Looks like community water fluoridation has become an issue in the upcoming by-election for the New Plymouth City Council. All the usual arguments are being promoted but the one I find most grating is the rejection of fluoride because “it is a chemical.”
The person is expressing that when we get our trace elements and minerals and not-so-trace ones from natural sources we are more likely to get them in balance for what we need.
It is not so in every case, and explanation can be helpful.
If we supplement a pure substance like ascorbic acid (vitamin C) it is easier to get the dose too large so we may get low on copper.
If we supplement selenium compounds it is very easy to get too much. Excess natural selenium in places in China causes illnesses in people as does its shortages in other places. There is not a great range of usefulness. Its excess effect may be reduced by mercury which may even help in areas of excess?
A living plant or creature is more likely though not certain to provide elements in proportion for what humans need.
Trace minerals include such as iodine whose lack can cause goitre and cretinism, but whose excess from eating seaweed may also cause thyroid trouble. Iodine (iodide) is in the same chemical family as chlorine (chloride) and fluorine (fluoride).
Iodide and chloride both affect some foods.
About iodide supplementation:
I am thinking that since calcium fluoride has rather low solubility that fluoride introduced to many foods will turn up in that form. I would like to know if the body then has ways to more easily absorb just the amount it needs.
And to have a bit of like-minded fun at your diagram, 43kg of oxygen in a cube of 33.5cm would be at rather high pressure.
It would be interesting to put the number of molecules in and water would be close to some 98 or more percent going by numbers of molecules. Water is quite important to life and people are right to want to respect it.
And a paper which that cites: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3285728/
” the destabilizing effect of one solute can be balanced by the stabilizing effect of another; two destabilizing solutes are more destabilizing than each of them separately. The rank order of effectiveness of anions in stabilizing proteins is:
citrate > acetate > sulphate > fluoride > chloride > bromide > iodide
The rank order of effectiveness of cations in stabilizing proteins is:
N(CH3)+4 > NH4+ > Cs+ > Rb+ > K+ > Li+ > Ca2+ >Mg2+
These rank orders of cations and anions also follow observed patterns of partitioning between LDW and normal water. Anions are increasingly accumulated into LDW, going from left to right. Cations are increasingly excluded from LDW going from left to right.”
And for those who do not mind a bit of my brainstorming, perhaps it may be interesting to look at varying the concentrations of those substances in the diet, to see what changes happen.
If I am planting out seeds in pots I shall need fewer pots for a kg of big seeds compared to a kg of smaller seeds.
That 98% estimate may be a bit high. I saw another of 90%
(my 3rd ref last article):
“First, the adult human body is approximately 70% water
by weight. In pure numbers, given its small molecular
weight, 90% of our molecules are water. Hence, water is a
major absorption target even for
wavelengths with low AC’s “
Fluoride toxicity and new-onset diabetes in Finland: a hypothesis
M. Kemal Irmak1, Ilknur Senver Ozcelik2, Abdullah Kaya3
1High Council of Science, Gulhane Military Medical Academy, Etlik, Ankara;
2The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, Kavaklidere, Ankara;
3Service for Ophtalmology, Gulhane Military Medical Academy, Haydarpasa Training Hospital, Istanbul; Turkey
Received July 29, 2013
Accepted November 1, 2013
Published Online December 13, 2013
DOI 10.5455/jeim.011113.hp.007
Corresponding Author
M.Kemal Irmak
Gulhane Askeri Tip Akademisi
Yuksek Bilim Konseyi
06010 Etlik, Ankara, Turkey. mkirmak@gata.edu.tr
Key Words
Amoxicillin; Diabetes; Fluoride Abstract
The incidence of type 1 diabetes (T1D) has increased substantially in Finland, but the exact trigger for the onset of T1D is still unknown. We know that use of amoxicillin and anti-cariogenic fluoride tablets is a common practice for children in Finland. It seems that beta-cell destruction is initiated by modification of the proinsulin by combined effects of fluoride (F2) and amoxicillin. Amoxicillin especially when used together with clavulanic acid results in an acid environment around the beta-cells that promotes the conversion of F2 to hydrogen fluoride (HF). Unlike F2, HF can diffuse easily into the beta-cell cytosol. Because the cytosol has a neutral pH, virtually all HF reverts to F2 in the cytosol and F2 cannot easily diffuse out of the cell. Exposure to excess F2 promotes proinsulin covalent dimerization and simultaneously hyperexpression of MHC Class I molecules. Proinsulin dimers then migrate to the cell membrane with MHC class I molecules, accumulate at the beta-cell membrane and produces a powerful immunogenic stimulus for the cytotoxic T-cells. Production of cytotoxic cytokines from the infiltrating T-cells initiates the destruction of beta-cells. In Finnish children, this might be helped along by a higher beta-cell activity and by a reactive thymus-dependent immune system induced by higher levels of thyroid hormones and calcitonin respectively. After repeated similar attacks, more and more effector T-cells are raised and more and more beta-cells are destroyed, and clinical diabetes occurs
You’ve said “water would be close to some 98 or more percent going by numbers of molecules,” and “90% of our molecules are water.” Which is it? I’d be very interested to know, simply because I don’t know and can’t find a reliable reference.
All I said was “Just to put it in context, sea water is “only” 96.5% water.”
Did they seriously use a Full Grown Man to take these element statistics? Because if they did, then theyre OBVIOUSLY going to find trace elements in your body that SHOULDNT be there, but when they get their data, theyre going to be like, “Oh, its in the body, its naturally there.” NO! The dude has probably been brushing his teeth with fluoride his whole life. OF COURSE theres going to be Flouride in his body. You know, this site was right on one thing. Your mind DEFINITELY has to be open to work.
It’s like you go to get your car serviced and they sell you all the bits and fluids. But what you needed is the knowledge of where they go and how much.
Sure, remove all the bits (chemicals) and you have nothing left. But get back all the bits and you do not have a car (person).
Simpler creatures may be better at putting together bits. Cats can synthesise vitamin C whereas humans can’t.
Algae may synthesise a sort of vitamin B12 if they have the right chemicals like cobalt available. Fish eat the algae or plankton and make it more absorbable by humans.
Even then humans need an “intrinsic factor” to absorb it.
Plain chemicals are often no use.
We need chromium to help against diabetes. But is no use just getting the chemical. It needs to be in the right form. It’s no good getting the tannery waste chromium from the river or sea. But we might be able to eat animals from that river or sea if they can get the right valency of chromium and reject the wrong. I am not certain if they can so be careful.
Better to get not just chemicals but chemicals in the right proportion and form for humans, which are more likely though not certain, to be so if they come from other life forms.
You may need iron. If it is prescribed as teh chemical ferrous sulphate it may warn not to take it at the same time as vitamin E which may be destroyed. If you can get it from green leafy plants.
I am wondering if fluoride interacts with anything, but I would say it is likely. If it is the water you cannot choose so easily, maybe instinctively what not to take it with.
Soundhill – what a load of old rubbish attempting to support idiots who base their opposition to health measures on something being a chemical.
We are 100% chemical. Rabbiting on about different types of chemical does not change that fact, or change the fact that condemnation of something because it is a chemical is moronic.
I am offended but the fact that I cannot find out the composition of a commercial source of sea salt because it claims not to contain any chemicals. Pathetic.
Our NZ salt mainly comes from the sea. Epsom salt is extracted from sea salt to make what is left table salt. Not quite. The sodium chloride picks up water and will not free flow. So anitcaking agents are added, could have aluminium salts.
Also if you buy sea salt it probably has a good proportion of magnesium sulphate in it and other stuff from the sea. Except that some people may call salt extracted from sea water sea salt as opposed to rock salt.
@Richard, haha. Have recently had a car fire burnt a nice tree near my place. But I did not think it would be because of what I have written on this group.
Soundhill, you are teaching me to suck eggs. I am a chemist and understand very well the nature of salt.
What I am objecting to are the idiots who could declare that their sea salt product is “chemical free.”
Nothing is chemical free. And I am offended that the manufacturers refuse to include the chemical composition on their product because they declare it “chemical free.”
@Ken
I don’t think I would be drinking 3 litres of sea water daily.
Just the occasional mouthful when I come up to breathe and a wave breaks on me.
But some thoughts emerge.
Salmon can presumably deal with that level in the sea in concert with other “chemicals”. But when trying to navigate fresh water to spawn they may not be able to cope with much more than 1/8th the concentration. Why and what does that mean if anything for humans using water which is very pure except for fluoride?
And as the ocean acidifies I wonder if anyone is keeping watch on fluoride levels since CaF2 is more soluble in acid. We may find changes in species numbers.
It’s not just about what chemicals are there in isolation, it is their interactions and concerted effects on life forms.
I asked a polite question, about where you got your figures from for percentage of water molecules in the human body, to verify your supplied figures of both 90% and 98%.
So far, you’ve ignored the question. Even though you brought up the topic, giving two different answers with no reliable reference does make it seem like guesswork without understanding.
A reliable reference for at least one of your figures, please.
Just found this blog searching for fluorine necessity. Once here I searched the site for boron and noted no results. Curious as to your take on boron (in proper amounts) as seems to be a lot of supporting literature on it’s necessity (along with magnesium) from proper absorption and distribution of calcium in the body with proper amounts significantly impacting bone and tooth density and lack of calcification of soft tissues. Also of note is that modern agricultural techniques have dramatically reduced trace boron in soils. Another interesting observation is that areas of high boron concentration (such as areas around some of the volcanic springs in New Zealand) correlate with much lower incidence of bone disorders and arthritis. Thoughts?
Gerald Pollack is not listed amongst those authors. Actually it was Pollack from the Bioengineering Dept at Washington University said 99% and maybe the more recent paper is a typological error.
You may download some of his book free sand see it. I haven’t time to find it just at the moment.
But maybe that relates to my browser. But try this alternative of pasting in that whole expression to your browser if the former does not work.
Pollack’s intention is to make a readable book. I quote:
page 3
“Water covers much of the earth. It pervades the skies. It fills your
cells — to a greater extent than you might be aware. Your cells are two-
thirds water by volume; however, the water molecule is so small that
if you were to count every single molecule in your body, 99% of them
would be water molecules. That many water molecules are needed to
make up the two-thirds volume. Your feet tote around a huge sack of
mostly water molecules”
I’ve realised that you mean you read the statement.
Gerald’s point is, isn’t it, that there are many water molecules, so it is useful to spend time to understand them?
I think I understand you are wanting to check up that he is telling the truth.
I don’t know where to find the calculation, but I imagine it would go something like this:
Number of water molecules x molecular weight of water
plus number of protein molecules x molecular weight of protein
plus number of fat molecules x molecular weight of fat
plus number of bone molecules x molecular weight of bone
equals weight of body.
or
nw x 18 this bit has to come to about 60% of the mass
+np x 5000
+nf x 300
+nb x ?
= weight of body.
because 18 is rather small then nw has to be large to make up the 60%
The reference you give is merely someone’s opinion. Sure, it’s been published, but there’s no evidence within the paper to back up the opinion.
You’ve said that water molecules numerically consist 98%, then 90%, and now 99% of the human body. Which is it? Or is it another figure alltogether?
I would like to see a reliable reference, and not just someone’s opinion, because two of the figures you give say the human body consists of a higher proportion of water than does sea water.
A good approximation of the osmolar strength of the human body is 279 mOsm/L. That’s what we use for IV crystalloid in the form of Hartmann’s solution. It is actually more dilute than sea water, which is why sea water is not healthy to drink. (We can’t get rid of the excess solute.)
Unfortunately, the human body also consists of lipids and phospholipids, which aren’t dissolved in water. Our skeleton isn’t dissolved in water, either.
We can only use that figure (279 mOsm/L) for the human body if we ignore subcutaneous fat, cell membranes, bones, the brain and spinal cord. If we do that, then it’s hardly a human body any more, is it?
Your simple calculations are just that – simple. Their result is nowhere near an accurate figure.
Ken and many of the commenters will understand why I’m asking for a reliable reference, consistent with other scientific knowledge. If you give a statement on a scientific blog then you have to be able to back up that statement.
A reliable reference, please, for the percentage of water molecules out of all the molecules in the human body.
From memory sea water is 64lb per cubic foot and ordinary water 62.5.
So that would be 100*1.5/62.5 or 2.4%, or sea water about 97.6% water by weight.
with the main constituents sodium 23 g/mol, chlorine 35.5 and water 18 there is not a great deal of difference between the molecular weights. But by number of molecules sea water must be great than 97.6%.
You want this group to be scientific therefore don’t riddle it with suggestive statements. For example your word “drink” sea water, when you mean drink sea water solely as a source of water. But some uneducated readers could be played upon by your words to be made to think I had done something very risky by swallowing a mouthful i.e “drinking” sea water.
As Ken suggests maybe I was even getting a bit of fluoride from it. That may have been one reason for good teeth. But only during the swimming season. Not constantly as with fluoridated water. And in concert with many other “chemicals” maybe competing and blocking fluoride receptors.
Note the useful micro-organsisms in the human body crowd out the pathogens. Or substances a bit like human estrogens may latch on to the estrogen receptors and block them. See tamoxifen or phytoestrogens. Human estrogen may be thought to increase chances of cancer in women who have had breast cancer. Tamoxifen does not decrease it but blocks the receptors.
So in sea water salmon fish may have certain receptors blocked by chloride so as not to be so affected by fluoride. Whereas in fresh water rivers they do not and the levels from city wastewter may banish them. They are banished but my mechanism is just a hypothesis and science has a place for hypotheses.
You want me to look up more about my figures, and in the mean time how about you looking up as Pollack says the exclusion zone in water near a solid surface can be used to purify it maybe even from salt. And acknowledging that the properties of water moelcules make them take an active part in biochemistry not just as a solute.
@Richard you are unscientific if you exclude hypotheses. There can be no scientific progress without them except perhaps in the case of some accidental discoveries.
@Richard: complains of my use of “could be”.
Here is my use of the expression:
“But some uneducated readers could be played upon by your words to be made to think I had done something very risky by swallowing a mouthful i.e “drinking” sea water.”
Stuartg had said sea water is not healthy to drink. So I have to presume, Richard, according to what you say that no one had thought he meant even in small quantity.
You criticise, “maybe.”
and I was saying, “As Ken suggests maybe I was even getting a bit of fluoride from it.”
OK leave out the maybe. But I put it in to give the feeling for whether the amount was significant. More scientific.
You criticise, “may have”. I had written, “May have been one reason for good teeth.” That depends on how much I got. Another reason *may have* been that I tended to get asthma and asthmatics tend to produce more fluids being allergic, so more saliva which is protective of teeth.
And “Maybe competing and blocking fluoride receptors.”
A fair enough hypothesis.
You criticise “perhaps” which I used on January 16
I wrote: “And for those who do not mind a bit of my brainstorming, perhaps it may be interesting to look at varying the concentrations of those substances in the diet, to see what changes happen.”
Most people will think it is a valid word to use there. But Richard is banking on people forgetting and using that to build a case against me.
So, OK, I understand that you’re not going to give me a reliable reference because you don’t have one. You could have said that straight out I would have accepted it.
It’s a pity, because I became interested in the concept after you raised it.
In future, before you introduce a concept, please think it through carefully. Richard described your comments as off-the-cuff and ill-thought-through. I would agree with him, and add that they are very reminiscent of flight-of-ideas that I encountered years ago when training in psychiatry.
Please think your comments through fully before you post.
I have argued on internet groups since 1994. I am very awake to arguers who have an agenda to sell. When they get under pressure they try to attack the arguer rather than the arguments.
Definitions:
1. an uncontrollable symptom of the manic phase of a bipolar depressive disorder in which streams of unrelated words and ideas occur to the patient at a rate that is difficult to vocalize despite a marked increase in the person’s overall output of words.”
And since you bring up psychiatry let me give a little comment about that mind training called “assertiveness training”. From memory we were trained to speak in terms of, “I do it this way,” rather than “you do it this way.”
I did not like that attack on the way people often speak. “You” has a meaning of “anybody concerned,” which is very commonly used. I was annoyed that the trainers could not acknowledge that, that to them, “you” had to mean the person or people you are speaking to.
In called my thought “flight-of-ideas” you are referring in part to my interaction with Ken in which I used the expression, “your pp problem” and he replied as if it were aimed at him personally?
Psychiatry, like a parent or school teacher has power over a person and does not have to explain. Let’s do better.
I shall further talk of what I meant by “your PP problem,” here since I am on the topic, though Ken is saying he does not understand me on the other thread.
A number of times Ken has referred to ministers of religion and prostitutes showing a correlation to many things. I called ministers of religion preachers, and coined the term “your PP problem” for brevity, which I thought would be obvious. (Note I worry about normalising prostitution, Ken, which is frequently under age.)
The PP problem is like things being correlated, though not necessarily causally.
In the cases of the more firemen who go to a fire the more damage there is. Or the students who get private coaching get lower grades on average. I don’t think the partial correlation analysis would sort out those, I am not sure. But it tells you if a correlation is unlikely to be causal. It may be used to give an indication to eliminate causality between variables, not to prove it.
I shall now have another go at explaining one of the things which may have seemed “flight-of-ideas” to you, Stuartg. Please say where if you do not understand or think I am getting it wrong.
“Multiple regression,” as I think Ken says was used Choi et al, depends on linear relationships. That is double the fluoride, double the fluorosis.
I don’t think that should be assumed. In my view it could be like a tank overflowing. Even though fluid is flowing in to the tank it does not overflow until the tank is full then all the flow spills over.
If you are medically trained you may know that kidney disease is like that. People don’t realise they have damage until their kidneys have lost 90% plus of their large reserve of capacity.
So maybe fluorosis turns up in people who have lost their capacity to excrete fluoride. So if I am reading the Choi study I shall be looking for whether lack of urinary fluoride which Ken talks about, is because it is instead going to their teeth, or bones, or wherever else as fluorosis.
I hope I find that Choi & al stats are not based on linear relationships.
One way of dealing with such non-parametric systems is to use partial rank correlation with signficance as was described some years ago by Siegel and Castellan.
@Stuartg
If you are trained in psychiatry I wonder if you had it explained to you about the poor teeth of patients since their drugs suppress their saliva.
Here is a paper addressing saliva and the stimulative effect of fluoride on that. What is interesting is how little difference extra dietary fluoride makes on the salivary concentration of fluoride.
This seems to back up what I said before from Dunedin dentist BD Ritchie who said the saliva does not need great fluoride concentration.
@Stuartg: “You’ve said that water molecules numerically consist 98%, then 90%, and now 99% of the human body. Which is it? Or is it another figure alltogether?”
And earlier you said: “You’ve said “water would be close to some 98 or more percent going by numbers of molecules,” and “90% of our molecules are water.””
I tried to remember and thought it was a bit more than 98%. The figure of 99% was lurking in my brain, and I thought 98% or more included that well enough, but I couldn’t remember if it had been ninetyeight point something.
I am waiting for your psychological commentary on that.
I did not matter too much to me, just that cells have very many water molecules in them, and if they have behaviours other than just being a solute then that is extremely important.
I found out later that Pollack had said 99%. But in the meantime I had read the 90% figure.
At your urging to clear up this matter I have checked up with the authors of the 90% figure and they acknowledge it is a typo.
You initially said “It would be interesting to put the number of molecules in and water would be close to some 98 or more percent going by numbers of molecules.”
This raised my interest, and I asked you for a reliable reference for that comment.
Since then, when talking specifically to me (and ignoring replies to others), you have replied by:
1. Talking about planting seeds in pots.
2. Giving a second figure of 90%.
3. Giving an unreliable reference (just a straight statement).
4. Giving a reference to “fourth phase of water.”
5. Talking about molecular weights (water, amino acids and proteins).
6. Talking about golf balls and ball bearings.
7. Talking about Firefox.
8. Talking about “fourth phase of water” again.
9. Talking about an author’s intentions.
11. Giving a third figure of 99%.
11. Trying to justify your statement with oversimplified maths using mass rather than molecular numbers.
12. Trying to counter my reference with poor maths based on figures that you admit are “from memory.”
13. Accusing me of “suggestive statements.”
14. Talking about the microorganisms that are part of the human body consist.
15. Talking about oestrogen, oestrogen receptors, Tamoxifen and breast cancer.
16. Talking about salmon, chloride and fluoride.
17. Talking about “exclusion zone in water near a solid surface.”
18. Talking about your history on internet groups.
19. Asking me to explain why I thought your replies to me were “very reminiscent of flight-of-ideas.”
20. Told me you were “getting on with my answer to your question.”
21. Talking about my intentions.
22. Giving an article on fluoride in saliva.
23. Saying the 90% figure was a typo.
…And you still haven’t given me the reliable reference to your statement that I politely asked for several days ago.
Now do you understand why I suggested that your comments were “very reminiscent of flight-of-ideas?”
By doing that maths and relying only on your memory for the basic data, you give the appearance that you consider yourself a more reliable source of information than the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Earlier, I asked you: “In future, before you introduce a concept, please think it through carefully. Richard described your comments as off-the-cuff and ill-thought-through. I would agree with him…”
Please think your replies through carefully and consider the impression that your “off-the-cuff and ill-thought-through” comments convey to others.
The number was a bit surprising to me, and it seems so to you.
Do you not believe it?
I wavered a bit when I saw the 90% figure, but that is now explained.
I have given you the references where I saw the figures.
I have been taking you on several journeys hoping to explain other points to you that you may not have come across and trying to find out the basis of your demand. I suspect you are trying to suggest I am quoting a flaky source and so cast doubt on other things I or they say.
I think the points I have made relate to principles of biochemistry that might be applying in tooth health. I am sorry I have answered the next thread on this one somewhat. I found I could link some points to things that have come up from what you have said, and that sometimes helps for people to focus their attention. It wasn’t just to you and I noted the connection on the other thread.
I gave some alternative figures to your seawater ones. Did that help you to get around the understanding?
I don’t see the Britannica article speak of the numbers of molecules, only their total weights combined, and as the water molecules are each less weighty it takes more of them to make up the weight.
you wrote: ““Salinities in the open ocean have been observed to range from about 34 to 37 parts per thousand (0/00 or ppt).” That’s 96.3 to 96.6% water by molecule.”
Firstly you quoted from Britannica, then you added your bit “That’s 96.3 to 96.6% water by molecule”.
You should have said, “That’s 96.3 to 96.6% by type of molecule.”
From TA Crosbie’s copy’n’paste: “virtually all HF reverts to F2 in the cytosol and F2 cannot easily diffuse out of the cell. ” Elsewhere the authors speak of fluoride as being F2. This suggests that their chemistry is somewhat uncertain, as F2 is gaseous fluorine, while fluoride is F-. This reduces my confidence in their pronouncements.
