Cancer Prevention Diet…I’m Skeptical

The Boston Globe: It is time to reconsider the whole idea that the public ought to change its diet to help prevent cancer. The cancer prevention diet was launched on inadequate scientific evidence almost 25 years ago. Now five different randomized clinical trials have evaluated the preventive power of various recommended foods or ingredients, and not a single one has found a measurable effect. Rare is the adult who has not head the message from the National Cancer Institute that to lower the risk of cancer, people ought to eat five servings a day of foods with high fiber, low fat and containing fruit or vegetables. This dietary advice was publicized extensively with millions of dollars from the fruit and produce industry, which was hoping to increase market share for its products.

The larger lesson, however, is that the diet and cancer story proves how easy it is for health authorities to give dietary advice and the eagerness with which the public embraces it despite the shaky scientific foundations of the whole enterprise. Of all the key aspects of health, diet may be the most difficult to study. We eat different foods at every meal, and diet varies greatly day by day. Most of the food we eat is either excreted or heavily processed in the human chemical factory and reduced to basic compounds such as sugars, trigylcerides and lipids. To make matters more difficult, the exact same food item can have quite different effects when consumed as a liquid, a solid or mixed with other foods. With some ingredients such as sodium and calcium, the body tightly regulates concentrations within narrow limits using powerful biological mechanisms to dispose immediately of any surplus. Only dire shortages or gross excesses overwhelm this system–and these can be life threatening but are quite rare.

Unschooling

Unschooling (check out “Essay” section of website) is an educational philosophy which abandons tests, curricula, and textbooks in favor of self-directed learning. Practiced by an enthusiastic community of homeschoolers, unschooling has recently attracted some media attention (MSNBC, NYT). Of course, unschooling raises some concerns: “If they are not made to do arbitrary and tedious schoolwork, children might not learn how to do difficult, uninteresting, and unpleasant work.”

(from http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/56512)

The death of (the idea of) the Upper East Side

How New York’s most prestigious neighborhood lost its place atop the social hierarchy. Well into the twentieth century, blue bloods and their imitators lived in houses. The concept of apartment living, of different families sharing a common roof, was still wildly outré if not downright scandalous in 1912, when 998 Fifth, a McKim, Mead & White building, arose on Millionaire’s Row opposite the Met. Like all the Fifth Avenue apartment buildings that would succeed it, and unlike the towers of Central Park West, it was restrained and understated in its grandeur. Among the new residents at 998 was Levi P. Morton, who served as governor of New York as well as vice-president of the U.S. and who was one of those prominent New Yorkers whose uptown drift was emblematic. “Morton’s migrations up Fifth Avenue had always seemed to forge the way for the city’s elite,” says Elizabeth Hawes in New York, New York, her improbably riveting history of the New York apartment building. “From 17th Street to 42nd Street in 1891 (where he provided the setting in which Edith Wharton could come out more discreetly than at Delmonico’s); from there to 55th Street in 1894 … from 55th Street to 81st Street, where he forsook the genteel traditions of houses altogether.” Over the course of the next twenty years, grand apartment buildings on Fifth Avenue and Park redefined the concept of the good life. In a city that was still chaotic and dangerous, the western half of the Upper East Side, with its broad avenues and its doorman-guarded buildings, represented the equivalent of a gated community for the childbearing wealthy, with Central Park as the ultimate backyard. From that day down to the present, an apartment in one of several dozen buildings built before 1930—the number of “good buildings” is generally agreed to be 42—was necessity for status-conscious New Yorkers, as well as for those who had made their pile in Kalamazoo or Caracas and wanted to plant their flag at the center of the world.

Brilliant minds forecast the next 50 years

 

New Scientist: What will be the biggest breakthrough of the next 50 years? As part of our 50^th anniversary celebrations we asked over 70 of the world’s most brilliant scientists for their ideas. Delve into those visions of the future by author in the story list of this special report, or navigate forecasts by topic here:

Life: Ageing, alien life, consciousness, ecology, embryology, environment, evolution, genetics, health, humans, language, neuroscience, oceans, psychology, sex and social science.

Space and technology: Artificial intelligence, communications, computing, cosmology, space and technology.

Physical sciences: Chemistry, energy, materials, maths and physics.

One of us was a mistake

One in three babies is conceived by mistake, the result of missed pills and split condoms, according to a large-scale study which questions whether women have the control over their lives that modern contraception promised them. The study by leading sexual health researchers in Edinburgh concludes that women are crossing their fingers when their contraception fails them, or when they forget to take a pill, rather than taking emergency contraception. The figures in today’s Lancet are alarmingly similar to those in the last study of its kind 25 years ago – five years after the contraceptive pill first became available. The paper concludes that new efforts are needed to teach women how to use contraception. Of the women who were seeking abortions, only a quarter were because of unprotected sex. Most of the respondents blamed a missed pill or split condom. The results also revealed that a relatively small proportion of both groups of women had taken the morning-after pill, bought over the counter, even when they knew they had risked a pregnancy.

