What is healthy

March 11, 2007

It has been hard to miss the reports lately that blame High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) for many of our gluttonous ways. I have been swept up in the trend towards avoiding the ills of HFCS. It turns out that as with many fads this may all be a lot of whoop-la over a poor reading of science. The trouble is that High Fructose Corn Syrup isn't really much different from table sugar in it's fructose-glucose ratio. It does have a higher ratio of fructose to glucose than other forms of corn syrup and fructose has been found to have some undesirable health effects but there is a major leap to go from some of those effects to blaming HFCS for the obesity epidemic.

The dirty secret of youth sports

July 10, 2006

The New York Times airs the dirty secret of high school sports. There's the old coach's tale that high school coaches far and wide trumpet how their athletes are learning how to be fit for life. Then there's the reality where most of them aren't learning life skills but are instead engaged in something which they cannot sustain and aren't learning much useful in the process. That does not mean, however, that school districts strapped for money will consider cutting athletic budgets anytime soon.

The freedom of information

February 15, 2006

Last spring I wrote about Westlaw having RSS feeds available for searches. Then in the late summer a note about Lexis adding web feeds to their searches as well. In the time between it turns out that PubMed added feeds too.

There is an important dichotomy in the areas of law and medicine, however. In the area of law we depend upon two large companies to compile and publish the law of the land, cases and other important notes. If one wants to engage in the practice of law they must subscribe to these services. Medicine, to be sure, has its own databases of publications and information. However, for the lay person there is a big difference. In order for the lay person to search case law they must find a way, which generally includes shelling out bucks, to search the holy grail databases. In medicine it is possible for anyone to search PubMed's database.

Lest it be lost on anyone the ultimate irony would be that it is the government in its various forms that produces the law and the cases that interpret the law. In medicine they provide funding and have some agencies involved in medical research but it is not the primary job of two-thirds of the government as are law making and interpretation.

Emails 'pose threat to IQ'

April 27, 2005

Dr. Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist at King's College, London University, has done some research suggesting that emails, text and phone messages have a negative impact on IQ. In fact the average IQ loss in the studies commissioned by Hewlett Packard was 10 points, or more than double the average loss in studies of pot users.

It gives a whole new meaning to smoke breaks. In the information technology age workers might have to smoke a little weed every once in a while to get their brain cells back. That is not the exact conclusion the study draws, but the implications are widespread. Other findings mentioned in the article include that a third of respondents felt that answering text messages and emails during face to face meetings with other people had become acceptable and is seen as a sign of diligence. And the finding that two-thirds of respondents look at their work email while they are off or on vacation.

Merucry Sandwich

January 24, 2005

Until watching NOW tonight I thought it wasn't too bad to have a tuna sandwich five days a week for lunch. Turns out that the reason tuna is not known as a mercury laden fish has more to do with the spending of the tuna lobby than it does the mercury content of the fish. Maybe I can use the tuna cans in the pantry to make a thermometer.

Is hoarding hazardous?

June 2, 2004

We all know people (maybe even recognize it in ourselves) who tend to keep too much stuff around. Yesterday's New York Times has a piece about how the brain activity of people who hoard things. In addition it talks about some ties between hoarding and depression and how drugs have been less effective than with other related disorders. How Household Junk Can Grow Into Mountains -

Health