for cancer. [Like being poor] However, scientists suspect that overnight work is dangerous because it disrupts the circadian rhythm, the body's biological clock. The hormone melatonin, which can suppress tumor development, is normally produced at night.

If the graveyard shift theory eventually proves correct, millions of people worldwide could be affected. Experts estimate that nearly 20 percent of the working population in developed countries work night shifts.

Among the first to spot the night shift-cancer connection was Richard Stevens, a cancer epidemiologist and professor at the University of Connecticut Health Center. In 1987, Stevens published a paper suggesting a link between light at night and breast cancer. Back then, he was trying to figure out why breast cancer incidence suddenly shot up starting in the 1930s in industrialized societies, where nighttime work was considered a hallmark of progress. Most scientists were bewildered by his proposal.

But in recent years, several studies have found that women working at night over many years were indeed more prone to breast cancer. Also, animals that have their light-dark schedules switched develop more cancerous tumors and die earlier. Some research also suggests that men working at night may have a higher rate of prostate cancer.

Because these studies mostly focused on nurses and airline crews, bigger studies in different populations are needed to confirm or disprove the findings. There are still plenty of skeptics. And to put the risk in perspective, the "probable carcinogen" tag means that the link between overnight work and cancer is merely plausible. Among the long list of agents that are listed as "known" carcinogens are alcoholic beverages and birth control pills. Such lists say nothing about exposure amount or length of time or how likely they are to cause cancer.

The American Cancer Society Web site notes that carcinogens do not always cause cancer. The cancer society doesn't make its own assessments of possible cancer-causing agents, but relies on analyses by the IARC and a U.S. agency. Still, many doubters of the night shift link may be won over by the IARC's analysis to be published in the December issue of the journal Lancet Oncology. "The indications are positive," said Vincent Cogliano, who heads up the agency's carcinogen classifications unit. "There was enough of a pattern in people who do shift work to recognize that there's an increase in cancer, but we can't rule out the possibility of other factors."

Scientists believe having lower melatonin levels can raise the risk of developing cancer. Light shuts down melatonin production, so people working in artificial light at night may have lower melatonin levels. Melatonin can be taken as a supplement, but experts don't recommend it long-term, since that could ruin the body's ability to produce it naturally.

Sleep deprivation may be another factor in cancer risk. People who work at night are not usually able to completely reverse their day and night cycles. "Night shift people tend to be day shift people who are trying to stay awake at night," said Mark Rea, director of the Light Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, who is not connected with the IARC analysis. Not getting enough sleep makes your immune system vulnerable to attack, and less able to fight off potentially cancerous cells.

Confusing your body's natural rhythm can also lead to a breakdown of other essential tasks. "Timing is very important," Rea said. Certain processes like cell division and DNA repair happen at regular times. Even worse than working an overnight shift is flipping between daytime and overnight work. "The problem is re-setting your body's clock," said Aaron Blair, of the United States' National Cancer Institute, who chaired IARC's recent meeting on shift work. "If you worked at night and stayed on it, that would be less disruptive than constantly changing shifts."

Anyone whose light and dark schedule is often disrupted - including frequent long-haul travelers or insomniacs - could theoretically face the same increased cancer risk, Stevens said. He advises workers to sleep in a darkened room once they get off work. "The balance between light and dark is very important for your body. Just get a dark night's sleep."

Meanwhile, scientists are trying to come up with ways to reduce night workers' cancer risk. And some companies are experimenting with different lighting, seeking a type that doesn't affect melatonin production. So far, the color that seems to have the least effect on melatonin is one that few people would enjoy working under: red.

Source






Anti-salt craze

Strange that they fail to mention that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER!

The nation's top food regulators and the salt industry faced off at an FDA hearing Thursday, although it will be months, perhaps years, before the Food and Drug Administration rules on the salt reduction petition that sparked the hearing. The FDA's conclusion, however, could drastically reduce the amount of salt consumed by Americans every day.

Consumer and health advocacy groups say that after years of neglecting the issue, it's time for government to recognize the harmful effects of salt on blood pressure by imposing limits on salt content in foods sold in stores and to restaurants.

