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The quote above comes from Robert Brown, Ph.D., one of my instructors when I was in chiropractic school.  What Dr. Brown was referring to was that research and statistics, particularly biomedical research and statistics are subjet to all sorts of non-scientific and non-factual “twists” put forth by people with an agenda - and EVERYONE has an agenda - even if they don’t realize it or admit to it.

The point of this post is to make you aware that health-related research and statistics may not always mean what the source wants you to think they mean.  To illustrate this, let me give you some examples.

One hotly debated issue in the nutrition field is whether farm raised fish are equivalent nutritionally to wild fish.  For instance, about a year ago, I read an “advertorial” (a paid-placement article) that emphatically stated that farm raised salmon have the same amount of omega-3 fatty acids as wild salmon, according to nutrient analysis done by the U.S.D.A..  Yet I had just read an article that stated the opposite.  Since both articles referenced the U.S.D.A. as the source of their statistics, I figured that someone was lying and all I had to do was check the U.S.D.A. analysis to find out who. 

I was wrong - as it turns out, both articles were correct.  How could that be, since they had made opposing claims?  Well, according to the U.S.D.A., farm raised salmon does have about the same omega-3 content as wild caught - when you look at the amount of omega-3 for an equivalent weight of fish.  The thing is, farm raised salmon has a much higher overall fat content than wild salmon, so the amount of omega-3 relative to the total fat content is much less in farm raised salmon than in wild salmon.  So, the omega-3 content is about the same, but the omega-3 concentration is quite different.

Another example comes from a study that appeared a few years ago in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.  This study was picked up in the popular media and the conclusions of the study were pretty widely reported on television and in many major newspapers.  Basically, the study concluded that chiropractic treatment was no better than placebo (a placebo is a sham treatment with no therapeutic benefit) for asthma. 

Now, I may be biased myself, but let’s look at what that study actually showed.  First, the patients were not “run of the mill” asthmatics.  They had “treatment-resistant” asthma, which means they had not responded to conventional medical treatment.  I think it would be fair to say that these were especially tough cases.  Second, the “placebo” they compared chiropractic treatment to was massage therapy.  While far from conclusively proven, there has been indication that many asthmatics benefit from massage therapy, so the choice of massage as a placebo treatment is questionable at best.  Finally, about half of these treatment-resistant asthma cases actually had a very good response in both the chiropractic and the massage treatment groups (thus the conclusion that chiropractic is no better than placebo).  So, did this study prove that chiropractic treatment is worthless for asthma patients (as was how it was reported)?  You be the judge.  My take on it is that both chiropractic and massage are beneficial about half the time in asthma cases that have not responded to medical treatment.  I think that’s pretty good - but I didn’t get to write the headlines.

One final example of how research can lead us astray.  Several years ago, the “experts” proclaimed that eggs were terrible for your health, because high cholesterol is bad, and eggs are high in cholesterol.  This concept persists to this day despite one little problem with that thinking… about 70% of the cholesterol in your blood is NOT from the food you eat - it’s made by your liver!  Several studies have shown that eating eggs, even on a regular basis, does not significantly raise your cholesterol.  So, we have all these people worried about their cholesterol (even though cholesterol in and of itself is really not that big of a deal - but that’s a topic for another time) and avoiding eggs in favor of eating cereal for breakfast.  Most of that cereal is refined grains and a lot of it is high in sugar - which, to make a long story short, does far more to create health problems than eating eggs ever did.

So is medical research worthless? No, but it is important to realize that one study or statistic can be misinterpreted when taken by itself or outside the context of what else is known and what other studies have been done.  My advice is to view any research or statistic reported in the popular media with a little skepticism and a willingness to look further if the findings might impact the way you choose to manage your health.

Stay tuned to my natural remedies blog for updates.

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