Also, this is an hypothesis ie an interesting possibility; it would be useful to see some actual data to support it. The journal itself is on a par with Medical Hypotheses…
I politely asked for a reliable reference for a figure that you gave, simply because I was interested in that figure. Anything else is your own assumption.
You have diverted in many directions, reminiscent of flight-of-ideas or off-the-cuff writing. It’s as though you have not thought through your replies before committing them to computer.
And through it all, you still have not given the reliable reference that I politely asked for…
You now divert again by going back to my reference and appear to have misinterpreted it. It appears that a simple explanation of that reference is required.
Sea water consists of solvent and solutes, respectively water and salts. The amount of salt, or salinity, is given in parts per thousand. Divide that by 10 to get parts per hundred. Another name for parts per hundred is percent.
So… sea water consists of 34 to 37 parts per thousand of solute (from the reference). Divide by ten – 3.4 to 3.7 parts per hundred of solute. The remainder, entirely water, consists of 96.3 to 96.6 parts per hundred, or 96.3 to 96.6 percent.
Back to water in the human body… I can get a good percentage of water in the human body, by mass, from many sources, but that’s not the subject that you originated: you said “It would be interesting to put the number of molecules in and water would be close to some 98 or more percent going by numbers of molecules.” (I don’t know why you find it interesting, but I certainly do).
I can get a good estimate of the parts per hundred of water in both the intracellular and extracellular fluids of the human body – that figure comes from Hartmann’s solution or other crystaloid infusions. BUT… the figures I get from those do not include the parts of the human body that are not in solution, parts that include the bones, adipose tissues, the phospholipid bilayers, most of the central nervous system, keratin based parts of the body, etc. The reliable reference that I have asked you to supply (and you must have one because you brought up the topic) would also include the molecules of those parts of the human body that are not in aqueous solution.
If you have a reliable reference for the number of parts per hundred (percent), by molecule, of water in the entire human body, then I am interested in it. I’m not going back to count how many times I have said that. Please give the reference.
If you don’t have a reliable reference then let me know as well; I will have to search elsewhere. But, please, please, stop these diversions in all sorts of directions and think through your answers before you commit to them. All they are doing is giving the impression that you made a wild ass guess and you are now trying to cover up your error.
Sorry about the length of this. It’s considerably shorter than my first attempt!
Whilst I honestly have no idea where Soundhill gets his figures from (nor why the percentage of water molecules in the human body interests him), I figure I’ll provide a possible source for the 99% claim (or 98.73% as the case may be).
While this is unlikely to be Soundhill’s source, and does not actually state a percentage of the human body made up of water, I can certainly see the information in table 3-2 being picked up on, extrapolated from, and disseminated far and wide.
Note, however, that the human body does not consist entirely of “Typical 20-micron Human Cells,” so it’s really not valid to simply scale up and conclude that 98.73% of the molecules in the human body are water. See, for instance, bone.
I don’t know if anybody has actually tried to calculate the percentage of water molecules in the body. Most sources simply state that it’s high (as we would expect, given water is a high proportion of the body by weight and is much smaller than many of the other molecules in the human body) and leave it at that.
If you would care to provide a better source, Soundill, setting out the calculations and reasoning behind whatever the percentage might be, do feel free to do so. Otherwise, I think that’s probably about as good as we’re going to get.
Incidentally, Soundhill, I would have thought it was obvious that Stuart was talking about percentage by type of molecule. He is, after all, asking you to back up your figures, which have ranged from 90-99%.
Presumably, you do not believe that the human body is made up of 90% (or higher) water by weight.
I really do think you ought to have been clearer about how you were measuring the percentage of water in the human body way back in your original post though. After all, when most people discuss that, they’re talking about by weight. Hence the initial incredulity that you might be trying to tell us there was a higher percentage of water by weight in the human body than in seawater.
Airfares? MRIs of bone? Diversion? Or flight of ideas?
Why say: “are you asking for percent by type of molecule or by weight?” It was you who brought up the topic – not me. All I did was follow your lead and ask for a reliable reference. …Which you still haven’t provided.
Didn’t you even read what I said in my last comment?
” I can get a good percentage of water in the human body, by mass, from many sources, but that’s not the subject that you originated: you said “It would be interesting to put the number of molecules in and water would be close to some 98 or more percent going by numbers of molecules.””
Then, two paragraphs later, I said: “If you have a reliable reference for the number of parts per hundred (percent), by molecule, of water in the entire human body, then I am interested in it.”
You originated the topic of water molecular percentages, not me. Implicit in my previous comments is that I understand the topic. In fact, even though the topic is not a common one, I use it frequently at work. I would like to read the reliable reference because you phrased things in a different way than I am used to. That difference in phrasing, and hence perspective, could have derived from a reference that may (or may not) usefully contribute to my own knowledge and work. I would like to read that reference, providing it is from a reliable source.
Bringing up the topic implies that you already have the information, or at least should be able to access it readily.
A simple request for a reliable reference should be promptly answered. I’ve requested the information, politely, many, many times, because I’m interested in the answer.
I can’t explain things more simply than that.
If you don’t (or won’t) produce the politely requested reliable reference, then the obvious assumption that others will make is that it was a WAG.
Chris,
Thanks for the comments.
As you have seen, I have understood Soundhill. I really would be interested in his source if it was reliable. If he doesn’t produce one then I guess I’d have to involve a medical (or biological science) librarian. There’s just too much interference from “percentage by mass” for my own searches from home or the medical library.
I got thrown by seeing the 90% by number of water molecules in Luis’s paper.
So I have contacted that MD, and below is the result.
If you need his email it is on the paper.
@Stuartg
When I said the 98 plus % (it turns out 99%) I only had the Pollack figure. When someone is a bioengineering lecturer I tend to believe what they say.
Is it because it is in a book on the Fourth Phase of Water that you are suspicious?
Luis & al. made a typo. 90 instead of 99. Maybe the writer or proof reader *also* thought the 99 was way too high.
“The Fourth Phase of Water” is actually about science. It has several surprising things in it. Nothing to do with alternative medicine if that is what you are suspicious about. Large groups of water molecules gather together in such places as on bubble surfaces but not only there. Liquid water can be structured.
I know you try to stop me from giving linked topics however another topic you may not have heard of is of another recent discovery of flat sheets of carbon atoms (graphite like a pencil line). They are called graphene and are very strong and have interesting electrical properties for storage batteries coming up, and solar electricity collection.
Science is always progressing. It is hard to keep up.
my email exchange with Luis:
Hi Brian
Thank you for your note and link with interesting information
You are certainly right. There is a typo in the article. It should read 99%.
I appreciate the correction and your interest in our work.
Best regards
Luis
—
Luis Santana-Blank, MD
2015-01-18 19:49 GMT-04:30 Brian Sandle wrote
Hi,
Gerald Pollack in his book gives 99% but I am not sure if he talking about a cell or the whole body.
You wrote in your recent paper:
“In pure numbers, given its small molecular weight, 90% of our molecules are water.”
You said: “Is it because it is in a book on the Fourth Phase of Water that you are suspicious?”
I have asked you for a reliable reference. A reference for a topic you started. A reference for a number that you gave. I explain why I would like to see the reference. I tell you that I’m interested in seeing the reference. I ask you politely for the reference, many times. You’ve have never given the reference.
If you have never given that reliable reference, then exactly how am I expected to know the reference “is in a book on the Fourth Phase of Water?” My only suspicion, produced by your repeated failure to produce the reference, is that the reliable reference doesn’t actually exist. Which is disappointing.
It’s obvious that you are not going to provide a reliable reference to back your statement. Maybe you think that keeping it a secret enhances it in some way? I honestly have no idea why you should take this attitude.
OK, I’ll give up asking where you got your figure from. You have managed to waste my time without contributing anything to my knowledge. Was it worth it for you?
I’ll just have to stick with using percentage of water in the body by mass.
Not to put too fine a point on it, Soundhill, but the second result I picked up from searching for “fourth phase of water” (behind the book’s website) was Pollack being interviewed about the book by Dr Mercola ( http://www.donotlink.com/d9sf ), that paragon of alternative medicine quackery. This does not indicate to me that this is a book about science, or that Pollack is a respected scientist.
At the very least, it’s an appalling lapse of judgement on Pollack’s part. More likely, it indicates he’s fallen down the rabbit-hole. Given that connection, I am sure the book contains all manner of surprising things. Which of those things are true, and whether Pollack has drawn sensible conclusions from those things is something of an open question.
I find a very empty approach on this group doing ad hominems bandwaggon. Either at people or at sources, despite Ken’s clear instructions not to.
Mercola is an MD who at one stage was a promoter for hormone replacement therapy. He changed to natural ways and is still promoting HRT for women with ovaries removed.
He offers vitamins and supplements as you would see in the supermarket, but freer of artificial sweeteners &c. I haven’t bought his stuff. But Ken has pointed out to me that he sells a toothpaste sweetened by xylitol. Tell me where else that is available.
Mercola does not have to have his eye on the dollar to give advice, unlike most businesses.
He is keen to learn and has interviewed Pollack.
Mercola is a bit confused about 99% water molecules vs 99% water that Pollack relates of. Mercola also put in a New Agey question about getting the needed IR from a crystal. But Pollack is not familiar with that.
Pollack may lose some audience if he agrees to interviews from anyone, but not a really understanding audience. Only the people on the bandwaggon of labels rather than going into it oneself.
Gradually minds will improve. I had trouble on NZ Skeptics when I suggested two-valued in thinking of philosophy graduate was hampering progress. Some people have trouble with colours as opposed to black and white. So on this group you will find people who are totally for fluoridation and people who are totally against it, and people like me who want to look into it and each of those strongly polarised sides think I am on the other side.
And I feel you may be rather in the situation where you are compelled to reject everything from a source or accept everything because it is fashionable to do so. That is judging by what you have said. If I applied your philosophy now I might not bother to listen to you any more. But I still listen. I do not gang up with people and so make people feel uncomfortable.
As Ken says, science does not know everything, and Pollack is not claiming infallibility. Some of his ideas will disturb, as he explains.
It may be because after we do our learning and get our ticket we get set in our ways. We paid so much to get our education and think it is over when we leave university. But really it is just the start.
Who knows, maybe I will come up with a negative correlation between years of fluoridation of a city and prevalence of cancer in it. For me that would not be the end of it. I would want to know which individuals and how to keep fine tuning.
@Stuartg I gave you early on the quote, all I knew. You came back to me with Britannica stuff which does not deal with numbers of molecules, only the bulk quantity of them.
More recently I have offered you an article about bone which talks of the importance of water for its characteristcs. I felt you were not acknowledging water in bone by what you said. Correct me, please, if you may.
Water may affect how substances react much more than being just a solute. Besides teh Mercoal interview you may find a Youtube presentation by Pollack and see some videos of his experiments.
He does not always work by hypothesis to find out. Listen about the student who saw the exclusion zone increased by light.
At last. “I gave you early on the quote, all l knew.”
You are right. A quote. No attempt to justify the quote. No calculations. No attributions. As I told you after you gave it.
Several days after you have introduced a topic, with data associated with the topic, you admit that you do not have a reliable reference.
If your data is not reliable, then why use it in discussion at all. The only valid use would include the warning it was not reliable.
FYI. Back of the envelope. We have a value for percentage of water molecules in intracellular and extracellular fluids, derived from their osmolality. To that we can subtract the molecules of dehydrated keratin (skin, hair, nails), the many molecules of fat stored in adipose tissue, the molecules that consist the phospholipid bilayers of cell and mitochondrial membranes,the molecules in the minerals of the skeleton, the fatty molecules of the brain and spinal cord… I have no idea what the answer is, because of no reliable reference, but the calculation starts at under 98% and only gets smaller.
It is an interesting subject, but you haven’t contributed to it.
@Stuartg
My figures may be wrong but if a litre of water contains 55.51 moles of water molecules and the osmololaity of blood is about 0.29 osmoles per kg then I am getting about 99.5% water molecules in blood.
If you are thinking of liquid water as a chemical it is no longer thought of as being homogeneous. I have reported Pollack and here is a paper citing his group: ” We have investigated the case of an interesting variety of liquid water reported in literature, namely the case of the so called Exclusion Zone (EZ) water examined by the group led by G.H. Pollack [16,17]. This water is detectable close to hydrophilic surfaces, such as Nafion, and exhibits
properties quite different from those found in normal bulk water: a) EZ water is unable to host solutes, and this is the root
of the name Exclusion Zone; b) its viscosity is much higher than that of normal water suggesting the presence of a strong
interaction among molecules; c) it is an electron-donor, a chemical reducer, whereas normal water is a mild oxidant; consequently the interface EZ water/normal water is a red-ox pile, where the red-
ox potential could have a jump of a fraction of a Volt; d) it exhibits a fluorescent response in the UV region at 270 nm. EZ water should therefore imply a major reorganization of the molecular
structure of water, in particular (see property d) with respect
to the electronic structure.”
Be suspicious of those who talk about “internet researchers.” I am not saying ti is you, Richard, but you have promoted that film.
How are you getting on with Pollacks, “Like attracts like?”
“Yes or no” answer does not work, to “Do likes attract or repel?”
The film mentions evolution. It gives some simple examples, but you will find then some “science” shills take the leap to the “Central Dogma” of Crick and Watson and they do not allow for horizontal gene transfer and for epigenetics which Richard Dawkins is very uncomfortable with, even though modern medical treatments are looking at gene switching.
Accurately quoted, but obviously I was wrong. I’m human and so I make mistakes. I’ll readily admit to it. Because of that mistake, I have to reply.
First, I’ll correct the sentence that I wrote earlier: A good approximation of the osmolar strength of extracellular fluid is 279 mOsm/L.
Bear in mind the ECF is only a small fraction of the human body and cannot readily be used to represent the whole of the human body. (Yes, that’s what I suggested with my error, I obviously did not consider my reply sufficiently.)
You raised my interest by saying the human body consisted of over 98% water by molecule. I had never heard it expressed that way and my brain went through several stages.
Maybe you could go through them with me. Other commenters may also be interested in the way that my brain worked.
The basics: the water content of the human body, by mass, is 48 ±6% for females and 58 ±8% for males. http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/33/1/27.full.pdf Yes, I know YOU said 70%, but I skipped over that error because it was not relevant to percentage by molecule. Maybe I shouldn’t have skipped it and should have pointed out that reliable references actually say that water forms only about half of the mass of a human.
When contemplating the the concept of percentage of water by molecule rather than by mass, of the human body, I considered several questions.
I would invite you to consider the same questions:
What is the percentage of water, by molecule, of human hair?
What is the percentage of water, by molecule, of human finger and toe nails?
What is the percentage of water, by molecule, of phospholipid bilayers in the cells of the human body?
What is the percentage of water, by molecule, of the human skin keratin layer?
What is the percentage of water, by molecule, of the lipid in human fat cells?
What is the percentage of water, by molecule, of the myelin of the human central nervous system?
What is the percentage of water, by molecule, of the minerals that make up the bones of the human skeleton?
Reliable references, please, for any percentage that reaches double figures – because I don’t know of any.
What fraction of the human body do those seven items make? I considered the question using mass, volume and molecule.
Now, with that fraction of relatively anhydrous components in the human body, how can the human body consist of more than 98% water by molecule? In order to do so, the bones, skin, hair, nails, fat, cell membranes and central nervous system all combined would have to compose less than 1% of the human body. They obviously don’t.
My next thought then became “where can Soundhill have got a reliable reference for such an outlandish figure? Perhaps I’m wrong? I would really like to see that reference and how the figure was calculated. I’ll ask.”
I asked, and eventually you admitted that you did not have a reliable reference. “close to some 98 or more percent going by numbers of molecules” turned out to be a wild-ass-guess.
You may want to consider something that occurred to me later and haven’t done any more than speculate: if the human body did consist of a higher percentage of water, by molecule, than sea water, then wouldn’t it be more transparent than sea water?
“My figures may be wrong but if a litre of water contains 55.51 moles of water molecules and the osmololaity of blood is about 0.29 osmoles per kg then I am getting about 99.5% water molecules in blood.”
You are right – your figures are wrong.
Look for a reliable reference rather than trying the maths yourself.
An obvious error is that you have not considered the haematocrit.
Apologies for the delay, Soundhill. It appears the system has eaten my original post. I’d thought it was merely awaiting approval in the spam filter, but apparently not.
I am perfectly willing to substantiate my comments about Mercola being a quack, and have done so in the past, albeit in different venues. Accordingly, I have reproduced my comments the last time his name came up, slightly edited:
“Let me be perfectly clear on something. Mercola is not a “voice of sense.” He does not have your best interests at heart, and you should not, under any circumstances, take medical advice from him.
How do I know this? Because of material promoted on his own website. For instance:
1) Chemtrails. http://www.donotlink.com/bn3e
Mercola has published many, many articles telling people that the world’s governments are secretly dumping nefarious chemicals on their heads out of airplanes, for
2) Homeopathy. http://www.donotlink.com/d4k1
Mercola has written a good deal about this and sells a great many homeopathic products. The scientific and medical communities are pretty universal in their condemnation of homeopathy, as there is neither evidence that it works (ie no better than the placebo effect), nor any conceivable mechanism by which it might work.
3) Agenda 21 http://www.donotlink.com/d4k4
Specifically, the belief that Agenda 21 is secretly a conspiracy to depopulate the planet (often by means of chemtrails or fluoride).
4) “Vaccines are evil” (and cause autism) http://www.donotlink.com/d4k6
An actively dangerous piece of marketing there, considering that the diseases vaccinated against can and will kill children. Needless to say, there is not a shred of scientific evidence to support Mercola’s various assertions about the dangers of vaccines.
5) “HIV does not cause AIDS” http://www.donotlink.com/d4kc
Or maybe it does, depending on what he’s selling. In any case, don’t trust the medical establishment, trust Mercola and buy his “cures.” Again, an actively dangerous piece of marketing.
6) Morgellon’s Disease http://www.donotlink.com/d4kd
Morgellon’s Disease does not, in fact, exist. At least, not as described by Mercola.
No doubt there are innumerable other bogus and perhaps outright dangerous claims made by Mercola, but these seem like the ones most likely to get you to take a step back and ask yourself “Should I be encouraging this dangerous quack by purchasing his products?”
Needless to say, I am rather more skeptical of Mercola’s motivations than you are. He’s certainly continuing to make money hand-over-fist, and there’s some rather aggressive marketing on display there. I would say that he is most definitely motivated by money, and is very slick indeed when it comes to duping his customers out of it.
A common theme running through all those sets of articles is that people shouldn’t trust the mainstream medical establishment /scientists /government /Big Pharma /anyone who tells you Mercola is a quack. Rather, they should trust Mercola and his cronies and buy their products.”
Note that I have linked to Mercola’s website via donotlink, so as to avoid boosting his pageviews. The original post contained links to wikipedia for an overview of the different subjects, but I think we’re reasonably aware of the ideas in question.
Whether we find them credible is, I suppose, a separate question, but I think there’s enough there to illustrate just why I’m deeply suspicious of anybody associated with Mercola.
@Chris
Just stating those things you want people to believe Mercola said is not proof.
Many products are falsely advertised. Like Nature Bee pollen (NZ product) has “more calcium than milk.”
Cloud seeding does happen.
Have you compared the risk of homeopathy not curing something by placebo with the deaths due to iatrogenic disease?
What do HIV drugs do to a person? http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2001/07/11/aids-part-one.aspx
“In Africa, AIDS is caused by severe malnutrition and the release of endogenous cortisol. Any individual suffering from severe malnutrition has AIDS regardless if he or she is HIV-positive or HIV-negative. In addition, AIDS in people suffering from malnutrition can be reversed by giving proper nutrition and supportive medical care. I gave many examples in my book to illustrate these points.
Steven: Given what has happened to Dr. Peter Duesberg and having his funding scaled back because of his viewpoints and public questioning of HIV and AIDS, are you not concerned for your job security? Are you not stepping on the toes of the mainstream view that a virus is what actually causes AIDS?
Dr. Al-Bayati: Prior to November of 1997, I believed that HIV was the cause of AIDS and I did not have any intention to investigate this issue. However, I discovered in November of 1997 that AIDS can be caused by other agents, and that HIV is a harmless virus. I also realized that AZT and the antiviral drugs are killing people, which changed my direction.
It became my duty as a scientist to investigate this issue, to find out the truth, and to present my findings to our government and to the public. I have been spending a tremendous amount of time and money on this issue for the last four years without any financial help from any source. This has been extremely hard on my family, but what keeps me going is the reward of saving lives and our vital resources.
My findings were evaluated by professor Otto G. Raabe, a toxicologist from the University of California Davis, as well as other scientists and physicians who have been using my findings to save lives. In spring of 2000, I sent similar letters with copies of my books to President Mbeki and the Embassy of South Africa in Washington D.C. My book was submitted to President Mbeki’s Expert AIDS Panel where the medical evidence was evaluated and used. The panel report is posted on http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/panel/index.htm.
I do not understand why our government is ignoring this huge medical evidence that shows HIV does not cause AIDS while basing their entire AIDS program on unsupported hypothesis. Robert Gallo stated that HIV enters CD4+ T cells because they have special receptors for HIV and that HIV kills CD4+T cells selectively.
I have found no truth for this hypothesis.
Most individuals infected with HIV show hyperplasia of all cell components of lymph nodes (It has more cells than normal). In addition, HIV is present in all cells in the lymph nodes. Our government’s decision of basing the entire AIDS program on the HIV-hypothesis is a very dangerous and costly decision. This faulty decision has been resulting in the exposure of millions of people to very toxic antiviral drugs worldwide unnecessarily and wasting billions of dollars.
My stand on this issue has cost me a lot of my personal time, plenty of money and business opportunities. However, I will continue to present the medical evidence to physicians, scientists and to the people of the world to save lives and vital resources. ”
Thanks for the Agenda 21/Mercola ref which brings up:
But I find haemoglobin molecules in a red blood cell total about 280 million and they are very large compared to water molecules which also are in the cells and the concentration of solutes is about 0.3M. Is haemoglobin a solute?
“Just stating those things you want people to believe Mercola said is not proof.”
Soundhill, I linked you to lists of articles on precisely the topics I listed, generated by Mercola’s own site’s search engine. What higher standard of proof, exactly, could possibly exist that Mercola endorses and promotes the beliefs I listed?
I must say, this statement seems to go beyond ordinary incomprehension, and goes right into active trolling.