Salt industry representatives question the medical evidence linking salt to heart disease and stroke, and dispute the notion that limits on salt would make Americans healthier.

With each side claiming it has science on its side, and with indisputably high rates of elevated blood pressure in the United States, it is certain that the debate will continue. Even among members of the same family. Jeff Dax said he doesn't often frequent the fast food restaurants that dot Broadway, in Sacramento. He said he typically packs a lunch to eat on breaks from his job as a construction contractor. But that didn't happen Thursday, when he made his way to Taco Bell for a quick taco and quesadilla lunch with his father. Dax, himself an avid cook, said he'd welcome restrictions on salt content in fast foods, citing a family history of clogged arteries and heart disease. "You can always add more (salt)" he said. His father, Tom Dax, disagreed. Like food industry groups, he argues against regulation and for personal responsibility when it comes to diet. "I don't even salt my eggs," he said. "It's better to limit what you eat."

Liz Applegate, a nutrition expert at the University of California, Davis, agrees. While acknowledging studies that show salt contributes to high blood pressure, she said it is foolish to single out the mineral for regulation. "If you cut in half the amount of sodium in, say, a TV dinner, is that going to improve the health of the nation?" she asks. "My answer is no. The bigger issue is too many calories are consumed, and we don't burn the calories. And we don't have enough fruits, vegetables and grains in our diet."

Health advocates pushing for limits on salt content acknowledge that America's health problems are not all rooted in salt consumption. "But this is the single easiest piece of the pie to tackle," said Dr. Stephen Havas, vice president for Science, Quality and Public Health at the American Medical Association, who testified at the FDA hearing Thursday. "You can actually engineer a public health solution. You can systematically reduce the salt in foods and people's palates will adjust very quickly."

Morton Satin, director of technical and regulatory affairs at the Salt Institute, the U.S. salt industry's trade group, disagreed. "They don't understand the role of salt in food," said Satin, citing the highly healthy but salty Mediterranean diet, which features olives, capers and anchovies. Satin, who referred to salt-reduction proponents as "bozos" and "Marx brothers in lab coats," argued that salt limits would make people even less likely to want to eat healthy foods, particularly vegetables like broccoli, which many people agree taste better salted.

Among the proposals before the FDA are a 50 percent reduction in sodium in processed foods, fast food products and restaurant meals over the next decade and improved labeling of food products, including warnings for foods high in sodium. Havas said consumers are still confused about food labeling, and the industry has not done enough voluntarily to make its products healthier. He cited efforts in some European countries, including Great Britain and Finland, to regulate the use of salt in processed foods and to clearly label foods' salt content.

Despite decades of public health messages about the dangers of too much salt, American consumption of salt has actually increased by 55 percent the past 30 years, said Michael F. Jacobson, director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which filed the petition with the FDA. Americans now consume about 4,000 milligrams of sodium per day, about twice the amount recommended by the federal government, Jacobson said. There are 2,300 milligrams in a teaspoon of salt. "We are not sending out the full message about cutting back on sodium, and people are eating more and more processed foods," said Havas.

That has resulted in a corresponding increase in hypertension, which affects more than 30 percent of U.S. adults. Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is a known risk factor for heart disease and stroke. Excessive salt causes the body to retain fluid, which can overload the body's circulatory system, putting increased pressure on the blood vessel walls, kidneys and heart, Havas said. He cited several studies that link salt consumption with high blood pressure, noting that the World Health Organization has called the evidence conclusive.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correla-tion coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

*********************

Scientists believe they can reverse dementia

AUSTRALIAN scientists believe they have cracked the code to preventing dementia by restoring the decaying brain cells of a 65-year-old to the levels of an 18-year-old. The research, presented to pharmaceutical chiefs at a closed event last week, offers new hope for the 200,000 Australians suffering dementia - a group of degenerative brain disorders that includes Alzheimer's disease.

