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Author Topic: Don't believe the American Heart Assn.  (Read 7196 times)

Offline ChrisSmolinski

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Re: Don't believe the American Heart Assn.
« Reply #15 on: July 29, 2017, 1726 UTC »
I stopped believing in these so called 'trials' quite some time ago and here is my reasoning;

Medical trials are fraught with the potential for abuse. This is often done in the pharmaceutical industry. One common trick is to conduct multiple trials with a small number of individuals. Just through random chance, some of them will generate the results you're looking for. Here's an analogy. It's pretty unlikely you'll flip a coin ten times in a row, and get heads each time (actually 1 in 1024). But if you get 100,000 people to flip a coin ten times in a row, roughly 100 of them will get heads each time. So you could certainly conduct a series of experiments where participants wear a FanCo Patented Coin Modulator Tin Foil Hat. Some of them will indeed get more than the expected 5 heads out of 10 flips. Take the results when that happens and publish them. Throw away the results that don't show your desired effect. For bonus points, apply the same technique to show that diet soda, bacon, or even bottled water causes cancer. 

This is also practiced in the financial industry. Set up a bunch of in house managed mutual funds. Run them for a few years. Most will do meh. Many will be horrible. But one or two will have spectacular results! Now open those spectacular funds to the general public, where you will find many eager investors, since you can show a proven track record of 15% annual returns for the past five years.
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Offline didu heardat

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Re: Don't believe the American Heart Assn.
« Reply #16 on: July 29, 2017, 1739 UTC »

Offline Pigmeat

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Re: Don't believe the American Heart Assn.
« Reply #17 on: July 29, 2017, 1911 UTC »
Josh, I got the headaches and light flashes for years before I was diagnosed with epilepsy, they were often precursors to very mild seizures or migraines, migraines and epilepsy are believed part of the same disease spectrum. I thought they were weird "spells" caused by a head cracking whack in a car wreck in my early 20's. Until I was in my 40's and had one of the whoppers, I had no idea I had epilepsy? I avoided diet soft drinks like the plague due to pure machismo until I was in the hospital for my last seizure eleven years ago and was told about the borderline diabetes. I've been drinking them since. The little lights and the migraines have been gone since I first went on seizure meds.

Ka, those investment guys run the same game that "Sports Betting Services" and their grandaddy's, the racetrack tip sheets and touts have been running for decades. It's nice to see a simple short con go long.

Eh, you play the hand your dealt. Epilepsy is better than penguiphenia. Poor Al.

Offline MDK2

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Re: Don't believe the American Heart Assn.
« Reply #18 on: July 29, 2017, 2052 UTC »
Most of the problem isn't with science, but with reports in the popular media. You're not going to learn much about a study in a 30 second TV news report, which will often present a finding as though it's now conclusive, and which won't often tell you much about how extensive the research was, or its methodology. Nor will they tell you that most findings are not going to be something set in stone like a law of physics. Medicine in particular is a field where findings are continually revising what we know about human health. Some people can't tolerate the grey areas inherent in the field, and decide that it's all lies. It's a shame.

Ultimately, eating a low number of calories and getting adequate exercise will keep most people at a healthy weight. It's hard because until very recently, it was a fact of life that some years would be bountiful and others would have very little. Our survival as a species was once predicated on eating all that we could when we could get it, because there would be times when our fat would be what kept us alive through times of famine. Modern agriculture and modern food trade don't just ensure that we always have food regardless of the weather, in the industrialized world it means that we have too much food. And we do what our instincts tell us to do - fatten up for the crop failure that could happen next year. People tend to frame it as a moral matter (and certainly at one time the gluttony of a few could spell disaster for the tribe), but few question how it's possible that our actual gross tonnage of food per American has grown so dramatically over the past 70 years or so, and why "individual" portions are so much larger today than they used to be. A Quarter Pounder at McDonalds was once considered to be a big burger. A Coke was 8 ounces. A drumstick was a full main course. The greater availability of food just means that it all has to go somewhere, and that's not straight to the landfill. At some point, we'll have to question how we're managing our agriculture.

These are just some of my thoughts, and aren't meant to claim some kind of authority on the topic on my behalf.
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Offline Josh

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Re: Don't believe the American Heart Assn.
« Reply #19 on: July 30, 2017, 1619 UTC »
Josh, I got the headaches and light flashes for years before I was diagnosed with epilepsy, they were often precursors to very mild seizures or migraines, migraines and epilepsy are believed part of the same disease spectrum. I thought they were weird "spells" caused by a head cracking whack in a car wreck in my early 20's. Until I was in my 40's and had one of the whoppers, I had no idea I had epilepsy? I avoided diet soft drinks like the plague due to pure machismo until I was in the hospital for my last seizure eleven years ago and was told about the borderline diabetes. I've been drinking them since. The little lights and the migraines have been gone since I first went on seizure meds.

The people I know who had the flashes and headaches aren't epileptic. But glad you're doing well in keeping things under control.
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Offline Josh

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Re: Don't believe the American Heart Assn.
« Reply #20 on: July 30, 2017, 1626 UTC »
"The greater availability of food just means that it all has to go somewhere, and that's not straight to the landfill."

Lol the other day I was taking out the trash at work and noted a full tube of colby jack cheese sitting on top of the pile in the dumpster. It was intact and not a bit of mold or anything else, it's only crime was being out of date. It was about 8 inches in diameter and a few feet long. How is cheese out of date? I also often see perfectly good lobster tails, salmon filets, steaks of various cuts, and a huge assortment of produce laying in the dumpster, all headed to the landfill. We're supposed to call the cops on anyone we see diving for this stuff but I don't. I asked about giving it to the charities of wich there are several within 50 miles or so and was told produce can be given away but nothing else due to the lawyers, you know how they are.
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Offline MDK2

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Re: Don't believe the American Heart Assn.
« Reply #21 on: July 30, 2017, 1631 UTC »
Well, some obviously goes to the landfill (anyone working at any point in the food industry can tell you that), but look at any crowd anywhere in America (including my state, which consistently has the lowest obesity rate of all 50 of them) and you'll see where most of it's going.
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Offline Josh

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Re: Don't believe the American Heart Assn.
« Reply #22 on: July 31, 2017, 1550 UTC »
Yes, the vicious circle is all too apparent. Visit Golden Coral or Ponderosa every day and make sure you get your money's worth every time and you can expect to gain some weight on your 10k calorie diet.

If you don't burn off the calories doing something, they gatta be stored somewhere till you do.
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