17 Comments

I probably missed it, but what is MACE?

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Like Kirsten said MACE is major adverse cardiovascular event. It generally refers to things such as non-fatal heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure as well as deaths related to those events.

Sorry for not elaborating. I've used the acronym so much in other articles that I generally assume people know what I am referring to.

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No worries. Thank you!

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Major adverse cardiac event. Or martial arts center of excellence. Or pepper spray. Or a spiked club used in medieval wars. My guess is on major adverse cardiac event. 😄

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😂 LOLOL thanks Kirsten

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It's so strange that the basics of science aren't even followed, like controlling for confounders. I guess that might happen in preliminary studies, but the media spreads their results as if they have more validity than they do. (As you said in this stack). In my twenties and thirties I would follow some of this dietary advice without thinking of going to the original scientific studies! 🤪 It's only in the past 10 years that I recognized how much studies are misrepresented in the media. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on possible reasons behind studying these things, does it have to do with genes? I'm hearing about a shift towards genetic causes of disease, and more genetic solutions. 🤔

I think there's so much we don't understand about this miraculous complex biological system that is our body. It may be hard to design a study well for such a complex system.

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I think the main problem with this set of studies is that it can't control for confounders. As I mentioned, each study itself will contradict the finding of the other. If you find elevated xylitol levels and try to link that to risk of MACE but then find out this person also had elevated levels of TMAO then which one is contributing? Or is it both? If both then you can't argue that they are operating independent of one another. I am curious if this is why these studies are being reported separately. It creates this false assumption that they are using different cohorts when (at least to me) it seems like they are milking the same Discovery Cohort to find what sticks.

I certainly would have just listened to whatever "study" came out as well! But in looking into some of these studies I've become very skeptical of everything. And this isn't just a skepticism of the mainstream press but even anything that is touted as being THE ANSWER. I don't really know if seed oils are the worst thing in the world (I did some research and am a bit critical of some of the conclusions people made). I also don't think that means we should be eating a lot of it. I don't know if keto is the best diet in the world but also I won't deny that people have improved their health on it.

A big problem is that we don't like uncertainty, and we want people to tell us what to think because it removes that feeling of uncomfortableness that comes with stewing in uncertainty and having to make decisions for ourselves. We need people to validate or affirm our choices and so we will seek out people who tell us what we want to hear or who have done the work for ourselves.

I don't know if it's related to underlying genetic factors. I'm not sure if I explained it well in my recent article but my general point is that metabolomics could be an interesting field but its use here seems to be a bastardization in metabolomic research- just take blood samples from a group of people and screen it for whatever metabolites or biomarkers you can find. And then use that and see whatever correlation you can make with those metabolites and biomarkers. It's almost like publication farming in some ways as you just release all of these studies based on this same dataset.

It's quite possible that all of these metabolites may just be related to MACE- having a heart attack may permanently alter the metabolites that are released form cells due to some sort of cellular dysfunction. It could also be that people who are at risk of MACE were already unhealthy to begin with and those metabolites/biomarkers are related to some other underlying health condition.

The body is definitely complex, and possibly no study can hammer down all there is to know about the body and all of the stuff that goes on. But because of that conundrum it's important to view studies within the context of the research. But researchers and journalists can't stop themselves from overly exaggerating or misreporting on things.

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I think I can take a wild and crazy guess why there may be a rash of shoddy 'studies' trying to blame heart-related death on anything and everything, except the ONE BIG THING of which we do not speak...

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Well you have to remember that this data was collected during the early aughts. I believe the Discovery Cohort recruited people between 2001 and 2003 so this data is almost two decades prior to the vaccines. We have to be careful in assuming that everything going on is related to the vaccines as much as we have rightful criticisms of them.

A better criticism would be why this data is coming out now. It's like these samples were around for years but are now being looked at for these metabolites. It's why this appears more like a fishing expedition to see what can stick, which is causing all of this unnecessary histrionics in the press.

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OK, lemme back up a bit and reword that.... I think I can take a wild and crazy guess why there may be a rash of shoddy 'studies' about anything related to heart-issue deaths being dug up from obscurity and waved around like a new discovery, taking the heat away from the ONE BIG THING of which we do not speak...

How's that?

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Subordinate …

The Idea Of A Virus

Is Itself A Virus.

Self- Replicating

In The Presence

Of A Susceptible Mind.

Until Proven

It’s Just An Idea After All.

.

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Idiot.

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We don't need to resort to name-calling. Allow people to say what they want even if we disagree. In this case I find it strange that a comment on viruses is made on this article in particular...

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Hence my lack of patience with these 'people' (I presume at least some are bots, which are becoming common nowadays). As you say, this article isn't even about viruses but still these idiot bots come spewing their BS, undermining those seeking real answers.

At least vegans have misplaced passion; these idiots are deliberately disrupting conversations with some kind of agenda. Considering the other efforts by Fauci et al, I presume they're from the same mob, along with the, yes, idiots, they rope in with their "no virus" flat-Earth BS.

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Why the name calling?

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Why the spewing of BS on someone's substack?

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?

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