The scientists have developed two ways to stimulate stem cells and regenerate the brain, boosting mental functions such as understanding and memory. Leading stem cell scientist Dr Rod Rietze and his team at the University of Queensland believe increasing the number of stem cells in young and middle-aged brains will help stave off dementia. "The idea is not to transplant anything - but to stimulate what we have got," Dr Rietze said. "The job of the stem cell is to do two things: keep the body functioning and regenerate the tissue. "It makes sense that if you increase the regenerative cells, the brain lasts longer."

Dementia is a major health burden, costing more than $1.4 billion per year - a figure that is expected to blow out due to a rapidly ageing population and longer life expectancies. As people get older, the number of stem cells in the brain decreases rapidly and brain function deteriorates.

Dr Rietze's first approach to turning back the ageing clock involves injecting growth hormones directly into the brains of mice. The second approach involves using physical exercise on a treadmill to trigger stem cells to multiply naturally and improve brain function. "When people do regular exercise, they age better," Dr Rietze said. "There is a correlative relationship."

Dr Rietze and his team believe sustained physical activity may prevent or delay the onset of age-related dementia as much as injecting growth hormones, restoring stem cell levels of a 65-year-old back to that of an 18-year-old. The scientist, who funded his team's radical research with a $1 million Pfizer Fellowship he won in 2004, has submitted his work to international medical journals. "I think really the next step is to design treatment strategies, and the prevention of diseases," he said.

Source





Sticking a needle in alternative medicine

Exotic therapies such as acupuncture might make people feel good. But the role of medicine is to cure patients' illnesses, not make them happy

Alternative medicine is clearly popular (1). In 1990, 60million Americans spent an estimated $13.7 billion on alternative medicine. Americans visited alternative practitioners 425million times in 1990, more often than they visited their primary care physicians. By 1996 Americans were spending $21 billion on alternative medicine. Surveys in the UK reveal annual expenditure of around œ1.5 billion on alternative medicine. And alternative practices now find themselves nestled alongside the mainstream with the best hospitals providing aromatherapy, homeopathy, reflexology, acupuncture and so forth as adjuncts or alternatives to medicines that have been developed in laboratories and tested in clinical trials.

It is important to realise that the current vogue for alternative medicine is not really about alternative medicine at all - it is about us. The whole point of alternative medicine is that it doesn't change; the techniques of alternative medicine were developed several thousand years ago and you are meant to stick with the procedure as a fixed entity. Relative to scientific medicine, which is constantly attacked by scepticism and the proposal of newer and better procedures, alternative medicine is a closed shop. Alternative procedures are what they are and they are not open to development and change: they work because they work, end of story. So if alternative medicine is becoming more popular, then it is clearly not because of any changes in the practice of alternative medicine; it is because of changes in us.

Three things have changed. Firstly, we are physically much healthier. In all corners of the world, except in the former Soviet Union, life expectancy is rising and people are physically healthier for longer stretches of time during their lives. Many factors have contributed to this happy state of affairs, including improved living and working conditions and the rise of scientific medicine that has yielded vaccination programmes, antibiotics, steroids, radiotherapy, anti-viral medicines, and so on (2).

Secondly, and relatedly, having resolved many serious illnesses that blighted lives right up to the middle of the last century, scientific medicine is bumping up against harder problems associated with mechanical wear and tear, ageing and the existential distress of living in `a world without meaning' (3). Although physical health and longevity both trend in a positive direction, there has been a swathe of new problems that are defined by the subjective report of symptoms rather than the objective signs of disease or damage (4). These are disorders such as non-specific low back pain, fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome - illnesses of the `worried well', or, more precisely, the `worried sick', encouraged by a combination of people being healthy enough to be concerned about symptoms that are unlikely to indicate ill-health and being constantly bombarded with messages about ill-health. It is a rare individual who is unaware of the apparent need to reduce caloric intake, watch their units of alcohol, stay out of the sun, eat five fruit and veg a day, exercise, self examine and heed the occasional twinge as a potential harbinger of disease and death (5). When the banalities of everyday life - eating, drinking, catching the occasional ray of sunshine - are perceived as potential threats to continued life, it is little wonder that people are worried and flock to their GP to parade symptoms without illness.

