20/20 InSights

October 2008 - Posts

• Underestimating Diabetes

  I came across a very interesting article today on MSN Health regarding the dangers of diabetes. The article talks about a survey done by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).  In the survey, very few people understood the threat that diabetes posed to their health.  In fact, most people feared shark bites, plane crashes, or cancer more, even though they were more likely to get diabetes. For example, 49% of the respondents feared cancer, while only 3% feared diabetes. This article illustrates how are fears and perceptions often don't match up with reality.  While people fear shark bites more than diabetes, only 70 confirmed shark attacks occur each year around the entire world.  In contrast, over 233,000 people in the U.S. died of diabetes in 2005. Why is this? In my opinion, this is due to the phenomena known as misleading vividness.  This is where a small number of very dramatic events are taken to outweigh a significant amount of statistical evidence.  In other words, an event is so dramatic that it makes quite an impression in your mind.  Your fears of this event are heightened, and you develop a distorted perception of the likelihood of the event. Misleading vividness is also known as the Volvo fallacy.  Joe thinks about buying a Volvo.  He hears about someone whose Volvo had a wheel fall off the highway.  The car crashed and the person died.  So Joe won't buy a Volvo, despite the strong safety reports. Shark attacks are vivid, sensationalistic events, particularly if you've ever seen the movie Jaws.  Plane crashes are vivid, sensationalistic events.  Even dying from cancer can be a vivid event, in the sense that cancer deaths are much more heavily publicized by the media, and we are constantly reminded of the hardship of going through this disease. Dying from diabetes, however, is not a vivid event.  You rarely hear about people dying from diabetes on the news.  Death from diabetes is a very slow process.  It's not a headline grabber.  And thus it does not make the same emotional impact on your mind that a plane crash does. But it should.  We are at a much greater risk of diabetes than we are of getting in a plane crash.  And the cost of diabetes, to both our health and our finances, is staggering.  The average annual medical cost for someone with diabetes is nearly $12,000.  A diabetic's medical costs are at least 2.3 times that of someone without the disease.  And the complications that can result from diabetes are numerous, ranging from numbness to blindness to amputation to death. The bottom line is that we should be much more worried about diabetes than about Jaws.       Posted Oct 28 2008, 11:19 AM by jkrieger with no comments

• Vitamin C Craziness

  In a past blog, I talked about how we're a bit overly crazy about vitamin C in our society.  We'll take megadoses (1-2 grams per day), thinking it will help us fight aging and prevent colds and prevent cancer and everything else.  I pointed out how none of this is true, and how too much vitamin C may be harmful, despite the fact that it's a water-soluble vitamin (meaning it can dissolve in fluid so that your body can excrete in the urine). Well, more research has come out showing that vitamin C isn't all it's Cracked up to be. A recent study found that vitamin C, when taking in megadoses, reduced the effectiveness of anticancer drugs in animals.  The doses used were equivalent to about 2 grams in humans. In the study, mice underwent chemotherapy to treat cancer.  When they were given the high doses of vitamin C, the effectiveness of the chemotherapy was reduced by about 30%. This is another piece of evidence that you can have too much of a good thing.  Antioxidants, like vitamin C, are certainly healthy in moderate amounts.  But when you start taking very large doses, you can get the opposite of what you want. There's no need to be taking more than 200 milligrams of vitamin C per day, anyway.  This is the amount that will maximally saturate your blood levels; anything more is excreted. Overall, you want to stick with getting your antioxidants from your diet, and a standard multivitamin like the 20/20 multivitamin.  Avoid large single doses of antioxidant nutrients like vitamin C.  They won't benefit you, and in some cases may even cause harm.   Posted Oct 21 2008, 04:10 PM by jkrieger with no comments

• Superhype Juices Part Deaux

  In one of my first ever blogs, I wrote about so-called "superfruit" juices and how they were super-hyped. A study was recently published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine showing Goji juice to improve energy levels, athletic performance, sleep quality, mental acuity, calmness, and feelings of contentment.   So does that mean there's something to the hype? Not really. Dr. Paul Gross, the self-proclaimed "berry doctor", came out with some heavy criticism of this study.  And he's right.  This study is full of problems, including: The study was funded by Freelife International, a Goji-berry juice supplier The study was conducted by Freelife employees The subjects in the study were Freelife employees There was no control for the diets or personal habits of the subjects There was no validation of the questionnaires There was no "positive control" in this study.  This means that there was no "standard" juice to compare the Goji juice to.  It's quite possible that any juice may have had a positive effect. There were no improvements in objective measures of health, only subjective self-rated measures The study only lasted for 14 days The fact is, there is no plausible mechanism behind how Goji juice could have all of these miraculous effects.  If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Currently, there is not a shred of scientific evidence that these "superfruit" juices have any benefit beyond normal whole fruit.  There's nothing magical about these fruits.  The only thing magical about them is the inflated cost (a bottle of Goji juice can run you $44!!!!!).       Posted Oct 09 2008, 10:31 AM by jkrieger with no comments

• Cancer Misconceptions

  I came across an interesting article on MSN about the misconceptions people have about cancer. Researchers surveyed almost 30,000 people in various countries, asking them what they believed to affect cancer risk. The researchers had some interesting findings.  First, they found that people in high-income countries often didn't believe that alcohol intake affected cancer risk, despite the scientific evidence that cancer risk increases as alcohol intake increases.  These people also thought that not eating enough fruits and vegetables was more risky than drinking alcohol, although the opposite is true. Another interesting thing was that people were more likely to accept things they could not control (such as environmental factors, including air pollution) as risk factors for cancer, and were less likely to accept things they could control (such as body weight, which is strong risk factor for cancer). This made me think about how our priorities are often screwed up.  I've noticed people tend to "micro-manage" their bodies, worrying about whether little things like artificial ingredients or pesticides cause cancer, while ignoring the important things, such as body weight and lifestyle.  People tend to dramatically over-estimate the risks caused by the little things, and under-estimate (or ignore) the risks caused by the big things. I've seen people worry about whether the food they eat is organic or not, while ignoring whether they're getting enough fruits and vegetables in the first place. I've seen people who don't exercise worry about the monosodium glutamate (MSG) content in their foods. The bottom line is that we need to get our priorities straight.  Rather than making mountains out of molehills, we should be worrying about if we get enough physical activity, if we are eating a healthy, balanced diet, and if we are controllling our weight.  Those things will go much further into helping to lower our risk of cancer than worrying about if a food has yellow #5.   Posted Oct 06 2008, 11:06 AM by jkrieger with no comments