My guess is that the best ways to reduce the risk of heart disease, normalized for effort, are getting a couple HEPA filters for your house and getting blackout curtains to improve sleep quality. Diet, exercise, meditation, etc., are obviously more effective, but also require actual effort, whereas with these interventions you just pay the couple hundred bucks and you're done.
HEPA is probably the wrong thing to focus on. Instead focus on the actual rating level ( I can't remember the scale atm) one thing to remember is that you need to make sure your HVAC can handle the higher ratings (the virus and pathogen level filters), or your motor might burn out.
My guess is to filter out as many of the pollutants you possibly can. Newer houses are full of them since everything is made in China and off gassing. You also have external air which is full of diesel and gas emissions not to mention pesticides and everything else. The only thing you need to do though is make sure your HVAC can support it. Otherwise you run the risk of burning out the motors. Air pollution and radon are risks for lung cancer.
This. There have also been tons of experiments, starting with the Atlanta olympics, where external pollution sources get throttled and you can see a very clear and immediate drop in cardiovascular-related deaths.
Also there are plenty of standalone units that don’t integrate with HVAC. E.g. I have the Winnex 5300-2, which is one of the Amazon recommended units. (Some of the others are designed for smokers, chefs, or other specialized purposes.)
Most air purifiers with HEPA filters also have plasma generators to reduce VOCs. Whether it's a good idea to leave them running when you're in the room probably depends on how much you trust them not to be generate appreciable amounts of ozone.
Also worth noting that modern building materials, cinder block and drywall, are made from desulpherized flue gass, aka the ash from coal burning power plants. They're probably safe, but still disconcerting.
This should shock no one. Health wise, alcohol is bad for you. Period. However the potential decrease in loneliness and potential resulting friendships may negate the health negatives somewhat. However the increased likelihood of injuring yourself and/or others with too much consumption may negate that, and so forth.
This is exactly why it's difficult to properly control for the supposed moderate drinking that's "healthy". Sooo many ways to explain why "moderate" drinkers are healthier:
1. Maybe they're a self selected group of people who can properly moderate usage of something that's bad in order to get the benefits, in this case, friendships and social activity.
2. Maybe drinking is bad and moderate drinkers know it. Therefore moderate drinkers intentionally moderate their drinking and overcompensate in other miscellaneous healthy activity.
There was a good meta analysis in 2016 on this, you lose the mortality benefits of moderate drinking once you correct for study design, which can basically dictate results here. One big confound, a lot of current strict abstainers are former heavy drinkers with serious health problems:
Even without being former heavy drinkers, the fact that a fair percentage of teetotalers abstain due to serious health issues is enough to sway the results
The same could be said about smoking. Bad for you without a doubt, but the social aspects are undeniably attractive (and I don’t mean looking cool, but having reasons to take and socialize during breaks). It made giving it up that much tougher.
"This should shock no one. Health wise, alcohol is bad for you. Period."
...
"Sooo many ways to explain why "moderate" drinkers are healthier ..."
I have this silly idea that drinking, which is bad for you, in moderation, actually exercises the processing and filtering mechanisms (liver, kidney, etc.) that are required to deal with it.
Which is to say, imagine you never drank alcohol - how healthy
(or "fit") would those mechanisms be ?
I have no idea if there is any validity to this thought but I find the idea to be interesting.
There are trivial amounts of alcohol in a lot of things that teetotalers end up consuming, even the religiously so ones.
Vanilla extract, meats cooked in alcohol (it does not all burn off), some vinegars, mustard, cooking spray, "non-alcoholic" wine/beer -- they all have marginal amounts of alcohol.
I suspect the basis for your theory is the idea behind inoculation. However, the purpose of the kidney and liver are to serve as filters for toxins. In any other context, filters don't get stronger with use, they degrade with use. The more crap you shove through it, the faster it degrades. How often do you have to change your car's air/fuel filters, or your HVAC filter? How often do you have to change them when you abuse them by living in a dusty climate?
Thus, my own (unqualified) take on it is that these organs can only handle a finite amount of filtration before they simply fail.
Your argument could also be used for exercise, that lifting weights should make you weaker, not stronger. Bearings and rubber bands wear out with use.
The distinction should be between living and nonliving systems. Living systems are frequently designed to strengthen things that are under stress. This is why working out makes you stronger; compressing, even breaking a bone can make it heal stronger. And why we build up tolerances to things. Our biological filters work with specialized proteins, our body can learn to express certain proteins more in response to stress. Perhaps that includes the ones involved in filtering?
Stepping back and looking at a broader trend: As government is cut back, we shift power into the hands of the wealthy, individuals and corporations. There's sort of a law of preservation of political power: Cutting government doesn't reduce the amount of power out there, it just gets democratic government out of the way so that other powerful people can seize the power.
