Premarin, whole grains, and why you can ’ t believe headlines

Imagine you have a friend named Justin. He is a schoolteacher. Honest, hardworking, doesn’t smoke, rarely drinks alcohol, sleeps well, doesn’t take drugs, shows up at work every day. He has also chosen to be vegetarian. Another friend of yours, an auto mechanic named Tommy, eats fast food, loves fried chicken, drinks too much beer on the weekends, likes to drive fast cars, and sometimes gets into legal tangles. He smokes cigarettes, though has limited it to only half-a-pack per day. Late weekends, some weekday nights, sleep cut short to just two or three hours. Tommy is not a vegetarian, but likes his burgers rare with a big side of French fries and a can or two of Coca Cola. Who will do better in the long-run and be more likely to be spared health conditions like high blood pressure, high triglycerides, fatty liver, type 2 diabetes, psoriasis, or even a high-speed motor vehicle accident? Justin the schoolteacher will, of course. Tommy’s hard-living lifestyle is much more likely to end in disease or disaster. If we didn’t understand that such a mixed bag of observations are virtually worthless, we could then conclude that, because Justin is a vegetarian, vegetarians are therefore healthier. Laugh, but that is how most observational studies are conducted. Potential “confounding factors,” such as Tommy’s drinking and smoking, are “factored out” via statistical manipulations, but his love for fried chicken, fast driving, and ...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - Category: Cardiology Authors: Tags: Undoctored Wheat Belly Lifestyle Source Type: blogs