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You don't know the difference between your opinion and evidence?

https://www.webmd.com/diet/fea...

Benzyl Alcohol, Benzoic Acid, and Sodium Benzoate are safe:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

Azodicarbonamide is safe:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

Aspartame is safe:
https://jamanetwork.com/journa...

No evidence that organic based foods are safer than regular foods (a review of 240 studies)
http://annals.org/aim/article-...

No evidence that GMOs pose health risks:
https://www.csicop.org/si/show...

What is actually going on here:
https://sciencebasedmedicine.o...

You are missing the point, but you want it: http://annals.org/aim/article/...

Now, cite even one study that tests for toxicity in perfumes and colognes. THAT is the point. You want e-cigs banned. Fine. I do not care. What I do care about is the reasoning that brought you to wanting them banned.

Why do I care WHY you want them banned? Because I want perfumes and colognes banned. Now prove your perfumes and colognes are less deadly than vaping. ( which still misses the point, but you wanted to go down this road )

Perfumes and colognes are downright evil with how people bathe in them. My nose burns. I sneeze. My eyes water. But no, people want to go off on their high horse how a relatively harmless smell is so terrible (vaping) and then completely ignore that there are MUCH worse things out there that people are sensitive to.

To put it another way: You want to ban drunk driving. I ask why you want drunk driving to be illegal but don't give a fuck about the comatose people on opiods behind the wheel.

Actually, even that is not equivalent because nobody has proven vaping is even bad.

Do you understand now?

Research results are unclear. Some studies have found a link between sitting and bad health, and also found that exercising doesn't offset the sitting. Other studies have found a much weaker correllation, so maybe sitting all day isn't that big of a deal.

Disclaimer: I have a stand-up desk in my office ($39 folding table from Costco with 4 sections of PVC pipe to extend the legs, and a 2 inch thick anti-fatigue mat to stand on), and I use it about 4 hours per day.

Wait. The official cause of death is listed as Cardiovascular Disease and I'm the one who's reaching? I never said lung cancer didn't contribute to it, just that the official reason is heart failure and saying she died of lung cancer is perpetuating a myth.

There is ample evidence showing smoking increases the risk of Cardiovascular Disease, so it's safe to say that smoking contributed to her death, just not in the manner you described.

I suppose "cardiovascular disease" or "heart failure" don't have the same emotional impact as "lung cancer"...

Your chances of ever recovering full cognitive function after cardiac arrest are less than 2% with current techniques and procedures. You are an "idiot" (to use your words) if you choose a painful, lingering death in a hospital with cognitive impairment over a quick and mostly painless death from cardiac arrest, and that isn't even taking into account the massive financial burden you impose on your family And note that once your brain has been damaged from cardiac arrest, you will probably not be able to make any medical decisions for yourself anymore ever.

The way to deal with cardiac arrest is to avoid it in the first place, through a healthy lifestyle and (if necessary) various implantable devices. It's that kind of preventive care that poor populations don't receive and that we need to improve.

% recovery depends on what your denominator is. if you include the folks who die, then that obviously reduces the percentage who regain full function. if you use the patients who recover as your denominator, the incidence of permanent cognitive defects is more like 30%. http://annals.org/article.aspx... http://www.sciencedirect.com/s... and is related to how quickly you get treatment, which is where this app comes in.

Gosh, I'd love to find the link and read the whole context of your Daniel Webster quote. I tried to googled it, and my meager search skills were unable to locate the source.

And, given the stuff Webster has written elsewhere about the public health approach, see http://annals.org/article.aspx... this quote doesn't really sound like Webster...

As you've noted, Mr. Webster runs the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Gun Policy and Research; his job is basically to fund and promote anti-gun research, so when Daniel Webster comes out and says a pro-gun-control study is flawed you know it has got to have some serious problems! Looks like the majority of the Daniel Webster quotes indicting Bindu Kalesan's study are from an email exchange with the Washington Post.

hey, we apparently agree; trying to reduce avoidable injuries and death means you're anti-gun! wow, never thought you'd say it. congrats on your honesty.