Thirdly, medicine can be horribly impersonal. Doctors are not much interested in your existential concerns. In fact, your doctor is probably pretty keen to look straight through you to find the disease process lurking below. Of course you are more than your illness and a good doctor will at least attempt to engage you as he or she seeks the source of your sickness. In something like Britain's National Health Service system, however, which is driven by political and economic targets, the good doctor has no time to see you and barely has enough time to see your illness. It's much nicer to see an alternative practitioner who takes the time to get to know you, and prepare a treatment that is apparently tailored just for the kind of person you are and the illness or problem you are carrying.

It is tempting to try to deal with the advance of alternative medicine by carrying out randomised controlled trials of the alternative medicine versus a placebo and/or the conventional medical technique. The Guardian`s `Bad Science' columnist, Ben Goldacre, and other contemporary critics of alternative medicines see much benefit in controlled trials to expose the falsehoods of alternative medicine quackery (6). An excellent example of this approach was recently reported by Haake and colleagues (7). They investigated two types of acupuncture versus conventional therapy for chronic low back pain. The first type of acupuncture was based on traditional Chinese meridians; the acupuncture needles were inserted into appropriate Chinese acupuncture spots. The second type of acupuncture followed the same procedure but the needles were inserted into non-traditional or sham spots. Both these types of acupuncture worked better than conventional therapy, but traditional acupuncture spots did not produce better results than the sham spots. Thus it was concluded that acupuncture needles can be useful to alleviate chronic low back pain but it doesn't matter where you stick the needles. This finding echoes those of previous studies, including the finding that a cocktail stick is as beneficial as an acupuncture needle (8).

There is a reason why noxious stimulation of the skin might alleviate chronic low back pain and other types of pain. The experience of pain is never the simple and direct response to a noxious stimulus and is always the consequence of a balance of peripheral activity with activity in the spinal cord and brain that can increase or decrease the experience of pain. Whenever you hurt yourself and rub the injured region you are affecting that balance to damp the flow of noxious information and create pain relief. Noxious stimuli can also affect that balance, and that is, in essence, what the acupuncture needles do. Precisely how one noxious stimulus affects another is very poorly understood. But what we do know suggests that acupuncture shouldn't really work as well as it did in the Haake study. Rubbing an injured area generally provides only mild short-term relief, and rubbing is not likely to replace more conventional analgesics and anaesthetics any time soon.

Why, then, did the acupuncture prove to be more effective than the conventional treatments for chronic low back pain? One possibility is that acupuncture is just better. We might not understand exactly how it works, but perhaps it does work. However, there are some very good reasons to be highly dubious of this interpretation.

Chronic low back pain is a tricky disorder. More than 70 per cent of all cases of low back pain have no identifiable causal pathology. We don't know why the patients have pain and any diagnosis is based on the report of pain rather than on the observation of damage or disease. These types of pain are increasing at a ferocious rate and it seems unlikely that medical factors alone can adequately explain the large uptake in associated work-related incapacity benefits in most countries since the 1970s (4). Expenditure on these benefits has tripled over the past 30 years despite improvements in life expectancy and morbidity rates over the same period. Currently, in the UK, 70 per cent of recipients of incapacity benefit have health-related problems that are not sufficient to fully explain their incapacity in purely medical terms. In sum, chronic low back pain is more of a psychosocial than a medical problem, and so is unlikely to yield to mainstream medical intervention.

Little wonder, then, that the conventional therapy that was compared with acupuncture was a highly eclectic mix of interventions: `The therapies given in the conventional group were physiotherapy, massage, heat therapy, electrotherapy, back school, injections and guidance. In a few patients, therapies included infusions, yoga, hydrojet treatment and swimming.'

