by Kerry Cue

Ghosts of Things Past!

The piano belonged to my mother, Kath Meehan. When my daughter asked this question almost 20 years ago, I laughed. The piano was indeed dusty. My mother had a ‘minimalist’ attitude to housework. I had the good fortune to have a childhood blessed by a mother who spent far more time playing the piano (She played in a local dance band for 25 years), than dusting it. If she wasn’t playing the piano, she was bush walking, bird watching, silk screen painting, or playing music for the disabled.

When my mother died not long after my daughter’s dusty piano observations, we five – very different – kids wanted some scrap of a eulogy put on her tombstone. We unanimously agreed on ‘A life of music and laughter’.

Of late, however, dust has been invading my house. No more or less than usual, I guess, but it accumulates because I don’t notice it. I need my reading glasses to see the dust. This makes me a little fearful that I am turning into Dicken’s Miss Havisham. Will I discover a decaying wedding cake when I put on my glasses? It almost seems possible.

Nevertheless, whenever I unexpectedly discover the furniture peppered with motes of dust, I laugh because I’m taken back to the world of my childhood.

A time of music and laughter.

Photo source: Carminesuperiore Bolg

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Too much Botox? But I’m Smiling on the Inside!

June 1, 2014 by the sibyls Leave a Comment

In restless nights I slept alone
With a face that looked like cobblestone

…………Botox Parody of Simon and Garfunkel’s, Sounds of Silence, AmIRight,

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Photo Source: Vintage ad merbear74 blog

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Why we eat ourselves crazy

May 23, 2014 by the sibyls 1 Comment

by Kerry Cue

A big, juicy burger to anyone who knows what healthy eating is any more.

Owen Jones, The Guardian, 22 May 2014

Once all scientific research was filtered through the peer review process. Initial studies were tested by others and if the results could be replicated, they were eventually published in mainstream papers.

These days, to get funding, researchers release their results directly to newspapers. Later studies may show that the initial research was flawed but the damage is already done.

Here are 6 ways the healthy food message messes with our minds:

1.Oops! Crazy Professor (Superfood Claim Superbollocks)

2. Too many statisticians spoil the broth (Eat Meat and Die. Oops! Got the maths wrong.)

3. Seemed like a good idea at the time (Stop Oxidants? Stop Breathing! The Antioxidant Hoax)

4. Just made that one up (Drinking 8 glasses of water a day for Dummies),

5. Getting carried away with numbers again ( Winning the Salt Wars or Never Trust a statistician)

6. How marketing controls your mind (Would you eat a button? Millions do!)

Photo source: Undisclosed

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Eat Meat and Die. Oops! Got the maths wrong.

May 23, 2014 by the sibyls 1 Comment

By Kerry Cue

Be a vegetarian. Give peas a chance.

Coffee Mug

Every time a study finds this or that food is good or bad for you they usually make one huge error. It’s called a SAMPLING BIAS. ( See Ben Goldacre @ TED Talks.)

Red wines good for you. Red wines bad for you. Red wine causes cancer. Ditto coffee etc. What’s going on?

One newspaper article screamed ‘Cancer a risk for lovers of red meat’. So Real Men Eat Meat and Die. There are many good arguments for being a vegetarian, this does not include health statistics.

This claim was made but the article did not explain the maths. Big meat eaters tend also to be big drinkers and smokers, who are obese, unfit and the rest. This study has tried to separate out meat eating from other unhealthy lifestyle choices using the Cox Regression. Mathematical wizardry has produced these numbers but they don’t mean much.

If the study used a control group of unfit, drinking, smoking, obese vegans then comparing mortality rates over 10 years would be interesting. But where do you find half a million of them????????

Photos: Vintage Circus Photo Blog

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Stop Oxidants? Stop Breathing! The Antioxidant Hoax

May 23, 2014 by the sibyls 1 Comment

by Kerry Cue

Evidence gathered over the past few years shows that, at best, antioxidant supplements do little or nothing to benefit our health.

Lisa Melton,The antioxidant myth: a medical fairy tale, New Scientist, 05 August 2006.

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Eat. Pray. Breathe Oxidants.

We breathe oxygen. The oxygen is carried around our body by red blood cells. And, guess what? Oxygen is an oxidant. It ‘burns’ or ‘oxidises’ fuel in our cells. We get energy. The red blood cells then carry the carbon dioxide produced by oxidation back to our lungs and we breath it out. Sometimes, these oxidising reactions are incomplete producing free radicals or, as scientists like to call them, Reactive Oxygen Species, ROS.

Lisa Melton attacked the popular belief that anti-oxidants have magical health benefits in the New Scientist. In the article biochemist Barry Halliwell from the National University of Singapore explains that “One per cent of the oxygen we consume turns into ROS.” Other free radical producing factors include X-rays, smoking, air pollutants, bacteria and intensive exercise. When subjects with diets high in fruit and veg were found to suffer lower incidence of heart disease, diabetes, dementia, stroke and some cancers the theory that antioxidants mop up free radicals was born. It has sponsored a $US 23 Billion supplement industry and that is not even including superfoods.

According to Melton ‘Time and again, however, the supplements failed to pass the test. ‘True, they knock the wind out of free radicals in a test tube. But once inside the human body, they seem strangely powerless.’ Evidence suggests that sometimes anti-oxidants can even do harm. One study involving 18,000 subjects had to be stopped when researchers found the cancer rates rose in those given beta carotene supplements.

Even antioxidants should be consumed in moderation.

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Photo Source: atomictoasters blog

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Drinking 8 glasses of water a day for Dummies

May 23, 2014 by the sibyls 1 Comment

You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him water ski.

ff………….Kerry Cue, Sibylesque (Just made that one up to be annoying)

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Even as I write these lines some self-proclaimed health adviser will be insisting that for optimum health you should drink 8 glasses of water a day.

This assumes two things:

1. You are incapable of deciding if you are or are not thirsty. Answer this question. What day is it? Correct. As you do not appear to have dementia, you will remember to drink fluids.

2. That 8 glasses is the correct fluid intake for you. How do they know?

Meanwhile, the claim that you need eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day has been debunked.

Drs. Dan Negoianu and Stanley Goldfarb at the University of Pennsylvania reviewed published clinical studies on the topic and found no data to suggest people need to stick to the “8 x 8″ rule.

“Indeed, it is unclear where this recommendation came from,” they write in an editorial in the June 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Photo source: Vintage Hairdryers pinterest