Monday, March 27, 2006
What's Good is Bad
...or at least not good.
A review of randomized-controlled trials suggests that the much-touted health benefits of oily fish are not so clear. There's lots of data in this study, and I haven't the time to properly look at it now, but the basic message is clear: the Omega-3 fad is, like every other miracle food, just a fad. Eat a balanced diet, kids.
Something else that we've all known forever, that drinking milk helps build stronger bones and is a Health Food, may not be true. Women who got a high proportion of calcium from milk were more prone to fractures than others, a few studies have linked dairy products to cancer, and then there's the question of how much pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics get passed on to milk drinkers. Eat a balanced diet, kids.
One of the long-standing tenants of the pro-marijuana campaign, and certainly part of pot smokers' dogma, is that smoking pot is less "bad for you" than smoking cigarettes. There is certainly some debate on that matter, but a French study suggests that this is not the case. They found that cannabis smoke contains "seven times more tar and carbon monoxide...twice the amount of benzene and three times as much toluene" as tobacco smoke. The question on studies like this is always the methodology - how do the studied joints compare to what real people smoke, how do smokers smoke pot and cigarettes differently, etc., but the implication (if the study is even a little valid) is that smoking pot is bad for you. Smoking is bad for you. duh.
A review of randomized-controlled trials suggests that the much-touted health benefits of oily fish are not so clear. There's lots of data in this study, and I haven't the time to properly look at it now, but the basic message is clear: the Omega-3 fad is, like every other miracle food, just a fad. Eat a balanced diet, kids.
Something else that we've all known forever, that drinking milk helps build stronger bones and is a Health Food, may not be true. Women who got a high proportion of calcium from milk were more prone to fractures than others, a few studies have linked dairy products to cancer, and then there's the question of how much pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics get passed on to milk drinkers. Eat a balanced diet, kids.
One of the long-standing tenants of the pro-marijuana campaign, and certainly part of pot smokers' dogma, is that smoking pot is less "bad for you" than smoking cigarettes. There is certainly some debate on that matter, but a French study suggests that this is not the case. They found that cannabis smoke contains "seven times more tar and carbon monoxide...twice the amount of benzene and three times as much toluene" as tobacco smoke. The question on studies like this is always the methodology - how do the studied joints compare to what real people smoke, how do smokers smoke pot and cigarettes differently, etc., but the implication (if the study is even a little valid) is that smoking pot is bad for you. Smoking is bad for you. duh.
