Tag: tidbit

Some Great Quotes

“Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don’t need to escape from.” – Seth Godin [reference]

“Common sense is not so common” [Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764)]

“I wait for death and journalists.” – Jeanne Calment [reference] (as of 2012, she was oldest person ever lived who died at 122)

When asked what she like best about being 102 years old, Jeanne Calment answered “Well, there’s no peer pressure.” [reference]

“The very purpose of spirituality is self-discipline. Rather than criticizing others, we should evaluate and criticize ourselves. Ask yourself, what am I doing about my anger, my attachment, my pride, my jealousy? These are the things we should check in our day to day lives.” [quote from the Dalai Lama on Facebook]

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.“
– by Confucius [source]

“I sometime worry about my short attention span, but not for very long“
– by Herb Caen, San Francisco Chronical, 2/10/74 [source]

“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!” – by Audrey Hepburn [source]

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure. These things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” – by Steve Jobs from Stanford University commencement speech 2005.

More great quotes regarding retirement and aging here.

Butter in Coffee

Butter in coffee can be a good idea for healthy individuals without cholesterol problems and who are not afraid of saturated fats.

Dave Asprey explains how he takes his coffee with butter and MCT oils.  MCT oil is medium chain triglyceride oils such as coconut oil.   He also consumes 50% of his calories as fats.

Coconut oil and butter and coffee are all healthy foods.  So his coffee recipe is not bad.

 

The difference between relative versus absolute risk reported in studies

New reports often reports the relative risk or benefits between two groups (say a control group versus treatment group).   This number is usually deceptively higher than the absolute risk or benefit.

What is the difference between relative risk versus absolute risks?

KnowBreastCancer.org has a good explanation.   Suppose that 2 person out of 100 in a control non-treated group ended up with cancer.  And supposed that only 1 person out of 100 in a treatment group ended up with cancer.  Hence the relative risk would be a 50% decrease in breast cancer in the treatment group.  This is arrived at by taking the change and dividing by the initial value:  (2 – 1) / 2 = 0.5 = 50%    This is the number often reported.   Sounds pretty good right?

But consider the absolute risk.   Since the risk of cancer is 2% in the non-treated group, and the risk of cancer in the treated group is 1%, the treatment only reduced the risk from 2% to 1%.  This is only a 1% reduction in absolute risk.  Now it doesn’t sound that great.   This number is arrived at by taking the change in percentage divided by the overall percentage: (2-1)/100 = 0.01 = 1%.

Presentation by Sally Fallon-Morell also gives examples of how distorting the reports of relative risk are.  Video presentation on YouTube.

Tom Naughton is a comedian that did a bit at the Ancestral Health Symposium called “Science for Smart People” in which among the other topics talked about relative risk versus absolute risk…

Many Causes of Depression

Depression is a name given to a set of symptoms consisting of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person’s thoughts, behavior, feelings and physical well-being.

But there are many different causes that can produce this depressive state. Here are just a few of the many causes (listed in no particular order) with links to references…

Omega-3 deficiencies, Vitamin D deficiencies, magnesium deficiencies, vitamin B deficiencies, etc.

Cholesterol deficiency and low-fat diet may cause depression.[reference and here]

Mercury toxicity and mercury dental fillings.

Emotional Trauma

Stress and burnout

Low Testosterone in Men

Thyroid imbalance

Hypothyroidism (as mentioned in Dr. Lo Podcast) can result in depression.

Dementia associated with Depression

Calcium Toxicity or Calcium deficiency

Concussion and brain trauma

In the book Digestive Health with Real Food (page 45), it writes …

“People with fructose malabsorption don’t have enough tryptophan, even though they eat enough of it, and therefore can’t produce enough serotonin to feel good … in their study, reducing dietary fructose resulted in a 65-percent improvement in depression score in only four weeks.”

Here is a video of a lecture that explains the biology of depression and the affects of stress.

The video says that depression may be a whole body disorder and that more Americans suffer from depression than coronary disease, cancer, and AIDS combined. It is the leading cause of disability in North America.

The biogenic amine theory of depression is the idea that there is a deficiency of certain neurotransmitters such as norepinephrine, serotonin and dopamine.

It is possible to drink too much water

Dr. Ben Kim writes article explaining why a person can die from force drinking too much water.

Unfortunately, it was reported that someone did die in a water-drinking contest called “”Hold Your Wee For A Wii” in which she drank 2 gallon worth of water.

This is due to consuming too much water in a too short amount of time and not allowing your bladder to empty. The circulatory system gets diluted with water, reducing electrolytes level.   And the cells in the brain swell with water causing cranial pressure.