Weird Science

I almost always get wound up when I read articles trumpeting the latest in exercise research, especially from the New York Times Well Blog. They tend to plaster sensational headlines about the latest study to creep into the literature by some doctor or scientist who needs to publish or perish, or perhaps genuinely cares but is so focused on his/her niche that the big picture gets lost.

Translation: articles about health always force my baloney meter into the ON setting.

Why?

The human body is a complex biochemical machine. Inputs from the environment come in countless forms – the foods we eat, the music and noise we hear, the pollution in the air we breathe, the kettlebell in our hands…everything that we experience with our five senses has some effect on us. Internally, our reaction to these inputs are involve thousands of processes and chemicals: cortisol (stress hormone) triggered by being late for a meeting, getting in an argument, or being late for work; insulin triggered by eating carbs (or in some cases, just by looking at cakes and other treats); white blood cells produced to fight an infection. Obviously, scientists can’t consider all of the variables that affect the human body when they design a study.

The problem with the way many researchers approach exercise studies is that they don’t scope their factor space, or set of considerations, broadly enough. Looking at exercise alone without considering the nutrition of the subjects can lead to inaccurate results, which end up in NYT headlines. For example, one study said that for 10% of people, exercise made their heart disease measures worse. Researchers are puzzled, and the article doesn’t ask a key question:

What were the subjects eating?

Increasing activity usually drives people to eat more food, and if the 10% of people having problems in the study were finishing their 3 mile jogs at Einstein’s with a huge bagel and large orange juice – and thus sending their bodies into a massive insulin emergency – the food, not the exercise, could be causing the problems. A 10th grade science fair participant might figure this out with common sense, but eminent researchers have a habit of missing the point. Sometimes the scientific method gets in the way: they are so concerned about correctly drawing a correctly stated conclusion from the observed data that they don’t question whether the data make any sense, or whether they might be missing a very big puzzle piece!

Here’s my favorite example, from the same article: “We do not know whether implementing exercise programs for unfit people assures better outcomes,” said Dr. Lauer of the heart institute. “That has not been established.”

Um…the doc doesn’t know if getting off your bum may be right for you.

Another attribute that should trip your baloney meter is the metric used for health. In other words, the science sometimes uses some pretty generous definitions of “favorable outcome,” such as:

– Not dead

– No heart attack

I don’t know about you, but if someone is overweight and on a bunch of cholesterol meds, I don’t consider their state “healthy” even if they are not dead and have not had a heart attack. I won’t go on a tirade about Big Pharm here, but let’s just say that the modern version of “normal” is really pretty scary. At least Dr. Lauer was using blood chemistry measures; this winning article just uses mortality as the key metric. They collected 30 years of data, so I certainly hope they did something else useful with it!!

The article says that people who jog for half an hour 3 times per week are less likely to die than those who run longer and at a faster pace. Did they take into account:

– That the faster people may have had more stressful lives? Lots of hardcore runners are Type A’s with high-powered careers, and stress can age you faster (yep, scientists have studied that too). They may also be eating more convenience food because of their long hours, which leads us to…

– …Nutrition…were their eating habits different?

– What about other metrics? What state of health were the subjects in? What percentage of the faster runners were overweight or on medications as compared to moderate runners or non-runners? How many people in each group could play with their children/grandchildren outside for a few hours without having to take a break or give up entirely?

Next time a headline about exercise surprises you, activate that Critical Eye – the baloney meter – and look closely at whether the scientists were considering the important pieces relevant to human bodies, such as lifestyle. How do they measure a positive outcome? Do you agree with their definition of health? These questions will make it much easier to argue with Aunt Ethel when she cites a published study and tells you that training hard can kill you!