Why do veins pop out when exercising?

Contrary to expectations, perhaps, bulging veins during exercise have nothing to do with an increase in either blood volume or pressure in these vessels. In fact, both are known to decrease during stepped-up activity, including exercise. When exercise begins, the heart’s rate and strength of contraction increases and blood is quickly pumped into the arteries. As this is occurring, systolic blood pressure increases linearly with exercise intensity, rising to nearly 200 mmHg during high intensity aerobic exercise (and to more than 400 mmHg during weight lifting). Diastolic pressure, on the other hand, changes very little with aerobic exercise (although it rises during weight lifting). Simultaneously, the internal diameters of veins and venules narrow in a process called venoconstriction, forcing the flow of blood forward to the heart and enhancing their ability to receive blood coming from the capillaries. Overall, this process helps decrease the pressure in the venules and veins to at most about five mmHg. Venous volume and pressure thereby decrease and are thus not the basis for the bulging. Instead, the process occurring in the capillaries as a result of the rise in arterial blood pressure during exercise causes plasma fluid otherwise resting in these tiny tributaries to be forced out through the thin vessel walls and into compartments surrounding the muscles. This process, known as filtration, causes a swelling and hardening of the muscle that is noticed during exercise. As a result of this swelling, cutaneous veins are pushed toward the skin surface, flatten to some extent, and appear to bulge. Such veins are more visible in persons with less subcutaneous fat. This bulging is neither good nor bad but simply a result of normal physiological mechanisms that result from the rise in arterial blood pressure during exertion.

The Analects

Here is a collection of my favorite verses from The Analects, a book of teachings attributed to Confucius by his followers. Looking over these, I noticed that most generally reflect some type of deficiency I see within myself.

The Master said: ‘To learn something and at times to practise it-surely that is a pleasure? To have friends coming from distant places-surely that is delightful? But not to be resentful at others’ failure to appreciate one-surely that is to be a true gentleman.

The Master said: ‘Young men should be filial when at home and respectful to elders when away from home. They should be earnest and trustworthy. Although they should love the multitude far and wide, they should be intimate only with the humane. If they have any energy to spare after so doing, they should use it to study “culture”.’

Meng Wu Bo asked about filial piety and the Master said: ‘It is when father’s and mother’s only worry is about one being ill.’

Zigong asked about the gentleman. The Master said: ‘He puts his sayings into action before adopting them as guidelines.’

The Master said: “When you come across a superior person, think of being equal to him. When you come across an inferior person, turn inwards and examine yourself.’

The Master said: ‘When substance prevails over refinement there is churlishness, and when refinement prevails over substance there is pedantry. Only if refinement and substance are properly blended, does one become a gentleman.

Zigong asked about friends. The Master said. ‘Loyally provide them with information and guide them skillfully. If this is no good, then desist. Do not humiliate yourself through them.

The Master said: ‘Avoid being impatient, avoid noticing minor advantages. If you are impatient, then you will not be thorough. If you notice minor advantages, then major tasks will not be accomplished.

The Master said: ‘Not to talk with people although they can be talked with is to waste people. To talk with people although they cannot be talked with is to waste words. A man of understanding does not waste people, but he also does not waste words.’

How to talk to the dying

From the Editor: This isn’t some groundbreaking article, but I think it addresses something I feel relatively unprepared to deal with when the time comes. Just some things to keep in mind for later.

Medical experts say talking about the end of our own lives — and the lives of loved ones — could very well be our last societal taboo. “We are a death-denying society,” said Dr. Darrell Owens, founder and director of the Palliative Care Consult Service at Harborview Medical Center. “If you look at people in their 50s, they’re more willing to talk to their kids about safe sex than about their parents’ — or their own — deaths. While facing our own mortality — and especially that of loved ones — can be particularly uncomfortable, being there for family and friends when they’re about to die can be the most important thing you can do for them — making sure they’re not only ready to go, but satisfied with where they’ve been.

Don’t assume that the person dying won’t be willing to talk about it. Often, dying patients are more ready to talk about their deaths than their families are. But be sensitive to personality and cultural differences. Recent medical studies on palliative care have noted significant contrasts in attitudes toward death exhibited by those with differing ethnic and religious backgrounds. For example, some Asian cultures traditionally hold that talking about death will hasten it, and some conservative Muslim sects would regard a prognosis that gives a timeline for death as a challenge to the power of Allah. Offer ways for the dying person to be remembered. Often, that’s their greatest wish. Make an oral history: audio or video recording of the person so family members can have, in the voice of the person who lived through them, a history of important events, such as immigrating to a new country, setting up a home or memories of historical milestones. The process of creating oral histories and ethical wills can help the dying realize — and have acknowledged by their survivors — how much they accomplished throughout the years. Don’t be afraid to ask the dying what they’re afraid of and how you can help. Such fears may concern not only what’s coming, but also the financial and legal situation the patient is leaving behind. Talking about legal wills can go a long way toward addressing the financial and legal issues, and, at the same time, introducing the topic of death without getting too emotional.