But hey, let’s break it down. I have stated that Mercola endorses the following ideas:
1) Chemtrails
2) Homeopathy
3) The Agenda 21 depopulation conspiracy
4) The evils of vaccination, including that vaccines cause autism
5) AIDS Denialism (ie the idea that HIV does not cause AIDS)
6) Morgellon’s Disease
Which of these, exactly, do you believe that Mercola does not endorse?
And let’s not get into any claptrap about “oh, Mercola didn’t write this article.” It’s his website, he controls and is responsible for the content.
I do have things to do this evening, but will get to the rest of your post in due course. Do feel free to use the time to work out which of the items on the list Mercola does or does not endorse.
This gives a list of iatrogenic effects of the AZT HIV drug. Should not be used if the patient has HCV, and I wonder if that is honoured in the places where the data comes from. Hepatitis C virus must be very common in association with HIV.
Soundhill, you seem to have missed the point here. Let me reiterate it in capital letters, so as to emphasise it and convey my rage through shouty text.
MERCOLA IS CLAIMING THAT HIV DOES NOT CAUSE AIDS.
SIDE-EFFECTS, EFFECTIVENESS OR OTHER CHARACTERISTICS OF DRUGS USED TO TREAT HIV AND CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH PARTICULAR DRUGS SHOULD OR SHOULD NOT BE USED HAVE NO BEARING ON THE CLAIM THAT HIV DOES NOT CAUSE AIDS.
THE TAKE-HOME MESSAGE IS THAT PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE TRYING TO TREAT HIV BECAUSE IT IS HARMLESS. THEREFORE PEOPLE SHOULD NOT TAKE DRUGS TO TREAT IT, OR EVEN TRY TO CHECK ITS SPREAD.
THIS IS A DANGEROUS MESSAGE BECAUSE IT HAS MEANT THAT HIV (AND INDEED AIDS) HAS GONE UNTREATED, WHICH HAS CAUSED UNTOLD HUMAN MISERY. PARTICULARLY IN SOUTH AFRICA. CONSEQUENTLY, AIDS DENIALISM HAS NOT BEEN GOVERNMENT POLICY THERE SINCE 2006.
[/Hulk]
As to the articles on the links, personally, I would not recommend you read any of them, as I suspect you will simply pick up and absorb still more misinformation. I included the links specifically to demonstrate that these are beliefs which Mercola holds and promotes.
Beliefs which, I will note, the scientific community categorically rejects.
I would like to think that, in an overwhelming majority of cases, simply seeing all these beliefs laid out would be sufficient to give people pause. However, if you personally believe that these beliefs are perfectly plausible, do feel free to state which ones.
We may be able to discuss these in a rational fashion and hammer out just why, exactly, these claims are a load of nonsense. Then again, there may come a point at which I will be forced to conclude that you are simply a lost cause.
SIDE-EFFECTS, EFFECTIVENESS OR OTHER CHARACTERISTICS OF DRUGS USED TO TREAT HIV AND CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH PARTICULAR DRUGS SHOULD OR SHOULD NOT BE USED HAVE NO BEARING ON THE CLAIM THAT HIV DOES NOT CAUSE AIDS.
the claim is that the side effects are rather bad. and that better nutrition enables the patient’s immune system.
have you any refs on the progress of aids with and without proper nutrition, with and without AZT? NZ Medsafe are rather sketchy about side effects throughout their article. Get me a proper side effects article before I can believe you. Are they covering up something? to be so sketchy is unusual for Medsafe.
THE TAKE-HOME MESSAGE IS THAT PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE TRYING TO TREAT HIV BECAUSE IT IS HARMLESS.
wrong the message is build the immune system in what I read.
THEREFORE PEOPLE SHOULD NOT TAKE DRUGS TO TREAT IT, OR EVEN TRY TO CHECK ITS SPREAD.
you’re making that up. don’t tell me it’s implied because you think it is.
THIS IS A DANGEROUS MESSAGE BECAUSE IT HAS MEANT THAT HIV (AND INDEED AIDS) HAS GONE UNTREATED, WHICH HAS CAUSED UNTOLD HUMAN MISERY.
let me see the case studies and compare with glandular fever treatment, once again if the person goes off their food or cannot afford it of course the body cannot heal and attention must be given to that.
PARTICULARLY IN SOUTH AFRICA.
case studies please, detailing food.
CONSEQUENTLY, AIDS DENIALISM HAS NOT BEEN GOVERNMENT POLICY THERE SINCE 2006.
Maybe you can provide me with answers to my comments. I intend to be very insistent.
I say again that you are simple minded to reject Pollacks book because Mercola invited him to explain about water.
Mercola promotes sunlight as anti-cancer, something I have been saying for years: in NZ cancer is worse the farther south you go. Except for perhaps melanoma, which hits indoor workers who get irregular strong exposure and burnt.
Anyone giving free and useful advice is a problem in this corporate profit world.
I see Eli Lilly are suing Canada for $500m for trying to allow cheaper drugs to be prescribed. And EL are trying to put Canada on a list of countries who are not friendly to corporates.
.
.Placebo is a very important part of most medical treatments. To check the actual effect of medicines you need to subtract the placebo effect and see what you have left. Antibiotics are losing the fight with resistant bugs.
I think people go to alternative health care providers when the ordinary ones are not helping enough.
Soundhill, I am not interested in your points because they are not relevant to the question of whether HIV causes AIDS. Which, if you recall, is the basis of one of my complaints against Mercola. This is something which you really need to settle *before* you start discussing how or if you treat HIV/AIDS.
Frankly, I am not interested in proceeding with this until we sort out the basis of this discussion. You seem to think that Mercola is not telling people that “HIV does not cause AIDS.” Very well. We may be able to discuss this.
However. You recall that I presented six sets of outlandish claims promulgated on Mercola’s website. Once again:
1) Chemtrails
2) Homeopathy
3) The Agenda 21 depopulation conspiracy
4) The evils of vaccination, including that vaccines cause autism
5) AIDS Denialism (ie the idea that HIV does not cause AIDS)
6) Morgellon’s Disease
Which of these do you dispute? That is, which of these claims do you believe Mercola has not made?
I think he offers useful advice that does not eventuate from commercial sources out for their biggest profit.
It would help if you point to his words so I can read them. I clicked on some links you gave and did not find them.
Here is his twitter feed, this time giving individual advice about how much water you need, and his usual advice about types of exercise which I have not seen elsewhere.
I think people get their supplements from him rather than from the supermarket to support him and his health site.
Maybe there are a few wrong claims. I have challenged on his site the advice to replace amalgam dental fillings with composites which I believe elute out xenoestrogens. Could I get that discussed on many sites?
Maybe he will be wrong about fluorides.
Doctors prescribe treatments. They do not agree with some people and have to be changed. Penicillin can be life threatening. Does that mean you stop using that doctor? I hope you may discuss that because it looks like that is what you are doing to Mercola.
There are lot of corporates do not like Mercola. Especially the Grocery Manufacturers’ Association who have spent many millions more than Mercola trying to stop GMO food labelling food legislation. Mercoal supports knowing what is in our food.
If you have links to friends or shareholders gaining from the GMO industry you may have a good reason to build the squeal of bandwagon against Mercola. Monsanto shares have been dropping.
Do you want your food to have increased dicamba and other herbicides as weed resistance increases and Monsanto have to keep adding new resistance genes and allowing them to be used on our food crops we import?
“Maybe he [Mercola] will be wrong about fluorides.”
He IS wrong. As he is about so many things. He is running a business, and making a mint doing so; he’s not doing what he does out of the goodness of his heart.
Soundhill1, your posts here show that you are quite a good exponent of the Gish Gallop. How about just addressing Chris’s points, straight up?
@Alison to address Chris’s points I would have to read all the Mercola has said. To require me to do an impossible task does not give you a win. Direct me to his words. I have clicked on Chris’s links and do not find what he says.
Non-European poorer health which is often blamed on lifestyle and poverty I believe to be quite correlated with poorer ability to get vitamin D from sunlight. Vitamin D is a fatty acid antioxidant, it promotes cell differentiation and differentiated cells do not proliferate, as well as being ant-rickets, anti-tooth decay and reducing multiple sclerosis relapses.
My data is around 1980 and is for urban distribution. When taking a whole region it is also necessary to consider the proportion of year round outdoor workers which will be greater in areas with more farming.
“Non-European poorer health which is often blamed on lifestyle and poverty I believe to be quite correlated with poorer ability to get vitamin D from sunlight. ”
Are you really suggesting that poorer people don’t get outside so much? Really?
As for Chris’s links, how much easier do you want him to make it for you?
Try this: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2001/08/08/chemtrails.aspx
That is an article on his site promoting the nonsense of chemtrails. It’s Mercola’s site, so he would have to have sanctioned an article like that. So please don’t quibble that it’s not in his actual words.
And in any case, this links to a list that Mercola has written; you’ll notice his opinions are clearly stated and that, no surprise, chemtrails are on that list.
The problem here, Soundhill, is that if I start loading up my posts with links illustrating my point, I run up against the spam filter. So. You get one link apiece, and that’s it.
Remember: This is Mercola’s website. He (or the people employed by him) controls its content. It is not necessary for Mercola, personally, to write an article in order to him to be endorsing and promoting its content.
We’ll be doing this in sequence, so I’ll be waiting for an acknowledgement or some form of dispute before moving on.
Page title: “Chemtrails: Delivery System For Dept. of Defense’s Toxic Cocktails”
Mercola’s comments at page bottom: “I certainly am not an expert in this area, but I believe there is enough possibility to at least consider the evidence that these chemtrails may in fact have some adverse reactions on our health.”
Conclusion: Mercola believes in the existence of chemtrails. He is non-committal about whether they impact human health (which is a decidedly weird attitude to hold), but is certainly willing to provide a platform for people to spout nonsense on the topic.
@Alison
That is a point, whether poorer people do more rugby &c or are trapped in small apartments with TV.
It is a thing to allow for but I do not see how to do it at the moment.
As I have said quite a lot SPARC said gardening is the number 1 physical after walking. Sports are further down the list. The move to smaller sections mean people will be out in gardens less.
As to vitamin D there is also the possible relative decrease in the cost of hot water compared to earlier years or maybe the culture of more soaping of the skin which I believes remove sterols and causes the vitamin D ones to be lost. It takes hours to days to convert and get the vitamin D after sunlight produces the precursor on or in the upper layer of the skin.
It is your prerogative to write off everything Mercola says if he gets something wrong. Some people write off their mother or child if they have a nasty habit. Others still get value from them.
I will ask the Mercola group (where I post as sandhill1) from the Twitter link about the relative constancy of salivary fluoride through a wide range of dietary intakes.
Silence? It appears that when you are definitively shown to be wrong about a topic, you stop commenting about the topic and then change the topic.
I take it that your silence on the subject at last acknowledges that you were wrong with your guess about the human body being more dilute than seawater. OK, there’s no more comments needed about that. I’m just sorry it took so long for you to realise the obvious.
The Mercola website and followers as a source of information? Hmmm. They are about as reliable for accurate information as flying carpets are for international travel. I’d agree with Chris and Alison about that.
Try looking at reputable websites instead. Even Wikipedia, despite its problems, is much more reliable and accurate than Mercola.
Mercola has posted the 2001 newspaper article and was hoping for comment.
Eventually you have referred me to something Mercola has said:
“I certainly am not an expert in this area, but I believe there is enough possibility to at least consider the evidence that these chemtrails may in fact have some adverse reactions on our health.”
In my experience the trails behind aircraft over where I live, on the route from Wellington to Dunedin, have become much more persistent. Jets travel over here at high altitude. A problem with jets is keeping the fuel burning at high altitudes.
Various additives may be used to avoid “ignition out”
I note the trails over here are sometimes short and short lived.
In the latter months of last year I did not see any long persistent ones for quite a while. Maybe it is weather conditions but now they are back, and persist across the whole sky.
I relied yesterday at 5:15 if you did not see it, so let’s get this bit done first.
“You may be quicker to find the figures than I.
But I find haemoglobin molecules in a red blood cell total about 280 million and they are very large compared to water molecules which also are in the cells and the concentration of solutes is about 0.3M. Is haemoglobin a solute?”
I also feel I should respond to a couple of things you’ve said which demonstrate some fundamental misunderstandings.
“I think he offers useful advice that does not eventuate from commercial sources out for their biggest profit.”
Mercola *is* a commercial source out for the biggest profit. You cannot possibly have failed to notice the copious amounts of advertising plastered down the side of each and every article, or perhaps even embedded within the article itself if Mercola has a specific product to help you with the imagined perils he has concocted.
Let me break down the profit motive for you here:
Step 1: Post article.
Step 2: People read article.
Step 3: People who read the article also view your advertising.
Step 4: Some of the people who view your advertising buy your products.
Step 5: Profit.
It is possible to boost the number of pageviews for your articles by writing about controversial subjects of interest to a particular segment of the community. You can also engage in social media campaigns, or form strategic partnerships with like-minded organisations which will promote your articles to their followers. There is a list of such partners plastered across the bottom of every page.
Mercola is an extremely savvy commercial operator. Unfortunately, his profit motive in no way provides an incentive to provide truthful information to his followers. Quite the reverse, in fact.
This is a common failing of capitalism. Hence the need for regulations to restrict the actions of commercial operators whose interests may not align with those of their customers. Alas, very few of the regulations which exist to keep industries based on mainstream medicine in check (like, you know, having to demonstrate that your product actually works) apply to the alternative health industry.
“the culture of more soaping of the skin which I believes remove sterols and causes the vitamin D ones to be lost.”
Evidence, please. In the form of an actual peer-reviewed scientific publication.
@Chris you would need to demonstrate that Mercola is any different from many websites. Sometimes people choose their own ads sometimes Facebook or Google or Microsoft choose them for you.
From my point of view Mercola offers more free info that I do not get from most medical sources, as I suggested, water needs, type of exercise and am waiting for a comment.
It is not as if he is the government and forcing stuff on people. Or the corporatocracy using the government as Pusztai indicated about the calls to Tony Blair leading to him losing his job.
Did you actually read the article, Soundhill? Because it said not a single solitary thing about engine additives. It was very clear that chemtrails were a nefarious plot on the part of the American Department of Defense to test out chemical/biological warfare agents.
The very point of the chemtrail idea, as reflected in the article, is that chemtrails are being deliberately and maliciously sprayed out of airplanes (often commercial airplanes because “look up, you can see them!”), specifically because of the nasty effects the government wants them to have on people.
Mercola also produced a follow-up article, which I believe Alison intended to link to, but may not have coded properly in her post: http://www.donotlink.com/bb48
“Although these experiments are listed on the Museum of Hoaxes web site, every single one of them is absolutely real.”
Chemtrails is number ten on that list, and links to the originally posted article. ie Mercola endorses the idea that chemtrails are an experiment to see what effect these chemical/biological warfare agents have on the populace.
Nowhere on that original article do I see the phrase “I have posted this article for comment,” nor any words to that effect. You may believe this, but the evidence contradicts your belief.
Rather, we see the words “these chemtrails” (ie chemtrails as described by the article’s writer) “may in fact have some adverse reactions on our health.”
For reference, jet contrails =/= chemtrails.
I will reiterate, since you seem to have trouble grasping this point:
Mercola controls and is responsible for the content posted on his website. Barring some disclaimer or presentation of opposing views, we must assume he endorses the content.
Now, I have linked to an explicit statement saying “every single one of them is absolutely real” (ie the original article and several more outlandish articles besides).
If you would still like to claim that Mercola does not believe in chemtrails, as defined and described in Amy Worthington’s article, you are going to need to present some kind of positive statement by Mercola (or at least an article on Mercola’s website) to this effect.
I presume that if sterols are washed off the skin that more will migrate from the cells to make up the for the loss. And the body will synthesise more sterols in those cells, maybe over night so won’t have the pre-vitamin D.
Need to look at historical cancer rates and see if there were any increase when bathing/soaping shifted from weekly to daily, in the 1960s for many people. I remember the school gym very stinky in the late fifties, but the varsity gym a lot less so in the 60s.
“I presume that if sterols are washed off the skin that more will migrate from the cells to make up the for the loss. And the body will synthesise more sterols in those cells, maybe over night so won’t have the pre-vitamin D.”
There are an awful lot of assumptions there.
It’s a fairly big topic. Nothing wrong with a “net MD” wanting to encourage people to talk. My doctor of the 70s was a Scott whose waiting room you may spend hours in waiting for him to finish his conversation with the previous patients. And you would get to talk to other waiters. All part of the treatment.
People can say on Mercola’s site that it is bunkum. People can make up their minds. It is not the government forcing ideas or ways on people.
Soundhill, I am once again tempted to convey emphasis and rage through use of capital letters. I shall refrain on this occasion.
“Other people use advertising” or “other people are commercial operators” =/= “Mercola is not a commercial operator.”
You really do need to learn a bit of elementary logic.
Let me make this absolutely clear. You said:
“I think he offers useful advice that does not eventuate from commercial sources out for their biggest profit.”
I said:
“Mercola *is* a commercial source out for the biggest profit” and gave the reasoning behind this statement.
You then said:
“From my point of view Mercola offers more free info that I do not get from most medical sources”
Notice how the first thing you said is not the same as the second thing. Indeed, you have abruptly changed tune entirely from trying to tell us that commercial sources are not to be trusted, to the perhaps more truthful claim that you value some information simply on the basis that it’s not mainstream.
I completely agree that Mercola offers you free information you would not get from most (or perhaps any) medical sources. I am trying to demonstrate to you that there are very good reasons why most medical sources would not give you some of this information, regardless of whether you paid for their opinion or not.
I am doing so by isolating the most ludicrous claims possible, which I think you must grasp are ludicrous, because you are currently engaged in a dragged-out argument with me about whether Mercola really holds these beliefs.
Believe me, I’m sure I could pick any number of articles from Mercola and hammer out why they were demonstrably false. Numerous people have done so.
I’m sure you could run down some of these sources if you genuinely cared to look. Alas, as you do not value views which align with the mainstream, your own biases prevent you from seeking out this contradictory information and reviewing it with an open mind.
“Nowhere on that original article do I see the phrase “I have posted this article for comment,” nor any words to that effect. You may believe this, but the evidence contradicts your belief.”
And I have a letter box but I don’t write on it, “Put letters in here, please.” It’s obvious.
We’ll consider this one settled, shall we? Mercola believes in chemtrails and promotes this material on his website.
I consider this matter closed because you have shifted to trying to convince me that it is reasonable to believe in chemtrails. The statement “Contrails are normally shorter lived. They may also start further from the engines than chemtrails” is, after all, predicated on the idea that there is such a thing as a chemtrail.
Whether chemtrails are real (they aren’t, for the record) is an entirely separate discussion from whether Mercola believes in and promotes chemtrails. We may come back to this question after we have settled whether Mercola believes the rest of the items on the list.
Unless you are willing to concede that Mercola believes in some of the claims? The list again, as a reminder:
Settled:
1) Chemtrails
Unsettled:
2) Homeopathy
3) The Agenda 21 depopulation conspiracy
4) The evils of vaccination, including that vaccines cause autism
5) AIDS Denialism (ie the idea that HIV does not cause AIDS)
6) Morgellon’s Disease
I would have thought an explicit statement saying “this article is absolutely true” was pretty obvious. But plainly you have difficulties in the area of what is or is not obvious.
“I presume that if sterols are washed off the skin that more will migrate from the cells to make up the for the loss. And the body will synthesise more sterols in those cells, maybe over night so won’t have the pre-vitamin D.”
There are an awful lot of assumptions there.
And I notice that you are gish-galloping again”
Do you mean “gish galloping” in that reply or in general?
If you mean overloading readers with too many ideas, you will note I have replied to Stuartg, cutting back to a fairly small amount to consider.
I only pick up bits of biochemistry from reading and what I notice myself, and problems I have come up against.
Maybe you know better than I when the natural oil is washed off the face how it comes back. How more is made.
Soaping the face is probably a rather recent invention in terms of evolution. Some of it may have been rubbed off on clothing or bedding. But I think out metabolism may have been use to oil staying on the skin longer than it does today.
You may wish to challenge that assumption. I won’t gish gallop, I shall let you comment on one point at a time.
@Chris
OK Mercola’s words
“I certainly am not an expert in this area, but I believe there is enough possibility to at least consider the evidence that these chemtrails may in fact have some adverse reactions on our health.”
say he acknowledges chemtrails.
There are so many photos. Did you look at the NZ Facebook page?
Those photos may all be a joke of course. But there are beginning to be enough that they may not be.
A common thing I find on groups where people are trying to find out stuff and someone thinks it is their interest for people not to know, like global warming, a whole lot of questionable “science” will appear as a straw man to be shot down in the hope the good science will be taken with it. That can be very effective and there is a lot of confusion about global warming.
So some chemtrail stuff may be fake.
Now Mercola’s words “possible to at least consider.” That does not say to me that Mercola is convinced chemtrails are poisoning us.
Mercola is a trained doctor.
“In the 21st century, the training of osteopathic medical physicians in the United States is very similar to the training of Doctors of Medicine (M.D.s).[3] Osteopathic medical physicians attend four years of medical school followed by an internship and a minimum two years of residency. They use all conventional methods of diagnosis and treatment. Though still trained in Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine (OMM),[4] the modern derivative of Still’s techniques,[5][6] they work in all specialties of medicine. OMT is a skill they use often in family practice, sports medicine, emergency medicine, but OMT is not commonly used in specialties such as dermatology, surgery, or other fields that do not lend themselves to correcting the body with their hands.[7][8]” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteopathic_medicine_in_the_United_States
Please realise that is different from New Zealand where the training is specialised and does not allow to do operations &c.
So it may be a bit like a child being taken to a doctor and saying they are hurting. The doctor may see it could be psychological but does not deny it to the child. Just explores. To me that is more Mercola’s tone.
One game people have is to get into two teams and compete.
Either one team or the other “wins” but both had had a sort of win by the physical activity, and enjoyment.
Then I think there is a way of gaming which is more exploring together. It does not have to be decided beforehand that your idea is correct and you have to convince people that the other’s idea is wrong.
Good and bad can change. You say the cat is good because it caught the mouse. I say it is bad because it was a mouse involved in one of my experiments.
Lead in petrol was good. It improved octane rating and made engines work better. Until people learnt what damage it was doing to our health. Now it is bad.
Two-valued things can jump over to the other.
The there is where a thing is good in some respects but bad in others, like most medicines.
Some sellers of anti-cholesterol drugs may want to cover up their bad points. But they are becoming known with help of people like Mercola. So he is a devil to the statin sellers. Or maybe not totally, just somewhat.