Gosh, I'd love to find the link and read the whole context of your Daniel Webster quote. I tried to googled it, and my meager search skills were unable to locate the source.

And, given the stuff Webster has written elsewhere about the public health approach, see http://annals.org/article.aspx... this quote doesn't really sound like Webster...

As you've noted, Mr. Webster runs the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Gun Policy and Research; his job is basically to fund and promote anti-gun research, so when Daniel Webster comes out and says a pro-gun-control study is flawed you know it has got to have some serious problems! Looks like the majority of the Daniel Webster quotes indicting Bindu Kalesan's study are from an email exchange with the Washington Post.

Gosh, I'd love to find the link and read the whole context of your Daniel Webster quote. I tried to googled it, and my meager search skills were unable to locate the source.

And, given the stuff Webster has written elsewhere about the public health approach, see http://annals.org/article.aspx... this quote doesn't really sound like Webster...

Now that there's finally research coming out about the effects of multivitamins, the studies are proving that in many cases multivitamins at best have no effect on health.

"... the authors concluded that there was no clear evidence of a beneficial effect of supplements on all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, or cancer."

No effect on mortality is very far from "no effect on health". Vitamins may in fact be useful for some aspects of health or quality of life that aren't correlated to mortality, but their research does not address that. They really tried to oversell the importance of their research by calling it "Enough Is Enough: Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements". And of course the media lapped that headline right up, the same way they blindly reported that Oreos are more addictive than cocaine.

There's definitely a problem that we've been fed a lot of misinformation, but those problems are generally facilitated by lack of scientific data. I think the case of multivitamins is a good example. The creation of multivitamins was spurred by the realization that there are different types of compounds that we must consume in certain amounts in order to maintain health. Then someone saw an opportunity to pack all that stuff into one little pill and sell it at a huge mark-up. There hasn't historically been a lot of evidence supporting multivitamins as a maintainer of good health. Instead there's been a lot of evidence that we need the stuff that is in multivitamins. Just because a multivitamin contains what you need doesn't mean your body can access those resources. Now that there's finally research coming out about the effects of multivitamins, the studies are proving that in many cases multivitamins at best have no effect on health.

There's still a lot more to be researched on this issue, but that's the point, the scientific community never knew a lot of this stuff in the first place. It's been both the media trying to sell newspapers and companies trying to create new products without actually researching what those products do.

Another great example of this is the inclusion of vitamin A in topical products like moisturizers and sunscreens. Companies started putting vitamin A in these products because vitamin A is important for healthy skin, so they assuming that slathering it on your body would benefit your skin. Now that research has finally been done on these products, it is now believed that using this product can increase risk of sunburn for as much as a week afterwards!!!!

We should stop blaming science and start blaming those who either manipulate scientific studies for profit or rush products to market without actually using scientific methods to test that the product is safe and does what it is intended to do.

http://annals.org/article.aspx... This article is one study in a long line of studies that show that a low (40g/day) carb diet is healthier than a high carb one. how does the future of food keep diets under 40 carbs per day and still supply enough calories? assume 1200 cals for a woman and 2000 for a man. 30 cals/carb and 50 cals/carb respectively

With one particle, your immune system has time to detect and react.

You can be infected with Ebola from only 1 to 10 viral particles.

For 10 cents a day, I'll take the risk that I'm wasting my money. It's cheap insurance, and there might even be a benefit.

You might want to consider that there might be a significant risk of harm too.

Slight negative effect on lung cancer survival for high doses of Vitamin A.
Increase risk of all-cause mortality for high doses of Vitamin E.
Significant increase in mortality from gastrointestinal cancers from high doses of antioxidants, A & E in particular.

