More Secrets To A Longer Life

A couple of related stories caught my attention recently. The impression I got from them is that people continue to look for easy answers, tips and secrets. With all the new technology and scientific breakthroughs, they tend to abandon common sense, expecting something better and easier. This attitude drives a lot of wasteful behavior indicative of a lack of discipline and critical thinking.

 

The first was from a website called Outside with the title: “8 Simple Tips to Live Longer and Healthier.” These tips, it explains, are easy and based on scientific time-tested methods. The tips are merely to develop healthy daily living habits. This idea has been around for ages and the evidence to support it “has mounted, even as more people try to find the elixir of youth.”  A 2016 British study “found a healthy lifestyle reduces one’s chance of all-cause mortality by a whopping 61 percent.”

 

To make such a list, as the line from Casablanca goes, “round up the usual suspects.” They are easy to understand, but not so easy to adopt.

1. Exercise is good for you.
2. Watch what you eat.
3. Socialize – loneliness has surprisingly bad effects.
4. Avoid nearly all supplements – “the vast majority don’t work and may even cause harm.”
5. Get enough sleep.
6. Get outside and enjoy nature.
7. Don’t smoke.
8. Drink alcohol in moderation.

This kind of information is republished frequently by the news media and in public service announcements. By now it’s not really news! Some might add a few more such as: sunscreen, brushing and flossing, drink when you are thirsty, wash your hands and get a flu shot.  But most of this is common knowledge.

 

The one about the supplements is certainly right but not often mentioned. For example, Harvard School of Health calls claims about antioxidants “mostly hype” adding, “mostly disappointing [study] results haven’t stopped food companies and supplement sellers from banking on antioxidants.” The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) says, “Many studies have shown antioxidants do not add health benefits nor do they play a key role in preventing cancer or heart disease.” I have covered the dangers and waste associated with dietary supplements many times in the past.

 

The related idea of looking for the easy answer came from a story early in the pandemic. Americans were hoarding not only toilet paper but also another product that made little sense. Last May a Forbes article reported, “retail sales of orange juice increased 46% in the United States in a four-week period ending on April 11.” 

They apparently believed in the power of Vitamin C to cure colds and other viruses. That this is not true should also have been common knowledge. Back in 2006 NPR ran a story, “The Vitamin C Myth.” By then there had been “at least twenty well controlled studies on the use of mega doses of vitamin C in the prevention of colds, treating the duration of colds, and in treatment of the severity of colds;” none of them showed any evidence that “vitamin C in mega doses does anything.” 

 

This vitamin C myth is just another example of what I referred to recently in “Flashback – Fear of Power Lines” on September 11: when people get an idea stuck in their heads, it takes a great deal of persuasion to get them to change their minds, even if the science is definitive.

 

Problems in discipline cause us to ignore the simple but not easy-to-follow lifestyle instead hoping for a pill or magic medical device. Problems in critical thinking cause the brain latch on to one of those ideas and never again wonder if it’s accurate.

Flashback – Baby Powder

Almost exactly four years ago I wrote about the difference between how the legal system looks at the danger of baby powder vs. how science sees it. Of course, that makes no difference, as just this week I saw another class action lawsuit ad on TV. When it comes to taking money from big rich companies and giving it to poor victims (and their lawyers) juries don’t care about science. They just want to use someone else’s money to dry the tears.

But they still expect the same company to continue to make the Tylenol for their headaches while testing and producing a COVID-19 vaccine. It’s all part of some weird love/hate relationship.

From September 2016: "How Baby Powder Can Harm You?"

[Under the heading of Health, the Fox News headline read: “Research finds talc doesn't cause cancer; juries disagree.” The story tells that two juries awarded a total of $127 million dollars to two women claiming that the Johnson & Johnson baby powder gave them ovarian cancer. A second judge threw out two cases, saying there was no reliable evidence; but another 2000 women have already lined up to sue.

That’s the legal side. What does science say? “Most research finds no link or a weak one between ovarian cancer and using baby powder for feminine hygiene, a practice generations of American mothers have passed on to their daughters. Most major health groups have declared talc harmless.” The rest of the article gives more information about the research and the trials. Here is another conflict between science and the legal process, but that should come as no surprise in light of jury awards given years ago for silicon breast implants when the implants were later found to be safe.

