Slashdot Mirror

Maybe we should mandate all of these things too? Because there are hundreds of communicable diseases that all those protect people against -- not just measles.

https://www.drfuhrman.com/shop...
"In Disease-Proof Your Child, Dr. Fuhrman details how a Nutritarian [vegetable-emphasizing etc.] diet increases a child's resistance to common childhood illnesses like asthma, ear infections, and allergies. He explains how eating a high-nutrient diet during childhood protects against developing chronic illness including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and autoimmune disorders."

https://www.everydayfamily.com...
"What all of this means, unfortunately, is that while breastfeeding generally provides the most protection against measles for babies when they are newborns and up to six months, those antibodies wane as they baby gets older. Currently, the CDC doesn't recommend that infants get the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine until they are 12 months old, so babies who are my daughter's age â" 6 months â" are lacking in that protection."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
"It is now clear that vitamin D has important roles in addition to its classic effects on calcium and bone homeostasis. As the vitamin D receptor is expressed on immune cells (B cells, T cells and antigen presenting cells) and these immunologic cells are all are capable of synthesizing the active vitamin D metabolite, vitamin D has the capability of acting in an autocrine manner in a local immunologic milieu. Vitamin D can modulate the innate and adaptive immune responses. Deficiency in vitamin D is associated with increased autoimmunity as well as an increased susceptibility to infection. As immune cells in autoimmune diseases are responsive to the ameliorative effects of vitamin D, the beneficial effects of supplementing vitamin D deficient individuals with autoimmune disease may extend beyond the effects on bone and calcium homeostasis."

https://www.health.harvard.edu...
"Just like a healthy diet, exercise can contribute to general good health and therefore to a healthy immune system. It may contribute even more directly by promoting good circulation, which allows the cells and substances of the immune system to move through the body freely and do their job efficiently. ..."

Adequate sleep is also important for immune function:
https://valleysleepcenter.com/...
"One reason our immune system function is so closely tied to our sleep is that certain disease-fighting substances are released or created while we sleep. Our bodies need these hormones, proteins, and chemicals in order to fight off disease and infection. Sleep deprivation, therefore, decreases the availability of these substances leaving us more susceptible to each new virus and bacteria we encounter. This can also cause us to being sick for a longer period of time as our bodies lack the resources to properly fight whatever it is that is making us sick."

If the logic of forced vaccination holds up, shouldn't we also be putting people in jail for giving children junk food -- as well as for producing or selling junk food consumed by children?

Or maybe we should jail people who are not getting enough sleep (e.g. people who stay up late reading Slashdot) and so are posing a health risk to everyone?

Or is that too slippery a slope for people here to consider?

Humor also boost the immune system. So maybe people who don't laugh enough should also be sent to jail as a health risk? :-)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.ni

Maybe we should mandate all of these things too? Because there are hundreds of communicable diseases that all those protect people against -- not just measles.

https://www.drfuhrman.com/shop...
"In Disease-Proof Your Child, Dr. Fuhrman details how a Nutritarian [vegetable-emphasizing etc.] diet increases a child's resistance to common childhood illnesses like asthma, ear infections, and allergies. He explains how eating a high-nutrient diet during childhood protects against developing chronic illness including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and autoimmune disorders."

https://www.everydayfamily.com...
"What all of this means, unfortunately, is that while breastfeeding generally provides the most protection against measles for babies when they are newborns and up to six months, those antibodies wane as they baby gets older. Currently, the CDC doesn't recommend that infants get the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine until they are 12 months old, so babies who are my daughter's age â" 6 months â" are lacking in that protection."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
"It is now clear that vitamin D has important roles in addition to its classic effects on calcium and bone homeostasis. As the vitamin D receptor is expressed on immune cells (B cells, T cells and antigen presenting cells) and these immunologic cells are all are capable of synthesizing the active vitamin D metabolite, vitamin D has the capability of acting in an autocrine manner in a local immunologic milieu. Vitamin D can modulate the innate and adaptive immune responses. Deficiency in vitamin D is associated with increased autoimmunity as well as an increased susceptibility to infection. As immune cells in autoimmune diseases are responsive to the ameliorative effects of vitamin D, the beneficial effects of supplementing vitamin D deficient individuals with autoimmune disease may extend beyond the effects on bone and calcium homeostasis."

https://www.health.harvard.edu...
"Just like a healthy diet, exercise can contribute to general good health and therefore to a healthy immune system. It may contribute even more directly by promoting good circulation, which allows the cells and substances of the immune system to move through the body freely and do their job efficiently. ..."

