Posts Tagged health
Two-level factorial experimentation might make music for my ears
Posted by mark in Uncategorized, Wellness, design of experiments on May 9th, 2010
I am a fan of classical music – it soothes my mind and lifts my spirits. Maybe I’m deluded, but I swear there’s a Mozart effect* on my brain. However, a big monkey wrench comes flying in on my blissful state when my stereo speaker (always only one of the two) suddenly goes into a hissy fit. I’ve tried a number of things on a hit-or-miss basis and failed to find the culprit. At this point I think it’s most likely the receiver itself – a Yamaha RX496. However, before spending the money to replace it, I’d like to rule out a number of other factors:
- Speaker set: A vs B
- Speaker wire: Thin vs Thick.
- Source: CD vs FM-Radio
- Speaker: Left vs Right.
It’s very possible that an interaction of two or more factors may be causing the problem, so to cover all bases I need to do all 16 possible combinations (2^4). But, aside from the work this involves for all the switching around of parts and settings, I am stymied by the failure being so sporadic.
Anyways, I feel better now having vented this to my blog while listening to some soothing Sunday choir music by the Dale Warland Singers on the local classical radio station. I’m taking no chances: It’s playing on my backup Panasonic SA-EN25 bookshelf system.
*Vastly over-rated according to this report by the Skeptic’s Dictionary.
Pushing the limits on alcohol levels for holiday cheer – higher the better (?)
Posted by mark in Uncategorized, Wellness on December 24th, 2009
Just in time for holiday gift-givers to the guy who already owns everything, Boston Beer Company (BBC) — brewer of Sam Adams lager — announced this year that they’d achieved new heights for alcohol content – over 25 percent by volume. Alcohol levels traditionally have been capped at the 14% level due to natural limits of the yeast that drive fermentation. However, the beer boffins at BBC applied their wits to the zymurgy and came up with “Utopia,” which can be purchased at $599.99 a mini-kettle via this internet purveyor (warning: it’s banned in 13 states!). Otherwise you can await the next batch of ten thousand bottles or so of this potent beer to emerge in two years from the 15-year aging cycle.*
Perhaps this holiday season you may restrict yourself to tamer drinks than high-alcohol beer, such as the traditional eggnog — a “sweetened dairy-based beverage made with milk, cream, sugar, beaten eggs (which gives it a frothy texture), and flavored with ground cinnamon” (according to Wikipedia). However, my plans to pick up our annual eggnog after Thanksgiving were dashed after listening to a recent radio broadcast of NPR’s Science Friday by Ira Flatow. They warned about people (like me) risking salmonella-induced food poisoning by milking their ‘nog clear through Christmas. The show posted this video reporting results from microbiologist Vince Fischetti on his challenge tests** in a lab at the Rockefeller University (RU). I’ve seen these at food clients of Stat-Ease and they gross me out, so I know the end result of dosing up a dairy product with spoilage organisms and pathogens cannot be pretty. Fischetti compared the results after one month of storing a spiked eggnog made by a traditional RU recipe (equal parts bourbon and rum to a 20 % alcohol level) versus one purchased commercially (no alcohol). See the outcome by watching the video – it may encourage you to keep a bottle of spirits on hand. (I’ve got a supply of tequila – just in case.) Being a devotee of DOE, I must say that Fischetti’s findings appear to be based only on sample-size 1. But to his credit, he expresses the desire for grant money leading to more definitive studies.
So whether you hoist a beer or a ‘cheered-up’ glass of eggnog to give your seasonal salute to your friends and family, here’s hoping you all a happy holiday!
*Source for news about high-alcohol beer: 11/30/09 article by Russell Contreras of the Associated Press, seen here as published by the Huffington Post.
** For all the gory details see this posting of Microbiological Challenge Testing by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT). The “Phoenix” phenomenon is particularly worrying (lethal bugs rising from the ashes of sterilization).
The State of happiness
Posted by mark in Uncategorized, Wellness on December 20th, 2009
Those of you American citizens who (like me) enjoy our unalienable pursuit of happiness should see where your home State ranks in this list presented by economists Andrew Oswald and Stephen Wu.
Our local newspaper headlined this report with the suggestion that we Minnesotans “try living in a sunnier State.” I have a hard time arguing with moving to Hawaii or Florida – both near the top the Oswald-Wu list. Louisiana (#1) is a good choice too, I think, despite the setback of Hurricane Katrina. I spent time there and in the neighboring State of Mississippi (#7) last March – a great time to get out of Minnesota (#26). However, I really do enjoy our winters here in the northernmost part of the lower 48. At this time of the year our sun sits nearly at its lowest point (Winter solstice being mid-day tomorrow), which makes any rays one can catch all the more dear.