It is very easy to understand how a jury could ignore science and award millions of dollars to a woman with ovarian cancer. They do it out of sympathy, and they do it because they can. To do otherwise seems cold and heartless.  It’s not their money and the company has plenty of money. What’s a few million dollars in the grand scheme of things when it can bring comfort?

What person would stand by and see a toddler fall and skin her knee and not immediately run over to pick her up, dust her off and give her some comfort? It is the human thing to do.

There are several similarities between the one who helps the fallen toddler and the juries who award large sums. It costs them nothing. It gives comfort to the afflicted, although it does nothing to cure the cancer or heal the skinned knee. And it makes the rescuers feel good about themselves.

There are, however a few key differences. When you comfort the toddler it truly costs you nothing, and other toddlers don’t look at the one who fell and line up to also fall down to get sympathy. (Some may independently discover that falling down is an easy way to get attention, and some of them probably grow up to be trial lawyers.)

Also, when a toddler gets sympathy, the costs of that sympathy are not spread to the rest of society.  When a jury finds for the plaintiff in this case, not only does the company (or insurance company) pay, but every other company in that industry is put on notice. They are at risk of losing a large judgment for one of their products that has been on the market for years with no ill effects. They don’t spend the money now, but must keep some in reserve to protect against such a contingency.

Likewise, all insurance companies, seeing that evidence means nothing to some juries, must save for similar outcomes. The companies making personal products slowly raise their prices to adjust for this, and the insurance companies raise their rates to cover the increased risk. This sympathetic redistribution, which is really what it is, ends up costing everyone in society. 

What’s worse is that this activity adds no value. It does not add to the GDP. It does nothing to increase the standard of living for anyone except the few women who win in court (and their lawyers – Remember personal injury lawyers are not paid for justice; they are only paid for winning.)

In the end what can Johnson & Johnson do (besides spend a lot more time and money appealing each decision)? What lesson could they learn? Should they get everyone who buys baby powder to sign a hold-harmless agreement? Why are they more at fault than the “generations of American mothers” referred to in the article? They made a product considered safe for years and suddenly they are on the hook for $127 million; and if the ratios hold true and half the next 2000 win similar amounts, it could be $127 billion! It’s “jackpot justice,” and the cost of all the winning “lottery tickets” is spread among the rest of us, including the people who served on those juries!

So how can baby powder harm you? It harms you in the same way other wasteful legal actions harm you. It takes money out of deep pockets to compensate “victims,” but the costs ultimately come back to each of us, with nothing to show for it but richer lawyers, and juries who, in some misguided way, temporarily feel satisfied that they did something to help.]

Why Is Capitalism a Failed System?

Just as one example, here is a picture of Seattle taken about 140 years ago. A caption reads, “Seattle was still a village in 1878 and contained about 3,500 people” with an average life expectancy at birth of about 42 years.

Today the city itself has a population of almost 750,000 with nearly 4 million people living in the Seattle metropolitan area. It looked like this a few years ago.

The caption from this 2015 picture says “243,995 Seattleites work downtown,” while 65,000 people live there.

Suppose someone told those 1878 residents about an economic system that, despite some problems of cheating and favoritism, would raise their standard of living by many hundreds of times. They would have cars, electric lighting and appliances, indoor plumbing, air conditioning, antibiotics, air travel, a telephone in every pocket and so many other things they could never have imagined; and the only drawback would be some income inequality. Would that seem like a fair deal?

With the typical poor person in Seattle living longer and at a higher material and health standard today than the typical person 140 years ago, why do a number of its citizens (and others around the country) think the system should be scrapped? Could it be a problem with perspective, critical thinking or economic understanding?

Flashback – Chicken Protests

Back in 2015 I wondered if Americans ever stop to appreciate how well off we must be when some people have the time and energy to demand better living conditions for chickens. We have progressed from stressing about putting food on the table to stressing about whether that food had a happy life. Americans only 50 years ago would have been scratching their heads in disbelief.