My interpretation of this study, therefore, is that at the current moment in time, patients with a non-specific existential disease prefer to spend time with an acupuncturist than with a heat therapist, and it is no surprise that patients report feeling better when they do things that they prefer to do. But it is not the role of medicine to run randomised control trials of stuff that makes people happy in order to prove that stuff that makes people happy tends to make them feel happy. While randomised controlled trials can be justified in some cases, we should not view them as blanket solutions to the problem posed by alternative medicine. Such trials are extremely time-consuming and expensive, and it is often not worth the time and expense to investigate something that is obviously unfounded. Moreover, conducting such a trial can give the impression that a treatment must be worthwhile, given all the expense and time being invested. A negative finding will not necessarily forestall the advocates of alternative medicine and a comprehensively negative finding is always difficult to achieve. Positive effects can be discovered for all sorts of non-specific reasons that can never be fully explained away even if they are almost certainly spurious.

It is also important that medicine does not get too flippant and include alternative treatments because of the argument that they `seem to work' and they `can't do any harm'. First of all, to the extent that these treatments work it is probably via non-specific psychological mechanisms that are parasitical upon prior experiences with medicines that do work. It would be cynical to deliberately mobilise those non-specific responses to provide benefit from a known ineffective treatment. If medicine becomes less than serious about promoting interventions that are known to work via well-understood and well-studied mechanisms, then the authority of medicine is put at risk and the benefits of non-specific psychological responses to medicine may soon be lost.

Secondly, there is the possibility of harm even if the intervention is seemingly innocuous. Most obviously there is the danger of over-zealous advocates of alternative medicine promoting homeopathy to cure cancer, malaria or AIDS and so forth. Less obviously there is the potential undermining of straightforward, bland, but effective medical advice (6). Recently, Hancock and colleagues reported that those presenting with an acute onset of back pain are best treated with advice to stay active and take paracetamol if needed (9). The addition of spinal manipulation or spinal mobilisation and further medication did not provide for a better outcome.

Time is a great healer and most acute symptoms will resolve quite naturally (10). Alternative medicine is partly promoted using the poisonous idea that doctors providing short and simple interventions are fobbing their patients off and not showing the required concern. This encourages patients to focus on their symptoms of ill-health unnecessarily and consume medicines or partake in activities that are unnecessary, unwise or dangerous. This is quite simply an unhealthy state of affairs that actively encourages people to be sicker than they need to be or otherwise would be. In short, medicine needs to recognise that alternative medicine is part of the problem, not part of the cure.

Source

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correla-tion coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

*********************

NEW COMPOUNDS TO HELP RESIST DIABETES

This is geninely interesting work but hyping it as linked to the alleged beneficial effects of red wine and resveratrol is a stretch. The authors themselves decribe the new molecules as "structurally unrelated to" resveratrol. Whether the results transfer from rats and mice to people remains to be seen, however. Side effects could also be a concern. Popular summary below followed by journal abstract:

Millions of people with adult diabetes could one day be treated with a drug based on the healthy ingredient of red wine which could even help prevent other diseases linked with old age. The new class of drugs, which will be tested on patients next year in Europe or the US mimics the effects of a reduced-calorie diet, which is known to extend the lifespan of a wide range of creatures, from worms to mice and monkeys. They work in the same way as resveratrol, the chemical in wine and grapes thought to deliver some of the proposed health benefits and explain the "French paradox," referring to how the French suffer relatively low incidence of coronary heart disease, despite having a diet relatively rich in saturated fats. [It's no paradox. There is no harm in saturated fats]

The problem with red wine is that earlier animal research suggested that around 1000 glasses would have to be consumed each day to take enough resveratrol to reduce the impact of a high fat diet, increase stamina two fold and significantly extend lifespan. Now new compounds have been developed that are roughly 1,000 times more potent than resveratrol and are also 1,000 times better at staving off the development of type 2 diabetes, report researchers led by Christoph Westphal of the company Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, and David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School, in today's Nature. "The novel drug candidates we have identified can potentially unlock a whole new approach to treating Type 2 Diabetes," stated Dr Jill Milne, lead author of the study.

Type 2 diabetes occurs when the body becomes insensitive to the effects of the hormone insulin and it seems that the new drugs can boost insulin sensitivity substantially. The new drug candidates work by activating a protein called SIRT1, which influences the ageing process and functions to ensure that the body remains receptive to the activity of insulin. The compounds potentially offer an important new avenue for developing treatments to tackle diseases linked to ageing and poor diet.

