Gluten-free January Participants: Take the Survey!

Matt Lentzner, Janine Jagger and I have designed a survey for participants of Gluten-free January, using the online application StatCrunch. Janine is an epidemiologist who studies healthcare worker safety at the University of Virginia; she has experience designing surveys for data collection so we're glad to have her on board. The survey will allow us to systematically gather and analyze data on the results of Gluten-free January. It will be 100 percent anonymous-- none of your answers will be connected to your identity in any way.

This survey has the potential to be really informative, but it will only work if you respond! The more people who take the survey, the more informative it will be, even if you didn't avoid gluten for a single day. If not very many people respond, it will be highly susceptible to "selection bias", where perhaps the only people who responded are people who improved the most, skewing the results.

Matt will be sending the survey out to everyone on his mailing list. Please complete it, even if you didn't end up avoiding gluten at all! There's no shame in it. The survey has responses built in for people who didn't avoid gluten. Your survey will still be useful!

We have potential data from over 500 people. After we crunch the numbers, I'll share them on the blog.

if you need me....

i'll be hanging out here.  not b/c it's cool but b/c i have no where else to sit in my house due to the fact that all of my kitchen drawers and doors are currently scattered throughout the house.  as for the rest of the family, they're going to have to fend for themselves!  

and i'll be listening to this on repeat (did you see garden and gun this month?!).  happy weekend!  

tune in next week to see what color i picked!  *i already know*

The Diabetes Epidemic

The CDC just released its latest estimate of diabetes prevalence in the US (1):

Diabetes affects 8.3 percent of Americans of all ages, and 11.3 percent of adults aged 20 and older, according to the National Diabetes Fact Sheet for 2011. About 27 percent of those with diabetes—7 million Americans—do not know they have the disease. Prediabetes affects 35 percent of adults aged 20 and older.

Wow-- this is a massive problem. The prevalence of diabetes has been increasing over time, due to more people developing the disorder, improvements in diabetes care leading to longer survival time, and changes in the way diabetes is diagnosed. Here's a graph I put together based on CDC data, showing the trend of diabetes prevalence (percent) from 1980 to 2008 in different age categories (2):

These data are self-reported, and do not correct for differences in diagnosis methods, so they should be viewed with caution-- but they still serve to illustrate the trend. There was an increase in diabetes incidence that began in the early 1990s. More than 90 percent of cases are type 2 diabetics. Disturbingly, the trend does not show any signs of slowing.

The diabetes epidemic has followed on the heels of the obesity epidemic with 10-20 years of lag time. Excess body fat is the number one risk factor for diabetes*. As far as I can tell, type 2 diabetes is caused by insulin resistance, which is probably due to energy intake exceeding energy needs (overnutrition), causing a state of cellular insulin resistance as a defense mechanism to protect against the damaging effects of too much glucose and fatty acids (3). In addition, type 2 diabetes requires a predisposition that prevents the pancreatic beta cells from keeping up with the greatly increased insulin needs of an insulin resistant person**. Both factors are required, and not all insulin resistant people will develop diabetes as some people's beta cells are able to compensate by hypersecreting insulin.

Why does energy intake exceed energy needs in modern America and in most affluent countries? Why has the typical person's calorie intake increased by 250 calories per day since 1970 (4)? I believe it's because the fat mass "setpoint" has been increased, typically but not always by industrial food. I've been developing some new thoughts on this lately, and potentially new solutions, which I'll reveal when they're ready.


* In other words, it's the best predictor of future diabetes risk.

** Most of the common gene variants (of known function) linked with type 2 diabetes are thought to impact beta cell function (5).

Journal of Universal Rejection

This is absolutely fanTASTIC. I especially love the archives.

About the Journal

The founding principle of the Journal of Universal Rejection (JofUR) is rejection. Universal rejection. That is to say, all submissions, regardless of quality, will be rejected. Despite that apparent drawback, here are a number of reasons you may choose to submit to the JofUR:

  * You can send your manuscript here without suffering waves of anxiety regarding the eventual fate of your submission. You know with 100% certainty that it will not be accepted for publication.
  * There are no page-fees.
  * You may claim to have submitted to the most prestigious journal (judged by acceptance rate).
  * The JofUR is one-of-a-kind. Merely submitting work to it may be considered a badge of honor.
  * You retain complete rights to your work, and are free to resubmit to other journals even before our review process is complete.
  * Decisions are often (though not always) rendered within hours of submission.

PS: I'm really tempted to submit something, just to see what happens.

PPS: The other joke here is, "Q: We're in CS - what about the conference of universal rejection? A: Wasn't that last year's SIGGRAPH?" (Or CVPR? SIGCOMM? Not sure what the snobbiest conference is these days, people love to complain about all of them!)

Two Wheat Challenge Ideas from Commenters

Some people have remarked that the blinded challenge method I posted is cumbersome.

Reader "Me" suggested:

You can buy wheat gluten in a grocery store. Why not simply have your friend add some wheat gluten to your normal protein shake.

Reader David suggested:

They sell empty gelatin capsules with carob content to opacify them. Why not fill a few capsules with whole wheat flour, and then a whole bunch with rice starch or other placebo. For two weeks take a set of, say, three capsules every day, with the set of wheat capsules in line to be taken on a random day selected by your friend. This would further reduce the chances that you would see through the blind, and it prevent the risk of not being able to choke the "smoothie" down. It would also keep it to wheat and nothing but wheat (except for the placebo starch).

The reason I chose the method in the last post is that it directly tests wheat in a form that a person would be likely to eat: bread. The limitation of the gluten shake method is that it would miss a sensitivity to components in wheat other than gluten. The limitation of the pill method is that raw flour is difficult to digest, so it would be difficult to extrapolate a sensitivity to cooked flour foods. You might be able to get around that by filling the pills with powdered bread crumbs. Those are two alternative ideas to consider if the one I posted seems too involved.

And my heart filled with joy

Yesterday I went to get a soda and passed by a group of young women, one of color, sitting around chatting. Having never seen them before I figured they were from a nearby (non-science) department, but then I started hearing snippets of their conversation -

"-- and I can't believe he's teaching it in Java."                            
"I know, what a ridiculous language to use for this material."

That's my kind of talk!

(Well, actually, I love Java, but you know what I mean).

still undecided.

i was so going to play it safe and go white....i had my mind made up.  i talked to my mom; she said white.  i saw this pic on brad ford's website and i thought....yep that looks fab (as if i could compare that kitchen to my own).

and then i saw these on his site.....and now i am back on greige.  i have a problem: it's called, i seriously cannot make up my mind for my own house.  it's pitiful (my husband told me to quit playing it safe w/ white...well maybe not that politely- he might have told me to grow a pair).  two days until the painter calls asking my color.  yikes!  do you have a favorite griege color??!

i also got this pic from my FAVORITE lighting company, urban electric, this AM....it's now my inspiration for my hallway.....i don't know if i can talk warren into painting the floor but i love it and the lights are killer.

i love browsing that site....it's full of inspiration.  hello, i love this light.  she needs to live in my house....

happy hump day!  off to stare at paint chips on my super bright kitchen walls....

