by TC
Oh man, it's the space race between the U.S. and the Russkies...in freakin' High Def...right on my 62-inch Sony!
Look! There's Gordo Cooper! And Gus "Army Creole" Grissom! My God, it's Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut! And John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth! They've even got film of the intrepid Ham, the chimpanzee that beat all of them into space!
I'm a total freak for anything related to the history of the space race so when the Discovery Channel aired some never-before-seen footage of the space race last Sunday, I was so there.
"Woman! Keep the Diet Snapple and wasabi peas coming because I'm not moving for the next two hours!"
But as the images from the sixties washed over my eyeballs, I gradually became aware of something. There weren't any porkers in the footage. No fatties. Everybody was imperially slim, from the throngs of people watching lift-offs from Florida beaches to the scientists, engineers, and assorted techies in the Cape Canaveral control rooms.
What devilry is this? The film must be fake! Those conspiracy people were right! We never landed on the moon, all of that space-race stuff was just filmed in a Hollywood back lot and they hired slim, Perrier-sipping, yogurt lapping actors! I thought I saw a Buick drive by in one those shots of the lunar landscape!
But no, I guess people were just thinner then than they are today. I guess we just didn't have the same easy access to fast food and crappy grocery store food. And people were probably just more active then today's land-based cetaceans.
Yep, those are the dietary habits that are costing our health care system billions of dollars. Those are the dietary habits that are causing untold hardships to the rest of society.
But hold on a second. Rein in your synapses. I wasn't referring to the obese people; they're not the ones costing our health care system billions of dollars because of diet-related health problems. Instead, it's the slim people in the old film footage that are draining our tax coffers!
Here's the simple truth: obese people — because of diet-induced heart problems and diabetes — usually die earlier, thus saving us untold millions in health care.
Contrast that with the "healthy people" who live a long time, only to eventually end up being wheeled in and out of hospitals and fitted with various bionic devices intended to let them milk out a few more precious moments of existence instead of doing their duty to society, which is to fucking die already.
See? The fat people are our financial friends! We love you, fat people!
Where did I come up with that? Insurance actuaries! A recent study in Public Library of Scienceby Pieter van Baal and colleagues used data from the Netherlands to simulate the annual medical costs attributed to obesity and they compared those to taking care of healthy people.
They found that while annual health-care costs are higher for obese people earlier in life (until age 56), the ultimate lifetime costs are highest for the healthy (nonsmoking, non-obese people).
Ha! You're confused, right? Well, I'm the Multiple Miggs of dogma and I just chucked a sickeningly warm handful of confusion at you!
I can smell your cunt-fusion!
Duck!
And stay alert, buddy-boy, cuz' my factual prostate is about to spew forth a veritable Peter North like fountain of contradiction and confusion! The real truth is that what we usually assume to be true often isn't true. We don't know shit! No one does! Everyone's full of hooey!
Here's another handful, courtesy of A. Bernard Ackerman, MD, one of the world's foremost authorities on skin cancer and recent recipient of the highly coveted Master Award, given to one person a year by the American Academy of Dermatology
Let me "credentialize" Dr. Ackerman a bit more before I lay his findings on you. Ackerman and his six associates examine more than 100,000 skin specimens a year, in addition to examining more than 4,000 patients a year. The doctor has published over 625 research papers.
Sounds like an expert, right?
You betcha'. Here's the thing, though. Dr. Ackerman doesn't believe there's an association between melanoma (the worst kind of skin cancer) and sun exposure. He himself sports a bitchin' year-round tan.
Incoming! Duck!
Sure, he believes that basal cell and squamous cell carcinoma (the far less lethal type of skin cancer) are linked to sun exposure, but not the infinitely more lethal melanoma.
As evidence, Ackerman points out that African Americans and Asians develop melanomas mostly on their palms, soles, nails, and mucous membranes, which is pretty much where the sun don't shine. In whites, the most common melanoma sites are on the legs (in women) and the trunk (in men). Why not the face and arms, which are the areas most frequently exposed to the sun?
As further evidence, a 2003 study conducted by another researcher (Kennedy, 2003) found that lifetime sun exposure seemed to be associated with a lower risk of melanoma.
Is Ackerman nuts? Or are the dermatologists, health experts, and nagging mothers and wives nuts?
Speaking of nuts, you know that epidemic of peanut allergies that's killing thousands of people every year, causing airlines and other concerned business entities to all but hand out BioHaz suits to customers?
Well, there may be more to food allergies than meets the anaphylactic eye, or, rather, less.
Duck!
The Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN) estimates that 30,000 American get hauled off to emergency rooms every year from allergic food reactions and that 150 to 200 ultimately die.
However, these numbers are based on a 1999 study of a rural Minnesota community in which 133 people over a five-year period were hospitalized for food anaphylaxis, which, by definition, can mean anything from going into shock to an itchy mouth.
However, only 9 of the 133 had to be hospitalized. One did die, but that was attributed to exercise and not food allergies.
The FAAN, in an incredible display of chutzpah, used this small sampling to come up with the nation wide statistics mentioned above, including the death rate of 150 to 200 per year. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only list about 12 deaths a year from food allergies.
