Sunday Smörgåsbord: liberty, the internet, worry, health & Lyle McDonald.

Five items this time, not necessarily related.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smörgåsbord

By liberty, I mean personal liberty. I believe that individuals should be free to do whatever they want, provided that they don't harm another individual. However, collections of individuals should not be free to do whatever they want, as collections of individuals (i.e. businesses) usually try to profit from individuals, so the welfare of the individual isn't of importance. Businesses obviously don't want to instantly kill their customers, as that's obvious and will probably get them sued. However, "killing them softly" isn't obvious!

In the EC, just about everything has a CE kite-mark in order that it may be sold in the EC. Standards include EMC (Electro-Magnetic Compatibility) to ensure that:-
a) Devices don't emit excessive levels of RF "radiation", which may interfere with other devices.
b) Devices don't respond to excessive levels of RF "radiation", which may interfere with their operation.
I put "radiation" in quotes, as it's TEM (Transverse Electro-Magnetic) radiation i.e. Radio Waves.

In the US, who knows?

This is about "Smart Meters" - again! I've recently seen a surge in Facebook statuses about Smart Meters. I posted a technical article about these devices in Smart meters. Even after I posted a link on Facebook to my article, links to alarmist pages still appeared. The latest one is The Great “Smart Meters” Hoax. Electromagnetic Fields Are Real And Dangerous To Our Health, where Sam Milham, MD, MPH epidemiologist & researcher tells us how things really are.

Unfortunately, he's talking shite. The problem with people talking alarmist shite on the internet is that people who read alarmist internet shite and who are ignorant of the subject, believe it! This causes Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt (FUD), which in turn causes chronic worry. Chronic worry causes chronic hypercortisolaemia, which isn't good. A placebo (e.g. wrapping aluminium foil around your Smart Meter or paying for a "proper" solution to the non-existent problem) alleviates the chronic worry, which improves health.

I don't know about US Smart Meters. For all I know, some eejit has designed them to transmit 1,000W of RF (I'm just being silly), to get an outdoor range of >100miles. As these devices are designed for short-range communication, they probably transmit up to 100mW (about the same power level as WiFi) to get an outdoor range of ~150m. 1mW is one thousandth of a Watt. Transmitting more power than is necessary increases the probability of interference to other electronic devices.

100mW is a lot lower than the power transmitted by mobile phones (up to 2,000mW for the 850/900MHz Vodafone/O2 network), which need to be able to reliably communicate with the nearest mast, which may be miles away. As mobile phones constantly transmit occasional bursts of RF (to let the network know that they are on) and they are either in a pocket or are held against the ear/in front of the face to make/receive calls etc (while transmitting regular bursts of RF) and they are safe to use, how can a Smart Meter which is transmitting a much lower power level at a much greater separation be harmful? It can't.

With WiFi, Equivalent isotropically radiated power (EIRP) in the EU is limited to 100mW. Dunno about the US. Bluetooth is very-low-power (~1mW for Class 3 devices).

So stop worrying! Chronic worry (also, reading alarmist internet shite) is bad for your health.

Finally, I noticed that Evelyn Kocur "liked" an article that I'd read and completely forgotten about. It's Evidence From the Metabolic Ward: 1.6-2.4g/kg Protein Turn Short Term Weight Loss Intervention into a Fat Loss Diet. Interestingly, the protein intake for optimum body recomposition is 1.6-2.4g/kg LBM. This is equivalent to ~1g/lb LBM, which is the protein recommendation given by Lyle McDonald in his Rapid Fat Loss Handbook. Yup, Lyle was right all along. That amount of protein isn't bad for the kidneys (even 50% more protein than that, isn't bad for the kidneys).

Placebo's evil twin....in the gym

Today I came across this new and very interesting study: Preventing motor training through nocebo suggestions

Here is the abstract:

Although placebos have repeatedly been shown to increase physical performance and endurance, much less is known about the effect of their negative counterpart, nocebos. Here, we employ negative suggestions and a sham electrical stimulation as a nocebo conditioning procedure in healthy subjects performing a leg extension exercise to total exhaustion. Using two different protocols, we analyze the contribution of expectation alone or the combination of conditioning and expectation to the nocebo effect evaluated as the change of work performed and rate of perceived exertion. We find that it is possible to negatively modulate the physical performance in both cases, and we argue that this effect can effectively offset the outcome of training programs.

The discussion in the paper is instructive:

The main finding of this study is that it is possible to negatively modulate the performance of subjects carrying out a muscle exercise to volitional maximum effort by employing discouraging suggestions and negative conditioning.

I do find this study absolutely fascinating.  The whole idea of the power of belief in health and healing is realitively well known - we have all heard of the placebo.  But what is less well known is the nocebo - the idea that rather than positive benefits, there can be negative impacts from certain contexts and expectations: you can get worse.

What is interesting here is how nocebo effects extend to exercise performance - hearing negative suggestions can impact how well you perform.

All this stuff about the impact of the mind is so important and could potentially trump all other effects - diet, exercise whatever.  If you think it is doing you good it will.  If you think it is harmful, then it will be.    It is like Samuele Marcora's work on the psychobiological model of fatigue - the impact of perception is so important.

By the way, coincidentally, Chris Kresser had a great podcast on this this week with a full transcript here: The Placebo Effect and The Power of Belief in Healing

In some ways this is all like epigenetics - the impact of environment, in this case perceptions and expectations, outweigh what seem to be the bigger more obvious factors.

The search for the perfect diet or exercise routine may be pointless.....the most important element to either is what you believe  about the diet or training regime.

Dr Kurt Harris has a good post on placebo here.