Anecdotal Evidence

Anecdotal evidence is not the same as science.  One person’s experience, or even many people’s experiences, do not make scientific evidence because science requires things like control groups, carefully constructed experiments, and statistical significance.  What I am about to write is not science, but rather food for thought, with some bits of science thrown in.  Even if you consider me a reliable source, do not disconnect your critical thinking while reading what I have to say.  End of disclaimer.

For the last month, I have virtually eliminated added sugar from my diet.  For a person who has belonged to the Church of 7-Eleven for years and has drunk from the mighty Big Gulp of soda, this was quite a change and a challenge.  Additionally, for the last three weeks, I’ve also removed corn, peanuts, dairy, eggs, gluten, and soy products.  Some of those were harder than others.  Here’s what happened as a result.

I lost eleven pounds.  Some of that was due to the fact that I chose nutrient-dense and lower calorie foods from among the remaining food options.  Some of it was due to the fact that a human can only eat so much kale.  But even though many days I did not have a calorie deficit (the calories I ate minus the calories I burned through activity, as calculated by my handy Fitbit…), the scale went down.

More importantly, I lost a lot of my chronic pain.  I try not to whine, but the results of my plantar fascia rupture two years ago stuck with me and I have such severe tendonitis in my forearms that I had to give up biking because my hands would refuse to brake.  Weight bearing on my arms has been problematic.  With the change in diet, I am almost pain-free and my test rides on my more arm-friendly mountain bike have gone well.

I also have lots more energy.  It took a little while to figure out how to manage my meals to prevent crankiness and the first few days without sugar were terrible, but once that was over, I started to feel like a whole new human.

There is some science that might explain why all these good things happened.  Sugar is known to cause inflammation, which is part of the stress reaction in the body.  Removing the sugar probably reduced inflammation, which reduced my pain.  The reduction of the stress reaction can allow the metabolism to work better, so it can also help with losing weight.

The rest of the stuff I eliminated can, in some people, cause mild intolerance reactions.  Over the next few weeks, I get to test out whether I can tolerate eggs, dairy, soy, and gluten.  I suspect, based on previous experiments, that I will do fine with eggs and the small amount of soy I tend to consume.  I’m pretty sure I will feel best without dairy and I’m not sure what will happen with the gluten.  This is the part of science where statistics are not helpful.  If three out of five people have a slight whatever intolerance, we can’t know if we are one of the three or one of the other two without testing it out ourselves.

My experience may not be the same as yours.  I am studying fitness nutrition right now in order to know more about how to make good food choices.  We all have the power to choose better for ourselves.  Let’s try.

Monday Workout: Speed Ladder!

This week’s workout combines cardio SAQ drills (the speed ladder stuff) with multi-joint exercises for a metabolic boost.  In other words, we’re going to burn calories and get tired.  Three rounds.

Ladder in in out out	1 min
overhead squats	20
renegade rows	10
Ladder lateral	1 min
lunge twists	20
Arnold press	10
carioca	1 min
bench press	20
plank

Friday Placebo Book Report: In Which I Read an Inert Substance...

I didn’t read a book this week because I’ve been studying my nutrition text and it is long and I take notes the old-fashioned way (My kid said, “What are you doing?”  I said, “Copying out the chapter learning objectives, writing out the vocabulary definitions, and taking chapter notes.”  He said, “Whoa!  You actually do all that stuff they tell you to do in school.  I didn’t think anybody actually did that!”) because it works for me.  However, because reading leads to thinking (“A dangerous pastime!”), I found myself wondering about placebos.

My other kid, handily enough, is a librarian, so when my personal internet search skills fail, I call him in to find out what I want to know; this is the privilege I get for having taken him to the library in the first place.

I had two main questions.  The first one was about the inactivity of placebos.  I’ve been reading in a variety of places and experimenting on my own bodily chemistry set (not scientifically valid, but personally useful) about sugar, so the use of “sugar pills” as placebos made me wonder how the decision was made that a substance had no effect.  It turns out that not having an effect is not important; it is not having an effect on the condition in question.

The second one was about placebos and exercise research.  The gold standard for research is a double-blind study in which neither the experimenters nor the subjects know who is in the experimental group and who is in the control group.  It is challenging not to know whether we are exercising or not, so I wondered if some smart people had figured out a way around it.  The answer is no.  What tends to happen is that several groups of people with whatever condition are randomly assigned to an exercise group (or one of several exercise groups) or a control group “waiting list.”

At this point, everyone may be wondering why I even care.  I believe in science, but it has to be good science, well-conducted, ethical, and verifiable.  We all need to think about how science is made and use our critical faculties to evaluate the claims and assumptions embedded in our science.  This makes us smarter and less likely to be hoodwinked by those who would like to exploit us.