Adequate sleep is also important for immune function:
https://valleysleepcenter.com/...
"One reason our immune system function is so closely tied to our sleep is that certain disease-fighting substances are released or created while we sleep. Our bodies need these hormones, proteins, and chemicals in order to fight off disease and infection. Sleep deprivation, therefore, decreases the availability of these substances leaving us more susceptible to each new virus and bacteria we encounter. This can also cause us to being sick for a longer period of time as our bodies lack the resources to properly fight whatever it is that is making us sick."

If the logic of forced vaccination holds up, shouldn't we also be putting people in jail for giving children junk food -- as well as for producing or selling junk food consumed by children?

Or maybe we should jail people who are not getting enough sleep (e.g. people who stay up late reading Slashdot) and so are posing a health risk to everyone?

Or is that too slippery a slope for people here to consider?

Humor also boost the immune system. So maybe people who don't laugh enough should also be sent to jail as a health risk? :-)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.ni

BACKGROUND: The largest measles epidemic in North America in the last decade, occurred in 2011 in Quebec, Canada, where rates of 1- and 2-dose vaccine coverage among children 3 years of age were 95%-97% and 90%, respectively, with 3%-5% unvaccinated

For those posting with comments along the lines of: "Why doesn't it matter if innocent slaves were tortured, the science is valid?!"

Ethics in medical (any) science is a very important, and we shouldn't encourage third-world dictatorships to create more suffering by accepting unethical medical research.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-ethics-of-using-medical-data-from-nazi-experiments

Holocaust survivor Susan Vigorito found the use of the word "data" a sterile term. She was 3½ when she and her twin sister, Hannah, arrived at Auschwitz. They were housed for an entire year in Mengele's private lab in a wooden cage a yard and a half wide. Without anesthetic, Mengele would repeatedly scrape at the bone tissue of one of her legs. Her sister died from repeated injections to her spinal column. She claims that she is the real data, the living data of Dr. Mengele.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4822534/

This is why we can't make any headway on this issue. Because people believe in this mythical boogeyman that is going to go through the pain and discomfort of carrying a baby for 9 months and decide ON THE FUCKING BIRTHING TABLE that they don't want it and it should just be killed, as opposed to giving it up for adoption. It's ridiculous. It's a fairy tale.

Of course. Not one woman has ever drowned her kids in a bathtub. Not one strapped them into car seats and let the car roll into a lake when dad was at work. These are fictional events. Boogeymen.

Mothers are the most likely to kill their newborns and the least likely to be charged. It's so bad, in fact, that The risk of being a homicide victim is highest during the first year of life

It's far past time to not see women as objects not responsible for their actions and as actors as evil as any man.

I'm sorry you're having this loss at such a young age. I'm a good bit older and regularly run (mix) sound (and I'm pretty good at very gentle augmentation of classical, to full-on rock). I haven't had my hearing tested, but I don't perceive it to be any worse than when I was 20, and now that I've gotten into audio work, I ardently/fiercely protect my hearing.

I know they're pricey but you've bypassed the world of junk hearing aids, and some argue that the super-cheap ones can do more damage.

I'm much more concerned that you might have one of the many inner-ear infections. They can be very difficult to detect until after they've done much damage. One is "mastoiditis" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4176546/ and
  https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/ear-infections/symptoms-causes/syc-20351616. Like too many conditions / diseases, it's often overlooked because it's considered more of a childhood disease; and may well set in during childhood.

70% of domestic violence is perpetrated by women

That is not even remotely close to what the link actually says. The 70% figure was quote-mined from this larger context:

Almost 24% of all relationships had some violence, and half (49.7%) of those were reciprocally violent. In nonreciprocally violent relationships, women were the perpetrators in more than 70% of the cases.

So sorry, this isn't saying 70% of all domestic violence is by women. It's saying that 70% of cases that account for half of domestic violence cases are perpetrated by women. Which when you work that out makes only 35% of all domestic violence cases. A figure that is half of what you claim.

Did you really think no one was going to read your link?