This morning a little Canadian ‘clipper’ topped off our existing blanket of snow with another inch of sun-sparkled crystals. It was good to be outdoors walking the dog through our little “Sunwood” park of evergreens again after taking a little break on our daily strolls last week due to the bitter cold. Maybe it was just as well we stayed home because a cougar came through our neighborhood (called “Croixwood”) as evidenced by the huge paw print pictured here . The cougar was last sighted in Wisconsin. My guess is that this cat is headed for Florida. =^.^=
Fair food follies – sticking on calories at a prodigious rate
The weather here in Minnesota has been incredibly clement this summer – encouraging more State Fair goers than ever before. The total for the dozen days will likely break the record, now approaching nearly 2 million visits!
My wife and I went for a second time yesterday. Thanks to a tip from my son, I found healthier food fare this time around – a pot-roast sundae (savory roast beef atop a scoop of mashed potatoes mixed with corn – yum!). On our first visit I succumbed to the siren call of a vendor selling deep-fat fried Hostess Twinkies on a stick, to which I compounded the calories by agreeing to it being dipped in chocolate and powdered with sugar. You can see this terrifically calorific confection pictured alongside a free yardstick — a mandatory pickup for any serious fairgoer.
I avoided the bacon on a stick dipped in chocolate at the advice of my daughter, who tried it last year. She worked the Haunted House at the last two Minnesota State Fairs and ate just about everything on a stick. My wife ate a piece of corn on a stick and part of a foot-long corn-dog on a stick. That looked good to me, but I was already satiated by my second sundae — the pot roast: I’d already eaten an ice-cream sundae with rhubarb and strawberries (highly recommended by my colleague Pat).
Several years ago I ate a deep-fat fried Snicker’s candy bar on a stick. Based on a sample size of two, I advice not eating any dessert confection that’s been deep-fat fried. I really think this can be hazardous to one’s health, especially on an empty stomach. However, if you like to live dangerously culinary-wise, see the recipes at the end of this report from the Seattle-Post Intelligencer on the Puyallap Fair. (“Puyallup” does not sound too appetizing, though, does it?)
Walk fast to stay ahead of the grim reaper
Mark (in blue) blocked by slow-paced tourists
I added another 10 miles to my Minnesota State Park trail tally this weekend, leaving me only a few more treks short of the century mark and another patch from the Hiking Club.
My idea of a good walk is moving at the briskest pace possible that can be sustained indefinitely. That really gets my blood pumping and thus it is most invigorating. Besides, then I get to more places faster. The tricky part is getting around those who prefer a more leisurely stroll, such as the tourists who impeded my ”push hike” to the Mendenhall Glacier outside Juneau, Alaska last year.
Some people I know have questioned my lust for long striding, but a recent report by gerontologists provides support for fast walking – it adds as many as 15 years to one’s life. Specifically, a 74-year old who walks at a gait of 1.4 meters per second (3.1 miles per hour) is more than twice as likely to be alive in 10 years than those oldsters who dawdle at 0.4 m/s (0.9 mph). Now that’s a stat for getting to where you’re going “pdq” (pretty darn quick).*
“Walk steadily and with a purpose. The wandering man knows of certain ancients, far gone in years, who have staved off infirmities and dissolution by earnest walking, hale fellows close upon eighty and ninety, but brisk as boys.”
- Charles Dickens
*Disclaimer: A more logical conclusion is that anyone who can walk this fast at age 74 must be very healthy – possibly just by luck and good genes. Thus, high gait speed is correlated with long life, not the cause of it.
USA health care system “Pareto-inefficient”?
Being a Certified Quality Engineer (CQE) I am well-versed in the Pareto Principle – a term coined by quality guru Joseph Juran for what’s commonly known as the 80-20 rule. When I was the team leader for manufacturing improvement projects, I’d start by categorizing causes for failure and graphing them on an ordered bar chart — most to least, while keeping a running tally on the accumulation in terms of percent. (See this primer on Pareto by the American Society of Quality.) Typically the first 20 percent of causes created 80 percent of the failures – that’s where I first focused the firepower of my quality team.
Today I learned of another concept attributed to the great Italian economist*: Pareto inefficiency. The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics explains that a “Pareto-optimal allocation of resources is achieved when it is not possible to make anyone better off without making someone else worse off.” I found this detailing by The New School which is too much for me to completely digest, but my attention was caught by this heads up:
“An economy can be Pareto-optimal, yet still ‘perfectly disgusting’ by any ethical standards.”
– Harvard Economics Professor Amartya Sen (1970)
So, while I am enticed by the idea that we can make most everyone (80 percent?) better off without making the others (20 percent?) worse off, I remain skeptical. However, having seen what a focused quality improvement team can do with the aid of Pareto charts at a micro level, I remain hopeful that some big strides can be made at the macro level for health care nationwide.
Do mental workouts keep your mind sharp?
Yesterday when I saw a Christmas card in our post-box, I wondered who went right down to the wire with their mailings this year. It was my last card returned for lack of address. I only put the name on the envelope — no postal address. Could this be a sign of my mental decline after age 50? Earlier this month (Dec. 2), I watched NBC’s “Saturday Today” with interest as a fellow only a few years older than me took a test for his brain age. He was horrified to be rated in his ’80′s mentally, but after a session of exercises prescribed by Dr. Gary Small, director of UCLA’s Center on Aging, this guy got down to near the ideal of 20 years of brain age.
