Seth's Blog

The increase in pediatric bipolar diagnosis, [Dr. Joseph Biederman's] lawyer said, “cannot be attributed solely to Dr. Biederman’s work.”

This article is a long list of drug-company abuses, such as

Lilly produced a video called “The Myth of Diabetes” to sell Zyprexa, which became its all-time best-selling drug, even though evidence showed that Zyprexa could cause diabetes.

And

Pfizer paid more than 250 child psychiatrists to promote its antipsychotic, Geodon, at a time when it was approved only for adults, according to a government filing with the Pfizer settlement last year. High-prescribing doctors pocketed extra money in the form of research payments, speaking fees, gifts, meals and junkets.

Pharma Gossip. Thanks to Ken Feinstein.

I found that pork belly improved my sleep. Pork belly is mainly fat, but is it as simple as that (pork fat improves sleep)? Thomas Seay brought to my attention claims about gelatin by Ray Peat. One was that it improved his sleep:

For years I hadn’t slept through a whole night without waking, and I was in the habit of having some juice or a little thyroid to help me go back to sleep. The first time I had several grams of [commercial] gelatin just before bedtime, I slept without interruption for about 9 hours.

Seay tried gelatin himself and found it improved his sleep. I asked him about this.

What do you do?

I take Great Lakes Unflavored Gelatin.  I take about 5 or 6 tablespoons a day (2 tablespoons per meal) usually in hot water. So, that amounts to about 35-42 grams/day. You can also put it in juice or make an aspic with it.  Another person I know who takes it only needs to take two tablespoons a day, just prior to sleep.

What effect has it had?

It helps me to sleep more hours uninterrupted. This did not require a build-up over weeks. It happened the first time I took it.

You sound like you’ve stopped taking it. How long did you take it? Why did you stop?

I have taken it off and on. (Usually I would take it one week on, one week off). I have noticed that after a few days it causes constipation FOR ME.  Another person I know who has tried it has not noticed this effect. Presently I am experimenting with segmented sleep (getting up for an hour or two in the night and then returning to sleep), so I have stopped taking any sort of supplement, including the gelatin.  Prior to this, I had done the gelatin for about 4 months.

I enjoyed this funny article about science-journalism cliches. Via Andrew Gelman. At the moment it has 643 comments. The five posts that preceded it (none of which Andrew linked to) have 19, 7, 6, 11, and 20 comments. Correlation or causation?

Last night someone asked me if it was hard to write scientific articles. I said no. As a friend said to me about her copy-editing job at The New Yorker, a trained monkey could do it. My articles are just as formulaic as everyone else’s. I hope the content isn’t formulaic, but the structure is.

When I was a boy, my family didn’t have a TV. (Which I now make up for by watching a lot of TV.) The strangeness of this was made clear one day at school. It was second grade. The teacher wanted to talk about something on TV. “Who doesn’t have a TV?” she asked the class. I raised my hand and a girl raised her hand. She didn’t have a TV because it was being fixed.

So I was especially disturbed by this video in which a few schoolchildren who differ from the rest of their class are blown up. Their fatal mistake is not cutting carbon emissions. The organization that made it took it down and issued a lukewarm apology (“live and learn”) that said nothing about ridiculing minorities. If I were teaching 10-year-olds, I think I’d show them the video, tell them how disturbing I found it, and ask them about times in their lives that they felt different from everyone else. It is a curiously teachable moment.