WIL Weekly 5-Point Review #32
Brute Force Happiness, Fruit isn't good for you and more...
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1. Brute force happiness
Researchers have also found that covertly manipulating a positive facial expression influenced people’s cardiovascular and affective responses to stress (Fredrickson & Levenson, 1998; Kraft & Pressman, 2012). This suggests that positive facial expressions may speed individuals’ stress recovery and reduce the negative after-effects of stress.
“Error-related negativity” (ERN) refers to how the electrical activity of your brain changes when you make an error. For example, you would likely see ERN when someone taking an online quiz gets a hit with a “WRONG” and a big red X on their screen. This particular pattern of electrical activity is thought to reflect a quick decrease in dopamine in the brain. You can expect an ERN if you accidentally drop your phone on your face while looking at it in bed.
On the other hand, research from 2010 suggested that simply smiling increases dopamine levels. In fact, a 1999 paper found that in a group of people with varying degrees of facial paralysis, impairment of smiling was a key predictor of depression.
Given all this, researchers at the School of Psychology and Cognitive Science of East China Normal University wanted to see if smiling would have a dampening effect on ERNs in people with minor depression. That is, they wanted to see if perhaps the brain signals that indicate negativity (decrease in dopamine in the brain) could be mitigated by smiling.
They found that this actually seemed to work. Even in people with minor depression, the strength of the “error-related negativity” signal was lower in the people who were deliberately smiling. They conclude that “our findings suggested that even brief smile manipulation may improve long-term negative mood states of people with minor depression.”
2. Fruit sugar isn’t special: Fruit worsens fatty liver disease?
A 2022 randomized controlled trial paper titled The effect of a fruit-rich diet on liver biomarkers, insulin resistance, and lipid profile in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease: a randomized clinical trial found that four servings of fruit a day for 6 months worsened several markers of liver health (steatosis, dyslipidemia, and glycemic control) in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease patients.
3. Video explaining why Saturated Fat does not work at all like you think it does on a keto diet
Great video by Nick Norwitz (PhD) on how his team’s data reveals that saturated fat does not work like we think it does on a keto diet.
4. What if more sun doesn’t mean more skin cancer ?
A 2017 paper out of the journal DermatoEndocrinology agues that no, the sun does not cause skin cancer via UVB rays.
"Contrary to popular belief, no significant trend or correlation between increasing incidence of [skin cancer] and increasing personal UVB dose for males or females of any age group or skin type, anywhere in the world."
In fact they point out that some data shows lack of UVB to be correlated with skin cancer.
“Surprisingly, increasing UVR doses, which represent erythemally-weighted doses comprised primarily of UVB (290–315 nm) radiation, did not significantly correlate with increasing CMM incidence for people with any skin type anywhere in the world. Paradoxically, we found significant correlations between increasing CMM and decreasing UVB dose in Europeans with skin types I-IV. Both Europeans and Americans in some age groups have significant increasing CMM incidences with decreasing UVB dose, which shows UVB is not the main driver in CMM and suggests a possible role for lower cutaneous vitamin D3 levels and UVA (315–400 nm) radiation.” (CMM = cutaneous malignant melanoma)
5. Curcumin is a Scam?
Reese Richardson is a PhD candidate working in computational biology. His blog is dedicated mostly to issues in scientific reproducibility. At the end of last month, he published an article titled The King of Curcumin: a case study in the consequences of large-scale research fraud.
Bharat B. Aggarwal, a biochemist who worked at MD Anderson Cancer Center for 26 years was largely the source of hype behind turmeric.
His research focused on potential anti-cancer effects and therapeutic applications of herbs and spices. Aggarwal was particularly drawn to curcumin, a non-toxic compound found in turmeric that has long been staple in Ayurvedic systems of medicine. He authored more than 120 articles about the compound from 1994 to 2020. These articles reported that curcumin had therapeutic potential for a variety of diseases, including various cancers, Alzheimer’s disease and, more recently, COVID-19. In his 2011 book Healing Spices: How to Use 50 Everyday and Exotic Spices to Boost Health and Beat Disease, Aggarwal recommends “taking a daily 500 mg curcumin supplement for general health”. (Richardson)
Eventually, MD Anderson Cancer Center probed Aggarwal’s research and retracted a whopping 30 of his articles due to fraud. The articles were about other natural products as well as curcumin.
Retractions rarely number this high for a single author; according to the Retraction Watch leaderboard, only 26 other people have authored this many retracted studies. Aggarwal’s retracted articles feature dozens of instances of spliced Western blots and duplicated images, as well as several instances where mice were implanted with tumors exceeding volumes considered ethical.
Richardson notes that in fact, “curcumin doesn’t work well as a therapeutic agent for any disease. …no well-powered clinical trials have ever found it to be an effective medicine.”
Consider the following summary from Nelson et al. 2017:
“[No] form of curcumin, or its closely related analogues, appears to possess the properties required for a good drug candidate (chemical stability, high water solubility, potent and selective target activity, high bioavailability, broad tissue distribution, stable metabolism, and low toxicity). The in vitro interference properties of curcumin do, however, offer many traps that can trick unprepared researchers into misinterpreting the results of their investigations.”
Does this nullify all promise of curcumin acting as an anti-inflammatory “wellness” supplement? Richardson didn’t comment on that specifically.
Plants in general are a scam 🙂
Circumin extract supposedly does not contain Oxalates but Turmeric from which it is derived is very high so when people think it reduces inflammation and pain, my assumption is that the body goes into sequester mode to get the Oxalates out of the bloodstream since they are very toxic and this reduces pain temporarily while loading the body with more and payment will eventually come due. From personal experience, I can assure you that this is NOT fun! In fact, it’s absolutely miserable. I love your newsletter!