SGU Episode 415
|
This episode needs: transcription, time stamps, links, 'Today I Learned' list, categories, segment redirects. Please help out by contributing! |
How to Contribute |
| SGU Episode 415 |
|---|
| 29th Jun 2013 |
 |
| (brief caption for the episode icon) |
| Skeptical Rogues |
| S: Steven Novella |
R: Rebecca Watson |
J: Jay Novella |
E: Evan Bernstein |
| Quote of the Week |
Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth. |
Robert Royar |
| Links |
| Download Podcast |
| Show Notes |
| Forum Discussion |
Introduction
You're listening to the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality. Hello and welcome to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Today is June 29th 2013 and this is your host, Steven Novella. Joining me this week are Rebecca Watson
R: Hello everyone
S: Jay Novella
J: Hey guys
S: and Evan Bernstein
E: Good evening everyone
R: Where the hell is Bob?
S: Bob, once again, is too busy to join us. Bob has a major thing happening at work
E: uh huh
S: that does keep him away.
This Day in Skepticism (0:35)
June 29: Happy birthday to Dr. Roy Wolford, calorie restriction pioneer and Biosphere 2 inhabitant R: Hey, happy birthday to Roy Wolford, Dr. Wolford.
E: Awesome! Is he a listener?
R: Well, uh no, he died in 2004. He was born June, 29 1924 and Dr. Roy Wolford is probably best known for being one of the inhabitants of Biosphere 2.
E: I love that movie
R: He was also though a pioneer of calory restriction as used for longevity. He wrote a book about living to 120. It was not, uh...
E: A life of perpetual hunger, that's what the title of the book was called.
J: Imagine what Perry would have said about that.
R: I think Perry would have said that he would gladly die at 20 than live on a restricted calorie diet.
J: Choking on a hamburger right?
R: Right
E: hahaha
R: Yeah, uh, Wolford lived on something like 1600 calories a day
E: Alright
S: It's not that bad.
R: Which is realy not that bad
J: That's not bad
R: That's slightly more than what I take in when I'm trying to cut back on my fats.
S: That's a weight loss diet, 1600 calories a day is a pretty reasonable weight loss plan
R: He died at the age of 79 uh, from comoplications from ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease.
E: That's not, that's got nothing to do with his lifestyle
R: It's not, yeah it's not a fair, it's not really a fair judgement wether or not his calorie restriction were the... Although he claimed at the end of his life his calorie restriction helped extend his life further by a couple of years after he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's.
J: Unprovable
R: Yeah
E: That's a nice antecdote.
S: Honestly, ya know, again this is all antecdotal I have no idea about the individual case but, that's unlikely to be true.
R: Yeah
S: Calorie restriction actually hastens death in ALS. It often, the ability to get enough calories in and keep your calories up is a huge pragnostic factor in ALS. So if anything, ya know, ya can't, it's very hard to argue that calorie restriction prolonged his life once he developed ALS.
R. But yeah, he also thought that his ALS was possibly caused by his time in the Biosphere due to lack of oxygen and increased nitrous oxide. Exactly what causes ALS is not entirely settled and so he suspected that that might have had something to do with it.
S: That's wild speculation.
E: Nitrous Oxides builds up in these Biodomes? I didn't know that.
J: Well they were having trouble in there right?
R: They had a lot of trouble. Although, they did stay in there for two years. But, one of the problems they had was a severe lack of food and so it was helpful that their resident doctor happened to be this guy who believed in calorie restriction. So he convinced them all to go on this diet. Ya know, to join him in his diet.
S: Yeah since we have no food anyway.
R: Right. And so they did, but even so at some point many months in they finally broke down and opened up a container of food that was grown outside of the Biosphere in order to supplement their diets.
J: That would have made an awesome YouTube video
E: Watching the moment of breaking that chest open
S: So they just didn't...Did something go wrong with their food production or they didn't plan properly?
J: If you couldn't grow enough food in the Biodome, and ya know, it was never done before. They didn't have the data going in to it, it was all just engineered and it failed. Biodome experiments didn't last as long as they hoped
S: It wasn't self sustaining.
J: No
R: Yeah by all their models I guess it seemed like it could be done but one thing after another went wrong.
S: Now imagined if that happened on Mars.
R: Well that's why they do this stuff. Although I'm sad that they're not, they haven't continued trying that sort of thing. I would love to see that project continue.
S: Yeah
R: I don't know the details of why nobody has tried Biosphere 3
J: Ya know what I noticed?
E: Pauly Shore
J: I noticed, looking at pictures of Biodome, first its interesting if you look at it today, a weed infested back yard. I also noticed it looks a lot like Logan's Run, that's 1970s movie of the people that get put into a Biodome like thing because that was like a last ditch effort to sav humanity and people were in there so long that they forgot what happened. That was Biodome man. Ya ever see, like it looks like it.
S: Well, it was a lot bigger
R: There was apparently a Biosphere 3, maybe still is in Syberia and there's a Biosphere J in Japan. But one other thing, despite the potential pseudoscience with origins of disease and wether or not calorie restriction can actually work in humans to extend life, Walford seemed like a really awesome guy. At one point he would like take off for a time as part of his studies and measure the rectal temperatures of holy men in India.
E: uh huh
R: He traveresed the African continent on foot, according to his obituary in the New York Times. So he specifically wanted to go out and just have adventures. He said, " If you spend all your time in the laboratories, as most scientists do, you might spend 35 years in the lab and be very successful and win a Nobel Prize. But those 35 years will be just a blur. So I find it useful to punctuate time with dangerous and eccentric activities." He once broke his leg on a motorcycle.
E: That qualifies as dangerous. R: Yeah he just seems like he was a fun guy.
News Items
Podcasting Patent ()
Class System in Mice ()
Anti-GMO Pseudoscience ()
- Science-based Medicine: Once More: Bad Science in the Service of Anti-GMO Activism
Skunk Ape ()
Who's That Noisy? ()
Questions and Emails ()
Staticman ()
Hey guys! Thanks for the show. I've been listening for years now and it's by far and away my favorite podcast. I was wondering if you heard about Static Man reported in Australia. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4252692.stm Sounds like balderdash to me, but who knows maybe it's a new Scientology superpower. Keep up the excellent work,
Damian Tinkey
Marlboro, NY
Science or Fiction ()
Item #1: Researchers at MIT have developed a transistor that is switched by a single photon. Item #2: Geologists have found evidence for a new subduction zone forming near Portugal which may indicate the beginning of the next phase of continental movements in which Europe will move towards North America. Item #3: A new study of whole body vibration therapy finds that it produced significant weight loss in obese subjects, who lost on average 10% of their body mass in 12 weeks.
Skeptical Quote of the Week ()
Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth.
Announcements ()
S: The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe is produced by SGU Productions, dedicated to promoting science and critical thinking. For more information on this and other episodes, please visit our website at theskepticsguide.org, where you will find the show notes as well as links to our blogs, videos, online forum, and other content. You can send us feedback or questions to info@theskepticsguide.org. Also, please consider supporting the SGU by visiting the store page on our website, where you will find merchandise, premium content, and subscription information. Our listeners are what make SGU possible.
References
|
|
|