“No more pork for me this year!”

“Thirty push-ups a day for 2022!”

“Never gonna touch cigarettes and beer!”

“I’m switching off Netflix and getting more sleep!”

We rang in the new year a couple of weeks ago and made a bunch of solemn promises like the ones above.

So the well-meaning fellow goes on Google to do his research.

And so, it begins...

He clicks link after link and is quickly bombarded by different health studies, claims from all sorts of experts, all from reputable institutions, all backed by scientific evidence.

“Eggs are bad for you!” “No! They are good for you!” “No, actually, it depends!”  

Readers get pulled in every direction, tossed to and fro by a menu of medical approaches, beliefs, and philosophies, until, exhausted, the would-be dieter raises his hands in exasperation and lands them on the big bag of chips and cookies in the fridge.

We at BloodWorks Lab know the plethora of medical opinions floated as medical doctrines online. That’s why we carefully choose the links that we place into our articles here. Simply put, you can’t and shouldn’t believe all the “medical studies” you read online.

The work done in the name of science can be biased, have conflicts of interest, and even be flat-out wrong. (Because the guys in white lab coats are fallible human beings who don’t know everything.)

So in 2022, the best thing to do is to take everything you read online (yes, even this one), with a grain of salt.

To help you with that, we take you behind the scenes into some of the issues with medical research. You should be aware of them so that when you read the latest piece from a reputable medical journal, you’re also reading between the lines and not take everything hook-line-and-sinker.

This year, in addition to all your vows for better health, resolve to become a better detector of truth, lies, and everything in between. That is one of the best things you can do for 2022!

Choose Your Own Adventure (All conclusions covered.)

Is chocolate good or bad for you?

It’s both. Because you’ve got studies saying it’s good and another set of researches saying it’s bad for you.  

When you think about it, when you’ve got a resource as deep and as robust as Google, you’re going to be seeing all sorts of contradictory conclusions. Not just about chocolate, but just about every topic you can think of—from sleep,  fever to calories.  

“I’ve read it somewhere online!” is a common refrain.

In short, if you have preconceived notions or biases on a topic, you’re going to find, in the vastness of a Google search, studies fully supportive of your position.

So, in an age when you’re encouraged and empowered to “Do Your Own Research” (DYOR), it pays to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. Because there is indeed great research out there, and they can help you achieve your health goals. But you need to have strong filters to get to them.

So, how are we going to get to the truth of things, you know, so we can diet properly and make 2022 rock?

Here are three super important questions you need to ask every medical study you set your eyes on:

Who is doing the research?

Is the methodology sound?

What are the numbers?  

Who is doing the research?

It’s not just about knowing the names of the doctors and scientists involved, or the institution or university they’re connected with. Knowing the cast of characters or that they’re from Harvard doesn’t say much these days. (Because yes, there’s another team from Harvard who are coming to the opposite conclusion.)

What is more important is to find out who is sponsoring the study. Conducting research and experiments costs money, and researchers apply and compete to get funding. Unfortunately, these funding sources, all too often, have vested interests in the results.

Now in an ideal world, the source of funding shouldn’t affect the results of a well-designed study by highly-competent researchers. But we don’t live in an ideal world. It has repeatedly been found that there are significant positive correlations between funding sources and the results of a study.

So we have a case where, “Oh, we discovered that milk is really, really good for you! That’s in a study sponsored by the milk companies.”

This is true for every major industry: dairy industry, sugar industry, tobacco research, and drug companies.

 The critical thinker in us should begin to think, “How unbiased are these studies actually?”

“Is this real science or simply corporate marketing?”

We’re not out to wave off these researchers as on the payroll of these big companies nor are we saying that these researches are invalid. We’re just alerting you to these interesting set-ups and situations so you become a more critical consumer of medical information.

Some medical journals help our cause by revealing sources of funding and possible conflicts of interest. So be sure to check them out whenever they’re given.

Is the Methodology sound?

For this one, you have to go beyond the headline and read the published material.

You follow what was actually done by the researchers.

How did the study come to its conclusions? Not all studies are made equal. For a finding to be valid, it should have gone through the soundest of methods. Surprisingly, not all studies adhere to even the most basic of research protocols.

