Good analysis!
On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 6:29 AM, Bert Herring <bherring@fast-5.com> wrote:
The raw data actually points the other way, and it's not until the authors applied an unspecified age-correction factor that the outcome was reversed.There were 26902 in the study; 3386 didn't eat breakfast and 23516 did. There were 171 cases of heart disease among the breakfast skippers and 1356 among the breakfast eaters.Doing the math, that mens by 2008, 5.05% of the breakfast skippers had developed heart disease since the 1992 baseline and 5.76% of the breakfast eaters did. Putting that in the terms the authors used, the raw data says breakfast eaters are 14% more likely to have heart disease than breakfast skippers. ((5.76-5.05)/5.05) Given that the skippers had more negative risk factors in almost every category (smoking, weight, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia), the numbers suggest a protective effect of breakfast skipping, if anything, but I think the only real message is that generally health-conscious people who have less risk of heart disease than generally health-negligent people.I get the same outcome when I use the person-years figures they present:171 cases of heart disease out of 49880 person years of breakfast skipping = 0.00343; 1356 cases out of 338074 person-years of breakfast eating = .00401.So again, there were more cases of heart disease per person-year of breakfast eating than breakfast skipping.The difference comes after a "correction factor"; the average age of the breakfast eaters was about five years greater than the skippers, so some non specified adjustment was applied that reversed the apparent benefit into a risk. When other corrections for risk factors were applied (BMI and health conditions), the relative risk dropped by almost half.The second "take-home" lesson from this is that we should all do our own "study of one" -- check your blood pressure, check your waist measurement and whatever else you can to see how your choices affect your health, and navigate accordingly. There's more on "study of one" in my TEDx talk on my blog (http://www.didienrichtoday.com).On Jul 23, 2013, at 6:06 PM, RickS <no3rdseat@gmail.com> wrote:Okay Dr Bert... looks like you're making a difference. I see entirely too many of these moronic "studies" lately-
http://now.msn.com/skipping-breakfast-increases-heart-attack-risk-harvard-study-suggests
Rick Stewart
Silver Spring, MD
Heather Twist -- Seattle 7B
http://eatingoffthefoodgrid.blogspot.com/
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