Mobile Scholar: Part 3

I've thus far written two posts on how to turn my iPad into a computer. I am doing this both because I am too stingy to buy a MacBook Air and too stubborn* to give up.

My number one "killer app" has been the ability to work on papers from anywhere using LaTeX. I am now able to fully do this (provided the iPad has an internet connection). Here are step-by-step instructions for anyone interested in trying:

Step 1: Get Dropbox

This first step is very easy. Dropbox is cloud-based storage that works on every device under the sun, and is really, really fantastic. It's free up to 2 gigabytes, and you get 500 mb for every friend you invite. Unless your papers tend to have gigantic graphs and images, it's likely you'll never come close to that 2GB limit.

Step 2: Start your LaTeX paper on your computer

If you're familiar with LaTeX, this is also straightforward. If you are new to LaTeX, there is a bit of a learning curve but a lot of help out there. In particular, I highly recommend Lyx, which is a cross-platform WYSIWYG editor.

Get everything set up - your bibliography file, tex file, etc. Save it all to your Dropbox folder.

Step 3: Get latexmk going

Latexmk is, by far, the most brilliant piece of software ever written, ever.  If I could write a love letter to its author, John Collins, I would.

What this program does is sit happily in a directory watching for changes to any changes to your tex files... or any associated files (e.g., .bib files)... OR, any other tex files that your main paper references (e.g., chapter1.tex, chapter2.tex).

What does this mean? This means you can have something watching your dropbox folder all day and all night and automatically recompiles your pdf on the fly. Now we're gettin' somewhere.

I believe latexmk is now bundled with all the major TeX distributions. To run it, the magic command you want is:
    % latexmk -pdf -pvc mypaper.tex

Step 4: Get Tex Touch

Tex Touch is a program that lets you edit LaTeX files on your iPad.

I have to tell you, I am not deeply in love with this program because it is extremely clunky for a $9.99 app. (No multitasking support, sometimes crashes, has no syntax highlighting). BUT, it does the one thing no other piece of iOS software does - it understands the LaTeX workflow and syncs to Dropbox. It also sports an easily accessible and well-designed symbol editor so you don't have to go through 18 soft-keyboard screens to find an α.

Step 5 (Maybe?): Get Mendeley

I have Mendeley Lite on my iPad, and while it is also pretty clunky at least it's functional. While writing I can search my bibliography, export a citation in bibtex format (using the web view), plunk it into my .bib file in Tex Touch, and voila. A Mendeley -> DropBox .bib connection would be really nice, and if Mendeley opens up their API maybe I'll write one. In any case, I have high hopes for the Pro version of their iPad software.

That's it! I still would like offline compilation of LaTeX source on the iPad, but I figure by the time someone writes that I'll have bought a MacBook Air. :-)

Happy writing. If you end up trying any of this (or have any suggestions/questions), please drop a comment - I would love to hear how things have worked for you.

----
(*) Something that occurred to me recently - possibly one of the best skills you can have as a computer scientist is stubbornness. If you are tenacious and keep trying lots of different things and talking to lots of people until you can get something to work, you will do well in this field. Even if you can't get something to work in the end, just going through the process of trying is a great learning exercise.

Art + Multimedia

In December we visited a lecture about interaction between arts and sciences, namely between (primarily) visual arts and (again, primarily) multimedia studies (Russian page). The lecture was given by Asya Ablogina, who turned out to be a nice girl. Although she lacked any technical background, she was doing well. Surprisingly, there is a lot of artwork that exploits technical support in a witty manner, which I was unaware of, so the lousy stuff exhibited in the Moscow Museum of Modern Art is not everything one can do in this field!

The most interesting part was Asya's exposition of some masterpieces. Most of them were presented during 2009 Science as Suspense exhibit in Moscow (Russian). Nicolas Reeves is a famous Canadian architect, also known for his work on modelling biological systems. He used the output of biologically-inspired computer algorithms (such as genetic algorithms) to draw pictures. In Moscow he presented a project called Marching Floating Cubes: massive but light cubes float in the air. Their movements are controlled by tiny fans, although any little gust of wind can affect the movement. Each cube is equipped with an on-board computer, which helps to avoid collisions. The implemented algorithms are simple but stochastic, hence the behaviour is unpredictable. They are said to move like animal creatures. Here is the video:

A similar project was developed by Paul Granjon. He also tries to gift robots with animal behaviour. In the video below, robots are sexed, i.e. they are able to locate robots of the opposite sex and eventually end up in coitus. Another Paul's robot (the Smartbot, photo) creeps over the restricted space and always grumbles (just like Marvin!). I also enjoy the way Paul speaks:

The real idol in the sci-art community is Stelarc (see also his homepage, although it takes balls to get through the welcome page :). His talent is recognized by both scientists and artists (it is enough to mention he's an Honorary Professor of Arts and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon). He's best known for his experiments on his own body. For example, during a performance he allowed to control his body remotely over the Internet by muscle stimulation. Probably his favourite project is Prosthetic Head, which is in fact a 3D model of his own head. The head is learned from Stelarc's behaviour and speech, so it is able to communicate with people using colloquial information as well as non-verbal cues. It is interesting to try it in practice, but here is just a non-interactive demo video:

Stelarc is probably the only person on Earth who has three ears. In 2007 surgeons implanted an ear into his arm! It is not functioning now (just a piece of skin), but he plans to install an audio receiver into the ear and broadcast everything he hears over the Internet. I definitely recommend to look through his projects, there are decent ones.

Asya also presented her own works. She focus on different photographic techniques such as overexposure. Here are photos from her project Canvas of the Road compiled in a video. There is a play of words in Russian: the single word for canvas and road surface. On these photos car traces look like painter's strokes:

Another Asya's project is a short film series called Habitat. She showed only one episode with the title Habitat: MSU Main Building. The film was about a girl who is a PhD student in Moscow State University and described her place: a standard 8 sq.m. dorm room. The narrative was full of expressive epithets and metaphors about that awful room: the girl felt like in a cage, she also didn't like shared bathroom, etc. It's funny, because I live in a similar PhD student single room, and I'm quite happy with it, since I've been living 5 years in a shared room before. :)

The second lecturer, Vladimir Vishnyakov, presented his project called The Museum of Revived Photography. He used the photos of the XIX century to create image-based animation. The idea is technically simple: first segment people from the background, then use inpainting techniques to restore the background behind them, and animate the movements, but Vladimir referred to a programmer he works with as a real genius. In fact, all the stuff I post here varies from easy to moderately complex (except of Stelarc's projects), so you can do something similar too. The main problem is to come up with the concept. Come on then! ;)

Blinded Wheat Challenge

Self-experimentation can be an effective way to improve one's health*. One of the problems with diet self-experimentation is that it's difficult to know which changes are the direct result of eating a food, and which are the result of preconceived ideas about a food. For example, are you more likely to notice the fact that you're grumpy after drinking milk if you think milk makes people grumpy? Maybe you're grumpy every other day regardless of diet? Placebo effects and conscious/unconscious bias can lead us to erroneous conclusions.