A second point is that a minority can coerce, bully and guilt the majority into acquiescence either as a PR attempt to appear kind and caring or to just put a stop to the tantrums. This tactic has grown in popularity and success over the past five years. 

Here is the original message from five years ago.

[Recently I read about people protesting for the better treatment of chickens so they can have a more pleasant life before they are killed and served up at fast food restaurants.  Here is one version.

The emphasis was on fast food industry because they have more economic clout than individuals making choices at the grocery store. It also gives protesters the opportunity to force their values on everyone else. Concerning any issue, note how easily that a minority of fanatics can impose their will on a majority of relatively indifferent citizens. They care; you don’t; you lose.

What struck me about the chicken story was a point of perspective. Does anyone, or indeed the protesters themselves sit back and think about what a luxury it is to be concerned about the living conditions of chickens? These are not your property, chickens you rely on to provide a livelihood. They are not pets, favorite chickens that live in the backyard and provide you with eggs. These are stranger chickens, ones that you never interact with until their remains appear in the freezer section of the grocery store or in the nugget box.

How many problems have we been able to solve to move the welfare of stranger chickens to the top of a priority list, important enough to change our buying habits or even give up our time to try to influence others? We must have enough food, shelter from the elements, a happy and healthy family, a wide circle of friends, job security, enough money in the bank for future emergencies and be at peace with our faith or conscience. In short, a person has to be pretty set in life to have the luxury to be able to worry about the living conditions of stranger chickens! That is pretty wonderful!

Of course, even those who are so set up in their own lives might care about the living conditions of other human beings, the poor in the inner cities and overseas, and the neighbor who needs a hand or just a kind word, before chickens. But people are free to make choices. 

It is important, though, when we make those choices, to remember how lucky we are to have the freedom and luxury to make them.]

One Last Time: Alternative Medicine

There are certain subjects that have come up time and again over the last 9 years. The main benefit of a behavioral approach is that so many seemingly diverse behaviors can be grouped into categories or dimensions to make sense of the consequences that arise from the resulting choices. 

About five weeks ago, in August, I wrapped up the subject of unfounded fears over GMOs with a One Last Time entry. Today the subject is the very broad area of alternative medicine, which I have described as magic pills and miracle cures. Just typing “magic pill” in the search box at the top left corner of the screen will reveal about 20 entries on this subject from vitamins to caffeinated underwear. In these and several other cases I pointed out the fallacies in their advertising and directed attention to the legally required disclaimer: “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease."

Recently, I found this informative site with an excellent summary.

First they list the various aliases used instead of alternative including: esoteric, complementary, holistic, integrative or natural medicine. It includes such a variety of treatments that “generally accepted definitions do not exist.” 

An incomplete list includes: acupuncture, anthroposophical medicine, applied kinesiology, aromatherapy, autologous blood therapy, Ayurvedic medicine, Bach flower remedies, bioresonance, chelation therapy, chiropractic, colonic irrigation, detox therapies, dietary supplements, energy healing, herbal medicine, homeopathy, iridology, Kampo medicine, macrobiotic, magnet therapy, mind-body therapies, music therapy, neural therapy, ozone therapy, reflexology, Reiki, shiatsu and Traditional Chinese Medicine. I have discussed many of these elsewhere, here and here, for example, but some I’ve never heard of. 

Since they have no scientific backing, how do they lure in customers? “The realm of EM (Esoteric Medicine) is riddled with fallacies which confuse patients and consumers and are used regularly to undermine critical thinking.” In other words, they trick people. The most prevalent and important of these fallacies from the site are summarized below.

The “appeal to popularity” or “appeal to authority” tries to substitute popularity or the opinion of respected people for scientific evidence. But “medicine is no popularity contest” and “even people of high standing make mistakes.”

The post hoc fallacy wrongly assumes “an event ‘X’ that is preceded by another event ‘Y’ must be caused by ‘Y’. If the rooster didn’t crow, the sun would not come up. If the child skipped vaccinations, he would not have autism. (No and no.) It is not true for individuals or for groups.

Many of these interventions rely on the placebo effect. Scientists are just beginning to understand the power of the mind to heal the body. This effect is present whether the medicine is real or not. Likewise, sometimes people just get better on their own. These alternative treatments take advantage of these facts to gather supporters and celebrity endorsements without bothering with scientific evidence.