They did not only make assumptions about Hitler, but early on they (The French, British and also Americans) did not disagree that much with the German eugenics practice. There were even articles published in respected medical journals in which American doctors decried that they were lagging behind Germany with respect to forced sterilisation. See for example: Eugenic Sterilization and a Qualified Nazi Analogy: The United States and Germany, 1930-1945 (sadly behind a paywall)

In the eugenics program they first sterilized and later developed methods to mass murder "disabled" people. (with gas, first with carbon mono-oxide from exhausts later with the pesticide Zyclon-B) They later used the methods of the eugenics program in the concentration camps as part of the final solution.

I think you have it for life if you have aquired it, but for type 2 diabetes, loosing weight (and exercising) is the primary treatment, and according to the widely used Norwegian Electronic Doctor's Manual (NEL) almost all cases can be prevented by preventing obesity (: They reference an article here, amongst others, for this claim. The goals of therapy is stated to be to reduce the condition to a non-symptomatic one if possible, and this is what weight loss and exercise seems to achieve (but medicines might also help, and acute cases needs medical intervention).

Regarding weight loss as treatment, I'm not sure if this resource is available for free everywhere, but it's also clearly stated here and here. Wikipedia also references an article on this.

That's of course not to mention all those other things that a healthy diet and working out does for your body. Seems like an attractive package for just about everyone (:

Due to a long history of unethical behavior in the medical field, there are stringent requirements that require one to show a need for research and to demonstrate safety concerns before one can begin an investigation.

This often means that simple experiments that could show benefit and harm of an intervention will not be done because of a large body of circumstantial evidence.

There has to be a fairly even view of outcomes on both sides of a trial before it will be approved - or other studies showing possible efficacy of the side that is under question will need to be done first.

When these situations arise, one can often perform the experiment in a subset of the population in which vaccine efficacy is questioned and benefits are unknown.

The population of HIV infected individuals is one such population and there are double-blind placebo controlled trials done in this group.
The annals of internal medicine (an American College of Phyicians publication) http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/131/6/430 published an investigation showing the efficacy of the influenza vaccine in a population that was least likely to benefit from it. While mortality data is not available here, its results stand on their own as a testament to the clinical efficacy of the vaccine.

I smoke and I've researched this issue into the ground. Its pretty accurate.

No you haven't! This is a classic case of data dredging and selective presentation of data. For starters, amongst smokers with small primary lung cancers, smoking cessation is associated with an almost 3-fold reduction in cancer recurrence.
(annals of internal medicine http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/abstract/119/5/383)

Not only that, but sustained quitters (14.5 years in this study ... data in the pdf and you'll need a subscription to access it... http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/abstract/142/4/233) had a 2.2 fold reduced incidence of lung cancer if they stayed cigarette free for that duration. Granted, that the risk never came back to baseline but its a far cry from declaring that smoking cessation doesn't reduce cancer mortality.

Also, smoking cessation dramatically reduces heart disease and stroke mortality. The number one killer of smokers (surprise, surprise!) is not cancer but in fact heart disease. Heart disease is also the leading cause of death in the US with 1 in 3 people dying of heart trouble. Hence, even if the benefits in terms of cancer reduction are modest, smoking cessation considerably reduces the number of people dying.

Get your facts right!

I smoke and I've researched this issue into the ground. Its pretty accurate.

No you haven't! This is a classic case of data dredging and selective presentation of data. For starters, amongst smokers with small primary lung cancers, smoking cessation is associated with an almost 3-fold reduction in cancer recurrence.
(annals of internal medicine http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/abstract/119/5/383)

Not only that, but sustained quitters (14.5 years in this study ... data in the pdf and you'll need a subscription to access it... http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/abstract/142/4/233) had a 2.2 fold reduced incidence of lung cancer if they stayed cigarette free for that duration. Granted, that the risk never came back to baseline but its a far cry from declaring that smoking cessation doesn't reduce cancer mortality.

Also, smoking cessation dramatically reduces heart disease and stroke mortality. The number one killer of smokers (surprise, surprise!) is not cancer but in fact heart disease. Heart disease is also the leading cause of death in the US with 1 in 3 people dying of heart trouble. Hence, even if the benefits in terms of cancer reduction are modest, smoking cessation considerably reduces the number of people dying.