The beauty of the scientific method is that it offers us effective tools to minimize this kind of bias. This is probably its main advantage over more subjective forms of inquiry**. One of the most effective tools in the scientific method's toolbox is a control. This is a measurement that's used to establish a baseline for comparison with the intervention, which is what you're interested in. Without a control measurement, the intervention measurement is typically meaningless. For example, if we give 100 people pills that cure belly button lint, we have to give a different group placebo (sugar) pills. Only the comparison between drug and placebo groups can tell us if the drug worked, because maybe the changing seasons, regular doctor's visits, or having your belly button examined once a week affects the likelihood of lint.

Another tool is called blinding. This is where the patient, and often the doctor and investigators, don't know which pills are placebo and which are drug. This minimizes bias on the part of the patient, and sometimes the doctor and investigators. If the patient knew he were receiving drug rather than placebo, that could influence the outcome. Likewise, investigators who aren't blinded while they're collecting data can unconsciously (or consciously) influence it.

Back to diet. I want to know if I react to wheat. I've been gluten-free for about a month. But if I eat a slice of bread, how can I be sure I'm not experiencing symptoms because I think I should? How about blinding and a non-gluten control?

Procedure for a Blinded Wheat Challenge

1. Find a friend who can help you.

2. Buy a loaf of wheat bread and a loaf of gluten-free bread.

3. Have your friend choose one of the loaves without telling you which he/she chose.

4. Have your friend take 1-3 slices, blend them with water in a blender until smooth. This is to eliminate differences in consistency that could allow you to determine what you're eating. Don't watch your friend do this-- you might recognize the loaf.

5. Pinch your nose and drink the "bread smoothie" (yum!). This is so that you can't identify the bread by taste. Rinse your mouth with water before releasing your nose. Record how you feel in the next few hours and days.

6. Wait a week. This is called a "washout period". Repeat the experiment with the second loaf, attempting to keep everything else about the experiment as similar as possible.

7. Compare how you felt each time. Have your friend "unblind" you by telling you which bread you ate on each day. If you experienced symptoms during the wheat challenge but not the control challenge, you may be sensitive to wheat.

If you want to take this to the next level of scientific rigor, repeat the procedure several times to see if the result is consistent. The larger the effect, the fewer times you need to repeat it to be confident in the result.


* Although it can also be disastrous. People who get into the most trouble are "extreme thinkers" who have a tendency to take an idea too far, e.g., avoid all animal foods, avoid all carbohydrate, avoid all fat, run two marathons a week, etc.

** More subjective forms of inquiry have their own advantages.

Fashion Tips, Part II

As promised, here are some specific professional dress tips for women. I am in no way a fashionista - I am a computer scientist - but I will pass along things that have worked for me. I should also note that I am all about low-maintenance everything - clothes, hair, shoes, etc. I want to optimize sleeping, research, and goofing off - not waking up three hours early to put on makeup and straighten my hair. (That'll be the day!). And I hate ironing.

The ultimate goal for professional dress for women (of all levels - from casual -> business casual -> formal attire) is to look classy without looking trashy. Most modern clothing designers make this damn near impossible, as they seem to think all we women ever want to do is to pick up guys at bars.

What's worked for me is to buy a few nice, key articles of clothing that are robust and hold up to being washed frequently. If I find an article of clothing that fits exceptionally well and looks well-made, I sometimes will buy several. (Because you can bet anything if you go back in a few months it won't be there!). Sometimes you spend a little more to get something well made, but it (usually) lasts longer than something cheapy, so it's worth it.

I've interleaved a few tips about dressing down outfits, since a few of you asked.

Stores

There are a few clothing stores that I always manage to find something at, and if you manage to get sales you can often swing some wonderful deals. These stores include:

- Ann Taylor  / Loft
- Chico
- JC Penny
- Sears
- Macy's
- Kohl's
- *sometimes* : Banana Republic / Gap / NY&Company/H&M/Target. Sometimes clothing from these places falls apart after two washes, so it's not always worth it, but sometimes you get lucky and have a great find.

Pants

I like to buy lined pants, because they can make one look professional without looking trashy or dowdy. Typically my favorite place to find these have been Ann Taylor.

In general my rule of thumb for pants is if another person can tell when you're flexing your gluteus maximus, they're probably too tight for a professional context.

Sometimes you need to spend a bit of money to get pants altered. If the pants are well-made and will last you a few years, this is money well-spent. I have two pairs of pants I wear both as part of a suit and also solo for less dressy occasions. I paid more to have them altered than I did the pants, but they fit exceptionally well and look good, so it was worth it.

Shirts

As I said, I'm all about low maintenance and comfortable, so most of the shirts I like to wear are made of fabrics that don't wrinkle, like lycra, and cotton knits. Chico sells some great, thick lycra shirts that are nice and can help conceal pudge if you have any. Their sizes run big, though, so if you have a more petite figure you may need to take the shirts in a bit.

I occasionally wear button-down shirts, but in my experience they are more trouble than they're worth, because you inevitably have to iron them. Some friends had good luck finding iron-free shirts at places like Brooks Brothers, but when I went there I found their shirts looked ridiculous on me. They felt like they were designed for men.

Sweaters are a great way to dress down fancier pants, if you don't want to look too formal but don't want to wear jeans. I like cotton turtleneck sweaters, or sometimes V-neck sweaters with a tank-top / cami on underneath them. Gap and H&M have served me well here - I've purchased a few thick cotton sweaters there that have lasted me for years.

Just like pants, it's important to get shirts that fit well, that are not too tight and not too low-cut. I have owned a few shirts over the years that were too tight for professional contexts, so I fixed them with a cardigan, jacket, or a pashmina.

Skirts and Dresses

I have no tips about skirts and dresses, as professional ones always seem to look ridiculous on me. And more importantly, panty hose and tights are far too high maintenance. One run and you're stressing out over nylons instead of, say, your conference talk. Not fun.

Jackets

Blazers are a great way to dress up jeans, so you can find a happy medium. I really like darker colors, such as black and dark brown. Definitely solids, though a light pinstripe is ok I suppose. I think corduroy blazers are great for men and women, regardless of whether they are in style or not - they just look nice.

Cardigans / open sweaters are a nice way to dress down fancier pants if you're worried they look to dressy. If you get one that is fitted, it will look professional without looking frumpy. (Here are some examples). Though I'll tell you, at my last job I always wore big frumpy sweaters because some of those machine rooms were cold!

Shoes

The most important thing about shoes is that you are comfortable. Again, shoe designers are seriously out to get us. I can't tell you how many shoe stores I visited over the holidays with my mother-in-law, and we both basically decided the shoe designers are Satan.

Shoe designers are satanic.

A few brands that maybe/sort of / sometimes feel comfortable are:  The Walking Company, Aerosole, Naturalizer. Sometimes you can find comfortable casual-dressy shoes at L.L. Bean, REI, and EMS. People that design shoes for hikers often have enough clue to design comfortable shoes that can be worn by white-collar office-warriors.

The only other rule for professional shoes is don't wear: furry boots, hiking boots, open-toed boots, flip-flops, or sneakers. Otherwise wear whatever you like.