And I feel you are showing the weakness in terms of one game, though strength in terms of another, classing Mercola only in the bad category. Your radio can only play at full volume or be totally quiet. Great strong sound from your radio but too strong for many.
“Whether chemtrails are real (they aren’t, for the record) is an entirely separate discussion from whether Mercola believes in and promotes chemtrails.”
Likewise whether anthropogenic global warming exists is an entirely different argument to whether you believe in it and promote action.
Some people are selling chemtrails with the suggestion they reduce incoming solar radiation and reduce global warming.
But you would believe it would be up for public consultation before it would happen?
It’s great to live by the myth that we are always told what is happening correctly.
Yes. Well done, Soundhill. Mercola believes in chemtrails. It’s taken a solid day for you to finally acknowledge this simple, easily demonstrated fact. Despite having clear evidence presented to you right at the start of the process.
Having established Mercola’s belief in chemtrails, we could, I suppose, go on to hammer out *why* Mercola believes in chemtrails. And whether this is a well-founded belief, based on valid evidence, or whether it is a load of claptrap, founded on the unshakable notion that the eeeevil government is actively trying to kill off its own citizens for nonsensical reasons. And somehow failing abysmally. See also agenda 21 / fluoride / HAARP / whatever.
But hey, never mind what Mercola thinks HIS evidence is. YOU have Facebook. Putting a label on a bunch of photographs (and maybe a couple of videos) labeled “chemtrail” is totally evidence of the chemical composition of airplane contrails. That’s just “obvious”. I mean, we don’t need piddling little things like chemical analysis or physical evidence of somebody pumping nefarious chemicals into airplanes. We can just eyeball stuff and declare it “looks like” a figment of our imaginations.
Seriously, Soundhill. Photos of aircraft contrails. Is this what you believe constitutes evidence? Is that all you have? I mean, you can declare something “looks like” a chemtrail to your heart’s content, based on some arbitrary distinction in appearance. In order to establish what a chemtrail looks like, you have to establish, independently of contrail appearance, which aircraft are spraying nefarious chemicals, as opposed to just burning jet fuel. Which requires some helpful Evil Genocidal Conspirator on the aircraft to tell you when they’re turning the nozzle on and off. Then, and only then, can you start building a database of the differences in appearance between ordinary contrails and the nefarious chemtrails.
Alas, the Evil Genocidal Conspirators persist in denying they’re spraying chemicals on peoples’ heads at all. Getting them to tell us when they’re spraying and from which planes seems a bit of a lost cause. It seems the fledgling science of “this photo is a chemtrail” has been strangled in its crib.
At the end of the day, Occam’s razor tells us that the simpler and most likely true explanation of photos of “chemtrails” on the internet is that a small, dedicated but unfortunately misguided group of people is going out, taking random photos and… posting them on the internet. Or, of course, appropriating other peoples’ perfectly innocent photos for the Cause.
I know. Misguided people getting together on social media. A truly radical thought.
I’m done with the topic of chemtrails. If you want to troll somebody with your talk of “photos” and “evidence,” go bother this guy for a while:
“Likewise whether anthropogenic global warming exists is an entirely different argument to whether you believe in it and promote action.”
No, Soundhill. No, no, no. You have missed the point.
Whether a particular person “believes in” (or accepts, whatever) climate change (or evolution, plate tectonics, vaccination, etcetera) is generally a trivially simple question. It is the work of mere moments to work out. You find a statement from them one way or the other and you go with it. Or you ask them, if you feel like taking the direct approach.
You do run into difficulty if they don’t publicise their view and don’t want to tell you. In which case you generally respect that and move on with your life.
You may also run into difficulty with politicians, who often have certain incentives to be deceitful so-and-sos.
Whether climate change is real is not a trivially simple question, even if the answer is scientifically sound.
Arguing with somebody over whether climate change is real is the stuff of nightmares (certainly not simple or trivial), because both parties can draw on the immense resources of the Interweb to provide them with arguments, generated by dedicated like-minded individuals (one side’s arguments will generally involve peer-reviewed science; the other side’s will either ignore it or misrepresent it).
Nor is the person in the wrong going to give in simply because their argument is a load of rubbish. They can simply move on to another well-worn canard, pioneered by endless climate trolls before them, and another after that, secure in the knowledge that they’re In The Right. There’s always another argument to be made. Plus, once enough time has passed (or if they’re dealing with a different audience), they can recycle old arguments, completely ignoring all the solid, irrefutable reasons they’ve been given why the argument is rubbish and insisting whoever they’re talking to disprove it all over again.
Wasting somebody’s time may be a victory in and of itself for the truly dedicated climate troll.
You, Soundhill, have wasted a solid day arguing over a trivially simple question. With five more trivially simple questions to go. I shudder to imagine the kind of endlessly drawn-out torture you’d make of something even moderately complicated.
So, congratulations. I am declaring you a lost cause (also a troll) and this conversation is therefore at an end.
Haemoglobin is not a solute in blood. If you don’t recall, your were talking about things dissolved in blood. I didn’t answer because you were changing the topic (yet again!)
“Nor is the person in the wrong going to give in simply because their argument is a load of rubbish. They can simply move on to another well-worn canard, pioneered by endless climate trolls before them, and another after that, secure in the knowledge that they’re In The Right. There’s always another argument to be made. Plus, once enough time has passed (or if they’re dealing with a different audience), they can recycle old arguments, completely ignoring all the solid, irrefutable reasons they’ve been given why the argument is rubbish and insisting whoever they’re talking to disprove it all over again.”
Very nicely put. I wish I could remember brief summaries like this in conversation.
Unfortunately, I don’t think Soundhill has the insight to recognise the commenter here who fits the description.
Now, even more unfortunately, I’m off to one of my three shifts (34 hours total!) at work this holiday weekend.
Haemoglobin is not a solute in blood. If you don’t recall, your were talking about things dissolved in blood. I didn’t answer because you were changing the topic (yet again!)”
Haemoglobin is in the red blood cells – the haematocrit you referred to as if it were not involving water molecules.
Chris has to have an adversary to argue against and when getting into trouble call a troll.
I look to investigate. I can’t get everything said all at the same time. The photos I have taken of trails show them appearing some distance behind aircraft, so as I suggest probably not chemtrails. They persist sometimes so as I said it must be something to do with weather conditions.
Chris has to have two-valued things to argue about.
He thinks Mercola must either totally believe in chemtrails or totally disbelieve.
Mercola said he is not sure whether chemtrails are hurting people. He is acknowledging many people with accounts of air analyses think they are. Chris has trouble arguing with that since it is not a two-valued Mercola and he has to turn him into one and anyone who does not agree with him is a troll.
Chris is the troll turning discussion of Pollack’s theories into a discussion of someone Pollack has talked to.
“Soundhill. No, no, no. You have missed the point.”
I am finding it hard grasping how what I said about you and climate change is different from what you said about Mercola and chemtrails.
Here is planning for doing chemtrails that other governments don’t want. It’s cheaper than mitigation or reduction in emissions, they say.
It’s not the most recent but seems to be the most recent free article.
from:
1 Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science, Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
2 School of Economics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA
You talked about osmolality of blood. Osmolality deals with solvents and solutes.
Leave anticoagulated blood to settle. The bit that settles, the cells in the blood, is called the hematocrit. It settles because it is in suspension and not in solution. The blood cells, 40-45% of the blood, do not contribute to the calculation of osmolality.
A brief indicator: in general, solutions are transparent (beer, sea water), suspensions are opaque (milk, blood).
You may remember that I suggested you made an error in your calculations, because you ignored the hematocrit, and suggested that you look for a reliable reference instead of accepting your own guesses.
I have to admit that it wouldn’t surprise me if you didn’t remember your error (again), ignored the correction (again), and tried to change the subject (again).
An interesting idea is if the cell membranes were all ruptured, and all the hemoglobin released into solution in the blood, what would be the concentration of hemoglobin? What would the blood viscosity be? No need to guess, or even calculate, the answers are out there.
You said: “My figures may be wrong but if a litre of water contains 55.51 moles of water molecules and the osmololaity of blood is about 0.29 osmoles per kg then I am getting about 99.5% water molecules in blood.”
Yes, your figures were wrong. As an example, you didn’t allow for the heamatocrit. The haematocrit is in suspension, not in solution, and even though it makes up 40-45% of the blood by volume it has no effect on the osmolality of blood. Because it is in suspension, it cannot be included in a calculation of water in blood that is based on osmolality, such as the one you made. Your calculations were based on either plasma or serum, not on blood.
You also said: “Haemoglobin is in the red blood cells – the haematocrit you referred to as if it were not involving water molecules.” and “So we can also calculate the percent by number of water molecules inside the red cell compared to the 260m large haemoglobin molecules.” …But then that’s a different calculation to the one you originally made, isn’t it. This is special pleading, saying that you were right all along, except for the mistakes you made.
Soundhill, my point was that you hadn’t included red cells (or white cells, or platelets, or… many other components of blood) in your initial calculation.
Why do you persist in doing these calculations and making these errors? Why are you even trying? It’s not as though you need to. These calculations were done decades ago. You can find them in basic textbooks of human physiology. The results will not change, no matter how much you juggle your maths, because the human body has not changed significantly since the measurements were made.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people were involved in making the initial measurements. Since then then have been measured millions, if not billions, of times as part of clinical investigations. The results are confirmed hundreds of thousands of times daily worldwide.
You seem to focus on a tiny point, without acknowledging it is only a tiny point. You seem to forget that there is a massive supporting structure of knowledge and investigation in the science behind these tiny points. When someone points out an error of yours – haematocrit, for example – you then nit-pick at that error, try to excuse it or say that you were including it all along. You don’t seem to consider that the example given to you may be representative of a systemic error on your part that others have noted and are politely trying to educate you about.
What you don’t seem to do is learn from it: “Hmm, if I forgot the red cells, then maybe I forgot the white cells, the platelets, and other components of blood. Am I considering osmolality of whole blood? Or of plasma? Or of serum? Are blood proteins in suspension or solution? Are they included in that figure for osmolality, or not? How are lipids carried in blood, suspension or solution? Have they been included in that osmolality figure? What about glucose? What about urea, uric acid… etc, etc.”
A briefer lesson: don’t bother to recalculate stuff that’s been known for decades and is reconfirmed on a daily basis.
Now: percentage of molecules, by type, of water in the human body. We don’t measure that because it’s not useful and it’s not easy to do. (You told us that – there’s no reliable references, only guesses.) For some things we do use osmolality, or even specific gravity, but most clinical measurements are related to mass – often mmol/L. It’s much easier to use mass – even you have indirectly acknowledged that because all of your calculations started with the mass of atoms or molecules.
…Which takes us back to “What Dave is made of” – the mass of all those nasty chemicals/elements that can be found in the human body.
Silly me, don’t even need to bother with the volume of a cell. They have the same osmolality as the saline carrier therefore they must have the same internal proportion of 99.5% by number of water molecules. Then there is only their thin outer osmotic membrane shell to worry about. Probably some large molecules.
Have you yet acknowledged there are water molecules in bone?
Soundhill1 makes a dodgy claim guess on a figure and we are all subjected to volumes of evasion, “could be”s, further estimates pure guesswork and gishgallops in attempts to justify it.
Would be great if Ken installed a “lets move on” button.
I tried to take us back to “What Dave is made of” as a way of finishing off the conversation.
I made the assumption that commentors on a scientific blog would be well versed in the scientific method and be able to apply such thinking to discussion on the blog.
Soundhill has made multiple errors in multiple areas. I, and others, have tried to point out just a few of them, not even approaching half. My own errors have been pointed out: I accept them, acknowledge them, and discard them by changing my thinking in light of new knowledge
Since a lot of my expertise is in anatomy/physiology/biochemistry/medicine, then that’s the area I try to stick to. Chris and Alison pointed out errors in areas more appropriate to their knowledge and skills. You have done the same.
Experts have pointed out her/his errors, but I suspect that Soundhill can’t contemplate her/himself being in error: “The mere thought hadn’t even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.” (thanks to Douglas Adams).
The inability to consider their own infallibility is a huge failing in someone who considers themselves to be using the scientific method. It’s a systemic problem on the part of Soundhill and it can’t be dealt with unless Soundhill develops personal insight into the problem.
I suspect that until Soundhill develops insight into her/his own way of thinking then it is unlikely that s/he will be able to take part in reasonable scientific discourse.
@Richard the discussion is going on since Stuartg said he was interested in the proportion of molecules by number in the body and challenged the number given by Gerald Pollack who appears lots in peer-reviewed journals. We are discussing osmolality as it bears on the blood and cells in it. Ken?
“The normal osmotic concentration inside mammalian red blood cells is approximately 288 mOsm (mOsm =
number of millimoles of solute particle in one liter of fluid) and the extracellular fluid surrounding the cells is
isosmotic to the interior of red blood cells (i.e.
also approximately 288 mOsm). “
I have the problem on the one hand of being criticised for giving too many ideas at once, then when I try to bring out understanding little by little I get cut off mid stream. And still feeling hurt by some of Stuartg’s comments.
soundhill1 you act like i dont know people call this “little troll”, must have last word whether or not he’s right. See how many money gets Mercola citing most flawed articles to support his flawed claims, There is two option he is incompetent because he dont realized about flaws in studies or he is fraud and know what he doing.
And you seem part of the set up which wants to pit two groups against one another.
I am a “find out” person. What I investigate is what I see to be bad science. Or good science. And I think Mercola is one, too.
At the moment I need time to figure out about significance when doing partial rank correlation. When I get time I shall go into Siegel and Castellan.
As we debated I have given figures on cancer and latitude. I have now added estimated fluoridation years.
It may be hard for some to understand. There is a correlation between fluoridation and latitude: more north than south. But when I partially correlate that out I seem to get a negative correlation between years of fluoridation of 6 NZ cities in 1983 and cancer. Rather small data set. Any statisticians help with significance?
Further if you read much of what I say I am not just interested in the population average, I want to be kind to individuals. Like someone with a diabetic tendency should not be forced to eat a normal diet. So I suspect fluoride needs will also vary.
There is such a lot to explore. Have you heard how morphine addicts get tolerant? When they go to prison and have withdrawn they lose that tolerance. If when they come out of prison they rush to get their same old dose a lot die. Is morphine the only substance to which the body adjusts? No of course not.
Don’t just trot out the old “there is no evidence.” That is only to reinforce the past. We ought to know more about fluoride to care for individuals.
Using 1980-1983 figures when the dark skinned population was less marked up north I found cancer rank correlated with latitude. I presume the vitamin D effect needs to be considered. Vitamin D promotes cell differentiation and differentiated cells don’t proliferate. Besides it being a fatty acid anti-oxidant.
Now I have tried to check with years of fluoridation against cancer for 1983. I gave about 8 for Christchurch up to 1983 since Waimairi was fluoridated though not the rest of the city. I don’t think the exact figure matters with rank correlation, rank is just ordering from greatest to smallest, which Christchurch will be. I found start dates for fluoridation from various council websites which I could give if you are interested.
The cancer figures come from a publication which is no longer in the Christchurch Library, but I got a scanned pdf copy “Cancer Data New Registration and Deaths 1983” from Information Analyst
Analytical Services, Ministry of Health.
I’ve probably got something wrong and I am trying to interest someone else to do some stats.
I subtracted the melanoma figures since I felt they may confuse the picture.
canc less melanoma; latitude; years of fluoridation
The cities are Auckland, Hamilton, Palmerston North, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin.
I have not got significance figures, would take some time to see how Siegel and Castellan do that for rank correlation.
Using the online wessa calcualtor I got rank correlations of
latitude to cancer 0.6
cancer to fluoridation -0.6
fluoridation to latitude -0.43 (less further south by rank).
suspicious 0.6 and -0.6!
Then using the online vassarstats for partial correlation
If I do latitude to cancer holding fluoridation constant 0.6 drops to 0.47
latitude to fluoridation holding cancer constant -0.43 drops to -0.11. That is quite small suggesting, as might be expected the latitude fluoridation result is rather spurious.
fluoridation to cancer holding latitude constant -0.6 drops to -0.47
So it could be that around 1983 non-melanoma cancer registrations were positively correlated to latitude and negatively to fluoridation.
Anybody got time to go into significance?
I have been too lazy/busy to do 1980 -82 so far though I have the cancer-urban district data for them, and am waiting to see if I will be sent the 1970s data.
And the other complicating figures I am trying to think of a way into such as epigenetics and individual responses, always wondering why as I posted that salivary fluoride stays so constant when dietary fluoride varies so widely.
Before anyone gets too excited need to check natural radiation levels in houses and water. I don’t have Timaru in my study but I know radon in water is much lower there.
NZ Science Blogs
Open Parachute 
The person is expressing that when we get our trace elements and minerals and not-so-trace ones from natural sources we are more likely to get them in balance for what we need.
It is not so in every case, and explanation can be helpful.
If we supplement a pure substance like ascorbic acid (vitamin C) it is easier to get the dose too large so we may get low on copper.
If we supplement selenium compounds it is very easy to get too much. Excess natural selenium in places in China causes illnesses in people as does its shortages in other places. There is not a great range of usefulness. Its excess effect may be reduced by mercury which may even help in areas of excess?
A living plant or creature is more likely though not certain to provide elements in proportion for what humans need.
Trace minerals include such as iodine whose lack can cause goitre and cretinism, but whose excess from eating seaweed may also cause thyroid trouble. Iodine (iodide) is in the same chemical family as chlorine (chloride) and fluorine (fluoride).
Iodide and chloride both affect some foods.
About iodide supplementation:
Click to access Technological_Issues-Science_Research.pdf
I am thinking that since calcium fluoride has rather low solubility that fluoride introduced to many foods will turn up in that form. I would like to know if the body then has ways to more easily absorb just the amount it needs.
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Regulation-Policy/Calcium-fluoride-deemed-safe-in-supplements-in-Europe
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And to have a bit of like-minded fun at your diagram, 43kg of oxygen in a cube of 33.5cm would be at rather high pressure.
It would be interesting to put the number of molecules in and water would be close to some 98 or more percent going by numbers of molecules. Water is quite important to life and people are right to want to respect it.
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43kg of oxygen in a cube of 33.5cm would be at rather high pressure.
Not if below 54.36 deg K
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Soundhill,
“Water would be close to some 98 or more percent going by numbers of molecules.”
Only if you ignore the 16kg of carbon combined with hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, etc to form proteins, lipids, carbohydrates and so on.
Just to put it in context, sea water is “only” 96.5% water. You are saying the human body is a higher percentage water than sea water is.
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#Richard
Now we are getting into things a bit more deeply.
Click to access 1411.2221.pdf
And a paper which that cites:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3285728/
” the destabilizing effect of one solute can be balanced by the stabilizing effect of another; two destabilizing solutes are more destabilizing than each of them separately. The rank order of effectiveness of anions in stabilizing proteins is:
citrate > acetate > sulphate > fluoride > chloride > bromide > iodide
The rank order of effectiveness of cations in stabilizing proteins is:
N(CH3)+4 > NH4+ > Cs+ > Rb+ > K+ > Li+ > Ca2+ >Mg2+
These rank orders of cations and anions also follow observed patterns of partitioning between LDW and normal water. Anions are increasingly accumulated into LDW, going from left to right. Cations are increasingly excluded from LDW going from left to right.”
And for those who do not mind a bit of my brainstorming, perhaps it may be interesting to look at varying the concentrations of those substances in the diet, to see what changes happen.
And a further interesting paper:
Click to access jcrt-3-1-1.pdf
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Be careful Soundhill, you are exhibiting the first signs of Richardcummingus disorder.
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@Stuartg
If I am planting out seeds in pots I shall need fewer pots for a kg of big seeds compared to a kg of smaller seeds.
That 98% estimate may be a bit high. I saw another of 90%
(my 3rd ref last article):
“First, the adult human body is approximately 70% water
by weight. In pure numbers, given its small molecular
weight, 90% of our molecules are water. Hence, water is a
major absorption target even for
wavelengths with low AC’s “
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The horrible result of Richardcummingus disorder can be observed here, in the comments of any and every post
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Fluoride toxicity and new-onset diabetes in Finland: a hypothesis
M. Kemal Irmak1, Ilknur Senver Ozcelik2, Abdullah Kaya3
1High Council of Science, Gulhane Military Medical Academy, Etlik, Ankara;
2The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, Kavaklidere, Ankara;
3Service for Ophtalmology, Gulhane Military Medical Academy, Haydarpasa Training Hospital, Istanbul; Turkey
Received July 29, 2013
Accepted November 1, 2013
Published Online December 13, 2013
DOI 10.5455/jeim.011113.hp.007
Corresponding Author
M.Kemal Irmak
Gulhane Askeri Tip Akademisi
Yuksek Bilim Konseyi
06010 Etlik, Ankara, Turkey.
mkirmak@gata.edu.tr
Key Words
Amoxicillin; Diabetes; Fluoride Abstract
The incidence of type 1 diabetes (T1D) has increased substantially in Finland, but the exact trigger for the onset of T1D is still unknown. We know that use of amoxicillin and anti-cariogenic fluoride tablets is a common practice for children in Finland. It seems that beta-cell destruction is initiated by modification of the proinsulin by combined effects of fluoride (F2) and amoxicillin. Amoxicillin especially when used together with clavulanic acid results in an acid environment around the beta-cells that promotes the conversion of F2 to hydrogen fluoride (HF). Unlike F2, HF can diffuse easily into the beta-cell cytosol. Because the cytosol has a neutral pH, virtually all HF reverts to F2 in the cytosol and F2 cannot easily diffuse out of the cell. Exposure to excess F2 promotes proinsulin covalent dimerization and simultaneously hyperexpression of MHC Class I molecules. Proinsulin dimers then migrate to the cell membrane with MHC class I molecules, accumulate at the beta-cell membrane and produces a powerful immunogenic stimulus for the cytotoxic T-cells. Production of cytotoxic cytokines from the infiltrating T-cells initiates the destruction of beta-cells. In Finnish children, this might be helped along by a higher beta-cell activity and by a reactive thymus-dependent immune system induced by higher levels of thyroid hormones and calcitonin respectively. After repeated similar attacks, more and more effector T-cells are raised and more and more beta-cells are destroyed, and clinical diabetes occurs
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Soundhill,
You’ve said “water would be close to some 98 or more percent going by numbers of molecules,” and “90% of our molecules are water.” Which is it? I’d be very interested to know, simply because I don’t know and can’t find a reliable reference.
All I said was “Just to put it in context, sea water is “only” 96.5% water.”
My reference: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/531121/seawater , “Salinities in the open ocean have been observed to range from about 34 to 37 parts per thousand (0/00 or ppt).” That’s 96.3 to 96.6% water by molecule.
