I hate medical researchers sometimes -

[hedgehog]

Here's an announcement that Yale researchers have indicted excessive salt use as triggering autoimmune disorders:

http://news.yale.edu/2013/03/06/yale-researchers-identify-salt-trigger-autoimmune-diseases#.UTitMhSsUQ0.mailto

Now, maybe the original article answers these questions, but I'm left wondering -

How much salt is "excessive"?

How similar are the mice to humans in their metabolism of salt?

Did you even check to see if people with autoimmune disease use excessive salt and/or have excessive salt in their systems where it would do harm?

Some medical research answers specific questions, some explores general principles, but I hate medical research that ignores important variables and premises.


Another very typical experiment uses supplements of X to treat condition Y because people with condition Y sometimes have a low level of X. Unless you determine that everyone in the experiment is deficient with X to begin with , and that your treatment brought X levels up to normal, please don't tell me that supplementing with X doesn't help with condition Y!

[Warpy]

1. I think what I hate are medical news reporters

who seemingly comb every study out there without regards to either the methods or the merits of such study.

[hedgehog]

2. That's why I 'm holding out hope that the actual report is more nuanced -

but the quote suggesting a low fat, low salt diet will prevent/treat MS? That'd be called quackery if Dr. Oz said it!

"“These are not diseases of bad genes alone or diseases caused by the environment, but diseases of a bad interaction between genes and the environment,” said Dr. David Hafler, the Gilbert H. Glaser Professor of Neurology, professor of immunobiology, chair of the Department of Neurology, and senior author of the Yale paper.
....
Hafler is not waiting with his own patients.

“I already recommend that my patients use a low-salt, low-fat diet,” he said"

[Warpy]

3. Low salt, moderate fat should be it.

and it's what everybody needs to aim for. That's just general good sense.

However, promising it will cure MS? Pure quackery!