Sunday, April 3, 2011

About all those studies

Please don't tell me I am the only one who finds the nonstop barrage of studies telling me to use olive oil its a good fat, or coffee will affect chronic pain, or this new wonder drug will save us all, or what they told us last week, last month, last year is now wrong is just plain confusing? I can't be alone here.

So then I found this lovely article telling me "Almost Everything You Hear About Medicine Is Wrong". I learned that there are people out there who make their career out of proving these studies wrong.

Its not that anyone has the intention, usually, of misleading us but most of the time, they meant well but something else was missing. Maybe more time was needed, maybe there was a statistical anomaly (big words for early in the day) or something else. I mean Thalidomide was meant to prevent morning sickness but ended up causing all kinds of birth defects and then some cancers too. Who knew what would happen 30 years later? I mean is a clinical trial supposed to last 50 years to see what happens to subsequent generations?

Or if you are doing research you are looking for results, changes, anomalies, or other differences, so you follow them down the road they lead you and assume you are getting to the correct hypothesis.

Well, now that I am happy to know that I am part of the confused general public, I will go have some breakfast starting with some fruit, because its better than juice, but does contain a lot of sugar so is it good or bad? I don't know. Maybe I'll just go have bacon because we know that while it tastes really good it is doesn't have much nutrition other than yummy fat grams.

1 comment:

Cynthia said...

It is confusing, Caroline. I just keeping reading the news and the studies and try to make balanced, sensible choices instead of bending to the latest "finding". The new assessment of vitamin D is troubling to me - so I'm going to follow up with my oncologist. In the meantime, I will also continue to enjoy very sporadic doses of bacon amidst healthy ones of kale and quinoa. :-)

I Started a New Blog

I started this blog when I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007. Blogging really helped me cope with my cancer and its treatment. Howe...