There are truly a great number of flawed research methodologies out there, but we’ll just scratch the surface here and talk briefly about “control groups” and “double-blind experiments.”

Whenever possible, an experiment has to have a “control group.” For something to be pinpointed or isolated as the true cause of something, you must have a “control group” (or a “placebo group”). These are subjects who don’t get the treatment.

If you want to ascertain, for example, that your “Rat Healer 2000” is the one that made sick rats better, you need to have a group of rats that didn’t get “Rat Healer 2000.” If these rats, who didn’t get the medicine, healed at the same rate as the treatment group, then you have a lot of issues with your “Rat Healer 2000.” And you can’t pinpoint it as the cure.

Another methodology issue would be on “double-blind experiments.”

Let’s say you want to know if an appetite-inducing pill works. In addition to having a “control group,” the experimenter and the subjects must not know to which group they belong to. Because knowing can alter behavior. If a subject knows he or she is taking the appetite-inducing pill, he or she might consciously eat more. And if the experimenter knows that a subject is taking the appetite-inducing pill, he or she might be more encouraging to the subject or unknowingly give him or her more food.

Then you wouldn’t know if it’s the pill that’s working or it’s both the experimenter and the subject being led on by their beliefs!

Truly there’s a whole mountain of issues with research methodology and the topic can be a post unto itself.

But at the very least, look into how the study performed the experiments. Put the study’s methods to a “smell test.” If you sense something fishy then it’s a signal not to put too much stock on its results.

Journals promise to publish only high-quality research, but judging by the material that’s out there, this doesn’t seem to be always the case.

Numbers can lie.

Mark Twain once said, “Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”

In addition to checking the experimental design, you also have to look at the quantitative techniques employed.

This is another big topic when it comes to research, but we’ll just talk about two: “random sampling” and “sample size.”

Say a research team wanted to find out what percentage of the general Filipino population still watches the evening news. They planned to employ a TikTok poll to find the answer and wanted to share the results with everyone.

Well, you shouldn’t bother with this study. Why? Because that team will most definitely get the wrong numbers. Tiktok users do not represent the general Filipino population. They are mostly of a certain age and persuasion. The poll will miss out on a great percentage of the demographic.

In short, the poll will fail to get a “random sampling” of the Filipino population. And so the results will be skewed.

For a result to be valid, it has to get a random sampling of the general population.

In addition to this, when you look at studies, you also need to consider the “sample size.” This refers to the number of participants in the study. The greater the number of test subjects, the more confidence we can have in the results.

Say, you read a headline trumpeting something like, “Asparagus Increases the Chance of Pregnancy by 80%!”

You dived into the article and discovered that only 8 married couples participated in the study. This should immediately alert you as to the validity of its conclusion, and make you think, “Eight doesn’t a conclusion make!” (The number doesn’t even deserve the bold headline and increased font size.)

Determine sample size quickly. It should be one of the first things you look for. Because no matter how well-designed a research is, its small “sample size” will limit its validity.

Sample sizes don’t usually appear with the headline (unless it’s a large figure and researchers wanted to highlight it). Fortunately, you can get this detail from the “Abstract” of the study.

Knowing the “who,” the “how” and the “how much” are just some of the ways you can be a more “woke” consumer of medical information. We’re not saying that a great number of articles are out to get you, we’re only helping you put them in a proper context so you, the reader, can make the decision based on properly appreciated data.

It’s another year of goals and challenges. We at BloodWorks Lab know how important your well-being is. So we offer you the “Well-being Package.” It helps you monitor the state of your health, looking into your CBC, blood sugar levels lipid profile (instead of cholesterol), urinalysis, and stool. You can use these assessments for disease prevention or to simply keep abreast of your physical condition.

As a premier testing facility, BloodWorks Labs provides a wide range of screening services, immunological tests, and neurological assessments. We are proud to be the first in the country to offer the Anti Acetylcholine Receptor (lgG) Antibody Test and the Anti N-Methyl-D-Aspartate Receptor (Anti NMDA Receptor) Antibody Test.

Come give us a visit. Our branches are in Alabang, Katipunan, and Cebu.