That doesn't mean we should always expand government; government has other drawbacks. But there are trade-offs that should be considered: some things should be controlled democratically, rather than by the powerful. The purpose of democracy is to distribute that power equally to everyone.
As long as science continues to be funded by corporations, we will always have this problem of getting results biased towards the corporations. I wonder what else can be used to fund scientific research if not the government?
Grad student here. I have thought about this a lot. I think governmental funding sources have problems similar to those from companies. They may not be as explicitly biased, but agendas will exist. There's also the problem that the people approving the funding don't necessarily make good choices. I might prefer an explicit lottery to the current system.
My plan right now is to save money, retire early, and then doing whatever research I want that fits my budget. This avoids many of the problems with the current system, but is not possible for many.
This would allow me to pursue more risky research (in the sense that the research may fail to produce useful results) than an assistant professor trying to get tenure could. I also wouldn't have to raise funds, so I could focus on projects I believe are important, not just what can get funded.
In the book "Invention" by Norbert Weiner, as I recall, he suggests that the government could fund independent researchers to encourage better research. I don't think that will happen, so I have a DIY solution instead.
You're plan sounds very appealing, but is unfortunately very limited to non-wet-lab sciences, such as CS. The amount of set-up and running costs for just a barebones functioning laboratory, e.g. in biochemistry, is in the multi-million dollar range, so there you will still be needing some sort of funding or a very large savings account.
I suspect some corruption going on when I hear something like this. I have no experience with biochemistry, but in my university they showed us a (selfbuild) 3D equipment consisting of one or a couple of computers, 3 (good) beamers and a gauntlet to control the scene. I couldn't believe the price-tag: 300k €. I think the problem is the same for many institutions. They get budget and need to spend it somehow (if they don't then they get less the next year).
I've seen that people start off gofundme's or the like when they need some financial support with an urgent unexpected issue. People are happy to help and contribute, sometimes even if they are complete strangers. I've read someone say it was because people want to know who is getting their support. Maybe if it was possible to easily support research similarly, then people might pitch in?
Early stage research still costs a lot of money. You won’t raise $200k from a bunch of individuals like a go fund me; and individuals are probably not the best at judging the impact and merit of proposals.
We need an overhaul of the way research is funded, but I don’t think asking everyday individuals to fund is the right way.
You don't need much research when you can just compared the number of people that used to die from illnesses that we vaccinate against with the number of people who die from vaccines.
I agree. Personal experience is that even moderate drinking causes poorer sleep and mental performance but can only be observed after you have been clean of alcohol for months. After you are in the habit of drinking multiple times per week you can not compare your state to the baseline of non drinking. I ran into this by accident when training for a race and did not believe it when people told me.
Alcohol has been part of human culture forever, I doubt it's going to go away.
Binge drinking needs to stop, though. Besides the obvious health hazards, it's also putting the rest of us — who just enjoy a nice glass of whisky once in a while, or some beer at a concert — in a needlessly bad light.
Just to make super explicit why this isn't even a little bit okay, there's a very sordid history of corporations influencing research (even federal research).
Before lead was put into gasoline two health studies were conducted by the government, but the relevant industries (including DuPont) had influence over the research. Both studies found leaded gasoline was totally safe. Low and behold it reduced the IQ of an entire generation around 3 points (best estimate).
Perhaps corn syrup/sugar is cheaper than low-calorie alternatives, with the assumption people won't eliminate sodas, only whether they pick diet/non-diet
Because RC Cola was beating them by a tonne in the market because of their sugar-alternative. The article I linked has a tonne of info on it if you read down a bit.
Because RC Cola was beating them by a tonne in the market because of their sugar-alternative. The article I linked has a tonne of info on it if you read down a bit.
So none of these studies can be read and reviewed on their own without knowing who is behind the study.
How can a supplement company ever do a study on it's efficacy if it's going to get shot down because they sponsored it.
But then what do they do? Cross their fingers and wait for some random researchers to take an interest in their product? Sure, if the product becomes popular then it might attract research, but what if barely anyone tries your product because there's no research on it? Am I missing something or is this a catch-22?
I used to think it was corrupt for companies to sponsor research on their own products. Then one day it occurred to me: who else is going to care about a product (especially one that's relatively unknown) more than the company trying to sell it?
If you come up with a supplement to aid in sleeping, it's fine to conduct a study and use it in marketing to say hey, studies have shown it helps you sleep at night.
The matter becomes grayer when there are concerns about the safety of a product. I'm personally willing to trust your study that your supplement aids with sleeping, but I don't trust that you're disclosing that your test subjects also all died of cancer. You have an interest in hiding the downside of your findings to sell more product.
Put another way, the NRA's studies would find nothing wrong with arming every American man, woman and child-- for their own protection! Their interest is in selling guns. That owning a gun increases your chances of accidental death by x% is likely not a fact they will share with you.