A reliable reference for either of your statements, please.
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Did they seriously use a Full Grown Man to take these element statistics? Because if they did, then theyre OBVIOUSLY going to find trace elements in your body that SHOULDNT be there, but when they get their data, theyre going to be like, “Oh, its in the body, its naturally there.” NO! The dude has probably been brushing his teeth with fluoride his whole life. OF COURSE theres going to be Flouride in his body. You know, this site was right on one thing. Your mind DEFINITELY has to be open to work.
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Cory, remove all the chemicals from your body and what are you left with? Did you miss the point of the article?
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@Ken,
It’s like you go to get your car serviced and they sell you all the bits and fluids. But what you needed is the knowledge of where they go and how much.
Sure, remove all the bits (chemicals) and you have nothing left. But get back all the bits and you do not have a car (person).
Simpler creatures may be better at putting together bits. Cats can synthesise vitamin C whereas humans can’t.
Algae may synthesise a sort of vitamin B12 if they have the right chemicals like cobalt available. Fish eat the algae or plankton and make it more absorbable by humans.
Even then humans need an “intrinsic factor” to absorb it.
Plain chemicals are often no use.
We need chromium to help against diabetes. But is no use just getting the chemical. It needs to be in the right form. It’s no good getting the tannery waste chromium from the river or sea. But we might be able to eat animals from that river or sea if they can get the right valency of chromium and reject the wrong. I am not certain if they can so be careful.
Better to get not just chemicals but chemicals in the right proportion and form for humans, which are more likely though not certain, to be so if they come from other life forms.
You may need iron. If it is prescribed as teh chemical ferrous sulphate it may warn not to take it at the same time as vitamin E which may be destroyed. If you can get it from green leafy plants.
I am wondering if fluoride interacts with anything, but I would say it is likely. If it is the water you cannot choose so easily, maybe instinctively what not to take it with.
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Soundhill – what a load of old rubbish attempting to support idiots who base their opposition to health measures on something being a chemical.
We are 100% chemical. Rabbiting on about different types of chemical does not change that fact, or change the fact that condemnation of something because it is a chemical is moronic.
I am offended but the fact that I cannot find out the composition of a commercial source of sea salt because it claims not to contain any chemicals. Pathetic.
It’s these silly “natural” health idiots again.
>
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Soundhill, let me help you out.
The bad chemicals are the ones that wear hoodies.
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@Ken
Our NZ salt mainly comes from the sea. Epsom salt is extracted from sea salt to make what is left table salt. Not quite. The sodium chloride picks up water and will not free flow. So anitcaking agents are added, could have aluminium salts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticaking_agent
Also if you buy sea salt it probably has a good proportion of magnesium sulphate in it and other stuff from the sea. Except that some people may call salt extracted from sea water sea salt as opposed to rock salt.
Needs clarification.
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@Richard, haha. Have recently had a car fire burnt a nice tree near my place. But I did not think it would be because of what I have written on this group.
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Soundhill, you are teaching me to suck eggs. I am a chemist and understand very well the nature of salt.
What I am objecting to are the idiots who could declare that their sea salt product is “chemical free.”
Nothing is chemical free. And I am offended that the manufacturers refuse to include the chemical composition on their product because they declare it “chemical free.”
>
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@Ken, you want a change of terms.
Sea water is quite healthy, I find. I have spent many hours in it, and swallowed quite a bit. Fish live in it.
What term would you use instead of chemical addition?
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And doesn’t the F in seawater worry you? Twice the optimum concentration.
>
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@Ken
I don’t think I would be drinking 3 litres of sea water daily.
Just the occasional mouthful when I come up to breathe and a wave breaks on me.
But some thoughts emerge.
Salmon can presumably deal with that level in the sea in concert with other “chemicals”. But when trying to navigate fresh water to spawn they may not be able to cope with much more than 1/8th the concentration. Why and what does that mean if anything for humans using water which is very pure except for fluoride?
And as the ocean acidifies I wonder if anyone is keeping watch on fluoride levels since CaF2 is more soluble in acid. We may find changes in species numbers.
It’s not just about what chemicals are there in isolation, it is their interactions and concerted effects on life forms.
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Soundhill
I asked a polite question, about where you got your figures from for percentage of water molecules in the human body, to verify your supplied figures of both 90% and 98%.
So far, you’ve ignored the question. Even though you brought up the topic, giving two different answers with no reliable reference does make it seem like guesswork without understanding.
A reliable reference for at least one of your figures, please.
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Hello,
Just found this blog searching for fluorine necessity. Once here I searched the site for boron and noted no results. Curious as to your take on boron (in proper amounts) as seems to be a lot of supporting literature on it’s necessity (along with magnesium) from proper absorption and distribution of calcium in the body with proper amounts significantly impacting bone and tooth density and lack of calcification of soft tissues. Also of note is that modern agricultural techniques have dramatically reduced trace boron in soils. Another interesting observation is that areas of high boron concentration (such as areas around some of the volcanic springs in New Zealand) correlate with much lower incidence of bone disorders and arthritis. Thoughts?
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@Stuartg
As I said I gave the 90% ref. (Yesterday 8:01am)
Here it is again:
Click to access jcrt-3-1-1.pdf
Gerald Pollack is not listed amongst those authors. Actually it was Pollack from the Bioengineering Dept at Washington University said 99% and maybe the more recent paper is a typological error.
You may download some of his book free sand see it. I haven’t time to find it just at the moment.
http://www.ebnerandsons.com/products/the_fourth_phase_of_water
In sea water the molecules are not so different in size as they are in living things.
A water molecule has a molecular weight of 18 g/mol.
An amino acid is maybe 5 times that and a protein molecule may be 1000 times more.
So for each protein molecule an equivalent mass of water molecules would be some 5000.
I gave you the plant pot explanation.
Now try this: what are you more likely to slip over on: a golf ball or an equivalent weight of ball bearings?
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Soundhill,
That reference has a bare statement, nothing to back it up.
Now, how about a reliable reference?
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@Stuartg
The link contains 2 lines which my Firefox browser clicks on. Maybe you have to copy them and make sure both go into your browser.
I don’t think I have any special permission.
Click on the “sample chapters”
When I did that I got:
http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0161/7154/files/FOURTH_PHASE_SAMPLE.pdf?1585
But maybe that relates to my browser. But try this alternative of pasting in that whole expression to your browser if the former does not work.
Pollack’s intention is to make a readable book. I quote:
page 3
“Water covers much of the earth. It pervades the skies. It fills your
cells — to a greater extent than you might be aware. Your cells are two-
thirds water by volume; however, the water molecule is so small that
if you were to count every single molecule in your body, 99% of them
would be water molecules. That many water molecules are needed to
make up the two-thirds volume. Your feet tote around a huge sack of
mostly water molecules”
“Mostly” by number, not by weight.
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@Stuartg
I’ve realised that you mean you read the statement.
Gerald’s point is, isn’t it, that there are many water molecules, so it is useful to spend time to understand them?
I think I understand you are wanting to check up that he is telling the truth.
I don’t know where to find the calculation, but I imagine it would go something like this:
Number of water molecules x molecular weight of water
plus number of protein molecules x molecular weight of protein
plus number of fat molecules x molecular weight of fat
plus number of bone molecules x molecular weight of bone
equals weight of body.
or
nw x 18 this bit has to come to about 60% of the mass
+np x 5000
+nf x 300
+nb x ?
= weight of body.
because 18 is rather small then nw has to be large to make up the 60%
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Soundhill,
The reference you give is merely someone’s opinion. Sure, it’s been published, but there’s no evidence within the paper to back up the opinion.
You’ve said that water molecules numerically consist 98%, then 90%, and now 99% of the human body. Which is it? Or is it another figure alltogether?
I would like to see a reliable reference, and not just someone’s opinion, because two of the figures you give say the human body consists of a higher proportion of water than does sea water.
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Soundhill,
A good approximation of the osmolar strength of the human body is 279 mOsm/L. That’s what we use for IV crystalloid in the form of Hartmann’s solution. It is actually more dilute than sea water, which is why sea water is not healthy to drink. (We can’t get rid of the excess solute.)
Unfortunately, the human body also consists of lipids and phospholipids, which aren’t dissolved in water. Our skeleton isn’t dissolved in water, either.
We can only use that figure (279 mOsm/L) for the human body if we ignore subcutaneous fat, cell membranes, bones, the brain and spinal cord. If we do that, then it’s hardly a human body any more, is it?
Your simple calculations are just that – simple. Their result is nowhere near an accurate figure.
Ken and many of the commenters will understand why I’m asking for a reliable reference, consistent with other scientific knowledge. If you give a statement on a scientific blog then you have to be able to back up that statement.
A reliable reference, please, for the percentage of water molecules out of all the molecules in the human body.
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@Stuartg
From memory sea water is 64lb per cubic foot and ordinary water 62.5.
So that would be 100*1.5/62.5 or 2.4%, or sea water about 97.6% water by weight.
with the main constituents sodium 23 g/mol, chlorine 35.5 and water 18 there is not a great deal of difference between the molecular weights. But by number of molecules sea water must be great than 97.6%.
You want this group to be scientific therefore don’t riddle it with suggestive statements. For example your word “drink” sea water, when you mean drink sea water solely as a source of water. But some uneducated readers could be played upon by your words to be made to think I had done something very risky by swallowing a mouthful i.e “drinking” sea water.
As Ken suggests maybe I was even getting a bit of fluoride from it. That may have been one reason for good teeth. But only during the swimming season. Not constantly as with fluoridated water. And in concert with many other “chemicals” maybe competing and blocking fluoride receptors.
Note the useful micro-organsisms in the human body crowd out the pathogens. Or substances a bit like human estrogens may latch on to the estrogen receptors and block them. See tamoxifen or phytoestrogens. Human estrogen may be thought to increase chances of cancer in women who have had breast cancer. Tamoxifen does not decrease it but blocks the receptors.
So in sea water salmon fish may have certain receptors blocked by chloride so as not to be so affected by fluoride. Whereas in fresh water rivers they do not and the levels from city wastewter may banish them. They are banished but my mechanism is just a hypothesis and science has a place for hypotheses.
You want me to look up more about my figures, and in the mean time how about you looking up as Pollack says the exclusion zone in water near a solid surface can be used to purify it maybe even from salt. And acknowledging that the properties of water moelcules make them take an active part in biochemistry not just as a solute.
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“May have” this, … “perhaps” that.
“Could be” one thing, … “maybe” another.
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@Richard you are unscientific if you exclude hypotheses. There can be no scientific progress without them except perhaps in the case of some accidental discoveries.
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@Richard: complains of my use of “could be”.
Here is my use of the expression:
“But some uneducated readers could be played upon by your words to be made to think I had done something very risky by swallowing a mouthful i.e “drinking” sea water.”
Stuartg had said sea water is not healthy to drink. So I have to presume, Richard, according to what you say that no one had thought he meant even in small quantity.
You criticise, “maybe.”
and I was saying, “As Ken suggests maybe I was even getting a bit of fluoride from it.”
OK leave out the maybe. But I put it in to give the feeling for whether the amount was significant. More scientific.
You criticise, “may have”. I had written, “May have been one reason for good teeth.” That depends on how much I got. Another reason *may have* been that I tended to get asthma and asthmatics tend to produce more fluids being allergic, so more saliva which is protective of teeth.
And “Maybe competing and blocking fluoride receptors.”
A fair enough hypothesis.
You criticise “perhaps” which I used on January 16
I wrote: “And for those who do not mind a bit of my brainstorming, perhaps it may be interesting to look at varying the concentrations of those substances in the diet, to see what changes happen.”
Most people will think it is a valid word to use there. But Richard is banking on people forgetting and using that to build a case against me.
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Soundhill1, perhaps I ought to be clearer: your constant positing of off-the-cuff, ill-thought-through possibilities in this blog achieves nothing.
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@Richard, I have just shown that you were taking the time of the group doing that: posting ill-thought-through comments.
My hypotheses are well thought-through.
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@Ken
Don’t you think that a chemical is a substance produced by a chemical process, in the normal meaning of the word?
Or do you think Wiki should include photosynthesis as a chemical process?
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Soundhill,
So, OK, I understand that you’re not going to give me a reliable reference because you don’t have one. You could have said that straight out I would have accepted it.
It’s a pity, because I became interested in the concept after you raised it.
In future, before you introduce a concept, please think it through carefully. Richard described your comments as off-the-cuff and ill-thought-through. I would agree with him, and add that they are very reminiscent of flight-of-ideas that I encountered years ago when training in psychiatry.
Please think your comments through fully before you post.
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@Stuartg
I have argued on internet groups since 1994. I am very awake to arguers who have an agenda to sell. When they get under pressure they try to attack the arguer rather than the arguments.
You are looking weak.
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@Stuartg
“flight of ideas
Type: Term
Definitions:
1. an uncontrollable symptom of the manic phase of a bipolar depressive disorder in which streams of unrelated words and ideas occur to the patient at a rate that is difficult to vocalize despite a marked increase in the person’s overall output of words.”
http://www.medilexicon.com/medicaldictionary.php?t=43358
How about explaining yourself or retracting.
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@Stuartg
I am getting on with my answer to your question, now how are you getting on with understanding the exclusion zone where water meets a solid?
https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091023021908AAGOeL3
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080701223840AAQeh9y
And since you bring up psychiatry let me give a little comment about that mind training called “assertiveness training”. From memory we were trained to speak in terms of, “I do it this way,” rather than “you do it this way.”
I did not like that attack on the way people often speak. “You” has a meaning of “anybody concerned,” which is very commonly used. I was annoyed that the trainers could not acknowledge that, that to them, “you” had to mean the person or people you are speaking to.
In called my thought “flight-of-ideas” you are referring in part to my interaction with Ken in which I used the expression, “your pp problem” and he replied as if it were aimed at him personally?
Psychiatry, like a parent or school teacher has power over a person and does not have to explain. Let’s do better.
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I shall further talk of what I meant by “your PP problem,” here since I am on the topic, though Ken is saying he does not understand me on the other thread.
A number of times Ken has referred to ministers of religion and prostitutes showing a correlation to many things. I called ministers of religion preachers, and coined the term “your PP problem” for brevity, which I thought would be obvious. (Note I worry about normalising prostitution, Ken, which is frequently under age.)
The PP problem is like things being correlated, though not necessarily causally.
In the cases of the more firemen who go to a fire the more damage there is. Or the students who get private coaching get lower grades on average. I don’t think the partial correlation analysis would sort out those, I am not sure. But it tells you if a correlation is unlikely to be causal. It may be used to give an indication to eliminate causality between variables, not to prove it.
I shall now have another go at explaining one of the things which may have seemed “flight-of-ideas” to you, Stuartg. Please say where if you do not understand or think I am getting it wrong.
“Multiple regression,” as I think Ken says was used Choi et al, depends on linear relationships. That is double the fluoride, double the fluorosis.
I don’t think that should be assumed. In my view it could be like a tank overflowing. Even though fluid is flowing in to the tank it does not overflow until the tank is full then all the flow spills over.
If you are medically trained you may know that kidney disease is like that. People don’t realise they have damage until their kidneys have lost 90% plus of their large reserve of capacity.
So maybe fluorosis turns up in people who have lost their capacity to excrete fluoride. So if I am reading the Choi study I shall be looking for whether lack of urinary fluoride which Ken talks about, is because it is instead going to their teeth, or bones, or wherever else as fluorosis.
I hope I find that Choi & al stats are not based on linear relationships.
One way of dealing with such non-parametric systems is to use partial rank correlation with signficance as was described some years ago by Siegel and Castellan.
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@Stuartg
If you are trained in psychiatry I wonder if you had it explained to you about the poor teeth of patients since their drugs suppress their saliva.
Here is a paper addressing saliva and the stimulative effect of fluoride on that. What is interesting is how little difference extra dietary fluoride makes on the salivary concentration of fluoride.
This seems to back up what I said before from Dunedin dentist BD Ritchie who said the saliva does not need great fluoride concentration.
Click to access westendorf.pdf
How about if you address the arguments, not ad hominems at the source.
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@Stuartg: “You’ve said that water molecules numerically consist 98%, then 90%, and now 99% of the human body. Which is it? Or is it another figure alltogether?”
And earlier you said: “You’ve said “water would be close to some 98 or more percent going by numbers of molecules,” and “90% of our molecules are water.””
I tried to remember and thought it was a bit more than 98%. The figure of 99% was lurking in my brain, and I thought 98% or more included that well enough, but I couldn’t remember if it had been ninetyeight point something.
I am waiting for your psychological commentary on that.
I did not matter too much to me, just that cells have very many water molecules in them, and if they have behaviours other than just being a solute then that is extremely important.
I found out later that Pollack had said 99%. But in the meantime I had read the 90% figure.
At your urging to clear up this matter I have checked up with the authors of the 90% figure and they acknowledge it is a typo.
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sorry “solvent” not “solute”.
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Soundhill,
You initially said “It would be interesting to put the number of molecules in and water would be close to some 98 or more percent going by numbers of molecules.”
This raised my interest, and I asked you for a reliable reference for that comment.
Since then, when talking specifically to me (and ignoring replies to others), you have replied by:
1. Talking about planting seeds in pots.
2. Giving a second figure of 90%.
3. Giving an unreliable reference (just a straight statement).
4. Giving a reference to “fourth phase of water.”
5. Talking about molecular weights (water, amino acids and proteins).
6. Talking about golf balls and ball bearings.
7. Talking about Firefox.
8. Talking about “fourth phase of water” again.
9. Talking about an author’s intentions.
11. Giving a third figure of 99%.
11. Trying to justify your statement with oversimplified maths using mass rather than molecular numbers.
12. Trying to counter my reference with poor maths based on figures that you admit are “from memory.”
13. Accusing me of “suggestive statements.”
14. Talking about the microorganisms that are part of the human body consist.
15. Talking about oestrogen, oestrogen receptors, Tamoxifen and breast cancer.
16. Talking about salmon, chloride and fluoride.
17. Talking about “exclusion zone in water near a solid surface.”
18. Talking about your history on internet groups.
19. Asking me to explain why I thought your replies to me were “very reminiscent of flight-of-ideas.”
20. Told me you were “getting on with my answer to your question.”
21. Talking about my intentions.
22. Giving an article on fluoride in saliva.
23. Saying the 90% figure was a typo.
…And you still haven’t given me the reliable reference to your statement that I politely asked for several days ago.
Now do you understand why I suggested that your comments were “very reminiscent of flight-of-ideas?”
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Soundhill,
I guess that I’m never going to get that reference that I so politely asked for.
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oops – “reliable” reference.
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Soundhill,
Number 12, above. You used your own maths, with figures “from memory,” to counter my reference about salinity of sea water. Let me repeat that reference: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/531121/seawater .
By doing that maths and relying only on your memory for the basic data, you give the appearance that you consider yourself a more reliable source of information than the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Earlier, I asked you: “In future, before you introduce a concept, please think it through carefully. Richard described your comments as off-the-cuff and ill-thought-through. I would agree with him…”
Please think your replies through carefully and consider the impression that your “off-the-cuff and ill-thought-through” comments convey to others.
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@Stuartg
The number was a bit surprising to me, and it seems so to you.
Do you not believe it?
I wavered a bit when I saw the 90% figure, but that is now explained.
I have given you the references where I saw the figures.
I have been taking you on several journeys hoping to explain other points to you that you may not have come across and trying to find out the basis of your demand. I suspect you are trying to suggest I am quoting a flaky source and so cast doubt on other things I or they say.
I think the points I have made relate to principles of biochemistry that might be applying in tooth health. I am sorry I have answered the next thread on this one somewhat. I found I could link some points to things that have come up from what you have said, and that sometimes helps for people to focus their attention. It wasn’t just to you and I noted the connection on the other thread.
I gave some alternative figures to your seawater ones. Did that help you to get around the understanding?
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@Stuartg
I don’t see the Britannica article speak of the numbers of molecules, only their total weights combined, and as the water molecules are each less weighty it takes more of them to make up the weight.
you wrote: ““Salinities in the open ocean have been observed to range from about 34 to 37 parts per thousand (0/00 or ppt).” That’s 96.3 to 96.6% water by molecule.”
Firstly you quoted from Britannica, then you added your bit “That’s 96.3 to 96.6% water by molecule”.
You should have said, “That’s 96.3 to 96.6% by type of molecule.”
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From TA Crosbie’s copy’n’paste: “virtually all HF reverts to F2 in the cytosol and F2 cannot easily diffuse out of the cell. ” Elsewhere the authors speak of fluoride as being F2. This suggests that their chemistry is somewhat uncertain, as F2 is gaseous fluorine, while fluoride is F-. This reduces my confidence in their pronouncements.
Also, this is an hypothesis ie an interesting possibility; it would be useful to see some actual data to support it. The journal itself is on a par with Medical Hypotheses…
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Soundhill,
I politely asked for a reliable reference for a figure that you gave, simply because I was interested in that figure. Anything else is your own assumption.
You have diverted in many directions, reminiscent of flight-of-ideas or off-the-cuff writing. It’s as though you have not thought through your replies before committing them to computer.
And through it all, you still have not given the reliable reference that I politely asked for…
You now divert again by going back to my reference and appear to have misinterpreted it. It appears that a simple explanation of that reference is required.
Sea water consists of solvent and solutes, respectively water and salts. The amount of salt, or salinity, is given in parts per thousand. Divide that by 10 to get parts per hundred. Another name for parts per hundred is percent.
So… sea water consists of 34 to 37 parts per thousand of solute (from the reference). Divide by ten – 3.4 to 3.7 parts per hundred of solute. The remainder, entirely water, consists of 96.3 to 96.6 parts per hundred, or 96.3 to 96.6 percent.
Back to water in the human body… I can get a good percentage of water in the human body, by mass, from many sources, but that’s not the subject that you originated: you said “It would be interesting to put the number of molecules in and water would be close to some 98 or more percent going by numbers of molecules.” (I don’t know why you find it interesting, but I certainly do).
I can get a good estimate of the parts per hundred of water in both the intracellular and extracellular fluids of the human body – that figure comes from Hartmann’s solution or other crystaloid infusions. BUT… the figures I get from those do not include the parts of the human body that are not in solution, parts that include the bones, adipose tissues, the phospholipid bilayers, most of the central nervous system, keratin based parts of the body, etc. The reliable reference that I have asked you to supply (and you must have one because you brought up the topic) would also include the molecules of those parts of the human body that are not in aqueous solution.
If you have a reliable reference for the number of parts per hundred (percent), by molecule, of water in the entire human body, then I am interested in it. I’m not going back to count how many times I have said that. Please give the reference.