Big Pharma has co-opted scientists.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17970244

That doesn't mean that vaccination isn't important. Vaccination was important for eradicating smallpox and polio. The science behind vaccination was well understood a century ago and well-enough understood to prevent more suffering than it caused even long ago when it still meant using scab tissue from infected patients. Modern Big Pharma's corruption doesn't invalidate that.

Still, the anti-vaxxers are right to fear the industry that gave us thalidomide. That's why we need better and enforceable regulation of the pharmaceutical industry: we need a regulatory regime that will give people like the anti-vaxxers faith in the system again.

Ok that's good because until 2017, they used only 13 loci and it was far more likely to find a false match than the FBI claimed. Even with 20 loci, the statistics can be abused when dealing with DNA fragments.

Battered wife syndrome is the only reason people still use it.

You mean "battered husband syndrome".

70% of domestic violence is perpetrated by women, and men are far more likely to suffer in silence.

Lesbian couples have twice the level of domestic violence as hetero couples. Male-male couples have half the hetero rate.
 

"Why Most Published Research Findings Are False"
John P. A. Ioannidis

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

Further reading:

"There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias".
- Dr John Ioannidis (“Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”) August 30, 2005 http://journals.plos.org/plosm...

"It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine".
- Dr. Marcia Angell, New York Review of Books January 15, 2009. http://www.nybooks.com/article...

"The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.
Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness".
- Richard Horton, Editor, “The Lancet” April 11th 2015 http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/...

"Scientists these days, especially but not only in such blatantly corrupt fields as pharmaceutical research, face a lose-lose choice between basing their own investigations on invalid studies, on the one hand, or having to distrust any experimental results they don’t replicate themselves, on the other. Meanwhile the consumers of the products of scientific research—yes, that would be all of us—have to contend with the fact that we have no way of knowing whether any given claim about the result of research is the product of valid science or not".
- John Michael Greer
http://thearchdruidreport.blog...

We? We?? Or do you mean a government thug doing the dirty work on your behalf? People like you who make these demands do so because you lack the spine to do anything yourself.

And how exactly would I take this matter into my own hands? Hide in movie theaters and prick kids with vaccination needles in the dark while they watch the latest brain-draining driven from Disney or Marvel?

And I sicken you? Ha.

Oh, and if a vaccination causes a reaction and a child is left crippled, or dead, who is going to accept responsibility for that?

Sorry, but this doesn't happen.. Outside of unhealthy people (immunocompromised or with existing alergies), common vaccines such as MMR and the flu are unequivocally safe. Even in the 0.0002% chance of an unknown allergy causing an anaphylaxis response, it doesn't always result in death or even any permanent condition. You have a better chance of being killed by a seat belt after your car went underwater, and most people are fine with seat belt laws.

This is a different but serious problem to antivaxxers. The majority of antibiotic resistance comes from agricultural practices. Animals are fed antibiotics even when healthy so that even more can be crammed into smaller spaces, and increase yields slightly. Short of a weapons grade bioengineering lab, this ranks among the fastest ways to reduce the effectiveness of antibiotics. If you want to help the best ways are to let your politicans know, and to purchase meats that are antibiotic free. Oftentimes these antibiotic free meats don't even cost more at the grocery store.

A lot. Here's some educational material for you, if you wanna know my citations:

2015-2017 are the hottest years on record on Earth. Citation: https://public.wmo.int/en/medi... and multiple countries and weather stations confirmed this

2018 is looking to be #4, but not 100% confirmed yet; but last April was the third warmest on record: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/...

The higher temperatures are affecting all crops, but their effects are most pronounced under Middle East and African Desert countries currently, but their effects should be closely examined to find ways to stop them in general. Citation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

There's a legitimate question. Why is mutilation of the body to match a desire gender something that is supported when other forms of body mutilation to match your self identity abhorred? Why is the destruction of the body's ability to procreate okay while destruction of the body's ability to perceive visual stimulus not okay?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

Unlikely. Dementia is defined as a loss of cognitive functioning.

I'm well aware of that. And it's quite possible he has experienced some loss of cognitive functioning. I'm not saying he's deep in the grip of Alzheimers or anything like that. 8.8 percent of adults over 65 have some amount dementia so it would hardly be shocking if he's in the early stages. He does and and has done so many "crazy" things that it's pretty hard to judge with any hope of accuracy because we don't have the data even though he's been a public figure for a long time.