"The new drug candidates represent a significant milestone because they are the first molecules that have been designed to act on genes that control the ageing process. " For this reason, we feel they have considerable potential to treat diseases of ageing such as Type 2 Diabetes," said Dr Westphal. "The breakthrough in potency we have achieved means that we can obtain the health benefits of resveratrol with a considerably lower dose." "If all goes well, SIRT1 activator drugs could be available on the market as early as 2012 or 2013," he told The Daily Telegraph.

Source

Small molecule activators of SIRT1 as therapeutics for the treatment of type 2 diabetes

By Jill C. Milne et al.

Abstract

Calorie restriction extends lifespan and produces a metabolic profile desirable for treating diseases of ageing such as type 2 diabetes1, 2. SIRT1, an NAD+-dependent deacetylase, is a principal modulator of pathways downstream of calorie restriction that produce beneficial effects on glucose homeostasis and insulin sensitivity3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Resveratrol, a polyphenolic SIRT1 activator, mimics the anti-ageing effects of calorie restriction in lower organisms and in mice fed a high-fat diet ameliorates insulin resistance, increases mitochondrial content, and prolongs survival10, 11, 12, 13, 14.

Here we describe the identification and characterization of small molecule activators of SIRT1 that are structurally unrelated to, and 1,000-fold more potent than, resveratrol. These compounds bind to the SIRT1 enzyme-peptide substrate complex at an allosteric site amino-terminal to the catalytic domain and lower the Michaelis constant for acetylated substrates. In diet-induced obese and genetically obese mice, these compounds improve insulin sensitivity, lower plasma glucose, and increase mitochondrial capacity. In Zucker fa/fa rats, hyperinsulinaemic-euglycaemic clamp studies demonstrate that SIRT1 activators improve whole-body glucose homeostasis and insulin sensitivity in adipose tissue, skeletal muscle and liver. Thus, SIRT1 activation is a promising new therapeutic approach for treating diseases of ageing such as type 2 diabetes.

Nature 450, 712-716 (29 November 2007)





Pomegranates to the rescue?

It's a good thing these results were not statistically significant. Antioxiodants shorten your life so choosing between a longer life and better erections would be a Devil's bargain! Popular summary below followed by journal abstract:

Pomegranate juice can give men a boost in the bedroom according to scientists. A daily glass can act like Viagra, new research shows. Nearly half the men who drank it for a month in the American study said they found it easier to rise to the occasion, reports The Sun.

It is thought the juice is rich in antioxidants which increase blood supply to the penis. Just like drugs for impotence, the antioxidants raise levels of nitric oxide, which relaxes blood-vessel walls.

Fifty-three volunteers aged 21 to 70 with mild to moderate problems drank 8fl oz with their evening meal. Researcher Dr Christopher Forest, of the University of California in Los Angeles, said: "Pomegranate juice has great potential in the management of erectile dysfunction."

Pomegranates have already been hailed a superfruit capable of reducing the risk of heart disease and preventing prostate cancer. The fruit is believed to have more antioxidants than any other juice, tea or red wine.

Source

Efficacy and safety of pomegranate juice on improvement of erectile dysfunction in male patients with mild to moderate erectile dysfunction: a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind, crossover study

By C P Forest et al.

Abstract

This randomized-controlled trial examined the efficacy of wonderful variety pomegranate juice versus placebo in improving erections in 53 completed subjects with mild to moderate erectile dysfunction. The crossover design consisted of two 4-week treatment periods separated by a 2-week washout. Efficacy was assessed using International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF) and Global Assessment Questionnaires (GAQ). Of the 42 subjects who demonstrated improvement in GAQ scores after beverage consumption, 25 reported improvement after drinking pomegranate juice. Further, 17 subjects showed preference of one beverage to the other. Subjects were more likely to have improved scores when pomegranate juice was consumed (P=0.058). Although overall statistical significance was not achieved, this pilot study suggests the possibility that larger cohorts and longer treatment periods may achieve statistical significance.

International Journal of Impotence Research (2007) 19, 564-567

****************

Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correla-tion coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi-tions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal-ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

*********************