Get your facts right!

Go talk to someone in the military about that whole free government provided healthcare...you get what you pay for...

I agree that the VA is underfunded relative to its size and patient population but, given its funding limitations, it's actually the best performing health system in the US when measured objectively in terms of patient outcomes.

Triple my bodymass in grams of protein is 726.75 grams of protein.

Sorry. 2.5x the "high protein" diet.

Back to your enumerated points (I'm focusing on your ridiculously-off-the-charts-high-protein/low carb/low fat diet)

Do you have Inuit genetics? Whoops.
Do you eat large amounts of seal blubber and other fats like the Inuit? Whoops.
Do you eat the mere ~100 grams of protein and ~200 grams of carbohydrate that the Inuit eat per day? Whoops.
Do you have Maasai genetics? Whoops.
Do you eat the very high-fat diet of the Maasai -- so high fat that a common treat for kids is fat boiled in water? Whoops.
Do you have Bantu genetics? Whoops.
"Northern" and "Southern" indians are not technical terms. Whoops. Did you mean to refer to a particular study or were you pulling that out of a hat?
Do you have any native american genetics from any group? Whoops.
Are you of the mistaken notion that people of different genetic makeups process foods the same? Big whoops. (ever heard of "lactose intolerance"? "Lactose tolerance" is an evolutionary adaptation developed in cultures whose diet included dairy. Cultures adapt to their native diets)
Have there been a ridiculously large number of studies on the negative effects of saturated fats? Whoops.

My average training week includes 30mins of weight lifting upon waking, 1hour of training for lunch, and 1 hour of weights/football/throwing everyday for 4 weeks.

That's it? You eat 600 grams of protein per day and that's all you do? For God's sake!

Look, you're free to destroy your body against the recommendations of all major medical organizations who've commented on high protein diets (and by "high protein", they're typically talking about 1g/lb, not 2.5g/lb). But don't try and pretend that it's somehow natural or good for you.

Sadly, we're all bought pretty cheaply. Ohh, shiny!

On another note, isn't this comparable to the free gifts that pharmacutical companies give doctors on their conferences.

Yes. It is. One of the interesting things coming out of some recent research is that even cheap trinkets (pens with blinky lights, post-it notes, etc.) subtly influence prescribing behavior. The drug companies know it. They've studied it extensively and will continue to do this sort of advertising as long as humanely possible. Unfortunately, as a species, we're pretty easy to influence, even if we think we know better and are above it all.

(Goes back to reading Slashdot).

Erm...I linked to the article, but the link didn't show up. No clue what happened.

http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/138/5/393

I don't know what happened there...

> go ask the aztecs or the incans if the appearance of new technology was fair to their empires

It was not technology but "Variolae Vaccinae" or smallpox what made the collapse of the Aztec empire in Mexico, where it was introduced by the Spanish conquistadors.

"Unknown in the New World, smallpox was introduced by Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors. It decimated the local population and was instrumental in the fall of the empires of the Aztecs and the Incas. When the Spanish arrived in 1518, Mexico had about 25 million inhabitants; by 1620, this number had diminished to 1.6 million"
http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/127/8_Part_ 1/635

Locke's ideal of a sound mind in a sound body

That article doesn't proof postulate nr. 3. For the Florida cases look at:
http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/124/2/250

In general it's not clear how it could be proven in practice, since no one is going to let himself inject with HIV for a nice clean trial.

If the people were treated with something like AZT, they will develop AIDS, since the common drugs used for AIDS treatment will destroy the immune system (among a long list of other stuff, side effects include blood cell damage and lower white blood cell count).

There certainly is a strong correlation between HIV and AIDS, but it hasn't been shown that HIV is not just a marker and actually causes AIDS.