Bags

Try to avoid using a backpack if at all possible. I'm aware that it's better for your back, especially if you are lugging around many things from place to place (laptop, papers, books, etc). Instead, there are nice wheely professional bags for women you can get. Sometimes people look at you funny wheeling something across an office building or campus, but you can just smile and say, "Bad back", and they'll leave you alone.

But if the wheely bag isn't appropriate for your context and you want to save your back (can't blame you), try to get a classy looking backpack. For example, select a bag from here. Several of these are perfectly reasonable to use in professional contexts.

Otherwise, if your travel gear is lightweight, really any shoulder bag will do. Just keep it simple and low-key. No bling.

Jewelery


Really wear whatever you like, just be sure it is tasteful and nondescript. Also be aware than anything with any sort of symbol or emblem on it will likely spurn discussion, which may or may not be a good thing.

Coats

I think wool coats with straight lines and nothing hanging off them are the most professional looking. I knew someone who always wore a fur coat to work and it always looked very strange to me. Sportsy jackets tend to look odd if you have dress pants on. (Or at least they do to me).

And that's all she wrote. I will try to do a post for the men sometime within the next few weeks.

kitchen painting

my kitchen is definitely a work in progress.  the previous owners had lots of green accents throughout the house and so the wall color made perfect sense.  however, with our stuff moved in, it kind of sticks out like a sore thumb.  i have until friday to make a decision and i keep flip flopping.  i can't decide whether to paint the cabinets white or go a greige (a light grey/ green color).  here are some of the kitchens that are inspiring me.  and i threw in a pic of our current kitchen for giggles...don't you love how i styled it!!  i mean, are those seriously bunny ears on the counter...see the kind of disaster i am living in!!??

speaking of kitchen, last night i had my inlaws over for supper (they live about 5 minutes away from us so it will probably be a weekly occurrence).  my parents had cooked a pizza the other weekend for me that i couldn't get out of my head and i was dying to try to make it....it's the strangest combination but divine- potato and leek pizza from the pioneer woman.  you have to try it- seriously!  luckily my inlaws know that i am a walking disaster case so when i dumped all the bacon on the floor that was suppose to go on the pizza, they just laughed and said we could always get take out!  luckily, i had more bacon to spare in the fridge and the pizza turned out good...at least everyone humored me and said that :)

TGIF

i sound like a broken record these days but i have too much on my plate right now....but i had to say hey and thank you for all of your comments and emails from wed's post.  they totally put a smile on my face and gave me that warm and fuzzy feeling inside to know that y'all are in the same boat as me!!   TGIF....i'm off to move piles around so painters can get into the kids' rooms.  have a wonderful weekend.

*images courtesy of love, thronton designers, make under my life, camille soulayrol, kerris dale design

Eating Wheat Gluten Causes Symptoms in Some People Who Don't Have Celiac Disease

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a condition characterized by the frequent occurrence of abdominal pain, diarrhea, constipation, bloating and/or gas. If that sounds like an extremely broad description, that's because it is. The word "syndrome" is medicalese for "we don't know what causes it." IBS seems to be a catch-all for various persistent digestive problems that aren't defined as separate disorders, and it has a very high prevalence: as high as 14 percent of people in the US, although the estimates depend on what diagnostic criteria are used (1). It can be brought on or exacerbated by several different types of stressors, including emotional stress and infection.

Maelán Fontes Villalba at Lund University recently forwarded me an interesting new paper in the American Journal of Gastroenterology (2). Dr. Jessica R. Biesiekierski and colleagues recruited 34 IBS patients who did not have celiac disease, but who felt they had benefited from going gluten-free in their daily lives*. All patients continued on their pre-study gluten-free diet, however, all participants were provided with two slices of gluten-free bread and one gluten-free muffin per day. The investigators added isolated wheat gluten to the bread and muffins of half the study group.

During the six weeks of the intervention, patients receiving the gluten-free food fared considerably better on nearly every symptom of IBS measured. The most striking difference was in tiredness-- the gluten-free group was much less tired on average than the gluten group. Interestingly, they found that a negative reaction to gluten was not necessarily accompanied by the presence of anti-gluten antibodies in the blood, which is a test often used to diagnose gluten sensitivity.

Here's what I take away from this study:

1. Wheat gluten can cause symptoms in susceptible people who do not have celiac disease.
2. A lack of circulating antibodies against gluten does not necessarily indicate a lack of gluten sensitivity.
   
3. People with mysterious digestive problems may want to try avoiding gluten for a while to see if it improves their symptoms**.
4. People with mysterious fatigue may want to try avoiding gluten.
   

A previous study in 1981 showed that feeding volunteers a large dose of gluten every day for 6 weeks caused adverse gastrointestinal effects, including inflammatory changes, in relatives of people with celiac disease, who did not themselves have celiac (3). Together, these two studies are the most solid evidence that gluten can be damaging in people without celiac disease, a topic that has not received much interest in the biomedical research community.

I don't expect everyone to benefit from avoiding gluten. But for those who are really sensitive, it can make a huge difference. Digestive, autoimmune and neurological disorders associate most strongly with gluten sensitivity. Avoiding gluten can be a fruitful thing to try in cases of mysterious chronic illness. We're two-thirds of the way through Gluten-Free January. I've been fastidiously avoiding gluten, as annoying as it's been at times***. Has anyone noticed a change in their health?


* 56% of volunteers carried HLA-DQ2 or DQ8 alleles, which is slightly higher than the general population. Nearly all people with celiac disease carry one of these two alleles. 28% of volunteers were positive for anti-gliadin IgA, which is higher than the general population.

** Some people feel they are reacting to the fructans in wheat, rather than the gluten. If a modest amount of onion causes the same symptoms as eating wheat, then that may be true. If not, then it's probably the gluten.

*** I'm usually about 95% gluten-free anyway. But when I want a real beer, I want one brewed with barley. And when I want Thai food or sushi, I don't worry about a little bit of wheat in the soy sauce. If a friend makes me food with gluten in it, I'll eat it and enjoy it. This month I'm 100% gluten-free though, because I can't in good conscience encourage my blog readership to try it if I'm not doing it myself. At the end of the month, I'm going to do a blinded gluten challenge (with a gluten-free control challenge) to see once and for all if I react to it. Stay tuned for more on that.

What was wiped? Part 1

Hello again Reader,

I've actually put an appointment on my calendar now to remind me to blog, let's see if reminders will ensure regular posts.This is a short beginning for part 1 to insure I meet these weekly updates.

Many times when you are working an investigation the question of spoliation will come up. In the most obvious scenarios of spoliation a suspect will use a tool that will to some extent wipe out his tracks. These tools come in three flavors:

1. Whole disk wipers: It's fairly obvious when this happens, though some suspects may tell you it's just encrypted. If they say that ask them what program they used to encrypt it and to please hand over the key.

2. File/directory wipers: If someone were to run a program such as bcwipe or eraser to delete files or directories the first thing these programs do is rename the file to prevent you from recovering what file was deleted. So if your suspect wiped 1,000 files you would find 1,000 randomly named files all seeming modified within seconds of each other on the disk from a different date. After renaming the file, it sets the time and after overwriting the contents of the file it sets the size to 0.

