The One Question You Must Ask When Reading Anything About Health, Nutrition, and Cycling

By Kevin Kolodziejski 

Feeling nauseated is no fun. The same can be said for vomiting. Unrelenting hiccuping — the type so persistent you have trouble eating and sleeping — is no day at the beach either.

But whether there’s sand between your toes or not, these three unpleasantries are all too often part of your days if you’ve been diagnosed with neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder. NMOSD’s not only a mouthful, but it’s also a diagnosis you should dread, for these symptoms are not nearly the worst of it. The disorder can lead to vision loss; immunity-related conditions like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and myasthenia gravis; difficulty walking; paralysis; and shorten your lifespan. Sometimes severely. One study on people with untreated NMOSD found mortality rates as high as 33 percent within five years of diagnosis.

While all that’s certainly scary, don’t misplace your fear. There’s only about a 1 in 100,000 chance of a doctor ever telling you have NMOSD, according to the National Organization of Rare Disorders. In other words, you’re seven times more likely to get hit by lightning. So why are you now reading about such a rarity instead of ways to get better at and better enjoy bicycling?

It’s not, repeat not, because a study presented at the 150th Annual Meeting of the American Neurological Association this September found what a Newswise article calls “a powerful connection between gut hormones and brain inflammation” — even though that connection could lead to the development of “new, more targeted treatments for patients with NMOSD.” While that’s great news for disease suffers, it’s information you can’t really use. It’s because this Newswise article is typical of the dozens of articles emailed to you if you do what so many of us now do: subscribe to health-and-fitness newsletters to help enhance our health and cycling. That makes the aforementioned article an apt example to introduce another affliction far more likely than NMOSD to have befallen you.

Information Overload

IO can occur any time you seek an answer to a problem or potential one by using your laptop or smartphone — and instead of getting a single answer you get 17. Which generally produces the same nauseous feeling NMOSD sufferers get. Fortunately, there’s a one-question antidote, not for nausea but IO in general. It’s the one question you must ask yourself anytime you’re reading anything health-related and will greatly reduce all types of health hiccups as well.

‘How Do I Differ From the People in the Article?’

That’s the question that’s essential to ask, and it’s essentially mine, though it only came to me after hearing “The Peter Attia Drive” podcast 368 that dropped on October 13. In it, Attia and his guest, Dr. David Allison, address what’s behind the recent “demonizing” of protein. Just in case IO has not etched this number in your memory, the RDA for protein ingestion is 0.8 grams per kilogram of bodyweight, meaning a 150-pound (68 kg) male or female needs about 55 grams of protein per day. Both Attia and Allison feel that amount is far too low for active individuals hoping to stay that way and achieve optimal health.

Many other human-performance experts agree. Doctors Stuart Phillips and Layne Norton, for instance, suggest those who seriously work out ingest double that amount while Attia tells all his clients regardless of their workout goals to shoot for nearly triple, 2.2 grams per kilogram per day, an amount the Mayo Clinic calls “excessive.” But as Allison points out, “no one [has] proved, demonstrated, or even claimed” that the established RDA for protein was the upper limit or best amount. What science has shown us, he says, is that we need protein to survive, that the RDA insures that, and that a 1928 Polish study first demonstrated this.

The Polish Potato Study

The six-month experiment had one healthy man and one healthy woman eat — except for a scant bit of fruit to avoid vitamin deficiencies and some fat to cook the potatoes — nothing but potatoes for that entire time. Potatoes are a poor source of protein, albeit a complete one, and by eating nothing but potatoes the two subjects got about 0.8 grams of it for every kilogram they weighed. Yet every time their nitrogen levels were assessed, the two were found to be in balance, meaning they were getting enough protein to survive.

Attia adds that later USDA-based studies corroborated the Polish study, finding 50 grams of protein per day did indeed keep the participants in nitrogen balance, but “if my memory serves correctly,” the participants were “lean, inactive, sedentary young men” with an average weight of 150 pounds. Does that sound like you? I didn’t think so.

That’s why it’s so important to keep asking yourself How do I differ from the people in the article? whenever you read about any sort of study about health, nutrition, or exercising.

One Last Clarification

To be clear, Attia believes what I do, though he’ll advise you to “be careful what patient population you’re looking at in any study and make sure it applies to you.” But what I feel needs to be stressed is that studies are rarely going to apply directly to you. So you’re goal then becomes to glean what you can from them and self-experiment.

And you’ll better know how to create those experiments by reading all you can and frequently asking yourself — you guessed it — How do I differ from the people in the article?

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Kevin Kolodziejski began his writing career in earnest in 1989. Since then he’s written a weekly health and fitness column and his articles have appeared in magazines such as “MuscleMag,” “Ironman,” “Vegetarian Times,” and “Bicycle Guide.” He has Bachelor and Masters degrees in English from DeSales and Kutztown Universities.

A competitive cyclist for more than 30 years, Kevin won two Pennsylvania State Time Trial championships in his 30’s, the aptly named Pain Mountain Time Trial 4 out of 5 times in his 40s, two more state TT’s in his 50’s, and the season-long Pennsylvania 40+ BAR championship at 43.