Using an appeal to tradition, citing a long history is another fallacy, assuming that if it has passed the test of time, it must be effective and safe. This may be good reason to conduct research, and if the argument is valid, the results will be favorable. But long history is no substitute for evidence. Many treatments were applied in the past that would be unconscionable today. Contrary to some popular opinion, ancient Chinese is not a code for safe and effective.

The article gives a long explanation of why EM is unethical by medical standards. “Informed consent is rarely possible in the realm of EM.” Often there is not a professional diagnosis.

“Another fallacy holds that EM defies science or extends beyond the boundaries of science as it is currently understood. Therefore, proponents claim, it cannot be tested in the same way as one would test conventional treatments.” 

Finally, because it is natural, it is assumed to be harmless. “Nature is pictured as benign and natural remedies are therefore not just intrinsically superior but also safer.” This shows a limited viewpoint and a basic misunderstanding of nature. Hurricanes, tornados and blizzards are natural. No one would argue that tobacco is safe because it is natural. To be enamored with words like “natural” and “non-chemical” or the phrase “available without a prescription” is to succumb to deceptive advertising.

These tools are used to “mislead the public such that even the most extravagant absurdities of EM might appear more plausible. Collectively they help foster and perpetuate a culture of unreason that is essential for EM to thrive.”

Ads for a vast number of bogus alternative medical products and services have cropped up since the advent of the COVID-19, faster than the authorities can alert the public or warn the purveyors about their illegal activity. The best defense is: Don’t be a sucker!

The truth is there is no such thing as alternative medicine (no matter what name it goes by); there is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t work. All these tricks, alluring words and excuses do not change that fact. Lack of critical thinking in this area can lead to a waste of money, but worse, real harm to you or your family.

Flashback – Fear of Power Lines

Irrational and unsubstantiated fears have been good examples of a lack of critical thinking. People hear a rumor or supposed scientific truth and latch onto it without questioning or doing any research. 

Back on December 5, 2014, I explained one of these unfounded fears, the concern that power lines emitted some kind of dangerous radiation that makes people and animals sick. That was almost six years ago, when Facebook and other social media were in their relative infancy. Today Americans are exposed to this kind of news almost constantly as social media users pass along scary information with no attempt at verification. 

As they did in this case, news organizations will sometimes pick up these stories or interview the believers without any attempt to explain or debunk the beliefs. They merely want to capture “eyeballs.” Fear sells, and fake news is nothing new.

Here is the original post. 

[If you are old enough, you remember the big scare in the late 1980s about power lines causing cancer.  In fact, if you are not old enough to remember the news reports of the time, you have probably heard about this idea from someone who was. There was a great deal of concern, but after over 30 years of further research, it appears to have been a mistaken assumption. Still the fear persists.

The fairly short (7:46) NY Times Retro Report is worth watching.

It begins with replays of news reports from all the major networks from 1987. It was big news at the time, and this review is very informative, showing in retrospect how the news business operates when breaking news has the potential to stir up a lot of fear based on very limited data. A voice-over talks about how power lines may cause cancer while showing the picture of a small bald child, apparently battling cancer (but not from power lines) – sneaky.  When seven children in one Denver school developed cancer and parents blamed it on nearby power lines, one reporter says that it could be a “tragedy of enormous proportions.”

The Times calls the episode “Power of Fear” with the message that once this type of fear is introduced into our society it never really goes away.  

The researcher who first suspected the problem now explains that further research has ruled out any problem.  With the number and density of power lines, this should have developed into a major health problem, but it didn’t.  “That suspicion (of a cancer risk) was simply wrong...The likely impact (of power lines) is zero.”  Scientists in the 1990s conducted hundreds of experiments exposing rats, other animals and human cells to intense EMFs (magnetic fields around the power lines) over long periods of time with no change in the cells.  “In 20 years of looking, no one has found a way that power line fields can do anything at all to cells of animals; unless it can do something to cells, it cannot cause cancer.”  The National Academy of Sciences confirmed this by reviewing 500 studies and releasing their findings in October 1996.  Nothing since then has altered the conclusion of no danger.

