Sigh, kittehs. It’s time yet again, to go on a rant-page.
It all starts with some Twitter notification that Jakey accidentally didn’t ignore. It’s a response to some study posted by Mark Sisson, from Mark’s Daily Apple.
It’s about myopia. And jungle plants.
Nicely done, Petra. :)
It’s about myopia and jungle plants, and how this Ecuadorian jungle tribe has zero myopia, and how their jungle grass eating could be the clue as to why their eyes are so great! OMG, my darlings. Could Mark just have literally found the jungle grass to fix this global myopia epidemic?
Here’s a link to this “study”, linking phytochemical consumption in particular, to myopia.
Or is it linking age related degenerative eye diseases, to phytochemical consumption? At this juncture Jake is a little confused, because in the same breath they’re talking about age related eye diseases and then myopia.
The first sentence of the abstract states:
“Myopia is absent in undisturbed hunter-gatherers but ubiquitous in modern populations.”
So it’s myopia, guys? Myopia and phytochemicals. Got it.
But wait, then there’s the last sentence:
“Our results suggest that intake of a wider variety of plant foods supplying necessary phytochemicals for eye health may help maintain visual acuity and prevent degenerative eye conditions as humans age.”
Right, so. Degenerative, age related conditions, or myopia? Because surely they’re not suggesting that myopia is an age related, degenerative disease. Are they?
You get why I’m confused.
Never mind the fact that far more obvious that jungle berry consumption is the fact that the tribe doesn’t play smartphone games all day, or sit in front of computers in the office. Occam’s Razor comes to mind, and all the published science on pseudo myopia, but sure. Jungle berries.
Let’s just say, whatever. Idiotic studies abound, I’d normally not bother wasting your time with that here. Question is, why does Mark Sisson, noted health expert, post this nonsense on Twitter, to his 108.000 followers? You know those people probably trust Mark to have done his research, before showing things to his audience.
Should these trusted health figures be held to some standard for fact checking, before posting things? What do you think?
Comment in the YouTube video rant comment section on this topic:
Jungle berries vs. Jake.
I’m genuinely curious about your opinion on health gurus and fact checking their studies. Do let me know in the Youtube comments.
If you’d like to comment on Mark’s Twitter post, that’s over here. If you do comment please consider Mark a friend (keep it nice, he’s featured us on his site before). Great if you do Twitter comment, a few of those may raise his awareness on the subject which would of course be awesome.
Cheers,
-Jake