Here is a ftk imager view of a directory named temp with some random new files made:

Here is the same directory in ftk imager a second after wiping:

"How long these file stick around seems to vary by the file system. In older cases I found them months after the fact but on my Windows 7 system that I'm running ftk imager doing a view of my local physical drive some random files disappear in a couple seconds, which accounts for why we don't see 7 random files. " *This isn't exactly true, please see the update below* This wipe was done using bcwipe, the behavior of what wipers leave behind and how it runs on each OS and file system sounds like a good post for me to work on.

In part 2 we will go into system cleaners like CCleaner and some research into what they leave behind.

Update:

Looks like my disappearing wiped files are not a product of a different version of windows or the file system, it was the windows write cache. I made a couple of new files before and just wiped them immediately after, looks like they didn't actually get committed to the disk before I wiped them and thus would not be around afterwords.

To test this I downloaded a random set of source code from sourceforge, extracted it to a directory and then rebooted to make sure everything was flushed.

After rebooting I wiped seven files from a directory in the source tree and got seven wiped entries as expected:

As you can see, seven randomly named files all again with the date of 4/30/1986 and the time 11:43am. I guess this goes back to my last post, if something seems wrong double check your assumptions.

When I wipe the entire directory tree it then appears as an orphaned directory with all of the directory names and file names changed again to random letters with the same date as we saw before, except for the directories which remain the correct date (these times are in UTC so the date appears as 1/20/11):

i try

i try and i totally fail every time....
i want to be that mom that has her sh*t together and i try hard...but i am not.  i need to face the facts.  i am the mom that is running around w/ her head cut off.  it's a constant battle that i face every AM.  i just can't get organized.  it doesn't matter if i wake up 3 hrs before i have to get taylor to school, i am always racing around.  i am that mom, who doesn't read the calendar until i am emptying out her book bag on the way to school and notice that today is "wear white day" and tay has on bright pink....i'm the mom that sends her daughter to school in a dress, tights, and ankle boots on "gym day"....i'm the mom that the teacher has to call in the evening to go over the "dress code" and "the calendar/ schedule".....so please, all of you 'together' moms, tell me how you do it.  i need help :)

Your Daily Knuth

I keep meaning to write a script that greets me with a Knuth quote when I log in every morning, but I haven't had time.

Today while looking up something else I came across these two gems, though, and thought I'd share:

"Premature optimization is the root of all evil" 

and

"If you optimize everything, you will always be unhappy."

I sometimes think Knuth is like the Mae West of Computer Science. Or maybe Confucius. Which I guess makes Stallman... Sun Tzu? :-)

howdy.

it's been awhile.....
we have moved and are in our new house in a new town.... but right now, i am going to imagine that i am not surrounded by boxes, newspaper, and crap.  in fact, i wish i could find one of taylor's plastic wands.  i'd wave it and things would magically come out of the boxes, make their way to their proper places, the walls would be painted already, and the pictures would be hung.
and me....i'd be sitting with my feet up, watching it all happen w/ a hot cup of coffee or better yet, a big glass of red wine.
good news- my computer is back up w/ the internet- yippee!!!  so i'll be seeing a lot more of y'all :)

Jangan Sampai Cairan Empedu Jadi Batu
Selasa, 18 Januari 2011 | 10:35 WIB


KOMPAS.com - Anda sering merasakan nyeri di sekitar perut? Jika iya, boleh jadi, Anda tengah mengidap penyakit batu empedu. Penyakit batu empedu adalah mengendapnya kolesterol yang mengeras di dalam kantung empedu atau saluran kantung empedu manusia.

Tidak sedikit penderita penyakit batu empedu awalnya mengira bahwa sakit yang dideritanya hanya gangguan pencernaan biasa, seperti sakit lambung atau mag. Maklum, penyakit ini juga ditandai nyeri di bagian ulu hati. Ini terjadi lantaran pada kandung empedu, batu dapat menyebabkan peradangan yang disebut kolestitis akut.

Peradangan itu timbul karena adanya pecahan batu empedu di dalam saluran empedu yang menimbulkan rasa sakit. Batu-batu yang melalui kandung empedu dapat menyangkut di dalam hati dan saluran empedu, sehingga menghentikan aliran dari empedu ke dalam saluran pencernaan. Ada faktor lainnya yang memicu proses pembentukan batu empedu. Unsur ini bisa berupa protein yang terdapat pada cairan lendir yang dibentuk kandung empedu dalam jumlah kecil. Hal ini memungkinkan kolesterol, bilirubin, dan garam kalsium membentuk partikel seperti kristal padat.

Bentuk dan ukuran batu

Bentuk dari batu empedu bermacam-macam. Batu yang terbentuk dari kolesterol berwarna kuning dan mengkilat seperti minyak, batu yang terdiri dari pigmen bilirubin bisa berwarna hitam tetapi keras atau berwarna cokelat tua tapi rapuh. Ukurannya juga bermacam-macam. Mulai dari yang kecil hingga sebesar batu kerikil. Tapi, rata-rata berdiameter 1 cm - 2 cm.

Menurut Suhanto, Kepala Bidang Pelayanan Medis Rumahsakit Mediros, Jakarta, biasanya penyakit batu empedu menyerang kaum pria dan wanita yang berusia di atas 40 tahun. Namun begitu, Anda yang berusia di bawah 40 tahun sebaiknya juga berhati-hati. "Sebab, penyakit ini juga bisa menyerang pasien berusia 30 tahun ke atas. Penyakit ini juga tidak bergantung pada berat badan," kata dia.

Handrawan Nadesul, Konsultan Kesehatan di berbagai media, mengatakan, batu di kantung empedu terbentuk biasanya pada orang yang kelebihan kolesterol, pernah terjadi infeksi atau peradangan di kandung empedu akibat si pasien pernah menderita penyakit tifus. "Ada juga jenis kuman lain yang merangsang terbentuknya batu empedu," ajar Handrawan.

Dia menambahkan, penyakit batu empedu lebih terkenal dengan istilah 4 F, yakni female (wanita), forty (40 tahun), fat (gemuk), dan fertile (masa subur). "Orang yang terkena penyakit batu empedu biasanya berada dalam posisi dan kondisi tersebut," katanya.

Handrawan bilang, biasanya orang yang mengidap penyakit batu empedu pada awalnya tidak memiliki keluhan sakit. Ini terutama, jika batu empedu masih berukuran kecil, yakni sekitar 1 mm - 2 mm. "Keluhan baru timbul bila ukuran batu sudah besar, misalnya, 3 cm - 4 cm," katanya.

Nah, bagi Anda yang memiliki penyakit batu empedu, Handrawan menyarankan untuk segera berkonsultasi ke dokter. Pasalnya, penyakit ini bisa menyebabkan kematian pada penderitanya. "Jika batu menyumbat saluran empedu, maka penderitanya bisa terkena penyakit kuning ," katanya.