Ah, but your posts

1) exhibited juvenile name calling,
2) used an ignorant black/white worldview of "you're accepting the word of authorites, therefore you're a stooge of the government,"
3) overplayed an irrelevant (and misstated) comparison with the risk of death by "overdose" of pain relievers.

You're not adding anything to the discussion here. Go spark up another bowl and switch over to the Cartoon Network...

Or, why not put it towards healthcare and get our life expectancy rates up?

Despite popular belief, having the government spend more money on healthcare doesn't actually improve health.

From the Annals of Internal Medicine:

http://www.annals.org/content/vol138/issue4/

The Implications of Regional Variations in Medicare Spending. Part 1: The Content, Quality, and Accessibility of Care. The more inpatient-based and specialist-oriented pattern of practice observed in high-spending regions largely explains regional differences in Medicare spending. Neither quality of care nor access to care appear to be better for Medicare enrollees in higher-spending regions.

The Implications of Regional Variations in Medicare Spending. Part 2: Health Outcomes and Satisfaction with Care. Medicare enrollees in higher-spending regions receive more care than those in lower-spending regions but do not have better health outcomes or satisfaction with care.

The bottom line is that 'race is an unscientific construct'. And here is another small excerpt:

Blumenbach, the German anthropologist and anatomist, first used the word "race" in 1775 to classify humans into five divisions: Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay. Blumenbach also coined the term "Caucasian" because he believed that the Caucasus region of Asia Minor produced "the most beautiful race of men." Both Linnaeus and Blumenbach stated that humans are one species, and the latter remarked on the arbitrary nature of his proposed categories.

These men were products and producers of the prejudices of their era, but it is remarkable how similar the concept and categories of race remain today, even after it has been widely documented that phenotypic and biochemical variations do not correlate simply with genotypic differences.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=2511595&dopt=Abstract /

and
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=8986205 &query_hl=3/

http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/127/5/376/

This is a fairly well known fact. To absolutely corect would have been better to say that some Asians often have a copy of the ADH gene that doesn't function (essentially),as compared to ethnic caucasians. There are some racial differences in drug metabolism. See also G6P metabolism in people of Afican and mediterrainian descent - certain drugs used to prevent malaria caused a hemolytic anemia (red cells burst).

In january 1998 a 13 year old faroese girl received a blood transfusion contaminated with HIV. She was treated with powerful anti-HIV drugs (zidovudine, lamivudine, and indinavir) for 9 months, when the treatment was stopped because of the strong side effects. HIV was never found in her blood. She received a compensation of DKK 750,000 (~$120,000). More on this here and here (in danish)

RTFA. Excerpt: "Cobblestone-like walking paths are common in China. The activity is rooted in traditional Chinese medicine and relates to some of the principles of reflexology, in that the uneven surface of the cobblestones stimulate and regulate "acupoints" located on the soles of the feet."

Then TFA is blowing smoke. There is only one TCM acupoint located on the sole of the foot, Kidney 1; and CM has no relation at all to reflexology.

But what about all the times that it doesn't work? And there are many. The trouble with things like this is people focus more on the times they succeed and tend to forget about all the times that things failed.

Of course. The same is true for any treatment, conventional or complementary. Western physicians aren't immune to believing in treatments that don't work. Hell, just a few decades ago your doctor would be telling you to take up smoking to help lose weight.

There is a huge difference between a medical doctor prescribing you a treatment that has been properly scientifically and medically proven and tested...

But very few of the treatments used in standard Western medicine have been so tested! Please show me a controlled double-blind study of coronary bypass surgery.

You simply have to submit the practice to a real scientific double blind-placebo controlled test. Fancy that, here is an example: http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/abstract/143/1/1 0

A study with only two fatal flaws:

• "A prescription of acupuncture at fixed points may differ from acupuncture administered in clinical settings". In other words, what was tested was nothing like acupuncture as it is actually applied.
• part of the control group received "noninsertive simulated acupuncture", which will also stimulate points - in some cases, as effectively as needle insertion. Those of us who practice acupressure and ABT stimulate points without needle insertion all the time

So you've cited a study that has no bearing on clinical acupuncture.