What was the last supplement you saw that was patentable?
Supplements in general are vaguely effective and mostly unpatented, meaning that the only incentive for a supplement company to perform "research" is for the purpose of marketing that they have some sort of research, but it's against the law for them to say that their supplements do anything specific outside the vague "bone health" etc. claims.
Don't get me wrong, I take various supplements daily, but I'm also fully aware of how sketchy this industry is, especially where there are herbal supplements that were out there found not to contain any genetic material of the herbs the bottle was advertising.
I'm unclear what your point is. Anybody can do a study on their own product, and anybody can lie in a study. The question is to the consumer, how much are we going to trust a particular study?
This is why there are clear rules about putting funding sources in the study, and it seems like the NIH violated this deliberately.
Shouldn't it be required to list funding sources on research?
It's surprising that I still see studies about the benefits of wine, chocolate, coffee, or basically any other vice as being healthy and life extending.
It's not surprising that these studies are often funded by the industries themselves without mentioning it as a disclosure in the research or in the articles promoting the research.
It's kind of a catch-22 though, who other than the relevant industry has the money and interest to do an in-depth study on relatively minor and long term effects? Goes for 'positive' studies like coffee as well as negative ones like BPA.
We've got to find a way to vet studies on their merits regardless or in spite of the conflicts of interest that are funding them.
I’m sure this won’t be a popular answer but: The government does. It’s called taking care of public health. Something squarely in the domain of the government, hence why the NIH and CDC exist. They shouldn’t have to go to industries that have a conflict of interest to seek funding on studies for public health issues.
I have a serious medical condition. I found that a particular brand of salt was very beneficial. I became an affiliate and had ads on my health blog for that brand of salt. People accused me of having a conflict of interest and just trying to make money off of sick people.
I am very leery of medical advice where I know doctors are basically there to prescribe drugs and surgeries when I know from experience I can get better results from diet and lifestyle. But talking about that is a huge shitshow. Most people don't want to hear that.
I don't know how to solve this. The money needs to come from somewhere, but the minute money is involved, no one trusts what you say and it seems to not matter the order in which that association happens. Being a believer in the product because it worked for you and trying to make money on something you believe in makes you one of those MLM people in the minds of a lot of people.
> I am very leery of medical advice where I know doctors are basically there to prescribe drugs and surgeries when I know from experience I can get better results from diet and lifestyle.
That sounds almost like a false dichotomy. I don’t think any decent doctor would exclude diet and lifestyle in regards to health. And neither should the patient. But I can’t help but wonder how often a patient gives up that kind of information. Does a person suffering from obesity and related symptoms disclose the fact they drink a 2-liter of carbonated sugar water a day? And since diet and lifestyle is not in the doctor’s control, what else can a doctor do? Best to get a referral to a dietician I guess.
Dietitians are routinely included on the medical team for my condition and their advice is "high fat, high salt, high calorie diet." They literally prescribe junk food. I have found that this is not in my best interest. I found that it is surprisingly effective to pay attention to nutrition and food quality.
And when I began getting better, my doctor was in no way curious. He just scheduled me fewer appointments because I wasn't sick enough to need his time.
It is a brand of sea salt. Table salt is almost entirely sodium chloride, plus things like additives that help it not clump so it pours easier. If I recall correctly, the salt in question is 84 percent sodium chloride and 16 percent micronutrients and other minerals found naturally in ocean water.
My body misprocesses salt. A high salt diet is standard medical prescription. I concluded that the additives in table salt are problematic for me, in part because I misprocess some molecules and in part because I consume more salt than average, which means I consume more of the additives as well. I also concluded that misprocessing salt has various knock on effects. When the body sweats out sodium chloride at high rates, it drags other minerals with it. Those micronutrients made a big difference to me.
I no longer need that brand of salt, in part because I live near the coast and get it in the air, in part because I spent years remedying my various deficiencies and I am no longer severely deficient.
There is research that people with my condition who surf have a better prognosis. So my conclusions aren't entirely unsupported by existing research. The medical world used that research to develop a nebulized treatment. Their theory is that surfing helps because you breath salty sea air and it helps the lungs. I used it to conclude that sea salt with a variety of micronutrients made sense for me. I think it is rather silly to conclude that surfing is solely or primarily beneficial because of the air you are breathing. The condition is famous for negatively impacting lung function, but it is genetic and there is a lot more going on than lung issues.
In a nutshell, the medical world recognizes that salt is significant for my condition, but they only think quantity matters. I decided quality mattered more.
I have "typical" CF (df508X2) but it's fairly mild (I believe it's because I grew up in a home where it was essentially immune system bootcamp, but that's another conversation ....). I've always had a very strong salt craving as you've described, but never considered the additive issue.
What I want is to share useful information with people who have largely been failed by conventional medicine and also somehow pay my bills. I have literally given away information for free for years. I have also been very poor for years. These two facts are not unrelated.
