The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [199]
TOOLS AND TRICKS
Seth Roberts, “Self-Experimentation as a Source of New Ideas: Ten Examples Involving Sleep, Mood, Health, and Weight,” Behavioral and Brain Science 27 (2004): 227–88 (www.fourhourbody.com/new-ideas) This 61-page document about self-experimentation provides an overview of some of Seth’s findings, including actionable sleep examples.
The Quantified Self (www.quantifiedself.com) Curated by Wired cofounding editor Kevin Kelly and Gary Wolf, a managing editor of Wired, this is the perfect home for all self-experimenters. The resources section alone is worth a trip to this site, which provides the most comprehensive list of data-tracking tools and services on the web (www.fourhourbody.com/quantified).
Alexandra Carmichael, “How to Run a Successful Self-Experiment” (www.fourhourbody.com/self-experiment) Most people have never systematically done a self-experiment. And yet, it’s one of the easiest methods for discovering what variables are affecting your well-being. This article shows you the five principles that will help you get started in running successful self-experiments. Bonus: an 11-minute video from Seth Roberts, discussing experiment design.
CureTogether (www.curetogether.com) CureTogether, which won the Mayo Clinic iSpot Competition for Ideas That Will Transform Healthcare (2009), helps people anonymously track and compare health data to better understand their bodies and make more informed treatment decisions. Think you’re alone with a condition? Chances are you’ll find dozens of others with the same problem on CureTogether.
Daytum (www.daytum.com) Conceived by Ryan Case and Nicholas Felton, Daytum is an elegant and intuitive service for examining and visualizing your everyday habits and routines.
Data Logger (http://apps.pachube.com/datalogger) Data Logger for iPhone enables you to store and graph any data of your choosing along with a time-stamp and location. It can be used for anything, whether food-related, animal sightings, or temperature sensor readings around your neighborhood. If you can think of it, it can be recorded and tracked.
SPOTTING BAD SCIENCE 101
How Not to Trick Yourself
Nothing is more irredeemably irrelevant than bad science.
—John Polanyi, Nobel Prize winner in chemistry
JIM BORGMAN © Cincinnati Enquirer. Reprinted with permission of UNIVERSAL UCLICK. All rights reserved.
“PANEL URGES HOUR OF EXERCISE A DAY”
—New York Times, SEPTEMBER 2002
“WHY EXERCISE WON’T MAKE YOU THIN”
—Time, AUGUST 2009
“LOW-CARB FAD FADES, AND ATKINS IS BIG LOSER”
—Washington Post, SEPTEMBER 2005
“LOW-CARB DIETS COMBAT METABOLIC SYNDROME”
—Washington Post, July 2007
It gets tiring, doesn’t it? Scientists seem to change their minds every six months. Eggs and butter will kill you, so you turn to margarine and turkey bacon. Now margarine will kill you and one egg a day is okay?! It almost seems better to opt out completely and live in ignorance.
Fortunately, science isn’t arbitrary. In fact, you just need to learn a few simple concepts to separate the truth (or probable truth) from complete fiction.
Most research is presented to the public through media or propagandists with agendas. Since diet is most often hijacked for selling newspapers and ideologies, we’ll use almost-believable diet nonsense to develop our BS meter. To create the most perfect you, you need to know which science to follow and which “science” to ignore.
After reading the next eight pages, you will know more about research studies than the average MD.
The Big Five
The Big Five are important to understand, as they are the tools most often used to exaggerate and brainwash.
They are also critical to grasp so you don’t trick yourself or waste time with false leads as a self-experimenter. I’ve phrased each concept as a question you should ask yourself when looking at diet advice or the “latest research.