The China Study II: A look at mortality in the 35-69 and 70-79 age ranges

This post is based on an analysis of a subset of the China Study II data, using HealthCorrelator for Excel (HCE), which is publicly available for download and use on a free trial basis. You can access the original data on the HCE web site, under “Sample datasets”.HCE was designed to be used with small and individual personal datasets, but it can also be used with larger datasets for multiple individuals.This analysis focuses on two main variables from the China Study II data: mortality in the 35-69 age range, and mortality in the 70-79 range. The table below shows the coefficients of association calculated by HCE for those two variables. The...

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HealthCorrelator for Excel (HCE) is now publicly available for free trial

HealthCorrelator for Excel (HCE) is now publicly available for download and use on a free trial basis. For those users who decide to buy it after trying, licenses are available for individuals and organizations. If you are a gym member, consider asking your gym to buy an organizational site license; this would allow the gym to distribute individual licenses at no cost to you and your colleagues.HCE is a user-friendly Excel-based software that unveils important associations among health variables at the click of a button. Here are some of its main features:- Easy to use yet powerful health management software.- Estimates associations among any number of health variables.- Automatically orders associations by decreasing absolute strength.- Graphs relationships between pairs of health variables,...

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It's exactly three years since...

...I started blogging about rubbish.Three blimmin' years! That sounds like a bit of a confession, especially since this blog was intended to last for eight weeks,  but I'll save you the pain of too much personal reminiscing.  If you really want a bit of that, check out this post from last year and this special celebratory number from 2009.  Instead of looking back, I want to take this opportunity to cast our minds to the future and how the subject of waste is going to remain a hot and relevant topic.For instance it won't be long until April, when the cost of throwing rubbish into landfill will suddenly rise to £56 per tonne,...

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Do you lose muscle if you lift weights after a 24-hour fast? Probably not if you do that regularly

Compensatory adaptation (CA) is an idea that is useful in the understanding of how the body reacts to inputs like dietary intake of macronutrients and exercise. CA is a complex process, because it involves feedback loops, but it leads to adaptations that are fairly general, applying to a large cross-section of the population.A joke among software developers is that the computer does exactly what you tell it to do, but not necessarily what you want it to do. Similarly, through CA your body responds exactly to the inputs you give it, but not necessarily in the way you would like it to respond. For example, a moderate caloric deficit may lead...

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How come evolution hasn’t made us immortal? Death, like sex, helps animal populations avoid extinction

Genes do not evolve, nor do traits that are coded for our genes. We say that they evolve to facilitate discourse, which is alright. Populations evolve. A new genotype appears in a population and then either spreads or disappears. If it spreads, then the population is said to be evolving with respect to that genotype. A genotype may spread to an entire population; in population genetics, this is called “fixation”.(Human chromosomes capped by telomeres, the white areas at the ends. Telomere shortening is caused by oxidative stress, and seems to be associated with death of cells and organisms. Source: Wikipedia.)Asexual reproduction is very uncommon...

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Does strength exercise increase nitrogen balance?

This previous post looks at the amounts of protein needed to maintain a nitrogen balance of zero. It builds on data about individuals doing endurance exercise, which increases the estimates a bit. The post also examines the issue of what happens when more protein than is needed in consumed; including by people doing strength exercise.What that post does not look into is whether strength exercise, performed at the anaerobic range, increases nitrogen balance. If it did, it may lead to a counterintuitive effect: strength exercise, when practiced at a certain level of intensity, might enable individuals in calorie deficit to retain their muscle,...

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Pledging to save energy ASAP to help Baglady

Today finally sees the start of the secret launch of Baglady's ASAP Pledge Round 2.  The official launch is 11.01.11, but Baglady being an impatient old gal decided to make the most of the tradition for New Year's Resolutions and the opportunity to get us Internet peeps thinking about sustainability.  You might remember my last blog post about it here.Now I know that you're used to me thinking big and tackling some huge challenges, such as organising rubbish free tasks or setting up local collection schemes for Recycle Week, but for this year's ASAP (As Sustainable As Possible) pledge, I've decided to tackle something really small but...

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