Maybe you remember the "death kiss" case where a girl died after kissing her boyfriend after he ate a peanut butter sandwich? The girl apparently had such a violent allergic reaction that she died, prompting FAAN to come out with brochures that instructed food-allergic teens to "tell that special someone that you can die... Don't wait for the first kiss."
The trouble is, there's no evidence that a food allergen can do serious harm if not ingested. Furthermore, a coroner later ruled, without any fanfare, that the "death kiss" girl actually died from an asthma attack caused by smoking a joint.
As a result of all these misused and abused statistics, the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends that peanuts be withheld from children until the age of 3. Hundreds of non-profit food-allergy and parents groups have formed across the nation, and six states have passed laws concerning food allergy precautions in schools. Similar legislation is pending in Congress.
Harper's magazine, in describing the food allergy hype, wrote the following:
"The peril is now perceived so great that the psychosomatic reactions to foods and their odors are not uncommon. Recent surveys have also shown that children thought to have food allergies feel more overwhelmed by anxiety, more limited in what they believe they can safely accomplish, then even children with diabetes and rheumatological disease. One study documented how food-allergic youth become terror-stricken when inside places like supermarkets and restaurants, since they know allergens are nearby."
Man, the next thing you know, they'll be making us swear off our non-fat milk.
Oh-oh. What's that you say? Drinkers of non-fat milk might as well be drinking Yoo-Hoo Chocolate beverage for all the nutritional good it's doing you?
That may well be the case.
Heads up! Duck!
As we all know, milk is considered by many to be a "complete" food. However, you have to look at what's meant by the term complete; it means that each ingredient plays a part, including the fat.
When you remove the saturated fat (as they do when they produce non-fat milk), you can't digest the protein very well or absorb the calcium in the milk!
And when you remove the fat, you also remove the fat-soluble vitamins A and D. Sure, dairies add those vitamins back in, but again it doesn't do much good because you need some fat to absorb the vitamins!
Lastly, milk fat contains glycosphingolipids, which are fats that spur cell metabolism and growth along with fighting gastrointestinal infections. Those are removed for good when you remove the fat.
Despite these simple facts, school systems around the country have begun to remove whole milk from cafeteria menus, their reasoning stemming from the belief that whole milk makes kids fat, even though it's largely white flour and sugar that makes kids fat.
Ironically, recent studies have shown that the calcium in whole milk products actually enhances weight loss and lowers blood pressure.
Oh, the perversity! Oh, the inanity!
At least I've got my water, the ubiquitous gallon-jug that's recommended by practically every sports nutrition writer, or, if you're not an athlete, the standard set-in-a-stone-fountain 8 to 10 glasses of water a day.
Gosh, I wonder where those recommendations came from?
Turns out nobody knows. Worse, every indication is that we need far less water than what's being recommended.
Duck!
"Health" articles in the mainstream press and on the Internet routinely espouse drinking large amounts of water to replace that which is lost daily, citing such statistics as:
• 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated.
• In 37% of Americans, the thirst mechanism is so weak that it is often mistaken for hunger.
• Even mild dehydration will slow one's metabolism by as much as 3%.
• Lack of water is the number one trigger of daytime fatigue.
Of course if you drink 8-10 glasses of water a day, you've nothing to worry about.
Well, neither the symptoms above or the aforementioned cure seem to have a basis in fact. Most nutritionists have no idea where the recommendations came from. Kidney specialists, however, do agree that the 8 to 10 rule is a wild overestimate of any required minimum, though.
Dr. Robert Alpern, Dean of the medical school at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas agrees, explaining "The notion that there is widespread dehydration has no basis in medical fact."
Some investigation has unearthed a possible source for some of the misinformation, though. In his book, Your Body's Many Cries for Water, Dr. Fereyoon Batmanghelidj maintains that people "need to learn they're not sick, just thirsty." He claims that diseases like arthritis, angina, migraines, hypertension, and asthma can be cured by drinking more water.
The trouble is, Batmanghelidj came by his conclusions not by research, but by reading other spurious books or articles. Denizens of the Internet seized on the misinformation and passed it until it became more or less accepted.
Best guesses (along with an overflowing jug of cool, refreshing logic) suggest that about half our fluid needs are met by the food we eat, and much of the rest through ingesting coffees, teas, and sodas.
And while many neophyte nutritionists will lament that caffeine-containing drinks cause the body to lose more water because of the diuretic effects, that effect is most seen in people who are caffeine naive. Established caffeine drinkers suffer little such diuretic effect.
And as far as the "gallon a day" rule for athletes? That suggestion is even further mired in mystery than the 8 to 10 glass a day rule. The best general advice seems to be the most logical. If you're thirsty, drink. If not, don't.
Okay, Miggs is about drained now. He'll have to skewer other rules or maxims of healthy living some other day. However, a few words in closing. Am I sure the fat people actually cost society less? No. Am I suggesting you ignore most advice to the contrary and throw away your sunscreen? No. Am I suggesting you take your whimpering, hyper-immune afflicted child and throw him into a vat of peanuts? No.
The point is that too often, researchers interpret results through a narrow keyhole of perception. More often, instead of playing 2-dimensional chess, they need to play Spock's 3-dimensional chess. That, or take their heads out of their collective ass and think a bit before trumpeting trumped up statistics as indicative of some great truth.
© 1998 — 2008 Testosterone, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Article Discussions