But there is little evidence that Trump is getting worse.

You don't know the man even close to well enough to judge that. Nobody reading this comment does including myself. Your guess is as good as mine but my only point is that you cannot simply dismiss it out of hand because you don't have the information to do that. Odds are that he doesn't have it but the odds that he does are too large to dismiss casually.

Nope. Vascular dementia is different from Alzheimers.

There's a reason they call Alzheimer's Diabetes 3.

That is what I came here to say. Floss your teeth.

No. Bad advice. Get a Waterpik. Waterpiks are more effective than string flossing at reducing plaque.

Waterpiks are also faster and easier to use, and people are more likely to use them consistently.

Add a jigger of fluoride mouthwash to the water, for even better results.

Same cannot be said for having red hair.

I suggest you Google that because it's not true. Red hair can lead to: increased change of getting Parkinsons, and increased risk of melanoma. On a slightly less important, but none the less quality of life issue, redheads are also likely to suffer increased pain sensitivity (anesthesiologists actually use more drugs on redheads for that reason) and increased temperature sensitivity.

Same cannot be said for having red hair.

I suggest you Google that because it's not true. Red hair can lead to: increased change of getting Parkinsons, and increased risk of melanoma. On a slightly less important, but none the less quality of life issue, redheads are also likely to suffer increased pain sensitivity (anesthesiologists actually use more drugs on redheads for that reason) and increased temperature sensitivity.

Alzheimer's is distinct from vascular dementia. From this study:

Metabolic syndrome was present in 15.8% of the study participants. The presence of metabolic syndrome increased the risk of incident vascular dementia but not Alzheimer's disease over 4 years, independent of sociodemographic characteristics and the apolipoprotein (apo) E4 allele.

Well, if a person has X and Y...they could be male...

then again...they could birth a child.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

-- There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy

People from mostly-illiterate cultures have vastly better memories.

This sounds highly implausible. So I did some Googling. I found nothing that backs up your claim. I found one study that contradicts it, and found that literate people have better recall.

You mean like this study which says they reduce accidents and fatalities? http://www.lse.ac.uk/News/Late...

Or maybe the one that specifically looked at Arizona and found no difference in number of collisions (though didn't look at injuries) and certainly didn't find a negative impact? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

Maybe you want a wide spread study of some 550 speed cameras which showed a reduction in accidents and fatalities and at the same time directly looked at the very speed cameras that the Daily Mail and some other worthless rags claimed (incorrectly) increased accidents? https://www.theguardian.com/uk...

Or this one from America that said also accidents are reduced and overall driver behaviour in the area improves: https://www.dailysignal.com/20...

I would give you result number 5 from my Google search but it's the same study as result number 2 and I don't want to waste your time.

Well, OK, calcium anyway.

If you do the high-protein, near-zero-carb weight loss routine without massively increasing your calcium intake, your bones get brittle... thus, the snapping of the bones in my feet when I jumped over a small wall... (yeah, actual voice of experience talking here - someone who has never done the experiment will now post to tell me I'm wrong because their Dunning-Kruger and college degree says it isn't so; THIS IS THE INTERNET!)

Drink at least a pint of milk a day - I have a pint at lunch - and as long as you're not lactose intolerant or allergic, all will be well. And you can help your neighbors and fight the rise of antibiotic resistant bacteria, if that matters to you, by buying organic milk locally.

Source: Over 15 years systematic experimentation with high-protein, low carb diets, including weight loss, weight maintenance and athletic performance dieting. Failures: several broken bones and clinically confirmed bone mass reduction. Successes: Over 30 lb weight loss maintained for ten years and bone degradation reversed through consumption of dairy products.

The "case" against him is out of pure vengeance for exposing fallibility.

No matter how many times you repeat that it doesn't make it true. Everything they supposedly "expose" was already well known. For example:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
https://www.nature.com/article...
http://science.sciencemag.org/...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

and so on and so forth.

He demonstated crappy journals exist (well known). He demonstrated that peer review is not robust to fraud (well known). He demonstated that journals accept crappy papers (well known).

What they then did was found that with a lot of work targeting known vulnerabilities, he could get 1/3 of his papers accepted. Fom that he concluded not that there was a problem with the jounals but that the whole field was junk.

Notice how they didn't try to do the same thing in a field they think isn't junk, in other words theyy jumped to conclusions with no control.

