Time, energy and life paths / Chapter 6
This section collects things that look cheap and effective. Once the original studies are opened, their benefit is close to zero, equal to zero, or in some cases negative.
The items are grouped by subject below. Item numbers are in parentheses.
Supplements: multivitamins (item 1), ordinary fish oil (item 2), vitamin D supplements (item 3), antioxidant supplements to prevent cancer (item 4), chondroitin for knee osteoarthritis (item 5), vitamin C to prevent colds (item 6), spending a lot on health products (item 10), taking probiotics long term (item 11), buying detox and colon-cleansing products (item 13), loading calcium after a fracture (item 30), relying on melatonin to cure long-term insomnia (item 34).
Check-ups and small findings: a whole-body PET-CT and a tumour-marker panel (item 7), a general check-up package (item 18), do not take medicine for high uric acid if it has never hurt (item 19), do not have a gallbladder stone removed if it has never hurt (item 20), do not give up calcium to prevent kidney stones (item 21), do not have arthroscopic clean-out for degenerative knee pain (item 33).
Health sayings: counting on a wristband to help you lose weight (item 8), buying organic food (item 9), cold showers to strengthen immunity (item 12), not forcing yourself to drink water (item 14), blue-light glasses (item 16), treating blood donation as health care (item 17), breakfast or intermittent fasting to control weight (item 26), counting on a correct lifting posture to prevent low-back pain (item 29), demanding an IV drip for a cold or fever (item 35).
Spending money on luck and on mood: paying for fortune-telling and horoscopes (item 15), buying crystals, pixiu, and similar objects (item 22), buying things to improve your mood (item 23), spending more in order to move up a tier (item 24), not saving because you think people can die at any time (item 32).
Willpower and sex: willpower is like a muscle (item 25), masturbation harms the body (item 27), conversion of sexual orientation (item 28).
Answers from AI: judging your own illness with an AI chatbot (item 31).
14,400 male doctors took multivitamins for 11 years. The number of serious heart or blood vessel problems and deaths among them was no different from those who didn’t take them. …
Two large trials enrolled 26,000 and 15,000 people with diabetes respectively. Those who took 1 gram of fish oil daily showed no difference from non-users in terms of major cardiovascular events or death rates. …
People who were not deficient and then supplemented for 5 years had the same numbers of cancers, cardiovascular disease, and deaths as those who did not. …
Antioxidant supplements are not merely useless. Pooling 78 trials and nearly 300000 people, in the more rigorously designed trials those who took them had a slightly higher death rate. …
People with knee osteoarthritis who took a placebo for 24 weeks also had about six in ten say the pain eased. …
Taking vitamin C every day will basically not make you catch fewer colds, and starting only after you already have a cold works only sometimes. …
When people without symptoms get screened, what turns up most often is a false alarm. …
Overweight people on the same diet and exercise plan lost 3.5 kg in two years if they wore a fitness band, while those without one lost 5.9 kg. To lose weight, the device is not money you have to spend.
There is no strong evidence that organic food is more nutritious. Only 3 studies looked at how healthy people were after eating it, and none found a difference. …
Multivitamins, fish oil, vitamin D, and other common ingredients have already been checked one by one in the first six items of this section; none showed a benefit. …
Pooling 45 trials in healthy adults, taking probiotics does not lastingly change the gut bacteria; stop and they go back. Blood lipids also do not improve. …
In a trial of 3018 people, those who took cold showers had 29% fewer sick-leave occasions. But the total days of leave matched everyone else, so it does not mean less illness. …
The detox industry is massive, yet there is very little clinical evidence to back it up, and no proper trials have been conducted on commercially available detox diets. …
Someone chased down the source of “8 glasses a day” and found not a single study that supports it. Food and other drinks already carry a lot of water, so you need not drink that much. …
In a classic classroom experiment, the “personal personality reading” students got was the same for everyone, yet most thought it was accurate. That is why fortune-telling seems to hit. …
Blue-light lenses show no benefit; skipping them saves a few hundred to over 1000 in mark-up. …
Claims that donating detoxifies, lowers lipids, or prevents heart attacks are unreliable. …
People who regularly take general health checks have the same death rate as those who do not, including deaths from cardiovascular disease and cancer. The few evidence-based screens for your age and sex are enough. …
For people whose uric acid is over the limit but who have never had a gout attack or tophi, the American College of Rheumatology advises not starting uric-acid–lowering drugs yet. …
People with stones in the gallbladder who have never had pain stay symptom-free for about eight in ten over nearly nine years. …
People who have had calcium-oxalate stones are often told to eat less calcium; trial results go the other way. …
Claims that wearing them changes luck, attracts wealth, or nourishes people have no checkable evidence. It works like fortune-telling seeming accurate: the words are vague enough that you fit them to yourself. …
People who put more weight on money and things feel less happy themselves, but the link is weak and you cannot tell which causes which. Other research finds that spending on an experience makes people happier than buying stuff. …
Holding income equal, the more neighbours earn, the lower this person’s reported happiness. It mainly shows up with neighbours of the same education level, and more clearly in people who often deal with neighbours. …
The popular claim is: do one self-control task first, then you break more easily afterward, so conserve willpower. Twenty-three labs and 2141 people redid the experiment under the same protocol; the result was almost zero. …
The popular claim is that skipping breakfast makes people binge at lunch and dinner so the day’s total is higher. …
No evidence that masturbation harms the body was found. Men who ejaculate more have about 20% less prostate cancer, though some research also saw higher risk in those who did it often when young. …
An American Psychological Association task force that reviewed the research says such conversion does not change orientation and may harm people. In one U.S. …
Workers who took lifting-posture training later had no less low-back pain than those who did not. People who bend more when lifting also do not clearly get more low-back pain. …
Trials of vitamin D after fracture show no case where bone healed better. Studies of calcium plus vitamin D together are few; whether they help is unclear. …
Handed a full case, AI names the disease over nine times in ten. …
By WHO figures for China, about 92% of people aged 30 live to 60, and over half live to 80. …
For middle-aged and older people with degenerative knee pain, arthroscopic clean-out or cutting a piece of meniscus is no better than sham surgery. …
People who sleep poorly and take melatonin fall asleep about 7 minutes sooner on average than on placebo, and sleep about 8 minutes more. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine does not recommend it for chronic insomnia. …
Ordinary colds and viral sore throat are listed by Guangdong health authorities as conditions that in principle do not need an IV. …
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