The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives. – William James (1893)
According to an article by Debbie Geiger of Best of New Orleans, Dr. Small recommends cross-training for the brain, for example by solving visual mazes with your right-brain and completing crossword puzzles with your left. To facilitate mental workouts, you could make use of resources on the internet, such as Happy Neuron, or buy a new computer game by Nintendo called Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day! It includes Sudoku math puzzles and word quizzes, and the software tracks your progress over time. More recently the game-maker released Big Brain Academy (see review by Walter Mossberg of the Chicago Sun-Times). Both of these Nintendo games are based on the theories of Japanese brain researcher Ryuta Kawashima. Ironically, he initially earned the ire of the software publishers by claiming that their computer games stunted brain development.
It seems prudent that, before investing money in software and time to do mental exercises, one should see whether scientific evidence provides any support for such expenditures. This week the Washington Post reported positively on mental exercise based on a randomized controlled trial detailed in the Dec. 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. It involved several thousand aging adults (over 65 years) who were divided into groups trained for memory, reasoning, and spead processing. Compared to a control group that received no brain training, immediate improvements were seen by most individuals. However, after five years (with some ‘booster training’ along the way), the effect was only significant for the reasoning group.
These results stike me as being somewhat ambiguous over the long haul. For a more balanced view, I recommend reading Mental Exercise and Mental Aging Evaluating the Validity of the “Use It or Lose It” Hypothesis by Timothy A. Salthouse, which appeared in the March 2006 of Perspectives on Psychological Science. This is a very detailed article that thoroughly reviews relevant studies. In the end, the author’s professional opinion is that the benefits of mental exercise hypothesis stem more from optimistic hope than empirical reality. However he suggests that, one should “continue to engage in mentally stimulating activities because even if there is not yet evidence that it has beneficial effects in slowing the rate of age-related decline in cognitive functioning, there is no evidence that it has any harmful effects, the activities are often enjoyable and thus may contribute to a higher quality of life, and engagement in cognitively demanding activities serves as an existence proof — if you can still do it, then you know that you have not yet lost it.” Sounds good to me, but then what do I know (other than what I knew at age 20-25)?
Stress as factor for cardiac arrest felled along with author who did not sweat the small stuff?
I’m a hard-working guy who suffered a heart attack at age 51 despite not smoking, and staying in shape via regular exercise. Although it was hard to overlook the genetic factor of my younger brother preceding me with his own myocardial infarction (as the cardiologists refer to it), many acquaintances figured that both of us probably created our own problem by being too stressed. After reading this morning that Richard Carlson, author of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, passed away on Wednesday due to cardiac arrest, I feel less sure than ever that stress creates heart problems. Ironically at this time just before Christmas, Carlson, only 45 years of age, died en route to an a New York city promotional appearance for his new book Don’t Get Scrooged: How to Thrive in a World Full of Obnoxious, Incompetent, Arrogant and Downright Mean-Spirited People.
The American Heat Association in their detailing of Risk Factors and Coronary Heart Disease puts stress near the bottom of the list and speculates that people suffering from this may overeat, start smoking or smoke more than they otherwise would — all more likely to create problems than stress itself. The most stress that I ever experienced was driving into Manhattan for a Broadway play and getting stuck in a traffic jam entering the Lincoln Tunnel. I made the mistake of being ‘Minnesota nice’ by letting someone wedge into line ahead of me. This precipitated widespread honking of horns from irate New Yorkers waiting impatiently all around me. A cursory internet search on stress studies dredged up Exposure to New York City as a Risk Factor for Heart Attack Mortality. It seems that I cannot yet rest my case against stress being a factor for causing heart problems, especially since Carlson was heading for New York when he suffered his cardiac arrest. 
Drinking twice as much reduces heart attack by factor of three?
After suffering a mild heart attack (an oxymoron!) a few years ago, I asked the cardiologist if it’s true that a glass of red wine a day keeps the myocardial infarctions away. He said “yes.” What about white, I wondered. “That works too,” said he. Encouraged by this, I wondered if beer might work too. The answer was affirmative. Next I questioned whether two drinks might be even better. After that got endorsed by the cardiologist, I quit while I was ahead. I’ve enjoyed one glass of beer or wine, and occasionally a second helping, every day since. Life is good!
Today I was heartened to see in the HeartCenterOnline Newsletter that a study by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston indicates that two drinks daily help men avoid heart attack. At first glance at the following detail I thought I ought to have more than two drinks:
“There were 9 heart attacks in a group of 714 men who drank more than two drinks daily, and 34 in a group of 2,252 who drank less than two a day.” Unfortunately, if you do the math and calculate the percents by comparison, this statistic becomes a lot less compelling for those who like their liquor. I am holding the line at one drink every day for sure and two at the most, but only when I want to really live it up.