The "case" against him is out of pure vengeance for exposing fallibility.

No matter how many times you repeat that it doesn't make it true. Everything they supposedly "expose" was already well known. For example:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
https://www.nature.com/article...
http://science.sciencemag.org/...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

and so on and so forth.

He demonstated crappy journals exist (well known). He demonstrated that peer review is not robust to fraud (well known). He demonstated that journals accept crappy papers (well known).

What they then did was found that with a lot of work targeting known vulnerabilities, he could get 1/3 of his papers accepted. Fom that he concluded not that there was a problem with the jounals but that the whole field was junk.

Notice how they didn't try to do the same thing in a field they think isn't junk, in other words theyy jumped to conclusions with no control.

You're thinking about NSF (National Science Foundation) they do more of the basic non-health-related research programs. NIH does most of the biomedical research.

NSF only has a $6B budget whereas NIH has $26B. Compared to the next runner up China that funds ~$2B worth of research total, half of which is biomedical.

Not at all, I'm thinking of the NIH. I've worked in basic biological research in both the US and the UK and I've been involved in writing funded NIH grants. Over 50% of the large NIH budget goes towards basic research. This is "bio-medical" but that doesn't mean it has a direct clinical application or even that it's health related. For example, I know people funded by the NIH to study how simple plants regulate their genes, to study evolution in yeast or flies, or how neurons in rodent cortex encode information about the world, or how fly brains work, or perhaps basic cancer genetics with no immediate clinical application. A huge amount of the NIH budget goes towards basic research of this sort.

Nitrate assimilation in plant shoots depends on photorespiration "nitrate assimilation in both dicotyledonous and monocotyledonous species depends on photorespiration. ... raises concerns about genetic manipulations to diminish photorespiration in crops. ... Extensive efforts to increase the specificity of Rubisco for CO2 relative to O2 and thereby increase the productivity of C3 crops have proved unsuccessful (5). Our results indicate that such efforts might have hitherto unforeseen consequences: in agricultural systems where NO3- is the dominant form of inorganic nitrogen, minimizing photorespiration may be associated with nitrogen deprivation." Now, the new result isn't "minimizing photorespiration", it's exchanging the procedure entirely. How will this affect the plant's ability to uptake nitrogen? The articles does not address this question. Do they avoid describing the manner in which their test plants were fertilized?

Still unclear from this recent meta:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

A few key paragraphs...

In conclusion, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, ingested nitrite under conditions that result in endogenous nitrosation is probably carcinogenic to humans (Group 2A (IARC Monogr Eval Carcinog Risks Hum. 2007, 94: in the press). NOCs are present in some processed meat, and are formed endogenously after red and processed meat consumption. Heme is a major determinant of NOC formation, and nitrite also contributes to NOC yield. Although many tested NOCs induce cancer in rodents, and NOC-adducts are found on volunteers’ colonic DNA, it is not yet clear whether red and processed meat-induced NOCs are colon carcinogens.

General Conclusion
The fact that processed meat intake increases colorectal cancer risk seems established from the published meta-analyses of epidemiologic studies. The evidence is weak, however, since the RRs were all less than 2, and observational studies never fully avoid biases and confounders. The excess risk in the highest category of processed meat-eaters is comprised between 20 and 50% compared with non-eaters, which is modest compared with established risk factors like cigarette smoking for lung cancer (RR=20). However, the excess risk per gram of intake is clearly higher than that of fresh red meat.

Several hypotheses may explain the association of processed meat intake with CRC risk. From data reviewed above, the authors propose that the most likely explanations for the excess risk in processed meat eaters are (i) heme-induced promoters and (ii) carcinogenic N-nitroso-compounds. These toxic compounds are not specific to processed meat, but it is likely that nitrite curing enhances the toxicity: (i) nitrite binds to the heme iron, and the nitrosylheme could yield more toxic lipoperoxides and/or cytotoxic agents than native myoglobin-bound heme; (ii) nitrite curing leads to increased levels of N-nitrosated compounds in food and in the gut: Processed meat eaters are thus exposed to larger NOC levels than fresh meat eaters.