Selain itu, bila batunya sudah membesar atau melebihi ukuran kandung empedu, maka kandung empedu bisa pecah. Sehingga, cairan empedu bisa menjalar ke seluruh organ di perut. "Ini yang berbahaya dan bisa menimbulkan kematian. Karena itu, penyakit ini tidak bisa disepelekan oleh penderitanya," kata Handrawan. (Dikky Setiawan)


Alternatif Herbal Untuk Atasi Batu Empedu :
1. Minum : Kumis kucing, temulawak dan meniran. Dosis 3x1

dikombinasikan dengan

2.MENGHILANGKAN BATU EMPEDU SECARA ALAMIAH oleh Dr Lai Chiu-Nan
Ini telah berhasil bagi banyak orang. Apabila kejadian anda demikian juga, ayolah beritahu pada orang lain. Dr Chiu-Nan sendiri tak memungut biaya untuk informasinya ini, karena itu sebaiknya kita buat ini gratis juga.
Ganjarannya adalah bila ada orang yang karena informasi yang anda berikan menjadi sehat.
Batu empedu tak banyak dirisaukan orang, tapi sebenarnya semua perlu tahu karena kita hampir pasti mengindapnya. Apalagi karena batu empedu bisa berakhir dengan penyakit kanker. "Kanker sendiri tidak pernah muncul sebagai penyakit pertama" kata Dr Chiu-Nan.
"Umumnya ada penyakit lain yang mendahuluinya. Dalam penelitian di Tiongkok saya menemukan bacaan bahwa orang-orang yang terkena kanker biasanya ada banyak batu dalam tubuhnya.
Dalam kantung empedu hampir semua dari kita mengandung batu empedu.
Perbedaannya hanya dalam ukuran dan jumlah saja.. Gejala adanya batu empedu biasanya adalah perasaan penuh di perut ('nek, busung) sehabis makan. Rasanya kurang tuntas mencernakan makanan. Dalam kondisi parah ada tambahan rasa nyeri pada ginjal."
Bila anda menduga ada batu pada empedu anda, cobalah cara yang dianjurkan oleh Dr Chiu Nan untuk menghilangkannya secara alamiah. Pengobatan ini juga dapat dipakai bila ada keluhan gangguan hati, karena hati dan kandung empedu saling berkaitan.
Tata-cara pengobatannya adalah sebagai berikut:
1. Selama lima hari berturut-turut minumlah empat (4) gelas sari buah apel segar setiap hari, atau makanlah empat atau lima buah apel segar,
tergantung selera anda. Apel berkhasiat melembutkan batu empedu. Selama
masa ini anda boleh makan seperti biasa.
2. Pada hari ke-enam jangan makan malam. Jam 6 petang, telanlah satu sendok teh "Epsom salt" (magnesium sulfat, garam Inggris??) dengan segelas air hangat. Jam 8 malam lakukan hal yang sama. Magnesium sulfat berkhasiat membuka pembuluh-pembuluh kandung empedu. Jam 10 malam campurkan setengah cangkir minyak zaitun (atau minyak wijen) dengan setengah cangkir sari jeruk segar. Aduklah secukupnya sebelum diminum. Minyaknya melumasi batu2 untuk melancarkan keluarnyabatu empedu.
Keesokan hari Anda akan menemukan batu-batu berwarna kehijauan dalam limbah air besar anda. "Batu-batu ini biasanya mengambang," menurut Dr Chiu-Nan.
"Cobalah hitung jumlahnya. Ada yang jumlahnya 40, 50 sampai 100 batu.
Banyak sekali. Tanpa gejala apapun Anda mungkin memiliki ratusan batu yang berhasil dikeluarkan melalui metoda ini, walaupun mungkin tidak semuanya keluar.
Baik sekali apabila kita sekali-kali membersihkan kandung empedu kita.

1. Jenis Apel sebenarnya sama, cuma saya seneng yang manis... Kemaren aku makan Apel RRC yang sering diskon kalau di supermarket harga diskon per 100 gram 800-1000 (biasaya 1600)
2. Minum/makan apel selama 1 hari 4 (rata2) lima juga boleh.
3. Sebelumnya aku minum Jus asli apel. Cuma butuh waktu untuk mebuatnya.
Akhirnya selama 5 hari aku makan apel seger dari kulkas, kulitnya aku buang. Karena apel sekarang banyak yang dikasih lapisan lilin dan terkontaminasi sama pestisida... jadi aku buang kulitya, lalu aku potong kecil..dan dimasukkan ke kulkas...jadi saat kita mau makan, apelnya masih seger dan dingin.
4. Garam Inggris beli di apotik harga Rp2.500 (Tempat obat)
5. Minyak Zaitun kalau kita ke Supermarket namanya Olive Oil, harga 25-30 ribu satu botol. Di Apotek juga ada, aku beli di sana karena dekat rumah.
Guna Jeruk agar kita tidak muntah saat minum Minyak Zaitun, Jadi aduk yang rata...karena sebelumnya adukanku tidak rata...sehingga eneg, ..lalu aduk lagi biar tercampur dengan rata..karena minyak dan jeruk tidak bersatu atau Berat Jenisnya beda...

Pokoknya Subhanallah. .. 3 Dokter suruh aku Operasi... dengan treatment ini, keluar batunya.

"Orang yang hanya memikirkan diri sendiri, akan hidup sebagai orang kerdil dan mati sebagai orang kerdil. Tetapi orang yang mau memikirkan orang lain, ia akan
menjadi orang besar dan mati sebagai orang besar”. (Sayyid Qutb)

Room for Failure

Back long ago when I was a wee undergraduate lass, there was a mathematics professor at my university, let's call him Smith. I have no idea what caliber of researcher Professor Smith was back then, looking now at his citation count in Google Scholar I'm not feeling impressed, but maybe those sorts of numbers are more common for Math.

We undergraduates knew Professor Smith not for his mathematical brilliance, but for his tendency to insult people when they came to his office hours and asked questions. I.e., "How could you not know that? You're stupid." To my knowledge he was completely gender-egalitarian in doling out insults, in fact I first heard about his behavior from a male student.

Yesterday when I read Amy Chau's WSJ article, "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior", I thought back to Professor Smith. In those days we all though Professor Smith was a jerk with no social skills, a demotivator, and a poor excuse for an educator. But it occurs to me - maybe he was tough on us because he expected us to be top notch students, and thought we should be pushing ourselves harder. Maybe he came from a cultural background where calling people stupid is acceptable practice and he missed the memo that it is Not Okay in the US.

Growing up, I was lucky to have parents who did not flip out when I got a low grade, and teachers who were always respectful and kind towards me. I did hear tales of some people whose parents would flip out when they failed a test, and I do wonder what effect that has on the developing mind. Does it lead students to cheat? Commit acts of self-harm when they fail? Drop out of school entirely? (I have no doubt it is a major contributor to grade-grubbing).

We seem to stress measured, quantifiable success both in education and in science - receiving high scores, publishing positive results. But I really wish there was more room for (and encouragement of) failure. I wish more stories were told about how a lot of good science comes out of making mistakes, or how a lot of brilliant thinkers flunked out of school.

