Bob, LOL! Of course, you don't have to post your degrees. Heck, folks
can just read about your background in the website on the anthro dept.
in which you are studying if they want to know. They can't know with me
(or anyone else for whom that info isn't readily available, though) so I
posted mine. No secrets. I DO think that you should have supplied the
other half of that old joke to people, though -- the "many degrees one".
A lot of folks will NOT know it. The second half of the joke is "70!
Fahrenheit!". It's like the one "Why are people in the U.S. more
educated than those in Europe?" You can guess that the answer is a
fahrenheit vs. celisus thing...
Anyway, folks might want to know that while Google is always a good way
to find who has written what and where it was published (even though it
misses some things) Pubmed is a really great place to go to see the
abstracts of some of the things mentioned in assorted diet discussions.
There actually ARE such diet restriction studies in relation to specific
types of malignancies, but I have not run into any those are generalized,
and in some of the restriction studies for malignancies it is one
nutrient or a set of nutrients which is restricted, depending not only
on the type of malignancy (given that "cancers" are actually possibly
hundreds of illnesses and they all have their own nuances - but some
of this is apparently changing from the current classification based
on location of origin to one based on behavior of the illness among a
few oncology research circles according to some things I've read) --
anyway -- one or one set of nutrients restricteed depending not only on
the type of malignancy but ALSO on the treatment routine used. For
instance, vitamin C is actually used by one form of breast tumor and that
particular type of breast cancer is shielded from radiation treatments if
the person with it has too much vitamin C so that nutrient is now being
restricted in that particular and very specific situation.
BTW, there really is a lot of work of work out there on caloric
restriction and longer lifespans, but the data is limited in certain ways
so that it is impossible to know for what species of those untested ones
it may not work. It's pretty hard to treat anything as universal: look
at how bears can eat tens of thousands of calories of fat alone when it
is plentiful for an extended time -- actually striping fish and eating
the layer just under the skin while leaving the rest -- (ditto fruit for
that alone during some times of year though fruit also will carry along
some insects) while almost no other mammals can do that sort of narrow
diet safely, how bears can concentrate and recycle urine during
hybernation which others don't do, and a number of other variations
specific to that grouping.
Look at how ferrets have a very different adrenal disorder than most
mammals... Just this week I have heard of three people confusing it with
Cushings and as a result mistakenly thinking that steroids pose the a
specific serious hazard for ferret adrenal glands that they pose for
dogs and humans. Species do vary!
It's fine to discuss hypotheses but when they are still hypotheses -- in
fact, it is good -- but they just need to be treated by everyone as such.
Things don't always turn out as expected. There was a strange result of
a study following people long term to see who gained the most weight over
12 years which was just in a Tufts publication I get. You'd expect that
the folks who fared the best had diets high in veggies and fruits and
very low in fat, and that the ones who fared the worst ate a lot of junk
food, and on those two groupings you would be right. BUT, it turned out
that those who ate a low but not terribly low fat level (example: people
who ate skin with their chicken) actually were slightly MORE likely to
gain a substantial amount of body fat weight than those who ate a lot of
fat in their diets. No one knows why. Was the study flawed? Was the
reporting by participants flawed? Was it just a statistical aberration
that will go away in further studies? Is it real? If it is real, is
the human body geared to be more effective at putting down fat stores
with a certain percentage of the diets calories such as are found in the
low-normal range for U.S. diet? No one knows.
A side note which may interest some: there is some interesting
preliminary work which has made some publications (I think at either or
both Women and Brigham, or Harvard Med, or both, but may be mis-recalling
location) in which there is work being done which rob tumors of nutrients
and as they found that the meds also help people lose weight, so those
medications are being studied as possible approaches for those who have
dangerous levels of fat tissue to lose.
WHATEVER: the best advice remains: if an idea seems interesting for
ferret health look into it and be SURE to discuss it with the treating
vet and the consultants FIRST because what is good for one illness can
be accidently fatal for another. GO WITH THE FOLKS WHO STUDIED THE
NUANCES -- THE VETS!
If it wasn't possible that a number of surprises are out there for all of
us (and historically have been out there for all of us many times) there
would be no reason to study, little reason to have scientists, etc. We'd
just read something and deduce something and it would be so. Sometimes
that happens; sometimes it doesn't...
It's not easy that everyone should look into things rather than just
accepting what is told, but it sure pays off.
I like discussing these things, but I sure do worry about the ferrets
who can be hurt if folks don't check with their ferret health experts
and just run with an idea without knowing the possible drawbacks or
remaining questions... I also worry because every time folks confuse
hypotheses with known facts someone seems to get hurt and then gets
defensive afterward and then posts something about how scientists can't
know anything because they are always "changing their minds".
[Posted in FML issue 3952]
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