Seth's Blog

• Probiotics reduce/prevent diarrhea caused by antibiotics. News article. The abstract says “The pooled evidence suggests that probiotics are associated with a reduction in AAD [antibiotic associated diarrhea].” It should say that the evidence suggests — very strongly, in fact — that probiotics cause a reduction in AAD (because there is no plausible alternative explanation of the association). This mistake is so elementary it is like saying 2 + 2 = 3. And JAMA is one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals.
• Living without money. The author was much healthier than when he lived with money. Among the many possible explanations is that dumpster food, old enough to allow microbes to grow on it, is healthier than fresher and therefore more sterile food.
• Not just farms. Children who grow up on farms have fewer allergies and less asthma than children who grow up in cities — important support for a modified version of the hygiene hypothesis (and my umami hypothesis). This study finds that living near other sorts of biodiversity provides similar benefits.

Thanks to Brody, Jazi Zilber and Mark Griffith.

• Difficulties repeating priming effects
• Unexpected benefits of yogurt in mice. “The yogurt-eating mice were incredibly shiny. . . . These animals had 10 times the active follicle density of other mice.”
• A 13-year-0ld invents a cure for hiccups.
• A business that sells starter cultures for yogurt, kefir, kombucha, and so on — even natto. Here’s a little secret: you shouldn’t need to buy starter cultures. The store-bought product (e.g., bottle of kombucha), if not pasteurized, should function as starter culture for yogurt, kefir, or kombucha.
• Amish farm kids have fewer allergies than Swiss farm kids. Suggesting that something besides growing up on a farm can reduce allergies. Drinking microbe-rich raw milk?

Thanks to Hal Pashler and Bryan Castañeda.

• The magic of mangoes. “In one double blind trial which included a low fat diet, the participants who took the mango supplements lost 5.3 per cent of their body weight while the control group lost only 1.3 per cent.” Which sounds impossible.
• Greek yogurt taste test
• Umami flavour as a means of regulating food intake and improving nutrition and health
• Babies fed breast milk have better intestinal microflora than babies fed formula. “Our findings suggest that human milk promotes the beneficial crosstalk between the immune system and microbe population in the gut, and maintains intestinal stability.”

Thanks to Melissa McEwen and Bryan Castañeda.

Alcohol is bad for your liver, we’re told. However, moderate amounts may be good for your liver. A recent meta-analysis found that men who drank moderate amounts of alcohol had considerably less risk (a risk ratio of 0.3) of liver cirrhosis than men who drank no alcohol.  It wasn’t clear if some forms of alcohol (e.g., wine) were more protective than others. I came across this study because another article called the association “biologically implausible”, whereas I think it is highly plausible due to vast experimental literature on hormesis (animals given small amounts of poisons are healthier than animals given none).

The findings about cirrhosis join a much large body of evidence that moderate drinking is associated with less heart disease.  A recent meta-analysis reached this conclusion once again and found, in addition, that moderate drinking is associated with less all-cause mortality.

These are more examples of the health benefits of fermented foods, one of my favorite subjects. It is unfortunate the liquor industry does not run long-term human experiments on the effects of moderate amounts of beer, wine, and so on.

It’s hard to get scurvy. If you eat anything resembling an ordinary diet you won’t get it. The existence of scurvy, produced by extreme conditions, led to the discovery of Vitamin C.  From the case of scurvy and Vitamin C we learned — well, most people learned — that some diseases are clues to what we need to eat to be healthy. (more…)

• All about kefir
• Fraud and waste at a New York hospital. From the comments you can see that the problems have lasted decades.  If someone is always sick, year after year, it means there is something about their sickness (about health in general, actually) we do not understand. Likewise, the decades-long persistence of huge problems at this hospital suggests there is something fundamental about regulation (and perhaps health care) we do not understand.
• This paper about how well blood uric acid level predicts mortality, which appeared in 2004, did not get nearly the attention it deserves. I was shocked by its existence — American medical school professors are almost incapable of good research. Well, it’s from Finland.
• David Healy’s new blog.