A better example of a double-blind controlled methodology for acupuncture research is that developed by Allen and Schnyer, where the control is geniune acupuncture adminstered for a condition other than that under investigation. They found:

Thus, based on a small outpatient sample of women with major depression, it appeared that acupuncture provided significant symptom relief at rates comparable to standard treatments such as psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy. The effect sizes observed in this small sample were at least as large or larger than those seen in trials of antidepressant medication or psychotherapy, and they suggest that a larger clinical trial is warranted.

"Thinking critically" also means being skeptical of the claims of current medical orthodoxy - looking at the actual evidence rather than being swayed by name-calling.

You are exactly right, however I don't see how that was relevant in my post, or in this thread, as we are not disputing medical practice. I never said that quacks didn't exist in every line of practice. However I will say that anyone practicing acupuncture or reflexology is a quack.

Reflexology has nothing to do with Chinese Medicine.

I didn't mention reflexology together with chinese medicine for no reason. RTFA. Excerpt: "Cobblestone-like walking paths are common in China. The activity is rooted in traditional Chinese medicine and relates to some of the principles of reflexology, in that the uneven surface of the cobblestones stimulate and regulate "acupoints" located on the soles of the feet."

Many pracitioners of Chinese Medicine don't care much about trying to find a Western Medicine explanation for how acupuncture

Whether they care or not doesn't mean it works just because they believe in it. Proof of acupuncture is anecdotal at best, there is absolutely no proof that such techniques are scientifically sound.

Sure there have been lots of "studies" done on acupuncture claiming that it Really Works, however none of which were appropriate in controlling placebo and other factors such as blinding.

They see it work every day, that's enough for them.

But what about all the times that it doesn't work? And there are many. The trouble with things like this is people focus more on the times they succeed and tend to forget about all the times that things failed.

(The same can be said of many Western physicians, a surprising number of whom have little interest or knowledge of biology.)

The CM model is very much a functional, not a structural, one; the Vital Substances, the Zang-Fu organs, and the meridians are best understood by what they do, not by chopping people up looking for them.

You don't have to chop people up to look for meridians. You simply have to submit the practice to a real scientific double blind-placebo controlled test. Fancy that, here is an example: http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/abstract/143/1/1 0

For some real information see http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/ acu.html

To quote:

The National Council Against Health Fraud has concluded:

• Acupuncture is an unproven modality of treatment.
• Its theory and practice are based on primitive and fanciful concepts of health and disease that bear no relationship to present scientific knowledge
• Research during the past 20 years has not demonstrated that acupuncture is effective against any disease.
• Perceived effects of acupuncture are probably due to a combination of expectation, suggestion, counter-irritation, conditioning, and other psychologic mechanisms.
• The use of acupuncture should be restricted to appropriate research settings, Insurance companies should not be required by law to cover acupuncture treatment, Licensure of lay acupuncturists should be phased out.
• Consumers who wish to try acupuncture should discuss their situation with a knowledgeable physician who has no commercial interest [20].

Enjoy.

Exactly. How about those who can't drink? I am very sickly allergic to alcolhol. See this report for more details. There is no getting buzzed or feeling good from drinking. A glass of wine messes me up more than you can imagine and there you can not build up a tolerance to the negative effects as the problem is embedded in my genes.

Nothing hurks me off more than news reporters claiming a related factor causes anything (or in this case, reduces risk). Learn some statistics. The *only* thing they can claim is that those who drank coffee also experienced fewer cases of diabetes.

This is a correlation. Coffee drinking could cause lowered diabetes risk, the genetic predisposition towards getting diabetes could cause coffee drinking, or both could be casued by a third factor, such as loss of appetite or fewer sugary foods. The 95% confidence interval for the study was 0.26 to 0.82, so not only do they not know the real cause, the real effect could be as little as 20%.

the study's abstract.