Surprise! Scientists discover that eating cheese makes you happier in old age!
Science discovers the obvious: A computer analysis of 2.3 million people in Europe has found that eating cheese helped make them healthier and happier as they aged.
A mediation analysis identified 33 factors that mediate “between the well-being spectrum and the aging-GIP” – essentially, statistically, the disease, behaviors and lifestyle choices that significantly reduce the healthy aging score. Key ones included TV watching, smoking, medication use, heart failure, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), stroke, coronary atherosclerosis and ischemic heart disease.
Cheese, on the other hand, swung the pendulum the other way in both its impact on the well-being spectrum and aging-GIP. One of five key lifestyle mediators the data testing identified, it had a 3.67% positive impact on those healthy aging factors (whereas, for example, higher fruit intake had a 1.96% positive result and too much TV time, an indication of a more sedentary lifestyle, had a 7.39% negative impact on the score for both indicators).
While interesting, this research is generally junk. The number of uncertainties and assumptions are so large that no one should take any of these positive and negative scores very seriously. Furthermore, the study basically discovers something that is patently obvious from the beginning: If you are active and eat well, you will be healthier in old age. If you are a couch potato who smokes, you will likely be sicker in old age.
Why cheese (and fruit) should improve these scores is intriguing, but simply suggests that the study is not very useful. The intriguing (and amusing) nature of these results guarantees however that it will blasted by every mainstream news source in the coming days, with little mention of the weakness of the research.
Science discovers the obvious: A computer analysis of 2.3 million people in Europe has found that eating cheese helped make them healthier and happier as they aged.
A mediation analysis identified 33 factors that mediate “between the well-being spectrum and the aging-GIP” – essentially, statistically, the disease, behaviors and lifestyle choices that significantly reduce the healthy aging score. Key ones included TV watching, smoking, medication use, heart failure, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), stroke, coronary atherosclerosis and ischemic heart disease.
Cheese, on the other hand, swung the pendulum the other way in both its impact on the well-being spectrum and aging-GIP. One of five key lifestyle mediators the data testing identified, it had a 3.67% positive impact on those healthy aging factors (whereas, for example, higher fruit intake had a 1.96% positive result and too much TV time, an indication of a more sedentary lifestyle, had a 7.39% negative impact on the score for both indicators).
While interesting, this research is generally junk. The number of uncertainties and assumptions are so large that no one should take any of these positive and negative scores very seriously. Furthermore, the study basically discovers something that is patently obvious from the beginning: If you are active and eat well, you will be healthier in old age. If you are a couch potato who smokes, you will likely be sicker in old age.
Why cheese (and fruit) should improve these scores is intriguing, but simply suggests that the study is not very useful. The intriguing (and amusing) nature of these results guarantees however that it will blasted by every mainstream news source in the coming days, with little mention of the weakness of the research.