Thanks to Bruce Charlton, Jazi Zilber, Melissa McEwen and Alex Chernavsky.

• Kombucha news: new scientific studies. Plus an expert says: ““When diets are fads, they never seem to last long.”
• University of Pennsylvania clears medical school professors of ghost-writing. “‘It’s important to note,” [said the Penn report,]  ‘that the results of the study were negative to the sponsor’s product [and] were so characterized in the publication’ . . . But Lisa Lehmann, the director of the Center for Bioethics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, notes that the study’s findings were not unequivocally negative. ‘Penn noted that the study was negative and seems to imply that diminishes concerns about bias, but this is not entirely true. There is a segment of the population, those with low serum lithium levels, for whom the study recommends the medication.’ “
• Jeffrey Sachs apparently believes in AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming). He also believes, according to Felix Salmon, “that development is easy, we know how to do it, and that given enough money, it’s relatively trivial to spend that money in an effective way to reduce poverty around the world.” Results from the Millennium Project do not support his beliefs.
• 5 years of success with the Shangri-La Diet

Thanks to Alex Chernavsky.

• In praise of Rush Limbaugh.
• Shangri-La Diet experience (“Bottom line: I lost three pounds in a week and a half”) of an artist named Elizabeth Periale.
• Long interview with Tucker Max. “His fridge . . . is in one way very different: where you’d expect the six-pack of cold ones waiting for the game, instead you’ll find rows and rows of kombucha, the fermented health beverage.”
• End of college campuses. Megan McArdle imagines a world in which college is replaced by distance learning. “95% of tenure-track jobs will be eliminated.” Jane Jacobs, in Systems of Survival, divided jobs into taking and trading. Teaching is trading if the student really wants to learn the subject. Teaching is taking if the student is forced to take (and pay for) the class. Scary thought: Every college student is asked about every class: would you take this class if you didn’t need to (and didn’t need to take other classes)?

A few weeks ago, I wondered if I drink too much tea. Is 4 cups/day too much? What about 2 cups/day? To learn more, I needed to drink a lot less tea.

What about miso? I wondered. I had some high-quality miso paste in my refrigerator. I got it in Tokyo at a miso store (thanks to Gary Rymar for taking me there). I made a cup (about 25 g miso paste — 2-3 teaspoons? — mixed with 1 cup hot water).  It was delicious. The complex taste reminded me of coffee and chocolate. I added a little cream and a half packet of sweetener (Sucralose). It tasted even better.

I did the same thing with miso from Berkeley. It was still very good.

I cannot imagine not drinking tea. But I can now imagine drinking less tea because miso is much healthier. Replacing tea with miso is an easy way to eat more fermented food. A cup of miso is easier to make than a cup of tea.

Incidentally, don’t waste your time with powdered miso. It is much worse than the refrigerated miso (paste) sold in tubs.

I started to eat natto, a kind of fermented soybean, after I became convinced that we need to eat plenty of fermented foods to be healthy. That was four or five years ago. Recently I learned it is a very good source of Vitamin K2, which is a co-factor of Vitamin D3.

This post about an infographic called World Stinky Foods (in Japanese) complains that the infographic doesn’t include natto. In my experience, however, natto has a moderately strong taste but does not stink. If anything it has too little smell, which is why it comes with packets of mustard and sauce. I think it is the texture that some people don’t like. Wikipedia refers to this difference of perception: “The flavor of natto can differ greatly between people; some find it tastes strong and cheesy and may use it in small amounts to flavor rice or noodles, while others find it tastes bland and unremarkable, requiring the addition of flavoring condiments.”

By ordering it in restaurants, I have finally figured out a good way to eat it: 1. Add both flavoring packets (mustard and sauce). 2. Add a raw egg. 3. Add chopped onion. 4. Mix. The egg adds protein and creaminess, the onion adds bite and crunch. I might try it with scrambled eggs. Ever since I learned that Mr. T (a rat) liked scrambled eggs, I have been eating about one egg per day.