If you don’t have a reliable reference then let me know as well; I will have to search elsewhere. But, please, please, stop these diversions in all sorts of directions and think through your answers before you commit to them. All they are doing is giving the impression that you made a wild ass guess and you are now trying to cover up your error.
Sorry about the length of this. It’s considerably shorter than my first attempt!
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@Stuartg
Before I get the info you are looking for are you asking for percent by type of molecule or by weight?
I fear you do not understand.
For example in a aeroplane fares are charged by number of people but fuel will be by total weight.
A rugby team may cost more fuel than the same number of jockeys.
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The point of my bringing up the number of molecules percent as opposed to just the total mass percent is part of acknowledging the importance of them.
They are special.
Scientists used to try to imitate bone without considering them.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1359/JBMR.041217/pdf
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Whilst I honestly have no idea where Soundhill gets his figures from (nor why the percentage of water molecules in the human body interests him), I figure I’ll provide a possible source for the 99% claim (or 98.73% as the case may be).
http://www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine/Ch03_1.html
While this is unlikely to be Soundhill’s source, and does not actually state a percentage of the human body made up of water, I can certainly see the information in table 3-2 being picked up on, extrapolated from, and disseminated far and wide.
Note, however, that the human body does not consist entirely of “Typical 20-micron Human Cells,” so it’s really not valid to simply scale up and conclude that 98.73% of the molecules in the human body are water. See, for instance, bone.
I don’t know if anybody has actually tried to calculate the percentage of water molecules in the body. Most sources simply state that it’s high (as we would expect, given water is a high proportion of the body by weight and is much smaller than many of the other molecules in the human body) and leave it at that.
If you would care to provide a better source, Soundill, setting out the calculations and reasoning behind whatever the percentage might be, do feel free to do so. Otherwise, I think that’s probably about as good as we’re going to get.
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Incidentally, Soundhill, I would have thought it was obvious that Stuart was talking about percentage by type of molecule. He is, after all, asking you to back up your figures, which have ranged from 90-99%.
Presumably, you do not believe that the human body is made up of 90% (or higher) water by weight.
I really do think you ought to have been clearer about how you were measuring the percentage of water in the human body way back in your original post though. After all, when most people discuss that, they’re talking about by weight. Hence the initial incredulity that you might be trying to tell us there was a higher percentage of water by weight in the human body than in seawater.
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Hm. My apologies there. Taking another read-through, you were quite careful to say that this was by number of molecules.
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Soundhill,
Airfares? MRIs of bone? Diversion? Or flight of ideas?
Why say: “are you asking for percent by type of molecule or by weight?” It was you who brought up the topic – not me. All I did was follow your lead and ask for a reliable reference. …Which you still haven’t provided.
Didn’t you even read what I said in my last comment?
” I can get a good percentage of water in the human body, by mass, from many sources, but that’s not the subject that you originated: you said “It would be interesting to put the number of molecules in and water would be close to some 98 or more percent going by numbers of molecules.””
Then, two paragraphs later, I said: “If you have a reliable reference for the number of parts per hundred (percent), by molecule, of water in the entire human body, then I am interested in it.”
You originated the topic of water molecular percentages, not me. Implicit in my previous comments is that I understand the topic. In fact, even though the topic is not a common one, I use it frequently at work. I would like to read the reliable reference because you phrased things in a different way than I am used to. That difference in phrasing, and hence perspective, could have derived from a reference that may (or may not) usefully contribute to my own knowledge and work. I would like to read that reference, providing it is from a reliable source.
Bringing up the topic implies that you already have the information, or at least should be able to access it readily.
A simple request for a reliable reference should be promptly answered. I’ve requested the information, politely, many, many times, because I’m interested in the answer.
I can’t explain things more simply than that.
If you don’t (or won’t) produce the politely requested reliable reference, then the obvious assumption that others will make is that it was a WAG.
Chris,
Thanks for the comments.
As you have seen, I have understood Soundhill. I really would be interested in his source if it was reliable. If he doesn’t produce one then I guess I’d have to involve a medical (or biological science) librarian. There’s just too much interference from “percentage by mass” for my own searches from home or the medical library.
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@Chris
I got thrown by seeing the 90% by number of water molecules in Luis’s paper.
So I have contacted that MD, and below is the result.
If you need his email it is on the paper.
@Stuartg
When I said the 98 plus % (it turns out 99%) I only had the Pollack figure. When someone is a bioengineering lecturer I tend to believe what they say.
Is it because it is in a book on the Fourth Phase of Water that you are suspicious?
Luis & al. made a typo. 90 instead of 99. Maybe the writer or proof reader *also* thought the 99 was way too high.
“The Fourth Phase of Water” is actually about science. It has several surprising things in it. Nothing to do with alternative medicine if that is what you are suspicious about. Large groups of water molecules gather together in such places as on bubble surfaces but not only there. Liquid water can be structured.
I know you try to stop me from giving linked topics however another topic you may not have heard of is of another recent discovery of flat sheets of carbon atoms (graphite like a pencil line). They are called graphene and are very strong and have interesting electrical properties for storage batteries coming up, and solar electricity collection.
Science is always progressing. It is hard to keep up.
my email exchange with Luis:
Hi Brian
Thank you for your note and link with interesting information
You are certainly right. There is a typo in the article. It should read 99%.
I appreciate the correction and your interest in our work.
Best regards
Luis
—
Luis Santana-Blank, MD
2015-01-18 19:49 GMT-04:30 Brian Sandle wrote
Hi,
Gerald Pollack in his book gives 99% but I am not sure if he talking about a cell or the whole body.
You wrote in your recent paper:
“In pure numbers, given its small molecular weight, 90% of our molecules are water.”
And https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091023021908AAGOeL3
You may be correct but you may want to check.
Thanks from Brian Sandle
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Soundhill,
You said: “Is it because it is in a book on the Fourth Phase of Water that you are suspicious?”
I have asked you for a reliable reference. A reference for a topic you started. A reference for a number that you gave. I explain why I would like to see the reference. I tell you that I’m interested in seeing the reference. I ask you politely for the reference, many times. You’ve have never given the reference.
If you have never given that reliable reference, then exactly how am I expected to know the reference “is in a book on the Fourth Phase of Water?” My only suspicion, produced by your repeated failure to produce the reference, is that the reliable reference doesn’t actually exist. Which is disappointing.
It’s obvious that you are not going to provide a reliable reference to back your statement. Maybe you think that keeping it a secret enhances it in some way? I honestly have no idea why you should take this attitude.
OK, I’ll give up asking where you got your figure from. You have managed to waste my time without contributing anything to my knowledge. Was it worth it for you?
I’ll just have to stick with using percentage of water in the body by mass.
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Not to put too fine a point on it, Soundhill, but the second result I picked up from searching for “fourth phase of water” (behind the book’s website) was Pollack being interviewed about the book by Dr Mercola ( http://www.donotlink.com/d9sf ), that paragon of alternative medicine quackery. This does not indicate to me that this is a book about science, or that Pollack is a respected scientist.
At the very least, it’s an appalling lapse of judgement on Pollack’s part. More likely, it indicates he’s fallen down the rabbit-hole. Given that connection, I am sure the book contains all manner of surprising things. Which of those things are true, and whether Pollack has drawn sensible conclusions from those things is something of an open question.
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@Chris
I find a very empty approach on this group doing ad hominems bandwaggon. Either at people or at sources, despite Ken’s clear instructions not to.
Mercola is an MD who at one stage was a promoter for hormone replacement therapy. He changed to natural ways and is still promoting HRT for women with ovaries removed.
He offers vitamins and supplements as you would see in the supermarket, but freer of artificial sweeteners &c. I haven’t bought his stuff. But Ken has pointed out to me that he sells a toothpaste sweetened by xylitol. Tell me where else that is available.
Mercola does not have to have his eye on the dollar to give advice, unlike most businesses.
He is keen to learn and has interviewed Pollack.
Mercola is a bit confused about 99% water molecules vs 99% water that Pollack relates of. Mercola also put in a New Agey question about getting the needed IR from a crystal. But Pollack is not familiar with that.
Pollack may lose some audience if he agrees to interviews from anyone, but not a really understanding audience. Only the people on the bandwaggon of labels rather than going into it oneself.
Gradually minds will improve. I had trouble on NZ Skeptics when I suggested two-valued in thinking of philosophy graduate was hampering progress. Some people have trouble with colours as opposed to black and white. So on this group you will find people who are totally for fluoridation and people who are totally against it, and people like me who want to look into it and each of those strongly polarised sides think I am on the other side.
And I feel you may be rather in the situation where you are compelled to reject everything from a source or accept everything because it is fashionable to do so. That is judging by what you have said. If I applied your philosophy now I might not bother to listen to you any more. But I still listen. I do not gang up with people and so make people feel uncomfortable.
As Ken says, science does not know everything, and Pollack is not claiming infallibility. Some of his ideas will disturb, as he explains.
It may be because after we do our learning and get our ticket we get set in our ways. We paid so much to get our education and think it is over when we leave university. But really it is just the start.
Who knows, maybe I will come up with a negative correlation between years of fluoridation of a city and prevalence of cancer in it. For me that would not be the end of it. I would want to know which individuals and how to keep fine tuning.
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@Stuartg I gave you early on the quote, all I knew. You came back to me with Britannica stuff which does not deal with numbers of molecules, only the bulk quantity of them.
More recently I have offered you an article about bone which talks of the importance of water for its characteristcs. I felt you were not acknowledging water in bone by what you said. Correct me, please, if you may.
Water may affect how substances react much more than being just a solute. Besides teh Mercoal interview you may find a Youtube presentation by Pollack and see some videos of his experiments.
He does not always work by hypothesis to find out. Listen about the student who saw the exclusion zone increased by light.
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Soundhill,
At last. “I gave you early on the quote, all l knew.”
You are right. A quote. No attempt to justify the quote. No calculations. No attributions. As I told you after you gave it.
Several days after you have introduced a topic, with data associated with the topic, you admit that you do not have a reliable reference.
If your data is not reliable, then why use it in discussion at all. The only valid use would include the warning it was not reliable.
FYI. Back of the envelope. We have a value for percentage of water molecules in intracellular and extracellular fluids, derived from their osmolality. To that we can subtract the molecules of dehydrated keratin (skin, hair, nails), the many molecules of fat stored in adipose tissue, the molecules that consist the phospholipid bilayers of cell and mitochondrial membranes,the molecules in the minerals of the skeleton, the fatty molecules of the brain and spinal cord… I have no idea what the answer is, because of no reliable reference, but the calculation starts at under 98% and only gets smaller.
It is an interesting subject, but you haven’t contributed to it.
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@Stuartg
My figures may be wrong but if a litre of water contains 55.51 moles of water molecules and the osmololaity of blood is about 0.29 osmoles per kg then I am getting about 99.5% water molecules in blood.
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If you are thinking of liquid water as a chemical it is no longer thought of as being homogeneous. I have reported Pollack and here is a paper citing his group: ” We have investigated the case of an interesting variety of liquid water reported in literature, namely the case of the so called Exclusion Zone (EZ) water examined by the group led by G.H. Pollack [16,17]. This water is detectable close to hydrophilic surfaces, such as Nafion, and exhibits
properties quite different from those found in normal bulk water: a) EZ water is unable to host solutes, and this is the root
of the name Exclusion Zone; b) its viscosity is much higher than that of normal water suggesting the presence of a strong
interaction among molecules; c) it is an electron-donor, a chemical reducer, whereas normal water is a mild oxidant; consequently the interface EZ water/normal water is a red-ox pile, where the red-
ox potential could have a jump of a fraction of a Volt; d) it exhibits a fluorescent response in the UV region at 270 nm. EZ water should therefore imply a major reorganization of the molecular
structure of water, in particular (see property d) with respect
to the electronic structure.”
Click to access 1310.0635.pdf
It must be opening up new understanding in biochemistry. Need to keep up before authoritatively propounding on individual biochemistry.
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It is important to pin down attribution.
How to argue with Assholes (not saying that you are one, soundhill):
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Soundhill,
For the final time.
YOU introduced the subject. YOU gave a figure for percentage of water, by molecule, in the human body.
All I did was be interested enough to ask YOU for a reliable reference in order to follow what YOU were thinking.
YOU eventually admitted that YOU had no reliable reference for the figure YOU produced.
Why on Earth do you think I would have any further interest in following arguments that have nothing to back them up?
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Hi Richard
Your video is very insistent on “either or.”
It talks about the stupidity of getting data from the internet, and in contrast it shows a shelf of scientific journals.
Actually scientific publishers earn a tremendous amount through the internet. Way more than Ebay or Amazon.
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/journals.html
Some internet stuff is good.
Be suspicious of those who talk about “internet researchers.” I am not saying ti is you, Richard, but you have promoted that film.
How are you getting on with Pollacks, “Like attracts like?”
“Yes or no” answer does not work, to “Do likes attract or repel?”
The film mentions evolution. It gives some simple examples, but you will find then some “science” shills take the leap to the “Central Dogma” of Crick and Watson and they do not allow for horizontal gene transfer and for epigenetics which Richard Dawkins is very uncomfortable with, even though modern medical treatments are looking at gene switching.
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Maybe someone else could explain to me what Stuartg does not seem to understand.
1 litre of water contains about 55.51 moles of water molecules.
Stuartg gives osmolality of 279 milliosmoles per litre. “A good approximation of the osmolar strength of the human body is 279 mOsm/L”
That is 0.279 osmoles per litre, or per kilogram of water to a good approximation.
So the percent is
Osmoles are the number of particles as they produce osmotic pressure, rough definition. Sodium chloride in water produces two particles.
The percent of particles is 100×0.279/55.51
The percent of water molecules is 100 minus that.
Thanks for reminding me about osmoles, Stuartg. Long time since I had contact with the term.
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Soundhill,
Accurately quoted, but obviously I was wrong. I’m human and so I make mistakes. I’ll readily admit to it. Because of that mistake, I have to reply.
First, I’ll correct the sentence that I wrote earlier: A good approximation of the osmolar strength of extracellular fluid is 279 mOsm/L.
Bear in mind the ECF is only a small fraction of the human body and cannot readily be used to represent the whole of the human body. (Yes, that’s what I suggested with my error, I obviously did not consider my reply sufficiently.)
You raised my interest by saying the human body consisted of over 98% water by molecule. I had never heard it expressed that way and my brain went through several stages.
Maybe you could go through them with me. Other commenters may also be interested in the way that my brain worked.
The basics: the water content of the human body, by mass, is 48 ±6% for females and 58 ±8% for males. http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/33/1/27.full.pdf Yes, I know YOU said 70%, but I skipped over that error because it was not relevant to percentage by molecule. Maybe I shouldn’t have skipped it and should have pointed out that reliable references actually say that water forms only about half of the mass of a human.
When contemplating the the concept of percentage of water by molecule rather than by mass, of the human body, I considered several questions.
I would invite you to consider the same questions:
What is the percentage of water, by molecule, of human hair?
What is the percentage of water, by molecule, of human finger and toe nails?
What is the percentage of water, by molecule, of phospholipid bilayers in the cells of the human body?
What is the percentage of water, by molecule, of the human skin keratin layer?
What is the percentage of water, by molecule, of the lipid in human fat cells?
What is the percentage of water, by molecule, of the myelin of the human central nervous system?
What is the percentage of water, by molecule, of the minerals that make up the bones of the human skeleton?
Reliable references, please, for any percentage that reaches double figures – because I don’t know of any.
What fraction of the human body do those seven items make? I considered the question using mass, volume and molecule.
Now, with that fraction of relatively anhydrous components in the human body, how can the human body consist of more than 98% water by molecule? In order to do so, the bones, skin, hair, nails, fat, cell membranes and central nervous system all combined would have to compose less than 1% of the human body. They obviously don’t.
My next thought then became “where can Soundhill have got a reliable reference for such an outlandish figure? Perhaps I’m wrong? I would really like to see that reference and how the figure was calculated. I’ll ask.”
I asked, and eventually you admitted that you did not have a reliable reference. “close to some 98 or more percent going by numbers of molecules” turned out to be a wild-ass-guess.
You may want to consider something that occurred to me later and haven’t done any more than speculate: if the human body did consist of a higher percentage of water, by molecule, than sea water, then wouldn’t it be more transparent than sea water?
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Soundhill,
“My figures may be wrong but if a litre of water contains 55.51 moles of water molecules and the osmololaity of blood is about 0.29 osmoles per kg then I am getting about 99.5% water molecules in blood.”
You are right – your figures are wrong.
Look for a reliable reference rather than trying the maths yourself.
An obvious error is that you have not considered the haematocrit.
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“What’s the haematocrit?”
The 40-45% of blood that is not in aqueous solution.
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Apologies for the delay, Soundhill. It appears the system has eaten my original post. I’d thought it was merely awaiting approval in the spam filter, but apparently not.
I am perfectly willing to substantiate my comments about Mercola being a quack, and have done so in the past, albeit in different venues. Accordingly, I have reproduced my comments the last time his name came up, slightly edited:
“Let me be perfectly clear on something. Mercola is not a “voice of sense.” He does not have your best interests at heart, and you should not, under any circumstances, take medical advice from him.
How do I know this? Because of material promoted on his own website. For instance:
1) Chemtrails.
http://www.donotlink.com/bn3e
Mercola has published many, many articles telling people that the world’s governments are secretly dumping nefarious chemicals on their heads out of airplanes, for
2) Homeopathy.
http://www.donotlink.com/d4k1
Mercola has written a good deal about this and sells a great many homeopathic products. The scientific and medical communities are pretty universal in their condemnation of homeopathy, as there is neither evidence that it works (ie no better than the placebo effect), nor any conceivable mechanism by which it might work.
3) Agenda 21
http://www.donotlink.com/d4k4
Specifically, the belief that Agenda 21 is secretly a conspiracy to depopulate the planet (often by means of chemtrails or fluoride).
4) “Vaccines are evil” (and cause autism)
http://www.donotlink.com/d4k6
An actively dangerous piece of marketing there, considering that the diseases vaccinated against can and will kill children. Needless to say, there is not a shred of scientific evidence to support Mercola’s various assertions about the dangers of vaccines.
5) “HIV does not cause AIDS”
http://www.donotlink.com/d4kc
Or maybe it does, depending on what he’s selling. In any case, don’t trust the medical establishment, trust Mercola and buy his “cures.” Again, an actively dangerous piece of marketing.
6) Morgellon’s Disease
http://www.donotlink.com/d4kd
Morgellon’s Disease does not, in fact, exist. At least, not as described by Mercola.
No doubt there are innumerable other bogus and perhaps outright dangerous claims made by Mercola, but these seem like the ones most likely to get you to take a step back and ask yourself “Should I be encouraging this dangerous quack by purchasing his products?”
Needless to say, I am rather more skeptical of Mercola’s motivations than you are. He’s certainly continuing to make money hand-over-fist, and there’s some rather aggressive marketing on display there. I would say that he is most definitely motivated by money, and is very slick indeed when it comes to duping his customers out of it.
A common theme running through all those sets of articles is that people shouldn’t trust the mainstream medical establishment /scientists /government /Big Pharma /anyone who tells you Mercola is a quack. Rather, they should trust Mercola and his cronies and buy their products.”
Note that I have linked to Mercola’s website via donotlink, so as to avoid boosting his pageviews. The original post contained links to wikipedia for an overview of the different subjects, but I think we’re reasonably aware of the ideas in question.
Whether we find them credible is, I suppose, a separate question, but I think there’s enough there to illustrate just why I’m deeply suspicious of anybody associated with Mercola.
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@Chris
Just stating those things you want people to believe Mercola said is not proof.
Many products are falsely advertised. Like Nature Bee pollen (NZ product) has “more calcium than milk.”
Cloud seeding does happen.
Have you compared the risk of homeopathy not curing something by placebo with the deaths due to iatrogenic disease?
What do HIV drugs do to a person?
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2001/07/11/aids-part-one.aspx
“In Africa, AIDS is caused by severe malnutrition and the release of endogenous cortisol. Any individual suffering from severe malnutrition has AIDS regardless if he or she is HIV-positive or HIV-negative. In addition, AIDS in people suffering from malnutrition can be reversed by giving proper nutrition and supportive medical care. I gave many examples in my book to illustrate these points.
Steven: Given what has happened to Dr. Peter Duesberg and having his funding scaled back because of his viewpoints and public questioning of HIV and AIDS, are you not concerned for your job security? Are you not stepping on the toes of the mainstream view that a virus is what actually causes AIDS?
Dr. Al-Bayati: Prior to November of 1997, I believed that HIV was the cause of AIDS and I did not have any intention to investigate this issue. However, I discovered in November of 1997 that AIDS can be caused by other agents, and that HIV is a harmless virus. I also realized that AZT and the antiviral drugs are killing people, which changed my direction.
It became my duty as a scientist to investigate this issue, to find out the truth, and to present my findings to our government and to the public. I have been spending a tremendous amount of time and money on this issue for the last four years without any financial help from any source. This has been extremely hard on my family, but what keeps me going is the reward of saving lives and our vital resources.
My findings were evaluated by professor Otto G. Raabe, a toxicologist from the University of California Davis, as well as other scientists and physicians who have been using my findings to save lives. In spring of 2000, I sent similar letters with copies of my books to President Mbeki and the Embassy of South Africa in Washington D.C. My book was submitted to President Mbeki’s Expert AIDS Panel where the medical evidence was evaluated and used. The panel report is posted on http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/panel/index.htm.
I do not understand why our government is ignoring this huge medical evidence that shows HIV does not cause AIDS while basing their entire AIDS program on unsupported hypothesis. Robert Gallo stated that HIV enters CD4+ T cells because they have special receptors for HIV and that HIV kills CD4+T cells selectively.
I have found no truth for this hypothesis.
Most individuals infected with HIV show hyperplasia of all cell components of lymph nodes (It has more cells than normal). In addition, HIV is present in all cells in the lymph nodes. Our government’s decision of basing the entire AIDS program on the HIV-hypothesis is a very dangerous and costly decision. This faulty decision has been resulting in the exposure of millions of people to very toxic antiviral drugs worldwide unnecessarily and wasting billions of dollars.
My stand on this issue has cost me a lot of my personal time, plenty of money and business opportunities. However, I will continue to present the medical evidence to physicians, scientists and to the people of the world to save lives and vital resources. ”
Thanks for the Agenda 21/Mercola ref which brings up:
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@Stuartg
You may be quicker to find the figures than I.
But I find haemoglobin molecules in a red blood cell total about 280 million and they are very large compared to water molecules which also are in the cells and the concentration of solutes is about 0.3M. Is haemoglobin a solute?
