Entries by Chet Zelasko

Your Breath and Your Dental Health

When I speak at events, I often answer questions afterward. To maintain some confidentiality, I often ask people to get close so it remains private. When you’re that close to people, you get a really good sense of the odor of their breath. People worry about garlic and onions but to me, those are normal. […]

Long COVID and Possible Solutions

I had a talk with someone who had a question about a skin condition, something that’s been a minor issue but suddenly got much worse. I happened to mention that sometimes when you deal with the flu or COVID, your immune system is weakened and it can impact other conditions; people report their symptoms began […]

Ice Cream, the Health Food

Paula gave me an article to read from The Atlantic written last summer, in which author David Merritt Johns tackled the issue of outlandish results in nutrition-science studies. In this case, the issue was research demonstrating that eating ice cream regularly reduced the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. He interviewed the […]

Questions About Fish Oil

While I’m spending the day making sure today’s primary election in Michigan goes smoothly in my precinct, here are some of my thoughts and questions about fish oil and omega-3 fatty acids. That’s the way I see it. It’s also why I think eating a good diet will prove to be beneficial when taking fish […]

Fish Oil: Reserve Judgment

Let’s put the fish oil study from Tuesday in perspective. The most important thing is that observational studies such as these cannot demonstrate cause and effect. That’s not just a way to weasel out of making definitive statements; it’s because while fish oil supplements are associated in some way with atrial fibrillation in people who […]

Fish Oil and Atrial Fibrillation

Researchers recently published an observational study on over 415,000 subjects in the UK Biobank database who took a fish oil supplement. During a follow-up period of almost 12 years, they statistically demonstrated a 13% increased hazard ratio (a measure over time of how often a particular event happens in one group compared to another group) […]

Nothing to Fear from the Multivitamin Study

If you’re concerned about taking your multivitamin, I think you can lower the concern. Is it still possible that there may be individuals who may have a unique set of genes and covariates that may increase the risk? Sure, it’s possible, but this study brought us no closer to finding out if that’s true. Here’s […]

Will Taking a Multivitamin Increase Your Risk of Death?

Close to a month ago, the health headlines were full of warnings about multivitamins. A long-time researcher even did a video to explain the study. This headline was based on a study that demonstrated an increase in Hazard Ratio if a person took a multivitamin every day, compared to occasionally or never. On the face […]

Nutritional Epidemiology: Still Confusing

Remember where we began: frustrated with the conflicting studies on nutrition and their impact on our health. The researchers used specification curve analysis to illustrate several issues. The most important point is that there are many ways to analyze large datasets in nutritional epidemiology. Reviewing 15 studies in 24 papers, they found that the number […]

Nutritional Epidemiology: Specification Curve Analysis

Did you look up quadrillion? It’s a 1 with a whole lot of 0s—15 to be exact. When I finished Saturday’s Memo, the researchers had chosen an area of nutritional epidemiology to focus on: the analytics used to analyze the data. They began with the premise that there are many ways to analyze any data […]