The association was always “suggestive, but very faint” but correlation does not prove causation. Yet the idea, the fear, persists and is still spread by some public figures, some advertisers who use the scare tactics to sell real estate service and by word of mouth – now with the added power of social media.

Why do some Americans believe these sources and continue to fear the presence of power lines?  Psychologists tell us that risks that are invisible, that might cause suffering before death or that might affect children have uncanny staying power, even in the face of firm evidence to the contrary. This highlights the need for critical thinking, to put aside emotional responses and listen to the facts. Don’t we have enough stuff to be afraid of without dredging up errors from the past?]

Speaking of Insurance

Unfortunately, I must name a particular brand to make the point. It's not meant as criticism, only as another example of how people often don’t ask the right questions about money and economics.

The example is the Allstate commercial about their accident forgiveness program. Whenever I see it I ask, “Where do people think the money is coming from – surely not some magic money tree?” But that is the impression the ad leaves. Have an accident and your rates don’t go up, even though you expect the insurance company to pay for the repairs.

If the company has some sort of accident forgiveness fund set aside in a secret vault, where does that money come from?

As always, the company’s money comes from their customers. They use it to pay their employees, pay their rent and utilities, pay the claims that come in, reward the shareholders by making a profit and pay for the production and airing of those television commercials. To make this work, they must collect more money in premiums than they pay in claims! On average every one of their customers pays them a little more than they get back; that’s true for all insurance companies – even the non-profits.

Generally, insurance companies reward good drivers by raising premiums only minimally to account for inflation and industry-wide claims experience. Drivers who have accidents are considered a higher risk and must pay more, so on the surface accident forgiveness sounds like a good deal. But beware the details. 

The program has been around for a long time. Here from Fox Business back in 2011 is one explanation of some of those details. It’s not free. “At Allstate, for example, you get accident forgiveness by upgrading to a Gold or Platinum coverage plan. Gold costs 8 percent more, and Platinum 15 percent higher than a standard policy.” To qualify for Gold coverage, “you need to go three years without a collision,” but with Platinum coverage it kicks in immediately.

So there apparently is an accident forgiveness fund, but the people who signed up for the program are the ones funding it. It’s almost like buying auto insurance and then buying more insurance against a first accident. 

It’s similar to life insurance where the company is betting, based on life expectancy tables, that you are not going to die until you have given them enough money to invest and come out ahead. For auto insurance they set rates betting you are not going to have an accident, based on your driving record so money is left over to pay for the exceptions. The added premium is a bet you make against the company to protect you against an unforeseen incident. 

The rest of the article says that this added protection might be good for some but not for others, and it’s best to talk it over very carefully with an agent. 

Several other companies also offer some form of accident forgiveness and the Allstate program may have changed since this 2011 review, but the main point remains the same: There is no magic money tree! Companies don’t reward us out of the goodness of their hearts or by lowering the CEO’s salary. They collect it from their customers; and in every transaction it’s our choice whether a purchase meets our needs and is fairly priced compared to the competition.

Flashback – Changing the Mythology

Over several weeks in July 2016 I explained how behavior is often driven by a kind of personal mythology, a belief system that is very hard to change. Unfortunately, people put a lot more thought and logic into defending their positions than analyzing those positions to see if they make sense in the first place.

This piece summarizes the ideas and is a good reminder of the lack of progress toward improvements in individual behavior over the past four years.

[Over the last two weeks I have made the case that everyone has a personal mythology.  People run stories in their heads about the what and why of everything happening around them. To be heroes of their stories depends on following an underlying mythology that sets the rules for judging noble, moral behavior. It is this underlying mythology that drives actions and decisions, not whether people are inherently evil, greedy or stupid. Calling them names or shouting them down has no effect, except possibly minor, temporary victories and new enemies.

We look at ISIS or white supremacists and easily recognize their mythology. Most Americans agree that those mythologies – one about building a caliphate to wipe out infidels as they usher in the end of the world and the other about racial superiority – are just plain wrong. But many mythologies of our friends and neighbors are not so clear-cut in terms of morality. There are gray areas with strong arguments on both sides, and some people don’t remain our friends long if their mythologies are too much at odds with ours as each side refuses to budge.