Colorectal cancer is the first cause of cancer death among non-smokers in affluent countries, and the five-year survival (approx. 60%) improves too slowly with the advances in the treatment of the disease. CRC prevention is thus a major goal for public health. Today, prevention is mostly based on dietary recommendations, notably the advice to reduce or to avoid processed meat consumption (2). We think that the prevention strategy might be improved if the mechanisms of cancer promotion were better understood. We guess that non-toxic processed meat could be produced, either by removing the potential toxic agent (e.g., removing nitrite to reduce NOC formation), or by adding a specific inhibitor, e.g., calcium to block heme in the digestive tract (Pierre et al, 2007, Brit. J. Nutr., accepted manuscript). This would permit the reduction of CRC load, without putting an end to the production and consumption of traditional, nutritional and enjoyable foods.

"What about making bacon in the microwave?"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

Yeah, I went there. ;)

All beer is basically water. It's literally like 95% of the product.

on a side note, Google's answer on "does beer dehydrate you?" is veritably wrong.

The average beer nowadays is 4 or 5 percent. So the answer to the question “Does it hydrate or dehydrate you?” is that it actually dehydrates you. It's actually thought that if you drink 200 ml of beer, that you don't just urinate 200 ml of water. You actually urinate 320 ml of water, which is a 120 ml of dehydration.

They actually did a study here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5066341/

Those places with filth have lower life expectancy for a reason. You don't hear about it because it's not news. It happens too often. Also, most US/European news tends to ignore what happens in Africa and South Asia unless it's the business section focusing on outsourcing. Lastly, you are, of course, just wring. Here's a quick-to-find example

And

I've eaten grilled shark steak. Very tasty! Whales are sort of like sharks so I expect whale meat is very tasty too.

Wut?!?!

Yeah, not really. They're just about as far apart as jawed vertebrates can be.

Understanding basic biology isn't one of your strengths, I take it.

So, what's the ratio of homeless in the US vs. the people who died in the old Soviet Union when they were doing "a better job of providing for the well-being of the population"?

So, like most Americans, are you unaware of the fact that famines happened every few years under the Tsars, deaths that were never blamed on capitalism? Or that some of those post-communism deaths happened because the United States and Britain decided to invade the USSR after the end of WWI? That the population of said USSR increased when Stalin was in power, despite losing nearly 30 million people in WWII? The millions who died when Yeltsin capitalized Russia?

The emerging roles of melanopsin in behavioral adaptation to light:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The ones they use were "microbubbles comprising a phospholipid shell and octafluoropropane gas core".

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

Personally I see more hope in the personalized, drugless approaches, such as Dr. Bredesen's MEND protocol. For me large part of medical scientists are too obsessed about finding drugs and don't pay enough attention to alternatives.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

https://chriskresser.com/new-h...

https://www.aging-us.com/artic...

I think what this is about is that it is really old news, and because it's rare and been a long time since then, newly trained doctors don't have this on their radar.
The much larger risk is from transfusions and graft material, a few hundred of those have occurred vs the 6 or so from surgical instruments over the last few decades.

overview
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cjd...

Here's the WHO guidelines from 1999 for avoiding and decontamination
https://www.who.int/csr/resour...

This article says around 60,000 years. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

I have no idea why it happens so much more frequently these days, but every now and then you get reports of young adults and teens just dropping dead from a heart condition nobody knew they had. Young athletes regularly get screened for these nowadays, but most people aren't aware of the risk.

I don't think this happens more frequently, it's just that historically people died much more frequently. So even when someone young and seemingly healthy died without a clear explanation it didn't seem much out of the ordinary since young and healthy people were dying on a regular basis.

This still seems odd as a news item, it's very tragic (and I'm not a fan of all the people trying to make a funny comment) but people do die at work.

Happened to a cousin of mine, he went to take a nap and never woke up. After that tragedy his parents were having all of his younger siblings screened as a precaution.

I have no idea why it happens so much more frequently these days, but every now and then you get reports of young adults and teens just dropping dead from a heart condition nobody knew they had. Young athletes regularly get screened for these nowadays, but most people aren't aware of the risk.

I don't think this happens more frequently, it's just that historically people died much more frequently. So even when someone young and seemingly healthy died without a clear explanation it didn't seem much out of the ordinary since young and healthy people were dying on a regular basis.

This still seems odd as a news item, it's very tragic (and I'm not a fan of all the people trying to make a funny comment) but people do die at work.

I have no idea why it happens so much more frequently these days, but every now and then you get reports of young adults and teens just dropping dead from a heart condition nobody knew they had. Young athletes regularly get screened for these nowadays, but most people aren't aware of the risk.

