Research

When I was first on this journey, I found it super confusing to know what was healthy and what wasn’t.  It seemed like websites were just regurgitating the same information back and forth along the same theme and I would have to hunt down WHY this was true.  The other issue with this was that I would be on one track, working with a particular idea of health and then run across a website that told me to do the opposite.  This lead me down many rabbit trails, some which paid off and others which made me feel like I was just failing miserably.    

So I changed tactics.  I learned to read researchese, start using Google Scholar  and began a whole new journey philosophy:  one grounded from the studies themselves.  

One of the main goals of this blog is not only to provide information, but also to link the studies that talk about it with the data, so you can look at it yourself.  This can be hard because first of all, not all studies are well constructed.  So you will have to be able to look at what other factors may be going on that could be at play.  

Also, keep in mind… studies never prove anything… they just support.  Science always says things are a theory, even when they believe that its totally true.   This keeps us all honest and still looking for new understandings. 

You will see a <P number in the data… this number represents the mathematical amount possible that the results are just dumb luck that they decided upon BEFORE the study was done and tallied to tell us if the study means anything.  The smaller the number, the more stringent they were on their studies.  

So look at how many people there were, what they ruled out for their participants of the study (were they also smoking, drinking, had any other diseases), and who funded the study.  Many scientists if they are working for a pharmaceutical etc are not allowed to publish their findings if it goes against the product, even if it did. There are other studies that are funded by groups that want to discredit other groups for some advantage.