Influencer Health Claims vs Reality: The Truth Hurts
Dr. Zain refutes health recommendations from a video sent to one of his patients, educating his audience on how to spot fallacies and manipulation techniques employed by health influencers.
Using examples like homocysteine levels, serum bicarbonate, and potassium levels he illustrates how complex truths are often oversimplified into attractive but misleading claims.
00:00 I'm Pissed!
00:49 A Change of Heart: From Anger to Education
04:47 Quantified Quackery and the Placebo Immunity Illusion
12:56 The Biomarker Bamboozle
20:39 "Any Study Will Do"
31:08 "A Pinch of Truth to Season a Pot of Bulls***"
Potassium and Mortality 2017 Study (Collins, AJ et. al).
Differences: Much more short term (18 mo vs 20 yrs, which makes more sense to me that it might possibly be relevant). Blood was tested using modern methods, data harvested from EMRs. As per my previous point, authors noted as a weakness that the data came from different labs, and they were not able to correct for differences in lab machines.
Citations:
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Abramowitz MK. Association of Serum Bicarbonate Levels With Gait Speed and Quadriceps Strength in Older Adults. doi:10.1053/j.ajkd.2010.12.021
Kovesdy CP. Association of serum bicarbonate levels with mortality in patients with non-dialysis-dependent CKD. doi:10.1093/ndt/gfn633
Liu S et al. Association of Serum Potassium Levels with Mortality and Cardiovascular Events: Findings from the Chinese Multi-provincial Cohort Study. doi:10.1007/s11606-021-07111-x
Collins AJ et al. Association of Serum Potassium with All-Cause Mortality in Patients with and without Heart Failure, Chronic Kidney Disease, and/or Diabetes. doi:10.1159/000479802
Blokland A. Can placebo or nocebo pills improve or impair cognition performance? doi:10.1002/hup.2869
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Expensive Placebos Work Better. https://www.science.org/content/blog-...
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Morooka H. Relationship between mortality and use of sodium bicarbonate at the time of dialysis initiation: a prospective observational study. doi:10.1186/s12882-021-02330-0
Raphael KL. Serum bicarbonate and mortality in adults in NHANES III. doi:10.1093/ndt/gfs609
Al-Kindi SG et al. Serum Bicarbonate Concentration and Cause-Specific Mortality: The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2010. doi:10.1016/j.mayocp.2019.05.036
Fang J. Serum Potassium and Cardiovascular Mortality. doi:10.1046/j.1525-1497.2000.91021.x
Walsh CR. Serum Potassium and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease: The Framingham Heart Study. doi:10.1001/archinte.162.9.1007
Yang Q et al. Sodium and Potassium Intake and Mortality Among US Adults: Prospective Data From the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2011.257
Sodium Bicarbonate Supplements and Exercise Performance. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/...
Spurious Correlations. https://tylervigen.com/spurious-corre...
Kvavilashvili L, Ellis JA. The effects of positive and negative placebos on human memory performances. Memory. doi:10.1080/741944922
Hadzic M. The Impact of Sodium Bicarbonate on Performance in Response to Exercise Duration in Athletes: A Systematic Review. J Sports Sci Med. 2019;18(2):271-281.
Ashor AW. The placebo effect on psychomotor performance and working memory capacity: randomized single blind cross-over trial. doi:10.5214/ans.0972.7531.1118403
Hughes-Austin JM et al. The Relation of Serum Potassium Concentration with Cardiovascular Events and Mortality in Community-Living Individuals. doi:10.2215/CJN.06290616
Koppel L. We are all less risky and more skillful than our fellow drivers: Successful replication and extension of Svenson (1981). doi:10.15626/MP.2021.2932