Once I gave a talk and a young student came up to me and said, "Thank you so much for telling us about the mistakes you made in your research. I've never seen anyone do that before." I was astonished. It just always seemed like the honest thing to do.

New blog design

Happy Sunday,
hope you enjoy the new blog design as much as I do. I've added some facebook/twitter buttons as well to make things easier for those of you already sharing, thanks btw. Looking for the next blog to be up Tuesday.

The gift of declining service

On reflection, I feel like I should clarify yesterday's post a bit. I was mostly targeting the post toward early-career researchers (ECRs). I think a well-established researcher is in a great position to take on lots of service tasks, and at my current institution that is most certainly how things are done. This division of labor ideally frees the ECRs to focus almost exclusively on doing their research, which I think they should definitely take advantage of.

The problem is, as an ECR it can often be difficult to know in advance which service tasks will help one further their research agenda and which ones will just be distractors. One example of this is paper reviewing. The first time an ECR gets a request to a review a paper it's really exciting and flattering, particularly when it's a high-profile publication venue or high-profile editor/PC member sending the invitation. If the ECR is really new to the research world, they may not yet know what they are and are not interested in, they may not yet know the literature. It's also a great way to keep up with the field. So frequently saying yes to review requests is often extremely helpful at first. As the ECR progresses in their career they start to begin to improve at filtering the good papers from the bad; however, they may not have learned to start declining the bad ones. Bad papers often take longer to review than good ones, especially as an ECR who thinks they need to also copy edit the whole thing.

Conference organization is another example. At first, the ECR is flattered to be invited to help with conference organization. Great way to meet people, to network, etc. But then hours, and hours, and hours go by. Weeks and weeks of time sending emails, preparing budgets, booking rooms, doing all of these things that have absolutely nothing directly related to one's current research. In my experience doing this when I was an ECR, the very best thing that happened was that maybe three more people knew my name. It was fantastic to help out all the people I helped, but it did not help my research career. Who knows, maybe three years from now someone will say, "Oh, yeah, Ada! Didn't she order tables for our conference banquet three years ago? What a sport - let's nominate her for best paper award!", but I rather doubt it.

Mostly, as an ECR, you want to take advantage of this remarkable gift senior researchers are giving you - a chance to do uninterrupted research. A chance to present at and enjoy international conferences without having to do anything remarkable other than show up. It's hard to just accept this gift - you want to give something back. But the best way to give back as an ECR is to publish some kickass results. This makes everyone in your management chain look good, it makes your institution look good, it makes your funding agency look good, and it makes your research community look good. That's how you can best "give back" at this stage.

I'm not suggesting one says "no" to every service request - certainly many tasks are fun, rewarding, and worth doing. But it's ok to consider these requests carefully before accepting, and viewing them with a bit of a selfish eye for how a particular activity might be useful to you in the long run research-wise. For example, I know of people who do CS Education research and can turn outreach events into data gathering exercises, or HCI people who turn administrative meetings into studies of workflow and technology use. (Maybe this is harder if you're, say, a Compilers gal, but you never know). Anyway, it's just good to keep these things in mind, particularly for the tasks that suck up a lot of your time.

The Word is No

This article in IHE reminded me of an important point I'd like to emphasize in this here blog:

If you are interested in a research career

And someone asks you do something that does not directly help your research career

Just say No!

This is yet another critical survival skill that often goes unmentioned. Sometimes it is difficult to tell what helps your research career and what doesn't, but in the end, it's going to be the quality and quantity of your publications. Occasionally service to your community may give you a slight edge in the review process, but in general it's unlikely to make much of a difference. (While good writing may compensate for mediocre research, I've yet to see service do the same thing).

I think a lot of people are afraid that if they don't say "Yes" to everything people will think poorly of them. In my experience this has not been the case. In fact, if anything, it reflects that one is a mature researcher who knows their limits and can manage their time well.

Research takes time - uninterrupted blocks of time where you can think, write, and do. If you are interrupted frequently it's hard to gain traction while at the office and tempting to procrastinate. But the "work at night/weekends" solution has its own set of distractions that also make finding uninterrupted blocks of time difficult (housework, family, blogging :-), pets).

To help learn to say oh-nay, I will share one of my favorite Sesame Street videos, in all its 1980s splendor:

Does Dietary Saturated Fat Increase Blood Cholesterol? An Informal Review of Observational Studies

The diet-heart hypothesis states three things:

1. Dietary saturated fat increases blood cholesterol
2. Elevated blood cholesterol increases the risk of having a heart attack
3. Therefore, dietary saturated fat increases the risk of having a heart attack

To evaluate the second contention, investigators have examined the relationship between blood cholesterol and heart attack risk. Many studies including MRFIT have shown that the two are related (1):

The relationship becomes much more complex when you consider lipoprotein subtypes, density and oxidation level, among other factors, but at the very least there is an association between habitual blood cholesterol level and heart attack risk. This is what you would want to see if your hypothesis states that high blood cholesterol causes heart attacks.

Now let's turn to the first contention, the hypothesis that dietary saturated fat increases serum cholesterol. This idea is so deeply ingrained in the scientific literature that many authors don't even bother providing references for it anymore. When references are provided, they nearly always point to the same type of study: short-term controlled diet trials, in which volunteers are fed different fats for 2-13 weeks and their blood cholesterol measured (2)*. These studies show that saturated fat increases both LDL cholesterol ("bad cholesterol") and HDL cholesterol ("good cholesterol"), but typically the former more than the latter.  These are the studies on which the diet-heart hypothesis was built.

But now we have a problem. Nearly every high-quality (prospective) observational study ever conducted found that saturated fat intake is not associated with heart attack risk (3). So if saturated fat increases blood cholesterol, and higher blood cholesterol is associated with an increased risk of having a heart attack, then why don't people who eat more saturated fat have more heart attacks?

I'll begin to answer that question with another question: why do researchers almost never cite observational studies to support the idea that dietary saturated fat increases blood cholesterol? Surely if the hypothesis is correct, then people who habitually eat a lot of saturated fat should have high cholesterol, right? One reason may be that in most instances, when researchers have looked for a relationship between habitual saturated fat intake and blood cholesterol, it has been very small or nonexistent. Those findings are rarely cited, but let's have a look...

The Studies

It's difficult to do a complete accounting of these studies, but I've done my best to round them up. I can't claim this post is comprehensive, but I doubt I missed very many, and I certainly didn't exclude any that I came across. If you know of any I missed, please add them to the comments.  [UPDATE 4-2012: I did miss several studies, although they're basically consistent with the conclusion I came to here.  I plan to update this post with the new references at some point.]

