WIL Weekly Review #39

Meaninglessness = porn usage, seed oils and autism and more...

This is my free weekly newsletter covering 5 interesting points from the week. Subscribe (if you haven’t already) if you’d like to get it in your inbox each week!

1. Study: People watch porn because life feels meaningless?

Nihilism is lame.

A 2022 study in Personality and Individual Differences found that the perception of life being meaningless is associated with boredom proneness which is associated with watching porn. Put another way, “pornography consumption, at least in some circumstances, may function as a means of dealing with perceived meaninglessness, signaled by boredom.”

“Previously, my colleagues and I found that when people experience boredom, it poses a threat to their sense of meaning in life. As an escape from this adverse existential experience, people may subsequently engage in hedonic behaviors,” explained study author Andrew B. Moynihan of the University of Limerick.

“We found that people may engage in unhealthy eating, impulsiveness, or endorse promiscuous attitudes in this context. In the current paper, we investigated whether pornography consumption, at least in some circumstances, may also serve as an escape from the threat to meaning in life posed by boredom.”

---

2. Homo Domesticas - Nothing wrong with being in boxes 90% of our lives, right?

According to a survey from 1992 through 1994, we spent 87% of our time indoors. While this is a very old survey, I can’t imagine the percentage would be much lower in 2024. A 2020 study titled Insufficient Sun Exposure Has Become a Real Public Health Problem says:

Studies in the past decade indicate that insufficient sun exposure may be responsible for 340,000 deaths in the United States and 480,000 deaths in Europe per year, and an increased incidence of breast cancer, colorectal cancer, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, autism, asthma, type 1 diabetes and myopia.

Sunlight hasn’t been marketed properly. The study explains that vitamin D is not the only health benefit from the sun.

…serum 25(OH)D as an indicator of vitamin D status may be a proxy for and not a mediator of beneficial effects of sun exposure. New candidate mechanisms include the release of nitric oxide from the skin and direct effects of ultraviolet radiation (UVR) on peripheral blood cells.

In fact, this wording questions the narrative that vitamin D is so amazing. That’s not to say vitamin D is not amazing, but rather: High vitamin D levels are simply an indicator of sun exposure, and sun exposure is where you get these big whole-system effects.

---

3. Headaches? Stop eating seed oils.

A 2021 study found that increasing omega-3 fatty acid intake and reducing linoleic acid (main fat in seed oils) reduced headaches more than just increasing omega-3 fats.

The H3-L6 diet decreased headache days per month more than the H3 diet (−2.0, −3.2 to −0.8), suggesting additional benefit from lowering dietary linoleic acid.

---

4. Canola oil worsens autism?

In a 2018 study, 18-38 month toddlers were given either Omega 3's and Omega-6 (GLA) for 90 days or canola oil "placebo" for 90 days to investigate the effect on Autism Spectrum Disorder.
・In the treatment group (Omega-3’s and GLA), ASD score decreased (7.0→5.3)
・The canola oil group's ASD score increased (6.4→7.6)

Now, this wasn’t highlighted by the authors. My guess would be that’s because they assume canola oil is benign and so any worsening of ASD score is just natural progression of the disease. You can see in Table 2 that they note the “difference in change,” -2.1 and this difference in change is noted in the results.

Of 31 children randomly assigned, 28 had complete outcome data. After accounting for baseline scores, those assigned to treatment exhibited a greater reduction in ASD symptoms per the Brief Infant Toddler Social Emotional Assessment ASD scale than did those assigned to placebo (difference in change = − 2.1 points; 95% CI: − 4.1, − 0.2 points; standardized effect size = − 0.71). No other outcome measure reflected a similar magnitude or a significant effect.

Based on this, they conclude that treatment with omega-3 and GLA may reduce autism symptoms. However, they don’t remark about whether the “placebo” (canola oil) could be detrimental.

*Someone might argue that the kids were ‘only’ getting 500 milligrams of linoleic acid (the detrimental fat in canola oil). On the other hand, a ‘mere’ 500 milligrams of EPA+DHA was enough to have a beneficial effect.

Note that a previous study found excess consumption of linoleic acid by mothers to be linked with autistic traits in children.

If you’re thinking “that’s so random, why would canola oil have anything to do with autism?,” make sure to read point #2 in WIL Weekly #38.

---

5. Sun protects against more common cancers?

A 2012 study in the International Journal of Cancer looking at 76,000 people found that “over 9 years of follow-up, UVR exposure was inversely associated with total cancer risk.” More ultraviolet radiation (sun exposure) meant less cancer. So sun exposure meant a lower risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, colon, squamous cell lung, pleural, prostate, kidney and bladder cancers.

BUT

Melanoma risk did increase slightly.

Now, I’ve talked in other WIL Weekly reviews about how we’re rarely told the full story on sun exposure and skin cancer, but if we are just to go by this study… considering the cancers sun exposure protects against are more common than melanoma, shouldn’t we be getting more sun?