Doctors are not somehow above having a conflict of interest. One cancer doctor* went to prison for his heinous treatment of patients for personal profit, some of whom never actually had cancer.
This isn't some problem unique to me or unique to people who aren't medical professionals. The entire health industry has a problem here.
Also, that's a personal attack and violates HN guidelines.
I wasn't peddling dietary supplements. I was recommending a particular brand of sea salt. Salt is not a supplement. It's a normal part of the diet.
There is research showing people with my condition who surf have a better prognosis. This research is respected enough it led to the creation of a prescription treatment where people inhale nebulized salt water. I think that's a silly conclusion and a more logical one is that sea salt is beneficial. I also recommend people like me simply go to the beach whenever possible and/or live near the coast because this is known to help.
I'm sorry for your suffering, but the problem here is that people are suffering horribly and dying from my condition and there is no path forward for helping them. Meanwhile, drugs are being developed that cost $300k annually and help only 5 percent of the population but I am evil incarnate and viciously attacked on a regular basis for a. Saying "I did X and it helped me" and b. Trying to find some means -- any means -- to monetize my writing on any subject, whether health related or not, so I can take better care of myself and stop being desperately poor.
I blog. The information is free. It isn't framed as medical advice. And when I criticize conventional medicine and how it gets monetized, I also get attacked for that, a thing that happened just today in a different discussion in HN. There is zero logical consistency here. The thing that is consistent boils down to prejudice.
I have thought a great deal about this problem space and how to monetize it. And I cannot think of a good path forward. Trying to make money off of helping people with their health is just inherently problematic. Period. Whether you decide to become a medical professional or not.
Kind of a corollary to the No Free Lunch theorem: No vice is entirely without upside. eg. Alcohol was a safe form of calorie storage before refrigeration.
“The presentations gave the alcohol industry an opportunity to preview the trial design and vet the investigators. Indeed, the scientist leading the meetings was eventually chosen to head the huge clinical trial.“
Which is unfortunate because “though excessive drinking is harmful and problem drinking is on the rise in the United States, many observational studies have found that moderate drinkers outlive abstainers and have less heart disease.”
Another problem is that many abstainers might already be at risk for either having once been problem drinkers or avoiding alcohol due to adverse reaction to alcohol.
In other words, moderate drinkers may be a self-selecting group for people with good health.
and a substantial number of heavy drinkers maintain the idea that they are moderate drinkers, and thus would actually be helping their health by continuing to drink.
It's a funny day to have this subject rise to the surface.
I am as against shite science as anybody, but I would decry the reverse happening as well—fear mongering over the fact that, yes, alcohol will probably shorten your life and put you at higher risk for many physiological problems that may outweigh whatever minor benefits it bestows.
I'd wager it's a larger question than all that. But of course I will second that the science-side should be represented honestly.
I can't comment on the States, though. And I understand the concern about the language.
This is interesting because there are some interesting research signals recently that indicate that alcohol may cause cancer. Something like this may be a preemptive PR war strategy.
This sounds more like a problem with the perceived quality of health research than anything else.
Given that the healthcare industry and the alcohol industry are fairly good sources of revenue, does anybody have an argument for why we should really expect a different outcome if this was funded by and influenced by federal government?
When I told a friend of mine, a very well respected surgeon in the UK, that I don't drink at all, he told me that I should, and that a glass of wine is good for you. Thankfully I had come across a journal which refuted that very claim about wine just a few days prior, so could offer a solid basis for my abstinence (as a non drinker, you are often under pressure to do so!). What surprised me was that a medical professional (specialising in the liver, no less) was happy to disseminate this information, believing it to be true. Clearly the marketing/propaganda campaign has been exceptionally effective in putting across their false rhetoric, having convinced even an individual that probably sees empirical evidence to the contrary during his day job!
300 million people, $19 Trillion economy, $4 TRILLION budget and we cannot pay $10 million a year ($100m for 10 yrs) for an independent study for something that affects the lives of maybe 100 million Americans. Something wrong?
Alcoholic drinks (not just casual content like vanilla extract) have been consumed by humans for millions of years. To put it in perspective, milk has been consumed by humans for less than 10000 years. It would be unsurprising that there might be some evolutionary selection that benefits people who consume some alcohol. I find this specific topic interesting, given my observations about patterns in my adult friends (when they started and stopped drinking, when they started and stopped working out, when they have kids, etc).
http://www.alexkrupp.com/Citevault.html#drug-company-funding...
My guess is that the best ways to reduce the risk of heart disease, normalized for effort, are getting a couple HEPA filters for your house and getting blackout curtains to improve sleep quality. Diet, exercise, meditation, etc., are obviously more effective, but also require actual effort, whereas with these interventions you just pay the couple hundred bucks and you're done.