Seth's Blog

Here is what Brent Pottenger was asked during a recent interview at USC medical school:

• What drives/motivates you?
• Describe a challenge you overcame?
• Describe a fulfilling experience that made you want to be a physician?
• Why USC?
• What do you bring to the entering class?
• What area of medicine are you interested in?
• What would you do for health reform?
• What do you do outside of school for fun?
• If you could improve something about yourself, what would that be?
• What are you looking for in a medical program?

Trees grow faster during periods of greater cosmic radiation from the sun:

During a number of years, the trees’ growth also particularly slowed. These years correlated with periods when a relatively low level of cosmic rays reached the Earth’s surface. When the intensity of cosmic rays reaching the Earth’s surface was higher, the rate of tree growth was faster. . .

Cosmic rays are actually energetic particles, mainly protons, as well as electrons and the nuclei of helium atoms, that stream through space before hitting the Earth’s atmosphere. The levels of cosmic rays reaching the Earth go up and down according to the activity of the Sun, which follows an 11-year cycle.

As someone pointed out, this may be another example of radiation hormesis. Although some examples of hormesis may be due to immune-system stimulation, you can also see hormesis with single cells, which don’t have an immune system, of course. They do have repair mechanisms.

From my point of view this is interesting because it helps to show what a big effect hormesis is. I’m sure we need daily stimulation of our repair systems to be our healthiest but this isn’t a part of standard teaching about health. It goes against what people are usually taught (e.g., all germs are bad, all air pollution is bad, keep from getting sick by avoiding contagion) roughly as much as does the Shangri-La Diet. The scientists who discovered the tree effect appear to not know about hormesis (“As for the mechanism, we are puzzled”).

The success of the Shangri-La Diet teaches that the obesity epidemic is due to eating too much food that has exactly the same flavor (smell) each time — from one can of Coke to the next, for example. In practice, this too-constant food is food from a package (food made in a factory) and food from a restaurant. My umami hypothesis says that the epidemic of autoimmune diseases has the same source. Food in a package is more sterile than other food because bacteria reduce shelf life so preservatives are added and/or manufacturing steps (e.g., pasteurization) kill bacteria. Food from a  restaurant has usually been freshly cooked (killing bacteria) and all sorts of precautions (“food safety”) are taken to make sure it remains low in bacteria.

Thanks to David Cramer.

Anchorage, of course, is the title of Michelle Shocked’s great song — one of her great songs. She writes to a childhood friend and the answer comes back from Anchorage: I’ve got a husband, two kids, a house . . . Anchorage: state of being anchored.

Yesterday I asked one of my Chinese students what his parents did. “They’re officers,” he said. He meant they worked in an office.

The bicycle is far from the most influential invention ever — that would be the printing press — but it might be the most perfect, at least where I live. As I rode home last night I reflected how curiously great it is (where I live):

1. Low cost. A friend gave me hers for free. Perhaps it would have sold for $5. A new bike costs as little as $20.

2. Durable. They never wear out, although parts need replacing. I could have the bike I have now 20 years from now.

3. Ages well. Unlike almost all commercial products, bikes improve with age. They look less and less desirable so the probability of theft goes down. My bike, which looks worthless, will never be stolen. (As my students confirmed for me today.) I took to fake-locking it because I couldn’t get the key out of the lock. One day someone managed to get the key out leaving my bike locked and possessing the key. Whoever did that didn’t bother to take the bike. I got the lock sawed off a block away for $1. I bought a new lock for $2.

4. Great service. When something goes wrong, I can bring it to a bike shop that will fix it in minutes. There are lots of bike shops in my neighborhood.

5. Convenient. You can always park your bike close to where you’re going.

6. Green. Zero pollution, zero fossil fuel.

7. Exercise.
8. Quiet. The Tsinghua campus is full of bikes yet is always quiet. Because of the bikes, cars are banned from large chunks of the campus.

9. Safe. My neighborhood, like elsewhere in Beijing (but unlike some Chinese cities), has plenty of bike lanes. It feels perfectly safe to ride in them. In Berkeley I wear a bike helmet but at least in my neighborhood I haven’t been able to see the need — it would be like wearing a helmet while walking.

10. Facilitates exploration. Most of Beijing is no fun to walk in — things are too far apart. But it is fun to bike around. You can easily bike from one interesting place to the next and whenever you get somewhere interesting you can get off your bike and walk around it.

I came across Fire Your Doctor! How to Be Independently Healthy by Andrew Saul while searching for info on natural hygiene, mentioned in a comment. I liked this story:

I had acne . . . It peaked when I was seventeen. . . Then I went overseas to study, was more than a bit stressed, and took my already considerable chocolate, sugar, meat, and greasy-food eating habits to new heights. My broken-out skin broke out still worse. Eventually, having failed to see any improvement otherwise, I changed my diet, and the acne went away.

Of course I support this non-gatekeeper approach to health. What about the book? Pro: Well-written, a reasonable amount of evidence. Con: No discussion of actual cases. What actually happens when you treat problems this way (often with vitamins and other supplements) is very important to know.

I found nothing about fermented foods, omega-3, or sleep (neither sleep problems nor the value of sleep for health). This isn’t really a weakness of the book, which is about a certain way of doing things; it’s a weakness of the way of doing things.