The blog post does conclude with exactly what you say: "What can we learn from this study? Are vegetarians are more likely to be neurotic sick people looking for dietary cures for what ails them, thus come out of the study looking more skinny, unhappy, and unsatisfied? Or are vegetarian diets nutritionally bereft leading to health problems, mental health problems in particular? We will never be able to get that answer from a study of this design."
Yeah, author does mentions that the study doesn't answers those questions. Still, I find the fact of writing a whole post based on one point, from the paper that seems to be pretty bad at specifically this point, to be disturbing (and sadly quite representative of modern journalism/blogging scene).
There seems to be a growing interest in this field, but there is a lot we don't know yet.
Human feces hasn't been an area with much prestige (and money to be made), so few used to care about it. But, if I remember correctly, the growing interest has partly been caused by geneticists who were initially studying the genome of e.g. humans, but who switched target as the original work was done much quicker than anybody though was possible.
From what I know about the research so far, it seems like our bacterial flora, especially in the gut, is tightly connected to quite a few diseases. However, for many of them, it is still unclear what is cause and effect: Does the altered flora cause the disease, or does the disease cause the altered flora? External factors like stress is known to alter gut flora. On the other hand, bacteria in your gut may affect your mood and personality. Figuring out what is what is tricky, and I suppose there can be feedback loops here as well.
There is much more research to be done. You should be careful with experimenting, as there is risk involved: You may get bacteria that you don't want, and you don't know what the changed flora will do to you. An acquaintance of mine is a researcher in this field, and he does not recommend taking probiotics for e.g. IBS, as he think we still know too little about what types of bacteria to take, dosage, and potential negative long term effects. "Good" strains can do bad things in some contexts, and interaction/symbiosis between different strains (and us) may complicate things. That being said, afaik, probiotics is generally thought to be safe (although I am not sure all manufacturers are trustworthy).
Personally, I think this field has the potential to really change the way we think about health, disease, and medicine. Another field, which I think is related, is diet and fasting: food, and lack of food, alters our gut flora too.
I agree. We have only started to explore the interaction between our microbes and our health and I am sure there will be some amazing discovery made over the next few years.
An example of this is the report by Borody that three Parkinson's patients who had C. difficile infections treated using faecal transplant. The transplants cured the C difficile infection, but he noticed that their Parkinson's symptoms were significantly reduced. Changing the bacterial in the guts somehow had an effect on neurotransmitters in the brain.
Also, it's fairly well known by this point that there's an altered microbiome in Autism. Would be fascinating to see a transplant study done if the risk is so low.
New Scientist has an article in this weeks number about sunshine and fresh air working as "antibiotics", and how the use of air and light could reduce the risk of infections in hospitals.
My guess is that he has a reasonably good overview, although not being a scientist: "He [...] later became the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. As such, Blix was the first Western representative to inspect the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union on site, and lead the agency response to them." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Blix
However, I am curious about the research showing that users will leave a website after 3 seconds. Where was this measured? On desktop, or on a low-end/low-bandwidth device? With low-end devices and/or low bandwidth, most websites will load slowly, and my guess is that performance expectations will be different than on desktop.
That "study" is bullshit. It's actually a survey asking people after how many seconds they will leave the site. I'm now expecting them to find cure for cancer by popular vote.
You're right but let me tell you this:
Half of the visits the article got since publishing have bounced off after close to 2 seconds. Coincidence? It´s a shame but I do this too
You do what too? Conflating correlation with causation? We all do that at one point or another :)
Speed is no doubt important but it's only a part of the big picture. The site I'm maintaining has roughly 60% bounce rate. If I'm to take the "study" at face value, that means all of those bounces are due to 3+ sec load time. And if I somehow manage to bring that to 0.1 sec (preferably using Akamai's services), the bounce rate will magically go to 0%. Of course, that doesn't happen in the real world.
Btw, great article, thanks for taking the time to write it.
Recently, there was an article in New Scientist about this[1]. Basically, if you sit for more than 6 hours a day, one hour of exercise a day doesn't undo the damage.
The solution is to get up and move around often, i.e. every ~20 minutes or so.
Exercise is still good even if you stand/move around often. And standing all day also has its problems, like others have mentioned.
The problem with sitting for long periods of time, or remaining in any static position really, is that as muscles fatigue more stress is put on joints and bones. Having more muscle and strength helps significantly, but not all forms of exercise develops muscle and strength adaptations equally.
It would depend on the exercise. If you by "exercise" mean superflous human movement for the purpose of wasting excess energy, I would agree it doesn't do much to counter sitting the rest of the day, it's basically just a break from sitting.
If you instead mean methodical heavy barbell training for the purpose of invoking physiological adaptations in the form of increased muscle and strength, it would probably do a great deal to offset sitting for the rest of the day, especially coupled with the increased awareness and understanding of spinal positioning that comes with lifting weights.
Most of the time when people talk of "exercise", they mean the kind that don't do much for muscle and strength development (mainly the aerobic kind or light anaerobic work), but a lot of people actually do the kind that does.
"The solution is to get up and move around often, i.e. every ~20 minutes or so."
I agree. One method to force you to walk twice an hour is drinking a lot of water. This will keep your brain fit, you will be much less tired in the evening, when you leave for home. And - yes - you have to run to the bathroom quite often. 2-3 liters of water will do the job nicely.
That is also what my physician recommends (But don't try that with sweet or sweetened drinks).
I do this as well. I guess I should elaborate on my 8-12 hour days. It's rare now that I will sit in the chair for more than an hour at a time. Not only due to my awareness of the issues that it causes, but also because it just helps me clear my head to get up and go talk to some people, walk around the office, etc...
This should be done if you have a standing desk as well.
Clearing your head is important. Unfortunately, many people seem to forget that it is necessary. "The physiological effects of tiredness are well-known. You can turn a smart person into an idiot just by overworking him"[1].
Also: Getting out the door is good: Five minutes of "green exercise" turns out to be good for your mental health[2].
Exercise is still good, but it doesn't do magic if you live unhealthy the rest of the time.
(That being said, I wonder if the extreme types of workout many people promote is actually good, or if it does more damage than good in the long run. I guess some people believe that one extreme can out-weight another extreme.)
Quote: " "Jim" Fixx (April 23, 1932 – July 20, 1984) was the author of the 1977 best-selling book, The Complete Book of Running. He is credited with helping start America's fitness revolution, popularizing the sport of running and demonstrating the health benefits of regular jogging. Fixx died in 1984 at the age of 52."
I've found it helpful to learn not to fuel thought trains. ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)[1] is helpful for that: It's basically about developing an understanding that thoughts and feelings are not real, and that they are not dangerous. A thought is the voice in your head, feelings are sensations in the body. Nothing more. It also has techniques that makes it easier to detect them.
By the way: Gut flora may play a role in anxiety[2], at least for some. It seems to play a role in many different mental, as well as physical, illnesses.
