HUB's LIST of medical fun facts

 “Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.”
― George Carlin

Maybe it is just that time of year, the record snowfall, the frigid temperatures, the lack of sun, but I feel like the world as I have known it is crashing down around my ears. Brian Williams has fallen off his pedestal, Bill Cosby is canceling shows all over the place, Tiger Woods is not coming back, Jon Stewart is leaving The Daily Show, Steven Colbert has already left, the towns are running out of sand and salt, and the trial of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, former head of the International Monetary Fund, has come up with the unique defense of his “aggravated pimping” “at a sex parties with “you can’t tell the difference between a prostitute and a naked socialite”.

So many of the truths we have held dear in medicine, science, politics, and society are being revealed as mere illusions. To wit:

• “Cholesterol need no longer be a nutrient of concern”. So sayeth the “nation’s top nutrition advisory panel” after 40 years of telling us just the opposite! High cholesterol levels in your blood do increase your risk for heart disease, BUT dietary cholesterol contributes only about 10% of that level. Of course, the panel couldn’t just leave it at that. According to them the REAL danger lies in foods heavy with trans fats and saturated fats. However, if you follow recent arguments in the literature closely enough you will see that there is some debate about which are the “good fats’ and which are the “bad fats.” Maybe we’ll have  to wait another 40 years for consensus.
• Mississippi and West Virginia, among the poorest states in our country, have the best rates of measles immunization, and it is because they are the ONLY states that refuse to accept a waiver from immunizations on the basis of parental beliefs when children enter school. Mississippi’s measles vaccination rate is 99.7% for entering kindergarten students. West Virginia is at 96%. Epidemiologists have established a 94% immunized rate for measles as necessary to sustain “herd immunity”. In California and Arizona ( where thousands of Super Bowl visitors came and went back to their own states) the rates are 90.7% and 91.4% respectively.
• Spewing sulphur gas into our high atmosphere could help block sun radiation and help cool off a warming earth. Isn’t sulphur one of those toxic pollutants given off by burning coal and other fossil fuels? Well, yes, says the National Academy of Science, but the computer models of blocking the sunlight with released sulphur have such a positive logic about them that “we should test it in some small pilot studies”.
• Four out of five bottles of supplements taken off the shelves of GNC, Walmart, Walgreens, and Target in New York did NOT contain ANY of the herbs listed on their label. Ginseng pills “for physical endurance and vitality” contained only powdered garlic and rice. Ginkgo biloba for “memory enhancement” contained powdered radish, houseplants, and wheat. That label even claimed that it was wheat- and gluten-free! The FDA can only target products that have dangerous ingredients. It took the NY State Attorney General’s office to reveal this harmless ingredient sham, aka “profit by placebo” (NY Times, Feb. 3, 2015, pg.1)
• Half of the health information and recommendations given on The Doctor Oz Show and The Doctors is false. Not only did 80 recommendations from each TV show picked at random from the 900 recommendations identified have NO evidence to support them, but many were even contradicted by evidence. In typical academic, “English speak” the authors suggest that “consumers and clinicians should be skeptical about these TV show recommendations”. (BMJ 2014 Dec. 17, 2014, 34)

Is there any hope for us optimists?   Well …

• Crime rates in Boston have plummeted during this cold snowy weather. Homicide is down by 70%, rape by 50%, and vehicle theft by 46%. I guess everyone is staying inside, wearing lots of clothes,  and skipping the shoveling needed to steal a car. Rates for violent crimes in New York City, which had less snow and higher temperatures, all increased during the same period.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 14th, 2015 at 10:01 PM and is filed under Alternative/complementary medicine, current events, evidence-based medicine, heart health, nutrition, vaccinations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.