Public Health

If you are a parent, or know a parent, you have had someone claim that if their kid eats sugar they get 'hyperactive' - that may happen, but only because a child has been told they get hyperactive and act that way, the same way if you tell a child rum cake has rum they may act drunk. Biologically, it doesn't work that way. Sugar can certainly help you if you are diabetic(1) and "anti-sugar rhetoric is simply diet-centric disease-mongering engendered by physiologic illiteracy,” according to Edward Archer, PhD.(2) Sugar rushes are a garbage correlation that got popular in the 1970s, the same…

Controversial social media video site TikTok has one supporter - a public relations academic at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. A recent paper, ironically in a journal from a publisher that has also been called predatory, argues that TikTok may be effective for encouraging women to get a pap smear, which aids in early detection of cervical cancer, which kills some 4,000 women each year in the United States.  The information they use is obviously anecdotal - "there have been a lot of news reports about how people, especially Gen Z, are using the platform as a source for health…

If you go to social media, you can see a lot of suspect claims about fad diets, unapproved medical devices, therapies, and conspiracy theories. Many of them have names with "Dr." attached. How is the public to know a "Dr." may be a PhD or an EdD or an osteropath or someone else who didn't go to medical school and become an M.D.? How should physicians respond? From the years 1998 to 2021, coastal states in the US led America in vaccine denial, were doctors supposed to tell their patients they were stupid for believing vaccines cause autism?(1)  Were the doctors handing out exemptions just…

The American Heart Association is concerned that stroke and heart attack survivors don't think enough about 'risk' of LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol, now colloquially termed 'bad' cholesterol. The public are not wrong to be jaded by epidemiology,(1) the EPA is overrun with it and now seems to believe in homeopathy when it comes to weedkillers. Our CDC brazenly invented epidemics using epidemiology before a real pandemic hit and they showed how incompetent they are. The AHA is the same group that, using suspect epidemiology, claimed all cholesterol was bad, and red meat was killing…

 In 2019, nearly 12 percent of Black individuals experienced pre-term births compared with 7 percent of White individuals, according to a new demography paper. Pre-pregnancy cardiovascular health (obesity, diabetes, hypertension) was the quantifiable difference but the authors also included vague factors like 'prenatal care' and 'education' - which are all self-reported, and how higher education would improve health outcomes is unclear, but it is certain that a premature birth is a risk factor for negative health outcomes. However, a family that is obese is far more likely to create an…

The number of girls diagnosed with precocious puberty increased during the COVID-19 pandemic was most likely due to obesity - increased screen time and less physical activity.  Precocious puberty is when children's bodies begin to change into adult bodies too soon. They start to develop physical changes before the age of 8 such as breasts buds in girls and bigger testes in boys.  Girls diagnosed with precocious puberty during the COVID-19 pandemic tended to have higher body mass index (BMI) scores than girls who did not. These girls spent an average of 2 hours per day using…

A new survey says lots of people opt for 'healthier' substitutes like chicken instead of beef and vanilla-flavored plant juice instead of milk, and 56 percent of them claim to feel better doing so. Well, they probably do feel better. The reason is not the food, it is that they changed their diet and it is a psychological adjuvant for lots of other positive things, like fewer calories or more exercise or just feeling like they are 'doing' something by getting on a scale.  For example, where is the science showing chicken is healthier than a hamburger? It doesn't exist. Instead if it just…

In recent years, there have been efforts to reconsider cancers of the uterine cervix oropharyngeal, penile, vulvar and anal as sexually transmitted diseases. The reason is because of their link to human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is everywhere and has been longer than is even known, there are over 100 types, and most of the time if anything happens it is benign lesions such as warts and condyloma. But a few thousand times per year it is more serious and subtypes like HPV16 can lead to malignant transformed cells which may develop into precancerous lesions or even cancer. In about a third…

A new paper laments fine particulate matter in Asia. which is like worrying about third-hand smoke when actual smoking is still killing people there. Smog from burning wood and dung for fuel is the top emissions problem for the world. Unfortunately, subsidizing solar panels in rich countries does nothing for that issue. Nor is saying something needs to be done about small micron particulate matter, PM2.5, which is so small you need an electron microscope to see it, when the issue is PM10. Yet because PM2.5 is one-quarter the size, environmental groups can claim there is four times as…

It is well established that although acupuncture, chiropractic care, massage therapy, yoga, and meditation/mindfulness market themselves as Asian traditional techniques that will help buyers avoid the same Big Pharma industry that gives us cancer treatments and vaccines, the overwhelming users in America are not Asians at all, they are wealthy white female progressives. Yet military veterans are not overwhelmingly progressives, nor are they women. A new study sought to find out if the same trend held true for military people as it did for the general population. Obviously this kind of cross-…