The reason why fat people find it so hard to lose weight and keep it off is that the body fights them. When they cut down their calorie intake it goes into starvation mode. They feel tried all the time and it reduces burn to a minimum, which ends up meaning they need to diet extremely aggressively to get anywhere and will likely be unable to keep the weight off. 1500 calories/day is neither healthy nor sustainable, but in starvation mode that's what they need to achieve.

Bullshit. "Starvation mode" doesn't exist, straight up*. What does happen is that you need fewer calories as you lose weight, because fat (like every other cell in your body) consumes energy: less fat means less energy consumed. The idea that your body can miraculously can metabolic efficiency just because you've lost some weight is garbage that makes absolutely no sense: our bodies have had literally millions of years of evolution to become basically as efficient as it's possible for a biological organism to become. And in fact meta-analysis of studies have found that in fact the energy consumption after weight loss behaves exactly as expected. Yes, you can find individual studies that look at a dozen participants that find "metabolic adaptation" (such as the Biggest Loser study you link to elsewhere), but that's because if you perform enough studies of a topic, some of them will show what you want. In the case of that study, for example, the error bars on the measurement of the resting metabolic rate are nearly as big as the "effect".

As an aside: it's very well known that the Biggest Loser competitors lost weight in a horribly unhealthy and unsustainable fashion, essentially going on a crash diet with heavy exercise to lose weight rapidly, instead of being taught to moderate their intake and lose weight over a longer period (this article has more information, as well as tons of links to studies about metabolic adaptation and weight loss). You can lose weight like that (like a Scottish man who lost 276 lbs of weight doing that), but it's unhealthy and can even be dangerous.

Also, 1500 calories/day is perfectly healthy and sustainable for extended times (how long depends on your height, weight, and level of physical activity: a tall physically active man should usually eat more, a short sedentary woman probably needs to eat even less just to maintain a healthy weight). It doesn't even really matter how you get those calories (as long as you make sure you get enough micronutrients): you can lose weight eating mostly Twinkies and Hostess cakes.

*Note that once someone starts actually starving, your body will start consuming and shutting down internal organs, which could be called "starvation mode". But that doesn't happen until you reach basically 0% body fat and 0% lean muscle. But unless you literally have no access to food for a month or so, or are working in a force labor camp on 500 calories a day, that's not happening to you. Actual starvation looks like this. Skipping your daily venti mocha frappachino? Not even close to starvation.

I think it's worth explaining about starvation mode. It's not a medical term, it's the popular name for what happens when you reduce calorie intake. The body reacts by conserving energy, reducing the amount of energy it burns at rest, i.e. the amount it would use if you did nothing all day. This is accompanied by feeling tired and hungry.

This study and article about the study are very enlightening:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
https://www.scientificamerican...

As you can see the test group went from an average resting calorie burn of 2600/day to 1900/day. So a loss of 700 calories/day burned, or about 1.2 hours of vigorous exercise like fast cycling or jogging, before it even starts to have an effect on their weight.

And of course, they feel tried all the time and being obese have to be careful about not injuring themselves during exercise (jogging is probably a bad idea), and have to carefully plan meals. Few people have the time to do this, especially when they have to work and need to be reasonably awake to do so.

This is why the "just eat less, do some exercise" advice doesn't work.

Here's an interesting study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

A more readable write-up here: https://www.scientificamerican...

TL;DR the people studied lost weight but ended up in an unsustainable position, and put a lot of it back on. Not to mention the other health problems they suffered as a result.

First, a couple of caveats, porn/sex addiction is a highly debated diagnosis. I will not enter that debate since it seems to be yet another can of worms.

Most of the linked articles concerns self reported problematic behavior. They do not show causality, i.e. porn causing problematic behavior, just that some report their porn use as problematic. I have mostly skipped those articles and may have missed something interesting.

The first section contains 20 reviews so it seems like a good place to start:

The first 8 concern addiction and Compulsive Sexual Behaviour (CSB). Thus not any causal effects of porn.

Number 9 sounds better: Is Internet Pornography Causing Sexual Dysfunctions? A Review with Clinical Reports. Behav. Sci. 2016, 6, 17
It suggests causality and claims to be a review but is makes some dubious claims. Let's see if someone who knows more has reviewed it... ooops:
https://retractionwatch.com/20...
That was a lot more damning than I had imagined.

