Certainly a birthday
Probably early 80s
I had more hair and less stomach than I do now.
She was as beautiful as ever
Amazing how
quickly some news items get around!
There is a new paper by Dr. Ying Bao
(and six others) in the New England Journal of Medicine. It is about nuts: apparently they help you stay alive.
In the last
24 hours I have heard about this study on TV (once), radio (twice), and read
about it in two newspapers. Contrast
this with the cancer-sniffing-dogs story that broke in early September on
“Sixty Minutes”, of all places, but has just now made it to the NY Times. Maybe the Times
was saving it for a slow-news day?
Anyway:
The nut
result falls out of two massive studies, conducted on medical professionals,
which lasted for a long time. After
“controlling” for potential confounding factors, nut-eaters appeared to die
less (at any given age, of course; we all die eventually) than do non
nut-eaters. Die of things like cancer
and heart disease, that is – people who only eat nuts while driving at high speeds on the
freeway probably gain no overall benefit.
The question of “why” doesn’t seem to have a definite answer as yet;
there was some mention of reducing cholesterol (heart) and inflammation
(cancer), but a detailed explanation was lacking. The result apparently is robust statistically;
although maybe we should get Dr. Ioannidis involved. Moreover, it was reassuringly dose-dependent:
the more nuts you ate, the less likely you were to die. So, pass the nut bowl.
As you can
imagine, there are many “confounding factors”.
That is, maybe the cause and effect chain only carries nuts along for
the ride. To make up a stupid
example: When I drink beer with my
buddies I often eat nuts. I don’t doubt
that there are many more beer-drinkers like me.
So, maybe it is the beer that reduces mortality. Or, to make it even more absurd, note that
many people who drink beer drink too much, get a headache, then take
aspirin. It has been shown that aspirin
is effective against some cancers, and also thins the blood, hence helps with
stroke. So maybe it’s the aspirin that
goes along with the beer and accompanies the nuts that deserves the
credit. These are the sort of things
that need to be "controlled" for. Again,
calling Dr. Ioannidis.
One
disturbing aspect of this study is that it was partially funded by the United
Nut Pickers of the World, or some such body.
It is stated that they had no hand in the design of the experiment nor interpretation of the results. I’m sure that’s true – isn’t it?
Here are the
links:
The popular
press version: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/11/21/study-says-nut-eaters-have-lower-cancer-heart-disease-risk/
My
references to Dr. Ioannidis: http://ljb-quiltcutie.blogspot.com/2013/11/beware-greeks-bearing-manuscripts.html
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