smoking and bone health
In Diet for Better Bones, Claudia Wallis does a good job summarizing the issues of bone health and calcium metabolism. [The Science of Health]. In her article, she mentions the harmful effects of excessive alcohol and coffee consumption. I would like to add tobacco to this list at almost any time and in any quantity in my life.
As a neurosurgeon, my daily work involved evaluating osteoporotic patients and performing spinal surgery, including fusion surgery. Although it was soon found that almost all osteoporosis patients had a history of smoking, many initially denied smoking until specifically asked if they had ever smoked during their teenage years. was Even shorter smoking history during adolescence and early adulthood, when bone growth and ossification peak, was correlated with a significantly increased risk of osteoporotic fractures in late adulthood.
Similarly, because the success rate of spinal surgery, especially discectomy and fusion, in active smokers was considerably lower than in nonsmokers, I recommend that patients be free from tobacco smoke for at least 4 weeks, and ideally 6 weeks. Postpone non-urgent surgery until you are away. Over the decades that followed, numerous studies have validated my anecdotal observations.
As Wallis points out, vitamin D supplementation would likely do little for most people trying to avoid osteoporosis. However, quitting smoking, or even quitting smoking altogether, does have significant benefits.
Daniel Spitzer Peermont, New York
less travel in metabolic pathways
I enjoyed Herman Ponzer’s article, “The Human Engine,” on the rigorous experiments that determine metabolic age-adjusted and lean-body-adjusted tendencies in humans. In the Metabolic Measurements box, these data are presented in two of her graphs, and the large variability in their respective regression curves raises even more interesting questions.
Each scatter point represents a unique human who is probably not “average”. Can a scatterplot explain why certain individuals have more difficulty losing weight, or why certain diets may not work for everyone? Is it relevant? Is it ethical to base health recommendations on sample means when people outside the regression curve may be harmed? Additionally, new cancer treatments? tailors treatment to individual genetics. Are such considerations applied to dietary and metabolic studies?
Mark G. Kujik Regents Professor of Physics, Washington State University
I was surprised to find no mention of the gut microbiome in Ponzer’s paper on human metabolism. Each of us coexists with a complex gut ecosystem that contains more microbes than cells in the body. Recent discoveries have revealed that our gut microbiome influences many aspects of our physiology, from immune function to mental health, and the use of antibiotics and highly processed foods It has become clear that alterations in the gut microbiota caused by the widespread use of lactate most likely play an important role in explaining the obesity epidemic. . The gut microbiota is also the filter through which all food is processed and is closely linked to human metabolism. “We” aren’t the only ones who burn the calories we burn, and the “calories in, calories out” formula that Ponzer cites is imperfect.
Ira S. Nash Scarsdale, New York
Ponzer’s response: Understanding individual differences in daily energy expenditure is the next frontier in metabolic research. We are now well aware of how body size, fat percentage, lifestyle, and age affect our daily calorie consumption, but as readers Kujik and Nash point out, , there are many unexplained variations. The extent to which these differences reflect genetics and environment is currently unknown. Our microbiome can be an important piece of the puzzle. However, the evidence on this aspect is currently scant.Time will tell more studies.
We do not know that “fast” or “slow” metabolism (more or less energy expenditure than would be expected for a person’s size or age) usually predicts weight gain or obesity. I suspect that the metabolic fluctuations we’re seeing tell us something about overall bodily function and health, but their possible associations are yet to be tested. Not..
Regional Loophole
The universe is not locally real by Daniel Galist, which uses the Bell test to rule out the existence of hidden variables, invisible factors that can explain quantum mechanical phenomena while maintaining local realities. reports how is used. But I’m still wondering why this technique didn’t declare the answer to the hidden variable question unsolvable.
Garisto said: “The prior physical connection between components no matter how distant the past [emphasis mine], which may interfere with the validity of the Bell test results. He then described the “cosmic bell test,” in which researchers used stars “far enough away” that light from one couldn’t reach the other for centuries.But assuming the Big Bang and cosmic inflation to be true, doesn’t that mean there is an inevitable loophole? every day Bell test because in the distant past everything was physically connected?
Gary Lecter Cave Creek, Arizona.
Garisto’s response: Additional cosmic bell tests have been conducted since the one described in my article, including tests using light from quasars billions of light-years away . The president is correct that even these tests can only be traced back in time. As he suggests, this means that the Big Bang is still an inevitable loophole. It is worth considering what such loophole size theories are premised on. Hidden variables were encoded at the beginning of time and space, and began to move everything deterministically until the end of space-time..
This idea, called hyperdeterminism, may rescue local realism from quantum mechanics, but it deprives the universe of contingency and favors a conspiratorial approach to experimentation. Everything we can measure suggests that quantum mechanics is right and local realism is wrong. It’s worth recognizing superdeterminism as a possibility. But believing things because they are impossible to rule out is a poor way to approach science..
be intelligent
Bumblebees apparently “play”, according to a study reported in Grace Van Dielen’s Bee-Ball [Advances]. This begs the question: Are bees individually intelligent? What about ants? Within the colony, these insects continuously exchange information in the form of pheromones and other chemicals. Colonies of bees and ants show higher intelligence than would be expected by summing the intelligence of the individuals.
Van Snyder la cresenta, california.
Errata
“Primitive Soup” by Clara Moskovitz [March 2023], the box “Quark Soup” should state that the cores of the Sphoenix and Star detectors at Brookhaven National Laboratory each have strong magnets, not strong superconducting magnets. is. Only Sphoenix magnets are superconducting.