The earliest and perhaps most interesting study I found was published in the British Medical Journal in 1963 and is titled "Diet and Plasma Cholesterol in 99 Bank Men" (4). Investigators asked volunteers to weigh all food consumed at home for 1-2 weeks, and describe in detail all food consumed away from home. Compliance was good. This dietary accounting method is much more accurate than in most observational studies today**. Animal fat intake ranged from 55 to 173 grams per day, and blood cholesterol ranged from 154 to 324 mg/dL, yet there was no relationship whatsoever between the two. I'm looking at a graph of animal fat intake vs. blood cholesterol as I write this, and it looks like someone shot it with a shotgun at 50 yards. They analyzed the data every which way, but were never able to squeeze even a hint of an association out of it:

Making the most out of the data in other ways- for example, by analysis of the men very stable in their diets, or in whom weighing of food intake was maximal, or where blood was taken close to the diet [measurement]- did not increase the correlation. Because the correlation coefficient is almost as often negative as positive, moreover, what is being discussed mostly is the absence of association, not merely association that is unexpectedly small.

The next study to discuss is the 1976 Tecumseh study (5). This was a large cardiovascular observational study conducted in Tecumseh, Michigan, which is often used as the basis for comparison for other cardiovascular studies in the literature. Using the 24 hour dietary recall method, including an analysis of saturated fat, the investigators found that:

Cholesterol and triglyceride levels were unrelated to quality, quantity, or proportions of fat, carbohydrate or protein consumed in the 24-hr recall period.

They also noted that the result was consistent with what had been reported in other previously published studies, including the Evans county study (6), the massive Israel Ischemic Heart Disease Study (7) and the Framingham study. One of the longest-running, most comprehensive and most highly cited observational studies, the Framingham study was organized by Harvard investigators and continues to this day. When investigators analyzed the relationship between saturated fat intake, serum cholesterol and heart attack risk, they were so disappointed that they never formally published the results. We know from multiple sources that they found no significant relationship between saturated fat intake and blood cholesterol or heart attack risk***.

The next study is the Bogalusa Heart Study, published in 1978, which studied the diet and health of 10 year old American children (8). This study found an association by one statistical method, and none by a second method****. They found that the dietary factors they analyzed explained no more than 4% of the variation in blood cholesterol. Overall, I think this study lends very little support to the hypothesis.

Next is the Western Electric study, published in 1981 (9). This study found an association between saturated fat intake and blood cholesterol in middle-aged men in Chicago. However, the correlation was small, and there was no association between saturated fat intake and heart attack deaths. They cited two other studies that found an association between dietary saturated fat and blood cholesterol (and did not cite any of the numerous studies that found no association). One was a very small study conducted in young men doing research in Antarctica, which did not measure saturated fat but found an association between total fat intake and blood cholesterol (10). The other studied Japanese (Nagasaki and Hiroshima) and Japanese Americans in Japan, Hawai'i and California respectively (11).

This study requires some discussion. Published in 1973, it found a correlation between saturated fat intake and blood cholesterol in Japan, Hawai'i but not in California. The strongest association was in Japan, where going from 5 to 75 g/day of saturated fat (a 15-fold change!) was associated with an increase in blood cholesterol from about 175 to 200 mg/dL. However, I don't think this study offers much support to the hypothesis upon closer examination. Food intake in Japan was collected by 24-hour recall in 1965-1967, when the diet was roughly 3/4 white rice by calories. The lower limit of saturated fat intake in Japan was 5g/day, 1/12th what was typically eaten in Hawai'i and California, and the Japanese average was 16g, with most people falling below 10g. That is an extraordinarily low saturated fat intake. I think a significant portion of the Japanese in this study, living in the war-ravaged cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, were over-reliant on white rice and had a very peculiar and perhaps deficient diet.  Also, what is the difference between a diet with 5 and 75 grams of saturated fat per day?  Those diets are probably very different, in many other ways than their saturated fat content.

In Japanese-Americans living in Hawai'i, over a range of saturated fat intakes between 5 and 110 g/day, cholesterol went from 210 to 220 mg/dL. That was statistically significant but it's not exactly knocking my socks off, considering it's a 22-fold difference in saturated fat intake. In California, going from 15 to 110 g/day of saturated fat (7.3-fold change) was not associated with a change in blood cholesterol. Blood cholesterol was 20-30 mg/dL lower in Japan than in Hawai'i or California at any given level of saturated fat intake (e.g., Japanese eating 30g per day vs. Hawai'ians eating 30g per day). I think it's probable that saturated fat is not the relevant factor here, or at least it's much less influential than other factors. An equally plausible explanation is that people in the very low range of saturated fat intake are the rural poor who eat a  diet that differs in many ways from the diets at the upper end of the range, and other aspects of lifestyle such as physical activity also differ.

The most recent study was the Health Professional Follow-up study, published in 1996 (12). This was a massive, well funded study that found no relationship between saturated fat intake and blood cholesterol.

Conclusion

Of all the studies I came across, only the Western Electric study found a clear association between habitual saturated fat intake and blood cholesterol, and even that association was weak. The Bogalusa Heart study and the Japanese study provided inconsistent evidence for a weak association. The other studies I cited, including the bank workers' study, the Tecumseh study, the Evans county study, the Israel Ischemic Heart study, the Framingham study and the Health Professionals Follow-up study, found no association between the two factors.

Overall, the literature does not offer much support for the idea that long term saturated fat intake has a significant effect on the concentration of blood cholesterol in humans. If it's a factor at all, it must be rather weak. It may be that the diet-heart hypothesis rests in part on an over-reliance on the results of short-term controlled feeding studies.  It would be nice to see this discussed more often (or at all) in the scientific literature.  It is worth pointing out that the method used to collect diet information in most of these studies, the food frequency questionnaire, is not particularly accurate, so it's possible that there is a lot of variability inherent to the measurement that is partially masking an association.  In any case, these controlled studies have typically shown that saturated fat increases both LDL and HDL, so even if saturated fat did have a modest long-term effect on blood cholesterol, as hinted at by some of the observational studies, its effect on heart attack risk would still be difficult to predict.

The Diet-heart Hypothesis: Stuck at the Starting Gate
Animal Models of Atherosclerosis: LDL


* As a side note, many of these studies were of poor quality, and were designed in ways that artificially inflated the effects of saturated fat on blood lipids. For example, using a run-in period high in linoleic acid, or comparing a saturated fat-rich diet to a linoleic acid-rich diet, and attributing the differences in blood cholesterol to the saturated fat. Some of them used hydrogenated seed oils as the saturated fat. Although not always consistent, I do think that overall these studies support the idea that saturated fat does have a modest ability to increase blood cholesterol in the short term.

** Although I would love to hear comments from anyone who has done controlled diet trials. I'm sure this method had flaws, as it was applied in the 1960s.

*** Reference cited in the Tecumseh paper: Kannel, W et al. The Framingham Study. An epidemiological Investigation of Cardiovascular Diseases. Section 24: The Framingham Diet Study: Diet and the Regulation of Serum Cholesterol. US Government Printing Office, 1970.

**** Table 5 shows that the Pearson correlation coefficient for saturated fat intake vs. blood cholesterol is not significant; table 6 shows that children in the two highest tertiles of blood cholesterol have a significantly higher intake of saturated fat, unsaturated fat, total fat and sodium than the lowest tertile. The relationship between saturated fat and blood cholesterol shows no evidence of dose-dependence (cholesterol tertiles= 15.6g, 18.4g, 18.5g saturated fat). The investigators did not attempt to adjust for confounding factors.