Turns out, one of the authors, Gary Wilson is also the author of the book "Your brain on porn" which may be related to the website you linked to (yourbrainonporn). Also, he is donates all the proceeds from the book to the Reward Foundation which has a clear anti-porn agenda. This was not disclosed in the original paper but was later corrected.

In short, I doubt I'll find anything useful further down the list but let's continue. The linked articles are not suspect even if Gary is.

10-16 is more addiction and CSB. I stopped at 17 but that was another addiction study, not showing a causal connection between porn and addiction (that is, there are people with problematic porn habits but it isn't necessarily porn causing those habits). 19-20 are more about addiction.

Ok, so out of the first 20, one was perhaps relevant but it turned out to be utter shite. Up next 20 neuroimaging studies.

Again, 1-3 are studies about self reported problematic behavior / addiction.

Number 4 is interesting though. It is a small study (28 ppl) but it showed a worse performance in a working memory test right after watching pornographic pictures (compared to controls). They did not test how long the effect lasts though so it may be a very short lived effect.

Number 5 is similar showing "negative impact on decision making" when porn pics are right on a "bad" deck of cards vs a "good". (i am getting a bit tired now so won't go into details). Again, probably a very short lived effect and difficult to extrapolate the effect into real life.

Number 6 is another addiction study (I think).

Number 7 is a funny one. Psychology Today summarizes it as NOT showing porn addiction exists. Yourbrainonporn interprets it differently of course.

Number 8, correlation between something in the brain and self reported porn use. Not causation. Did I mention I'm tired now?

Number 10-20 seem to be about self reported addicts, CSB or showing some kind of correlation and not causation.

Number 21 is a bit interesting. Basically, abstaining from porn is different than abstaining from your favorite food when it comes to delay discounting.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

Number 22-40 is more of the same (but I reading through it a lot quicker now). A lot of studies on people with self reported problematic behavior, some correlation studies etc. Nothing about how porn actually affects people. Just that some people have problems with it (and a lot of specifics about them).

Many of the web authors claimed conclusions are just conjectures. It is often claimed that study X shows that porn "causes" Y but when you read the study it did not show causality or if the effect transfers to ordinary life. Reduced decision making skills while watching porn is hardly a problem as long as you don't watch porn while making important de

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

For instance, for three of the largest Asian groups (i.e., Chinese, Filipinos and Japanese), life expectancy is higher for U.S. born than for foreign born [4], which is contrary to the healthy migrant hypothesis. On the other hand, the life expectancy of Asians in the United States is higher than in any Asian country, which suggests that some health selection is likely at play.

Well, that seems to blow a big hole in the "American diet" hypothesis.

If all animal agriculture disappeared to today, corn and bean production would hardly drop a whit.

This assumes that government incentives would not change. I think that is a faulty assumption. While I do recognize that the farm lobby is powerful, there is only so much excess production that they can justify. It's easy to justify an overproduction so that even a severely bad year does not lead to a food shortage - it's not so easy to justify double that again. Soybean production in particular is 90% dedicated to animals and would be very hard to direct elsewhere.

I have and they're universally horse shit.

The vast majority of nutritional studies are indeed horseshit. But there have been some pretty solid studies which point to a benefit of a plant-based diet.
Dietary fiber intake is inversely correlated to colorectal cancer
Red meat is correlated to colorectal cancer (but not poultry, and fish is inversely correlated)
EPIC also has yielded studies showing a correlation between dairy intake and prostate cancer, as well as saturated fat and breast cancer.

You should investigate the history of those who promote a vegetable-based-diet

Yes, there have been many charlatans. But let's stick with science and avoid the temptation to use ad hominems.

Because of vitamin B12, we are obligate carnivores-- there are simply no natural dietary sources of B12 sufficient for humans other than meat

Agreed, but we are also a lot smarter than dogs. If we can get B12 from an artificial source, I have no justification to reject that. You CAN live a healthy lifestyle today without any animal products whatsoever. It takes a lot of tenacity and - I agree with you - it's not the natural state of things. But the fact that it is possible shows that, in the future, it should be possible to do so with a lot less effort. Few of us live in anything like our "natural" state, except for a handful of miserable subsistence tribes living in Savannah-like conditions.