Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds • Hacker News Board

Re: Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

#251

Post by dahidahi1 » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:42 AM UTC

Elrac wrote: post #244

dahidahi1 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not claim it to be infallible, nobody does. It is a science, on equal footing with any other science. It followed the same rigorous trial & error procedures that is required of all sciences. And science does gets things wrong. Ayurveda roughly translates to the knowledge / science of health. Just because it is from India & it follows Hindu traditions does not disqualify it from anything.

I'm going to chime in to the growing chorus of HNers trying to explain to you why you're wrong. There's no such thing as "any other science." There is science as developed and practiced by qualified researchers all over the world - including India - and it's all one and the same science, which is a set of protocols for rigorously checking the relevance of what you're seeing, and the huge body of useful human knowledg…

Agreed that there is no "any other science". But human (Western) prejudices have made Vedic sciences (as in science originating from India) the lesser science, which is what I am trying to clarify. The reasons for this prejudice are too many, but it has a religious angle, an angle that the Church has pushed for too long that people have forgotten any other angle. Also the angle of Islamic destruction, which has ensured that most texts & documentation are destroyed under the pretext of war & iconoclasm. Please see my other comments.

Re: Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

#252

Post by gopalv » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:44 AM UTC

luka-birsa wrote: post #216

gopalv wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> was born and brought up in south India and my grandma used to make me drink turmeric + ground black pepper milk every night I grew up in a part of South India with a fairly high natural background radiation (thorium, mostly) and I did wonder if the practice boosted survival via accidental cancer protection from an alpha decay environment. Natural selection is weird because the goal of taking turmeric might have not…

Not sure if high natural background radiation really means more cancer. I tried searching but I cant find a study where apartment builings in Japan were inadvertently built using steel laced with radioactive elements. People (10000) were living in them for decades. Statistical analysis on them showed lower affinity for cancer related deaseses.

> inadvertently built using steel laced with radioactive elements. > Statistical analysis on them showed lower affinity for cancer

Radiation Hormesis might be real (I hope so), but if it gets through drywall, it would be a different form of radioactivity to the one I grew up around.

Alpha decay needs just a simple sheet of paper (or dead skin cells) to stop the radiation, but it messes with DNA if you happen to eat it or breathe it.

That's the one from Th-232, in comparison bananas are also naturally radioactive, but the K-40 emits beta particles, which doesn't cause as much damage.

Alpha decay is what a cup of Polonium tea would have (from the infamous assassination).

Re: Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

#253

Post by moh_maya » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:45 AM UTC

dahidahi1 wrote: post #249

moh_maya wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"rigorous" in science, especially biomedical sciences, has a specific definition. Where is the double-blind testing? Where is the statistical significance? Where are the clinical trials? Ayurveda likely has a lot to offer as a FOUNDATION to start doing investigative research; but this claim of "any vedic sciences are arguably as rigorous as today's sciences" is bunkum. Show me any statistics / clinical trial data (or…

It is clear that you have not even read the Vedas to understand its implications on the world, especially in science. Most of the statistics that you ask have been lost due to them being so old, or deliberately destroyed. But we have the results to prove that these existed. "Strong observations & correlations" are just another way of saying "trial & errors". Not just ayurveda, but take any science or even Mathematics…

Look, you obviously have an axe to grind. And you are conflating too many different things.

So I'll limit myself to the original point.

Science, particularly modern science, even with all its baggage and flaws and politics, is evidence based.

Evidence in this case is statistics and data. Those are not present, from many reasons (as an aside, I don't think there is any evidence of statistical trials being performed in the Vedas).

There is no work in medicine in the Vedas that satisfies this criteria. Ergo, it is not yet evidence based science. It's observational. Now, if the govt. through AYUSH [AYUSH added in edit] actually invests in performing clinical trials etc. and publishing them in peer reviewed journals, then your argument may hold water. You are conflating correlations with causation / evidence.

Re: Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

#254

Post by sov » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:50 AM UTC

brfox wrote: post #245

sov wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Small study Almost entirely irrelevant, provided it's properly powered--and based on the effect size and p-values, it is. Furthermore, for an 18 month trial, 40 people is larger than most. > probably not preregistered I mean, true, and we should definitely promote pre-reg, but, 1. so few are preregistered that I'm not sure it's prudent to disregard a study based on this and 2. it's an academic study, neither a clin…

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If that were the gp's argument, I'd have no problem with it (heck--I'd agree with most of it).

Re: Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

#255

Post by trhway » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:50 AM UTC

brailsafe wrote: post #166

tremendulo wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300808/

Quite funny, had to reflect on my own bias a bit. I still think it's important to be critical of purely observational or anecdotal results when tested evidence driven medicine does exist. For example, suggesting a cancer patient abstain from radiation therapy, offering the alternative of cayenne pepper smoothies.

haven't seen cayenne pepper studies. While for example drinking baking soda - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19276390

significantly slowing cancer spread with for example 4 months survival result - less than 40% of controls and more than 80% of baking soda drinker mice https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2834485/figure/...

