CUTTING THROUGH THE SIGNAL TO NOISE RATIO IN “HEALTH HEADLINES”
We’re bombarded daily with conflicting information on what’s healthy and what’s not. What we have is a health information landscape that’s pretty much impossible for an intelligent, aware, interested person to navigate while trying to do everything else in your life. Should you just give up? If you’re here, you want more than that.
What are the causes of the problem?
The Media: Most health information the average person is exposed to from the media is first and foremost designed to sell advertising. The person writing the “headline” is often a person with no scientific background scanning studies that come out and looking to write a headline, whether or not supported by the study, that will generate “clicks”.
Example: Many were confused last summer by headlines suggesting that low-carb diets may shorten life, based on a 2018 paper in The Lancet that used a low-carb group that had higher rates of smoking, diabetes and obesity, and lower rates of exercise. The “low carb” diet wasn’t even low carb by today’s standards (as much as 37% of calories from carbs.) The study was based on self-reported data, which is notoriously unreliable. This weak study was contradicted by over 70 much more rigorous trials, all of which show low carb diets improve health.
Publish or Perish is the expression used to describe the system under which most researchers have to live. “We found no connection between x and y” doesn’t get published. So, often data is “mined” to find subsets of participants with some reportable association even if it wasn’t what was being studied. A lot of weak studies make their way into medical journals this way.
Example: This recent story actually cracked me up when it hit a few weeks ago. Harvard School of Public Health report says men who can do more than 40 pushups at a time have a 96% reduction in cardiovascular risk indicators over a 10-year period. Awesome, right? If you look even fairly quickly at that study, the mean age of the group that could do over 40 push ups was 35, while the group that could do 10 or less push ups had a mean age of 48. And, the low push up group had a higher proportion of smokers. But, nah, wasn’t the relative youth and lower smoking rates, it was the push ups! This meaningless observational study was all over the media, and people were suggesting we’ve got a new, cheap diagnostic tool.
Bias and Industry support: While realistically we know we all have biases, what biases do the researchers come in with? Is the study design itself biased? Are there things about the study that mean one of the groups is more likely to engage in other healthy or unhealthy habits? Who paid for the study (directly or indirectly)? Is there an industrial power (like the processed food industry) pushing an agenda?
Example: Many are scared of animal sources of protein based on the latest “Eat Lancet” report suggesting that we should eat almost no animal protein and switch to a plant-based diet. First of all this study was sponsored by huge processed food companies; PepsiCo, DuPont, Cargill & Kelloggs, to name a few. Suggesting that a diet “rich” in wheat, rice, corn and highly processed oils is what we should be eating. Get rid of that steak, bring on the Kit Kats! Sure, you can get the amount of protein you’d get from 6 ounces of steak from, say, beans and rice, you’d need to eat at least twice as many calories of beans and rice. That would also be a fairly impressive volume of beans and rice and include a huge carbohydrate bomb. I’ll take my steak, thanks!
Example: Many are afraid of healthy fats and instead eat a carb-heavy diet as a result of the sugar industry demonizing fat to downplay the harms of sugar. I won’t go into much detail on this, the NY Times did a good job of that for me! It was eerily similar to some of the things done by the tobacco industry… https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/well/eat/sugar-industry-long-downplayed-potential-harms-of-sugar.html
I’m not saying you should stop paying attention, but I would recommend finding sources of information that are capable of weeding through this for you. Here I focused on the high profile “noise” that we’re all bombarded with, but there’s a lot of good science going on generating some real, implementable “signals”. If you want to cut through the noise, you can get started by schedule a FREE ANTI AGING ASSESSMENT with me.
Neither Deb Stewart nor any employee of Custom Healthspan LLC is a physician, psychologist, registered or licensed dietitian, certified nutritionist, physical therapist, or other healthcare professional and the scope of his or her consultation services does not include diagnosis, treatment, or cure of any psychological or physical condition, nor do the services replace the necessary services of licensed healthcare providers. None of the content presented constitutes medical or psychiatric advice, nor is it a substitute for treatment. The content on this website is for educational and informational purposes only. Clients should use their own judgement before applying any information herein to their own personal situation. Custom Healthspan LLC disclaims all liability as stated in the Terms and Conditions of Use and Service of this website. Visitors are encouraged to consult a physician before engaging in any Custom Healthspan LLC program or any constituent activity, especially if you suffer or believe you may suffer from a serious psychological or physiological condition or illness.
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