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“Just stating those things you want people to believe Mercola said is not proof.”
Soundhill, I linked you to lists of articles on precisely the topics I listed, generated by Mercola’s own site’s search engine. What higher standard of proof, exactly, could possibly exist that Mercola endorses and promotes the beliefs I listed?
I must say, this statement seems to go beyond ordinary incomprehension, and goes right into active trolling.
But hey, let’s break it down. I have stated that Mercola endorses the following ideas:
1) Chemtrails
2) Homeopathy
3) The Agenda 21 depopulation conspiracy
4) The evils of vaccination, including that vaccines cause autism
5) AIDS Denialism (ie the idea that HIV does not cause AIDS)
6) Morgellon’s Disease
Which of these, exactly, do you believe that Mercola does not endorse?
And let’s not get into any claptrap about “oh, Mercola didn’t write this article.” It’s his website, he controls and is responsible for the content.
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I do have things to do this evening, but will get to the rest of your post in due course. Do feel free to use the time to work out which of the items on the list Mercola does or does not endorse.
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@Chris I see the links now. Many on the chemtrail ref you give. Which ones should I look at?
And I say it is pretty funny thinking to put aside Pollack just because he went out of his way to explain stuff to Mercola’s crowd.
Scientists who take time to write understandable books and educate the public are very praiseworthy people.
I think you are just trying to get people on an attack bandwaggon.
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@Chris,
This gives a list of iatrogenic effects of the AZT HIV drug. Should not be used if the patient has HCV, and I wonder if that is honoured in the places where the data comes from. Hepatitis C virus must be very common in association with HIV.
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@Chris sorry missed it out.
Click to access Retrovircapsoln.pdf
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Soundhill, you seem to have missed the point here. Let me reiterate it in capital letters, so as to emphasise it and convey my rage through shouty text.
MERCOLA IS CLAIMING THAT HIV DOES NOT CAUSE AIDS.
SIDE-EFFECTS, EFFECTIVENESS OR OTHER CHARACTERISTICS OF DRUGS USED TO TREAT HIV AND CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH PARTICULAR DRUGS SHOULD OR SHOULD NOT BE USED HAVE NO BEARING ON THE CLAIM THAT HIV DOES NOT CAUSE AIDS.
THE TAKE-HOME MESSAGE IS THAT PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE TRYING TO TREAT HIV BECAUSE IT IS HARMLESS. THEREFORE PEOPLE SHOULD NOT TAKE DRUGS TO TREAT IT, OR EVEN TRY TO CHECK ITS SPREAD.
THIS IS A DANGEROUS MESSAGE BECAUSE IT HAS MEANT THAT HIV (AND INDEED AIDS) HAS GONE UNTREATED, WHICH HAS CAUSED UNTOLD HUMAN MISERY. PARTICULARLY IN SOUTH AFRICA. CONSEQUENTLY, AIDS DENIALISM HAS NOT BEEN GOVERNMENT POLICY THERE SINCE 2006.
[/Hulk]
As to the articles on the links, personally, I would not recommend you read any of them, as I suspect you will simply pick up and absorb still more misinformation. I included the links specifically to demonstrate that these are beliefs which Mercola holds and promotes.
Beliefs which, I will note, the scientific community categorically rejects.
I would like to think that, in an overwhelming majority of cases, simply seeing all these beliefs laid out would be sufficient to give people pause. However, if you personally believe that these beliefs are perfectly plausible, do feel free to state which ones.
We may be able to discuss these in a rational fashion and hammer out just why, exactly, these claims are a load of nonsense. Then again, there may come a point at which I will be forced to conclude that you are simply a lost cause.
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MERCOLA IS CLAIMING THAT HIV DOES NOT CAUSE AIDS.
can you direct me to the quote?
SIDE-EFFECTS, EFFECTIVENESS OR OTHER CHARACTERISTICS OF DRUGS USED TO TREAT HIV AND CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH PARTICULAR DRUGS SHOULD OR SHOULD NOT BE USED HAVE NO BEARING ON THE CLAIM THAT HIV DOES NOT CAUSE AIDS.
the claim is that the side effects are rather bad. and that better nutrition enables the patient’s immune system.
have you any refs on the progress of aids with and without proper nutrition, with and without AZT? NZ Medsafe are rather sketchy about side effects throughout their article. Get me a proper side effects article before I can believe you. Are they covering up something? to be so sketchy is unusual for Medsafe.
THE TAKE-HOME MESSAGE IS THAT PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE TRYING TO TREAT HIV BECAUSE IT IS HARMLESS.
wrong the message is build the immune system in what I read.
THEREFORE PEOPLE SHOULD NOT TAKE DRUGS TO TREAT IT, OR EVEN TRY TO CHECK ITS SPREAD.
you’re making that up. don’t tell me it’s implied because you think it is.
THIS IS A DANGEROUS MESSAGE BECAUSE IT HAS MEANT THAT HIV (AND INDEED AIDS) HAS GONE UNTREATED, WHICH HAS CAUSED UNTOLD HUMAN MISERY.
let me see the case studies and compare with glandular fever treatment, once again if the person goes off their food or cannot afford it of course the body cannot heal and attention must be given to that.
PARTICULARLY IN SOUTH AFRICA.
case studies please, detailing food.
CONSEQUENTLY, AIDS DENIALISM HAS NOT BEEN GOVERNMENT POLICY THERE SINCE 2006.
Maybe you can provide me with answers to my comments. I intend to be very insistent.
I say again that you are simple minded to reject Pollacks book because Mercola invited him to explain about water.
Mercola promotes sunlight as anti-cancer, something I have been saying for years: in NZ cancer is worse the farther south you go. Except for perhaps melanoma, which hits indoor workers who get irregular strong exposure and burnt.
Anyone giving free and useful advice is a problem in this corporate profit world.
I see Eli Lilly are suing Canada for $500m for trying to allow cheaper drugs to be prescribed. And EL are trying to put Canada on a list of countries who are not friendly to corporates.
.
.Placebo is a very important part of most medical treatments. To check the actual effect of medicines you need to subtract the placebo effect and see what you have left. Antibiotics are losing the fight with resistant bugs.
I think people go to alternative health care providers when the ordinary ones are not helping enough.
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“in NZ cancer is worse the further south you go”
Really? That is not borne out by data from the NZ Cancer registry: http://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/publications/cancer-major-sites-dhb2006-2008.pdf
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Soundhill, I am not interested in your points because they are not relevant to the question of whether HIV causes AIDS. Which, if you recall, is the basis of one of my complaints against Mercola. This is something which you really need to settle *before* you start discussing how or if you treat HIV/AIDS.
Frankly, I am not interested in proceeding with this until we sort out the basis of this discussion. You seem to think that Mercola is not telling people that “HIV does not cause AIDS.” Very well. We may be able to discuss this.
However. You recall that I presented six sets of outlandish claims promulgated on Mercola’s website. Once again:
1) Chemtrails
2) Homeopathy
3) The Agenda 21 depopulation conspiracy
4) The evils of vaccination, including that vaccines cause autism
5) AIDS Denialism (ie the idea that HIV does not cause AIDS)
6) Morgellon’s Disease
Which of these do you dispute? That is, which of these claims do you believe Mercola has not made?
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@Chris
I haven’t read all that Mercola has said.
I think he offers useful advice that does not eventuate from commercial sources out for their biggest profit.
It would help if you point to his words so I can read them. I clicked on some links you gave and did not find them.
Here is his twitter feed, this time giving individual advice about how much water you need, and his usual advice about types of exercise which I have not seen elsewhere.
There is one link to a fluoride discussion.
I think people get their supplements from him rather than from the supermarket to support him and his health site.
Maybe there are a few wrong claims. I have challenged on his site the advice to replace amalgam dental fillings with composites which I believe elute out xenoestrogens. Could I get that discussed on many sites?
Maybe he will be wrong about fluorides.
Doctors prescribe treatments. They do not agree with some people and have to be changed. Penicillin can be life threatening. Does that mean you stop using that doctor? I hope you may discuss that because it looks like that is what you are doing to Mercola.
There are lot of corporates do not like Mercola. Especially the Grocery Manufacturers’ Association who have spent many millions more than Mercola trying to stop GMO food labelling food legislation. Mercoal supports knowing what is in our food.
If you have links to friends or shareholders gaining from the GMO industry you may have a good reason to build the squeal of bandwagon against Mercola. Monsanto shares have been dropping.
Do you want your food to have increased dicamba and other herbicides as weed resistance increases and Monsanto have to keep adding new resistance genes and allowing them to be used on our food crops we import?
http://action.sumofus.org/a/monsanto-agm/?akid=8987.1356842.qiaRkB&rd=1&sub=fwd&t=4
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“Maybe he [Mercola] will be wrong about fluorides.”
He IS wrong. As he is about so many things. He is running a business, and making a mint doing so; he’s not doing what he does out of the goodness of his heart.
Soundhill1, your posts here show that you are quite a good exponent of the Gish Gallop. How about just addressing Chris’s points, straight up?
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@Alison to address Chris’s points I would have to read all the Mercola has said. To require me to do an impossible task does not give you a win. Direct me to his words. I have clicked on Chris’s links and do not find what he says.
As for the cancer latitude thanks for that data. I invite you to look at
http://stats.govt.nz/Census/2013-census/profile-and-summary-reports/quickstats-culture-identity.aspx
which will require some calculation to show the drop in proportion of European-skinned people since about 2001 and a lot more searching and calculating to do the the proportion by district.
Non-European poorer health which is often blamed on lifestyle and poverty I believe to be quite correlated with poorer ability to get vitamin D from sunlight. Vitamin D is a fatty acid antioxidant, it promotes cell differentiation and differentiated cells do not proliferate, as well as being ant-rickets, anti-tooth decay and reducing multiple sclerosis relapses.
My data is around 1980 and is for urban distribution. When taking a whole region it is also necessary to consider the proportion of year round outdoor workers which will be greater in areas with more farming.
My figures as I referred to on Jan 10:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/nz.general/ogmx7fvbYQc/zMy69m-XFdoJ
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“Non-European poorer health which is often blamed on lifestyle and poverty I believe to be quite correlated with poorer ability to get vitamin D from sunlight. ”
Are you really suggesting that poorer people don’t get outside so much? Really?
As for Chris’s links, how much easier do you want him to make it for you?
Try this: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2001/08/08/chemtrails.aspx
That is an article on his site promoting the nonsense of chemtrails. It’s Mercola’s site, so he would have to have sanctioned an article like that. So please don’t quibble that it’s not in his actual words.
And in any case, this links to a list that Mercola has written; you’ll notice his opinions are clearly stated and that, no surprise, chemtrails are on that list.
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The problem here, Soundhill, is that if I start loading up my posts with links illustrating my point, I run up against the spam filter. So. You get one link apiece, and that’s it.
Remember: This is Mercola’s website. He (or the people employed by him) controls its content. It is not necessary for Mercola, personally, to write an article in order to him to be endorsing and promoting its content.
We’ll be doing this in sequence, so I’ll be waiting for an acknowledgement or some form of dispute before moving on.
1) Chemtrails. http://www.donotlink.com/bn3c
Page title: “Chemtrails: Delivery System For Dept. of Defense’s Toxic Cocktails”
Mercola’s comments at page bottom: “I certainly am not an expert in this area, but I believe there is enough possibility to at least consider the evidence that these chemtrails may in fact have some adverse reactions on our health.”
Conclusion: Mercola believes in the existence of chemtrails. He is non-committal about whether they impact human health (which is a decidedly weird attitude to hold), but is certainly willing to provide a platform for people to spout nonsense on the topic.
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@Alison
That is a point, whether poorer people do more rugby &c or are trapped in small apartments with TV.
It is a thing to allow for but I do not see how to do it at the moment.
As I have said quite a lot SPARC said gardening is the number 1 physical after walking. Sports are further down the list. The move to smaller sections mean people will be out in gardens less.
As to vitamin D there is also the possible relative decrease in the cost of hot water compared to earlier years or maybe the culture of more soaping of the skin which I believes remove sterols and causes the vitamin D ones to be lost. It takes hours to days to convert and get the vitamin D after sunlight produces the precursor on or in the upper layer of the skin.
It is your prerogative to write off everything Mercola says if he gets something wrong. Some people write off their mother or child if they have a nasty habit. Others still get value from them.
I will ask the Mercola group (where I post as sandhill1) from the Twitter link about the relative constancy of salivary fluoride through a wide range of dietary intakes.
http://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/259654
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Soundhill,
Silence? It appears that when you are definitively shown to be wrong about a topic, you stop commenting about the topic and then change the topic.
I take it that your silence on the subject at last acknowledges that you were wrong with your guess about the human body being more dilute than seawater. OK, there’s no more comments needed about that. I’m just sorry it took so long for you to realise the obvious.
The Mercola website and followers as a source of information? Hmmm. They are about as reliable for accurate information as flying carpets are for international travel. I’d agree with Chris and Alison about that.
Try looking at reputable websites instead. Even Wikipedia, despite its problems, is much more reliable and accurate than Mercola.
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@Alison, thanks for the Mercola link.
Mercola has posted the 2001 newspaper article and was hoping for comment.
Eventually you have referred me to something Mercola has said:
“I certainly am not an expert in this area, but I believe there is enough possibility to at least consider the evidence that these chemtrails may in fact have some adverse reactions on our health.”
In my experience the trails behind aircraft over where I live, on the route from Wellington to Dunedin, have become much more persistent. Jets travel over here at high altitude. A problem with jets is keeping the fuel burning at high altitudes.
Various additives may be used to avoid “ignition out”
I note the trails over here are sometimes short and short lived.
In the latter months of last year I did not see any long persistent ones for quite a while. Maybe it is weather conditions but now they are back, and persist across the whole sky.
https://www.google.com/patents/US2935839?dq=%22high+altitude%22+%22jet+fuel%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GbDBVI-mCYrHsQSf2oLQCA&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAQ
Some of that other stuff mentioned may be re-entering space junk remnants. There is a lot up there.
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@Stuartg
You mentioned the haematocrit.
I relied yesterday at 5:15 if you did not see it, so let’s get this bit done first.
“You may be quicker to find the figures than I.
But I find haemoglobin molecules in a red blood cell total about 280 million and they are very large compared to water molecules which also are in the cells and the concentration of solutes is about 0.3M. Is haemoglobin a solute?”
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I also feel I should respond to a couple of things you’ve said which demonstrate some fundamental misunderstandings.
“I think he offers useful advice that does not eventuate from commercial sources out for their biggest profit.”
Mercola *is* a commercial source out for the biggest profit. You cannot possibly have failed to notice the copious amounts of advertising plastered down the side of each and every article, or perhaps even embedded within the article itself if Mercola has a specific product to help you with the imagined perils he has concocted.
Let me break down the profit motive for you here:
Step 1: Post article.
Step 2: People read article.
Step 3: People who read the article also view your advertising.
Step 4: Some of the people who view your advertising buy your products.
Step 5: Profit.
It is possible to boost the number of pageviews for your articles by writing about controversial subjects of interest to a particular segment of the community. You can also engage in social media campaigns, or form strategic partnerships with like-minded organisations which will promote your articles to their followers. There is a list of such partners plastered across the bottom of every page.
Mercola is an extremely savvy commercial operator. Unfortunately, his profit motive in no way provides an incentive to provide truthful information to his followers. Quite the reverse, in fact.
This is a common failing of capitalism. Hence the need for regulations to restrict the actions of commercial operators whose interests may not align with those of their customers. Alas, very few of the regulations which exist to keep industries based on mainstream medicine in check (like, you know, having to demonstrate that your product actually works) apply to the alternative health industry.
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I see I missed out my second link: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/02/21/the-most-bizarre-experiments-of-all-time.aspx
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“the culture of more soaping of the skin which I believes remove sterols and causes the vitamin D ones to be lost.”
Evidence, please. In the form of an actual peer-reviewed scientific publication.
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@Chris you would need to demonstrate that Mercola is any different from many websites. Sometimes people choose their own ads sometimes Facebook or Google or Microsoft choose them for you.
From my point of view Mercola offers more free info that I do not get from most medical sources, as I suggested, water needs, type of exercise and am waiting for a comment.
It is not as if he is the government and forcing stuff on people. Or the corporatocracy using the government as Pusztai indicated about the calls to Tony Blair leading to him losing his job.
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Right.
1) Chemtrails.
Did you actually read the article, Soundhill? Because it said not a single solitary thing about engine additives. It was very clear that chemtrails were a nefarious plot on the part of the American Department of Defense to test out chemical/biological warfare agents.
The very point of the chemtrail idea, as reflected in the article, is that chemtrails are being deliberately and maliciously sprayed out of airplanes (often commercial airplanes because “look up, you can see them!”), specifically because of the nasty effects the government wants them to have on people.
Mercola also produced a follow-up article, which I believe Alison intended to link to, but may not have coded properly in her post: http://www.donotlink.com/bb48
“Although these experiments are listed on the Museum of Hoaxes web site, every single one of them is absolutely real.”
Chemtrails is number ten on that list, and links to the originally posted article. ie Mercola endorses the idea that chemtrails are an experiment to see what effect these chemical/biological warfare agents have on the populace.
Nowhere on that original article do I see the phrase “I have posted this article for comment,” nor any words to that effect. You may believe this, but the evidence contradicts your belief.
Rather, we see the words “these chemtrails” (ie chemtrails as described by the article’s writer) “may in fact have some adverse reactions on our health.”
For reference, jet contrails =/= chemtrails.
I will reiterate, since you seem to have trouble grasping this point:
Mercola controls and is responsible for the content posted on his website. Barring some disclaimer or presentation of opposing views, we must assume he endorses the content.
Now, I have linked to an explicit statement saying “every single one of them is absolutely real” (ie the original article and several more outlandish articles besides).
If you would still like to claim that Mercola does not believe in chemtrails, as defined and described in Amy Worthington’s article, you are going to need to present some kind of positive statement by Mercola (or at least an article on Mercola’s website) to this effect.
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@Alison
I don’t know if an experiment has been done yet. If it had been this article should have referred to it.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3897598/
So I think they may be just presuming.
I presume that if sterols are washed off the skin that more will migrate from the cells to make up the for the loss. And the body will synthesise more sterols in those cells, maybe over night so won’t have the pre-vitamin D.
Need to look at historical cancer rates and see if there were any increase when bathing/soaping shifted from weekly to daily, in the 1960s for many people. I remember the school gym very stinky in the late fifties, but the varsity gym a lot less so in the 60s.
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“I presume that if sterols are washed off the skin that more will migrate from the cells to make up the for the loss. And the body will synthesise more sterols in those cells, maybe over night so won’t have the pre-vitamin D.”
There are an awful lot of assumptions there.
And I notice that you are gish-galloping again.
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@Chris
I am waiting for contact from Mobil on jet fuel additives. Apart from that patent I cannot find much else except from the chemtrails sites.
Yes condensation trails (contrails) are different from chemtrails.
Contrails are normally shorter lived. They may also start further from the engines than chemtrails.
So long as the subject of possible geo-engineering is not out in the open people are likely to think it is conspiracy.
Things can also be done to hope to kill several birds with one stone so to speak.
A jet fuel ignition improver may also work for geo-engineering.
https://www.facebook.com/AustraliansAgainstChemtrails?fref=nf
It’s a fairly big topic. Nothing wrong with a “net MD” wanting to encourage people to talk. My doctor of the 70s was a Scott whose waiting room you may spend hours in waiting for him to finish his conversation with the previous patients. And you would get to talk to other waiters. All part of the treatment.
People can say on Mercola’s site that it is bunkum. People can make up their minds. It is not the government forcing ideas or ways on people.
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Soundhill, I am once again tempted to convey emphasis and rage through use of capital letters. I shall refrain on this occasion.
“Other people use advertising” or “other people are commercial operators” =/= “Mercola is not a commercial operator.”
You really do need to learn a bit of elementary logic.
Let me make this absolutely clear. You said:
“I think he offers useful advice that does not eventuate from commercial sources out for their biggest profit.”
I said:
“Mercola *is* a commercial source out for the biggest profit” and gave the reasoning behind this statement.
You then said:
“From my point of view Mercola offers more free info that I do not get from most medical sources”
Notice how the first thing you said is not the same as the second thing. Indeed, you have abruptly changed tune entirely from trying to tell us that commercial sources are not to be trusted, to the perhaps more truthful claim that you value some information simply on the basis that it’s not mainstream.
I completely agree that Mercola offers you free information you would not get from most (or perhaps any) medical sources. I am trying to demonstrate to you that there are very good reasons why most medical sources would not give you some of this information, regardless of whether you paid for their opinion or not.
I am doing so by isolating the most ludicrous claims possible, which I think you must grasp are ludicrous, because you are currently engaged in a dragged-out argument with me about whether Mercola really holds these beliefs.
Believe me, I’m sure I could pick any number of articles from Mercola and hammer out why they were demonstrably false. Numerous people have done so.
I’m sure you could run down some of these sources if you genuinely cared to look. Alas, as you do not value views which align with the mainstream, your own biases prevent you from seeking out this contradictory information and reviewing it with an open mind.
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“Nowhere on that original article do I see the phrase “I have posted this article for comment,” nor any words to that effect. You may believe this, but the evidence contradicts your belief.”
And I have a letter box but I don’t write on it, “Put letters in here, please.” It’s obvious.
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1) Chemtrails.
We’ll consider this one settled, shall we? Mercola believes in chemtrails and promotes this material on his website.
I consider this matter closed because you have shifted to trying to convince me that it is reasonable to believe in chemtrails. The statement “Contrails are normally shorter lived. They may also start further from the engines than chemtrails” is, after all, predicated on the idea that there is such a thing as a chemtrail.
Whether chemtrails are real (they aren’t, for the record) is an entirely separate discussion from whether Mercola believes in and promotes chemtrails. We may come back to this question after we have settled whether Mercola believes the rest of the items on the list.
Unless you are willing to concede that Mercola believes in some of the claims? The list again, as a reminder:
Settled:
1) Chemtrails
Unsettled:
2) Homeopathy
3) The Agenda 21 depopulation conspiracy
4) The evils of vaccination, including that vaccines cause autism
5) AIDS Denialism (ie the idea that HIV does not cause AIDS)
6) Morgellon’s Disease
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“It’s obvious.”
I would have thought an explicit statement saying “this article is absolutely true” was pretty obvious. But plainly you have difficulties in the area of what is or is not obvious.
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@Alison | January 23, 2015 at 3:50 pm |
“I presume that if sterols are washed off the skin that more will migrate from the cells to make up the for the loss. And the body will synthesise more sterols in those cells, maybe over night so won’t have the pre-vitamin D.”