The study has all the statistical bells and whistles. And its result perfectly matches our understanding of cancer spread process - local overproduction of acid from glucose aerobic glycolysis (dominating way of glucose consumption by cancer cells) results in dissolution of the ECM (which is mostly collagen) - and the probable mechanism of action of the baking soda on it.

Re: Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

#256

Post by 2muchcoffeeman » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 6:57 AM UTC

dahidahi1 wrote: post #249

moh_maya wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"rigorous" in science, especially biomedical sciences, has a specific definition. Where is the double-blind testing? Where is the statistical significance? Where are the clinical trials? Ayurveda likely has a lot to offer as a FOUNDATION to start doing investigative research; but this claim of "any vedic sciences are arguably as rigorous as today's sciences" is bunkum. Show me any statistics / clinical trial data (or…

It is clear that you have not even read the Vedas to understand its implications on the world, especially in science. Most of the statistics that you ask have been lost due to them being so old, or deliberately destroyed. But we have the results to prove that these existed. "Strong observations & correlations" are just another way of saying "trial & errors". Not just ayurveda, but take any science or even Mathematics…

I am not a historian.

They may have been ahead of the Europeans in the past. But that’s irrelevant now. They are not ahead of modern civilisation.

And perhaps there’s some lost knowledge, but these alternative treatments as practiced now have never been shown to be effective.

Re: Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

#257

Post by danans » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 7:02 AM UTC

dahidahi1 wrote: post #224

danans wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP comment strikes me as having a rather jingoistic/nationalistic tone, so I sort of doubt its sincerity regarding question of efficacy of Ayurvedic practices. Any culture that has been developing food habits via trial and error for centuries has some that are beneficial, some that are harmful, and others that are neither harmful nor beneficial.

> Any culture that has been developing food habits via trial and error for centuries has some that are beneficial, some that are harmful, and others that are neither harmful nor beneficial. How is that different from science? That is great & is science. Maybe you do not recall the recent news about how Radium painting was also science. All this is science, especially the Ayurvedic sciences. What else is it?

It is different in important ways from the modern scientific method [1].

In particular, it omits (or has long since stopped):

- Developing testable (falsifiable) predictions

- Gathering data to test the predictions

- Refining, Altering, Expanding, or Rejecting Hypotheses

Modern science is actively doing all those things: constantly re-evaluating its own prior conclusions and testing against the most recent empirical data available.

Ayurveda, like many other traditional health practices, is an interesting source of hypotheses that can be tested by the modern scientific method - and we might learn a lot from doing just that - but it's by no means a fully verified system of knowledge.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method#/media/File:...

Re: Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

#258

Post by ebullientocelot » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 7:03 AM UTC

learc83 wrote: post #142

olympus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Normal people flourish and are in their prime around 50." This is false. The only advantage people in their fifties have is experience. Your body is past its peak physically and mentally. People flourishing in their fifties are by and large reaping the benefits of things done in their younger decades, not because they are peaking. I'm not saying that someone that is 50 years old is decrepit, but ask nearly any acade…

>but ask nearly any academic and they'll tell you they were better when they were younger. I don't think that's true at all outside of Mathematics. >Ask nearly any athlete (ultramarathoners being an exception) and they'll tell you they were better when they were younger. That's obvious.

>I don't think that's true at all outside of Mathematics.

Quite a few great math papers are written by people over 40, despite the flashy age restriction on the Fields Medal.

Re: Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

#259

Post by nabla9 » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 7:05 AM UTC

sov wrote: post #220

hannob wrote: post #152

Small study, probably not preregistered (didn't find anything about it in the description). Likely Publication Bias or p-hacking. I'm starting to get interested when it's been independently replicated.

> Small study Almost entirely irrelevant, provided it's properly powered--and based on the effect size and p-values, it is. Furthermore, for an 18 month trial, 40 people is larger than most. > probably not preregistered I mean, true, and we should definitely promote pre-reg, but, 1. so few are preregistered that I'm not sure it's prudent to disregard a study based on this and 2. it's an academic study, neither a clin…

Thank you for your informed comment.

I don't' work in the field so I find it hard to interpret these studies. What's your opinion about the size of improvements in practice?

For example, How meaningful is the 20.3 point difference in Buschke SRT test?

Cohen's d (mean difference divided by SD) above 0.60 with the memory or attention seems good (73 % of the people who take the dose get above the mean test score). But difference that is detectable in a test is not telling me how big the effect would be in the daily performance unless I'm familiar with the test.

Re: Curry spice turmeric boosts memory by nearly 30%, eases depression, study finds

#260

Post by ebullientocelot » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 7:05 AM UTC

psychometry wrote: post #73

jtwebman wrote: post #49

30 total people with 15 on placebo seems like a very small sample size to me but a great study to maybe get funding for a bigger one for sure.

Everyone without statistical training thinks sample sizes are too small, but rest assured these studies are usually planned very deliberately. Power calculations are usually done in advance to determine the necessary sample sizes needed to demonstrate the magnitudes of different hypothesized effects according to a desired confidence level.

Oftentimes planned deliberately to achieve something that might not be obvious from the content or presentation of the paper.