One problem is that some of the tenets of these modern mythologies lead individuals in the wrong direction. They waste time and money. They lead people to support political solutions that waste everyone’s time and money. When confronted, they cling to their core beliefs and coalesce into camps or tribes to support and justify their positions.

A second problem comes from the speed and reach of modern communications. Ideas are flying everywhere and people are more interested in clinging to ideas of their liking than taking time to find out if what they are hearing is true. Just as in casual conversation, it’s cooler to come up with a witty retort or story of your own experience than listen closely or check the facts.

The result is what we have today: a deeply divided populace, short on meaningful debate, throwing slogans, insults and accusations back and forth, and then retreating to their own corners for support and reinforcement.

Many people use kind words about understanding, tolerance and compassion, but it doesn’t play out that way. Even those who claim to be most tolerant and compassionate are often the first and the loudest to call someone with different ideas an idiot or a hater. They ask everyone to be open-minded, that is, to accept their point of view; but open-minded means listening to and considering another point of view, not accepting every crazy idea that comes along. Our politicians lead by example in an increasingly divisive and unproductive use of accusations and labels. There must be an end to this!

Our objective should be to unify Americans around the idea of putting an end to the waste in society and to reduce the number and intensity of behavioral errors in the key dimensions. This will get the country moving in the right direction. Doing it through behavior is the solution and is a viable alternative to gathering into tribes and fighting.

But this will be an uphill battle. The wasteful and dangerous behavior is so often initiated and reinforced by deep-seated modern myths. It must be an evolution, rather than a revolution, improving choices and decisions by chipping away at the underlying myths. These myths include: that it’s uncool to be conscientious; that being complacent about and tolerant of bad habits is appropriate; that there really is some magic cure to all our ills but doctors and others are hiding it to protect their own interests; that "natural" or "ancient" is equivalent to good because modern science can’t be trusted; that a growing economy only benefits a few; that wanting it all and wanting it now without concern for the future is the way to live; that the government has unlimited funds to bail everyone out; and all the rest. Take for example the housing boom/bust. The crisis sprang from the wrong belief that everyone has a “right” to the American Dream instead of the healthy belief that success requires hard work and sacrifice.

All these faulty myths are constantly reinforced: by the media to attract an audience, by advertisers to make sales and by politicians to get re-elected. Only a few years ago no one, except a small percentage with a specific medical condition, worried about gluten-free diets. Now almost 20% of Americans look for it on packaging, while manufacturers are all too happy to accommodate the fad by plastering it on more and more labels, even in products where the prospect of finding any gluten is zero. And that’s just one example. Thanks to the rapid and widespread reach of social media, more faulty myths are being created and reinforced daily.

To change people’s minds we must somehow get them to modify their mythology, not just assume that everyone else is stupid and evil. The only hope is for a significant group of Americans to become more aware of the behavior-consequences link in their lives and the lives of those close to them. We must begin resisting impulses, thinking more carefully, understanding the economy better, taking responsibility, improving education for all, working for results instead of demanding them as rights, and being more selective. We must begin challenging advertisers, politicians and the news media to give us straight information, instead of playing to our fears, insecurities and social fads. Some myths are just plain wrong leading people in the wrong direction with potentially harmful results. It is right to be intolerant of behaviors that show a lack of responsibility or make matters worse. Tough love is still a valid response to those making bad decisions.  

Use behavior and consequences to point out problems. Calling people stupid gets us nowhere and is probably incorrect. They merely have a different mythology that they turn to first for direction. Treating essential oils like a miracle drug is no crazier or stupider than thinking the sun is pulled around the sky by a god in a chariot. It’s just a different mythology.

Behavior is in a sense infectious. We read headlines about how your friends can make you fat and such - because we share their habits and tastes (and mythologies). By being sensitive to the behavior-consequences link and changing our own behavior accordingly, it may be possible to "infect" others.  And as we get more Americans on board with these ideas, advertisers, politicians and the media may respond by giving us better information and joining the fight against erroneous, wasteful and harmful behavior.  One can only hope.]