There are an awful lot of assumptions there.
And I notice that you are gish-galloping again”
Do you mean “gish galloping” in that reply or in general?
If you mean overloading readers with too many ideas, you will note I have replied to Stuartg, cutting back to a fairly small amount to consider.
I only pick up bits of biochemistry from reading and what I notice myself, and problems I have come up against.
Maybe you know better than I when the natural oil is washed off the face how it comes back. How more is made.
Soaping the face is probably a rather recent invention in terms of evolution. Some of it may have been rubbed off on clothing or bedding. But I think out metabolism may have been use to oil staying on the skin longer than it does today.
You may wish to challenge that assumption. I won’t gish gallop, I shall let you comment on one point at a time.
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@Chris
OK Mercola’s words
“I certainly am not an expert in this area, but I believe there is enough possibility to at least consider the evidence that these chemtrails may in fact have some adverse reactions on our health.”
say he acknowledges chemtrails.
There are so many photos. Did you look at the NZ Facebook page?
Those photos may all be a joke of course. But there are beginning to be enough that they may not be.
A common thing I find on groups where people are trying to find out stuff and someone thinks it is their interest for people not to know, like global warming, a whole lot of questionable “science” will appear as a straw man to be shot down in the hope the good science will be taken with it. That can be very effective and there is a lot of confusion about global warming.
So some chemtrail stuff may be fake.
Now Mercola’s words “possible to at least consider.” That does not say to me that Mercola is convinced chemtrails are poisoning us.
Mercola is a trained doctor.
“In the 21st century, the training of osteopathic medical physicians in the United States is very similar to the training of Doctors of Medicine (M.D.s).[3] Osteopathic medical physicians attend four years of medical school followed by an internship and a minimum two years of residency. They use all conventional methods of diagnosis and treatment. Though still trained in Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine (OMM),[4] the modern derivative of Still’s techniques,[5][6] they work in all specialties of medicine. OMT is a skill they use often in family practice, sports medicine, emergency medicine, but OMT is not commonly used in specialties such as dermatology, surgery, or other fields that do not lend themselves to correcting the body with their hands.[7][8]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteopathic_medicine_in_the_United_States
Please realise that is different from New Zealand where the training is specialised and does not allow to do operations &c.
So it may be a bit like a child being taken to a doctor and saying they are hurting. The doctor may see it could be psychological but does not deny it to the child. Just explores. To me that is more Mercola’s tone.
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@Chris
One game people have is to get into two teams and compete.
Either one team or the other “wins” but both had had a sort of win by the physical activity, and enjoyment.
Then I think there is a way of gaming which is more exploring together. It does not have to be decided beforehand that your idea is correct and you have to convince people that the other’s idea is wrong.
Good and bad can change. You say the cat is good because it caught the mouse. I say it is bad because it was a mouse involved in one of my experiments.
Lead in petrol was good. It improved octane rating and made engines work better. Until people learnt what damage it was doing to our health. Now it is bad.
Two-valued things can jump over to the other.
The there is where a thing is good in some respects but bad in others, like most medicines.
Some sellers of anti-cholesterol drugs may want to cover up their bad points. But they are becoming known with help of people like Mercola. So he is a devil to the statin sellers. Or maybe not totally, just somewhat.
And I feel you are showing the weakness in terms of one game, though strength in terms of another, classing Mercola only in the bad category. Your radio can only play at full volume or be totally quiet. Great strong sound from your radio but too strong for many.
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“Whether chemtrails are real (they aren’t, for the record) is an entirely separate discussion from whether Mercola believes in and promotes chemtrails.”
Likewise whether anthropogenic global warming exists is an entirely different argument to whether you believe in it and promote action.
Some people are selling chemtrails with the suggestion they reduce incoming solar radiation and reduce global warming.
But you would believe it would be up for public consultation before it would happen?
It’s great to live by the myth that we are always told what is happening correctly.
Some people have been putting iron in oceans to try to culture phytoplankton to reduce AGW. Did you know about that?:
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/13/5887.abstract
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Yes. Well done, Soundhill. Mercola believes in chemtrails. It’s taken a solid day for you to finally acknowledge this simple, easily demonstrated fact. Despite having clear evidence presented to you right at the start of the process.
Having established Mercola’s belief in chemtrails, we could, I suppose, go on to hammer out *why* Mercola believes in chemtrails. And whether this is a well-founded belief, based on valid evidence, or whether it is a load of claptrap, founded on the unshakable notion that the eeeevil government is actively trying to kill off its own citizens for nonsensical reasons. And somehow failing abysmally. See also agenda 21 / fluoride / HAARP / whatever.
But hey, never mind what Mercola thinks HIS evidence is. YOU have Facebook. Putting a label on a bunch of photographs (and maybe a couple of videos) labeled “chemtrail” is totally evidence of the chemical composition of airplane contrails. That’s just “obvious”. I mean, we don’t need piddling little things like chemical analysis or physical evidence of somebody pumping nefarious chemicals into airplanes. We can just eyeball stuff and declare it “looks like” a figment of our imaginations.
Seriously, Soundhill. Photos of aircraft contrails. Is this what you believe constitutes evidence? Is that all you have? I mean, you can declare something “looks like” a chemtrail to your heart’s content, based on some arbitrary distinction in appearance. In order to establish what a chemtrail looks like, you have to establish, independently of contrail appearance, which aircraft are spraying nefarious chemicals, as opposed to just burning jet fuel. Which requires some helpful Evil Genocidal Conspirator on the aircraft to tell you when they’re turning the nozzle on and off. Then, and only then, can you start building a database of the differences in appearance between ordinary contrails and the nefarious chemtrails.
Alas, the Evil Genocidal Conspirators persist in denying they’re spraying chemicals on peoples’ heads at all. Getting them to tell us when they’re spraying and from which planes seems a bit of a lost cause. It seems the fledgling science of “this photo is a chemtrail” has been strangled in its crib.
At the end of the day, Occam’s razor tells us that the simpler and most likely true explanation of photos of “chemtrails” on the internet is that a small, dedicated but unfortunately misguided group of people is going out, taking random photos and… posting them on the internet. Or, of course, appropriating other peoples’ perfectly innocent photos for the Cause.
I know. Misguided people getting together on social media. A truly radical thought.
I’m done with the topic of chemtrails. If you want to troll somebody with your talk of “photos” and “evidence,” go bother this guy for a while:
http://goo.gl/hDvr7e
He’s on Facebook. Plus, he has a relevant degree. I’m sure you’ll get along like a house on fire.
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“Likewise whether anthropogenic global warming exists is an entirely different argument to whether you believe in it and promote action.”
No, Soundhill. No, no, no. You have missed the point.
Whether a particular person “believes in” (or accepts, whatever) climate change (or evolution, plate tectonics, vaccination, etcetera) is generally a trivially simple question. It is the work of mere moments to work out. You find a statement from them one way or the other and you go with it. Or you ask them, if you feel like taking the direct approach.
You do run into difficulty if they don’t publicise their view and don’t want to tell you. In which case you generally respect that and move on with your life.
You may also run into difficulty with politicians, who often have certain incentives to be deceitful so-and-sos.
Whether climate change is real is not a trivially simple question, even if the answer is scientifically sound.
Arguing with somebody over whether climate change is real is the stuff of nightmares (certainly not simple or trivial), because both parties can draw on the immense resources of the Interweb to provide them with arguments, generated by dedicated like-minded individuals (one side’s arguments will generally involve peer-reviewed science; the other side’s will either ignore it or misrepresent it).
Nor is the person in the wrong going to give in simply because their argument is a load of rubbish. They can simply move on to another well-worn canard, pioneered by endless climate trolls before them, and another after that, secure in the knowledge that they’re In The Right. There’s always another argument to be made. Plus, once enough time has passed (or if they’re dealing with a different audience), they can recycle old arguments, completely ignoring all the solid, irrefutable reasons they’ve been given why the argument is rubbish and insisting whoever they’re talking to disprove it all over again.
Wasting somebody’s time may be a victory in and of itself for the truly dedicated climate troll.
You, Soundhill, have wasted a solid day arguing over a trivially simple question. With five more trivially simple questions to go. I shudder to imagine the kind of endlessly drawn-out torture you’d make of something even moderately complicated.
So, congratulations. I am declaring you a lost cause (also a troll) and this conversation is therefore at an end.
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Soundhill,
“Is haemoglobin a solute?”
Haemoglobin is not a solute in blood. If you don’t recall, your were talking about things dissolved in blood. I didn’t answer because you were changing the topic (yet again!)
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Chris,
“Nor is the person in the wrong going to give in simply because their argument is a load of rubbish. They can simply move on to another well-worn canard, pioneered by endless climate trolls before them, and another after that, secure in the knowledge that they’re In The Right. There’s always another argument to be made. Plus, once enough time has passed (or if they’re dealing with a different audience), they can recycle old arguments, completely ignoring all the solid, irrefutable reasons they’ve been given why the argument is rubbish and insisting whoever they’re talking to disprove it all over again.”
Very nicely put. I wish I could remember brief summaries like this in conversation.
Unfortunately, I don’t think Soundhill has the insight to recognise the commenter here who fits the description.
Now, even more unfortunately, I’m off to one of my three shifts (34 hours total!) at work this holiday weekend.
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@Stuartg
“Soundhill,
“Is haemoglobin a solute?”
Haemoglobin is not a solute in blood. If you don’t recall, your were talking about things dissolved in blood. I didn’t answer because you were changing the topic (yet again!)”
Haemoglobin is in the red blood cells – the haematocrit you referred to as if it were not involving water molecules.
That is not changing the subject.
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Chris has to have an adversary to argue against and when getting into trouble call a troll.
I look to investigate. I can’t get everything said all at the same time. The photos I have taken of trails show them appearing some distance behind aircraft, so as I suggest probably not chemtrails. They persist sometimes so as I said it must be something to do with weather conditions.
Chris has to have two-valued things to argue about.
He thinks Mercola must either totally believe in chemtrails or totally disbelieve.
Mercola said he is not sure whether chemtrails are hurting people. He is acknowledging many people with accounts of air analyses think they are. Chris has trouble arguing with that since it is not a two-valued Mercola and he has to turn him into one and anyone who does not agree with him is a troll.
Chris is the troll turning discussion of Pollack’s theories into a discussion of someone Pollack has talked to.
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People working in biochemistry, including involving fluoride metabolism will need to upgrade their research to take account of the work of GH Pollack who has many papers and references to him in academic journals.
http://scholar.google.co.nz/scholar?as_ylo=2014&q=Zheng+J-M,+and+%22Pollack+GH%22.+&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5
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Sorry that was only the year 2014 mentions in the search data I gave.
Here Pollack is referred to in a book involving restorative dental materials. It shouldn’t be long before we can find his work in normal biochemistry.
http://books.google.co.nz/books?hl=en&lr=&id=IagBaqtLn98C&oi=fnd&pg=PP2&dq=%22exclusion+zone%22++%22dental+materials%22&ots=I_Z16KoDGX&sig=ZlL_OYvVOuIxQuEJJdnnCxDGzhA#v=onepage&q=exclusion%20zone&f=false
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“Soundhill. No, no, no. You have missed the point.”
I am finding it hard grasping how what I said about you and climate change is different from what you said about Mercola and chemtrails.
Here is planning for doing chemtrails that other governments don’t want. It’s cheaper than mitigation or reduction in emissions, they say.
It’s not the most recent but seems to be the most recent free article.
from:
1 Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science, Panama Street, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
2 School of Economics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/1/014021/article
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Soundhill,
You talked about osmolality of blood. Osmolality deals with solvents and solutes.
Leave anticoagulated blood to settle. The bit that settles, the cells in the blood, is called the hematocrit. It settles because it is in suspension and not in solution. The blood cells, 40-45% of the blood, do not contribute to the calculation of osmolality.
A brief indicator: in general, solutions are transparent (beer, sea water), suspensions are opaque (milk, blood).
You may remember that I suggested you made an error in your calculations, because you ignored the hematocrit, and suggested that you look for a reliable reference instead of accepting your own guesses.
I have to admit that it wouldn’t surprise me if you didn’t remember your error (again), ignored the correction (again), and tried to change the subject (again).
An interesting idea is if the cell membranes were all ruptured, and all the hemoglobin released into solution in the blood, what would be the concentration of hemoglobin? What would the blood viscosity be? No need to guess, or even calculate, the answers are out there.
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@Stuartg
The blood cells do not contribute to the osmolality of the blood as we calculated the proportion of numbers of water molecules.
Or put the cells in water. They are osmotic and the water will go into them through their membrane cover and swell them.
Without doing that they have an osmolality inside them. Haemoglobin is a solute inside them, and it gets oxygen out through the membrane.
So we can also calculate the percent by number of water molecules inside the red cell compared to the 260m large haemoglobin molecules.
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I’m sorry, Soundhill, that conversation is at an end.
Further conversational gambits on your part will be assessed on their merits. Or ignored.
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Soundhill,
You said: “My figures may be wrong but if a litre of water contains 55.51 moles of water molecules and the osmololaity of blood is about 0.29 osmoles per kg then I am getting about 99.5% water molecules in blood.”
Yes, your figures were wrong. As an example, you didn’t allow for the heamatocrit. The haematocrit is in suspension, not in solution, and even though it makes up 40-45% of the blood by volume it has no effect on the osmolality of blood. Because it is in suspension, it cannot be included in a calculation of water in blood that is based on osmolality, such as the one you made. Your calculations were based on either plasma or serum, not on blood.
You also said: “Haemoglobin is in the red blood cells – the haematocrit you referred to as if it were not involving water molecules.” and “So we can also calculate the percent by number of water molecules inside the red cell compared to the 260m large haemoglobin molecules.” …But then that’s a different calculation to the one you originally made, isn’t it. This is special pleading, saying that you were right all along, except for the mistakes you made.
Soundhill, my point was that you hadn’t included red cells (or white cells, or platelets, or… many other components of blood) in your initial calculation.
Why do you persist in doing these calculations and making these errors? Why are you even trying? It’s not as though you need to. These calculations were done decades ago. You can find them in basic textbooks of human physiology. The results will not change, no matter how much you juggle your maths, because the human body has not changed significantly since the measurements were made.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people were involved in making the initial measurements. Since then then have been measured millions, if not billions, of times as part of clinical investigations. The results are confirmed hundreds of thousands of times daily worldwide.
You seem to focus on a tiny point, without acknowledging it is only a tiny point. You seem to forget that there is a massive supporting structure of knowledge and investigation in the science behind these tiny points. When someone points out an error of yours – haematocrit, for example – you then nit-pick at that error, try to excuse it or say that you were including it all along. You don’t seem to consider that the example given to you may be representative of a systemic error on your part that others have noted and are politely trying to educate you about.
What you don’t seem to do is learn from it: “Hmm, if I forgot the red cells, then maybe I forgot the white cells, the platelets, and other components of blood. Am I considering osmolality of whole blood? Or of plasma? Or of serum? Are blood proteins in suspension or solution? Are they included in that figure for osmolality, or not? How are lipids carried in blood, suspension or solution? Have they been included in that osmolality figure? What about glucose? What about urea, uric acid… etc, etc.”
A briefer lesson: don’t bother to recalculate stuff that’s been known for decades and is reconfirmed on a daily basis.
Now: percentage of molecules, by type, of water in the human body. We don’t measure that because it’s not useful and it’s not easy to do. (You told us that – there’s no reliable references, only guesses.) For some things we do use osmolality, or even specific gravity, but most clinical measurements are related to mass – often mmol/L. It’s much easier to use mass – even you have indirectly acknowledged that because all of your calculations started with the mass of atoms or molecules.
…Which takes us back to “What Dave is made of” – the mass of all those nasty chemicals/elements that can be found in the human body.
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@Stuartg
If the osmolality of the blood cells were different from the saline carrier the cells would shrink or swell.
Go little by little.
I the suspended particles are 40% – 45% that still leaves 55% – 60% that we have accounted for as 99.5% water molecules.
Next get the volume of a red cell and its volume and do a similar calculation.
Then we can move on to muscle &c.
Rather than a finding out session and infoshare you are trying to make this into a discredit session.
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Silly me, don’t even need to bother with the volume of a cell. They have the same osmolality as the saline carrier therefore they must have the same internal proportion of 99.5% by number of water molecules. Then there is only their thin outer osmotic membrane shell to worry about. Probably some large molecules.
Have you yet acknowledged there are water molecules in bone?
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Why is this discussion even going on?
Soundhill1 makes a dodgy
claimguess on a figure and we are all subjected to volumes of evasion, “could be”s, furtherestimatespure guesswork and gishgallops in attempts to justify it.Would be great if Ken installed a “lets move on” button.
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Thanks, Richard. That summarises it well.
I tried to take us back to “What Dave is made of” as a way of finishing off the conversation.
I made the assumption that commentors on a scientific blog would be well versed in the scientific method and be able to apply such thinking to discussion on the blog.
Soundhill has made multiple errors in multiple areas. I, and others, have tried to point out just a few of them, not even approaching half. My own errors have been pointed out: I accept them, acknowledge them, and discard them by changing my thinking in light of new knowledge
Since a lot of my expertise is in anatomy/physiology/biochemistry/medicine, then that’s the area I try to stick to. Chris and Alison pointed out errors in areas more appropriate to their knowledge and skills. You have done the same.
Experts have pointed out her/his errors, but I suspect that Soundhill can’t contemplate her/himself being in error: “The mere thought hadn’t even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.” (thanks to Douglas Adams).
The inability to consider their own infallibility is a huge failing in someone who considers themselves to be using the scientific method. It’s a systemic problem on the part of Soundhill and it can’t be dealt with unless Soundhill develops personal insight into the problem.
I suspect that until Soundhill develops insight into her/his own way of thinking then it is unlikely that s/he will be able to take part in reasonable scientific discourse.
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We need a few of these mjugs for awards? 🙂
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@Richard the discussion is going on since Stuartg said he was interested in the proportion of molecules by number in the body and challenged the number given by Gerald Pollack who appears lots in peer-reviewed journals. We are discussing osmolality as it bears on the blood and cells in it. Ken?
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The message is, let’s move on. On to something of more interest. This has been thrashed to death.
>
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Eventually found something backing up my notion: http://evanslabcsueb.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/1/9/12193389/evans_lab_2-water_and_solute_movement.pdf
“The normal osmotic concentration inside mammalian red blood cells is approximately 288 mOsm (mOsm =
number of millimoles of solute particle in one liter of fluid) and the extracellular fluid surrounding the cells is
isosmotic to the interior of red blood cells (i.e.
also approximately 288 mOsm). “
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I have the problem on the one hand of being criticised for giving too many ideas at once, then when I try to bring out understanding little by little I get cut off mid stream. And still feeling hurt by some of Stuartg’s comments.
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soundhill1 you act like i dont know people call this “little troll”, must have last word whether or not he’s right. See how many money gets Mercola citing most flawed articles to support his flawed claims, There is two option he is incompetent because he dont realized about flaws in studies or he is fraud and know what he doing.
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Dariusz, correlation is not causation.
And you seem part of the set up which wants to pit two groups against one another.
I am a “find out” person. What I investigate is what I see to be bad science. Or good science. And I think Mercola is one, too.
At the moment I need time to figure out about significance when doing partial rank correlation. When I get time I shall go into Siegel and Castellan.
As we debated I have given figures on cancer and latitude. I have now added estimated fluoridation years.
It may be hard for some to understand. There is a correlation between fluoridation and latitude: more north than south. But when I partially correlate that out I seem to get a negative correlation between years of fluoridation of 6 NZ cities in 1983 and cancer. Rather small data set. Any statisticians help with significance?
Further if you read much of what I say I am not just interested in the population average, I want to be kind to individuals. Like someone with a diabetic tendency should not be forced to eat a normal diet. So I suspect fluoride needs will also vary.
There is such a lot to explore. Have you heard how morphine addicts get tolerant? When they go to prison and have withdrawn they lose that tolerance. If when they come out of prison they rush to get their same old dose a lot die. Is morphine the only substance to which the body adjusts? No of course not.
Don’t just trot out the old “there is no evidence.” That is only to reinforce the past. We ought to know more about fluoride to care for individuals.
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Using 1980-1983 figures when the dark skinned population was less marked up north I found cancer rank correlated with latitude. I presume the vitamin D effect needs to be considered. Vitamin D promotes cell differentiation and differentiated cells don’t proliferate. Besides it being a fatty acid anti-oxidant.
Now I have tried to check with years of fluoridation against cancer for 1983. I gave about 8 for Christchurch up to 1983 since Waimairi was fluoridated though not the rest of the city. I don’t think the exact figure matters with rank correlation, rank is just ordering from greatest to smallest, which Christchurch will be. I found start dates for fluoridation from various council websites which I could give if you are interested.
The cancer figures come from a publication which is no longer in the Christchurch Library, but I got a scanned pdf copy “Cancer Data New Registration and Deaths 1983” from Information Analyst
Analytical Services, Ministry of Health.
I’ve probably got something wrong and I am trying to interest someone else to do some stats.
I subtracted the melanoma figures since I felt they may confuse the picture.
canc less melanoma; latitude; years of fluoridation
309 36.9 18
276 37.8 17
286 40.35 21
280 41.3 23
332 43.5 8
362 45.8 16
The cities are Auckland, Hamilton, Palmerston North, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin.
I have not got significance figures, would take some time to see how Siegel and Castellan do that for rank correlation.
Using the online wessa calcualtor I got rank correlations of
latitude to cancer 0.6
cancer to fluoridation -0.6
fluoridation to latitude -0.43 (less further south by rank).
suspicious 0.6 and -0.6!
Then using the online vassarstats for partial correlation
If I do latitude to cancer holding fluoridation constant 0.6 drops to 0.47
latitude to fluoridation holding cancer constant -0.43 drops to -0.11. That is quite small suggesting, as might be expected the latitude fluoridation result is rather spurious.
fluoridation to cancer holding latitude constant -0.6 drops to -0.47
So it could be that around 1983 non-melanoma cancer registrations were positively correlated to latitude and negatively to fluoridation.
Anybody got time to go into significance?
I have been too lazy/busy to do 1980 -82 so far though I have the cancer-urban district data for them, and am waiting to see if I will be sent the 1970s data.
And the other complicating figures I am trying to think of a way into such as epigenetics and individual responses, always wondering why as I posted that salivary fluoride stays so constant when dietary fluoride varies so widely.
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Before anyone gets too excited need to check natural radiation levels in houses and water. I don’t have Timaru in my study but I know radon in water is much lower there.
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