#bone density

There are increasing concerns over the harm being done by so-called 'forever chemicals', and research has now linked some of these substances with weakened bones in children. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have been given their nickname because they stick around so persistently in the environment. They've been used in manufacturing and other industries for decades, and are basically impossible to avoid. [...] The data showed an association between PFOA and lower forearm bone density at age 12. For the other substances scanned, associations with bone density varied with exposure time, suggesting that age is an important factor in how harmful PFAS might be. "These findings add to growing evidence that PFAS exposure during early life may carry long-term health consequences, underscoring the importance of efforts to reduce contamination in drinking water and consumer products," says epidemiologist Jessie Buckley of the University of North Carolina.

Mafia au lady bone demon

Hypogonadism culture is...

Honestly anon, treatment for osteopenia isn't exactly extensive. The guideline seems to be judging an individual's risk for fracture, and treating based on that. So a lot of folks are probably gonna get told the same thing you are. Doesn't mean it's impossible your doctors aren't judging correctly, nor that it can't kinda just suck being or feeling dismissed.

There is so much to unpack to where I can't even compile all this bullshit together.

Long story short, it's individuals like this that give disabled people a worse name through the constant spreading of misinformation and faking conditions that read as ableism.

Please take a look at r/zionistrevolution

I clicked on an article in Eating Well about low bone density and dementia, because my mother has both. There's not a lot we can do for her now, but I am a curious person. I know Eating Well isn't great at science interpretation and communication, so I'm anticipating that I'm going to need to read the original study already, going in. (How do I know Eating Well isn't a great source usually? Well, I have read it before, and it has some really clear biases if you read a few articles that aren't science communication, and so you get to know a source over time like that. Regardless of how, I'm already suspicious they're not going to do a great job.)

The article is talking about research that shows low bone density may be predictive of dementia risk. It is written by a journalist and reviewed by a dietician. Now, I don't know what review the dietician did, but she did a bad job, and also, so did the journalist, because THE FIRST red flag that goes up is pretty quick: the math is very, very clearly wrong.

This says there are 3651 participants, and that over 11 years, 688 of them developed dementia. This is 18.8% and the article calls it 19%. That's fair! Not a red flag so far, just rounding. Then it says that of the 1211 people with lowest bone density at the start, 90 people (7.4%) developed dementia, and of the 1211 with highest bone density, only 57 (4.7%) did.

This IS a red flag. It's a GIANT red flag. This red flag can be seen from SPACE by anyone who knows how percentages work.

Here's how: You have 3651 people. 1211 of them are in the low bone density group, 1211 of them are in the high bone density group, leaving 1249 people. You have 688 total dementia cases, but your high and low groups account for only 147 of them, leaving 541 cases for that middle group. That's a LOT of cases. That middle tertile, just eyeballing it, has to have about 40% of its people with dementia -- that makes low bone density look like it predicts LOWER dementia risk relative to the middle group.

I can write out the equations for you two ways:

3651 - 1211 - 1211 = 1249 688 - 90 - 57 = 541 541/1249 = 0.433 0.433(100) = 43.3%

Because I am someone who does a fair amount of stats for a living, though, what I noticed was pretty much this equation:

0.074(1211) + x(1249) + 0.047(1211) = 0.19(3651) and I knew immediately that x had to be MUCH bigger than it should, which indeed the math bears out: x(1249) = 0.19(3651) - 0.074(1211) - 0.047(1211) x(1249) = 694 - 90 - 57 x = 547/1249 = 0.438 0.438(100) = 43.8%

That 694 is because the authors rounded 18.8 to 19 earlier, not because I can't math. So, due to rounding, you get slightly different answers -- but BOTH of them point to something SERIOUSLY WRONG with the reporting. What is actually going on in that middle tertile? Where do these numbers come from? Well, lucky us, they mention the name of an author, a journal, and a date. Always be wary of pop sci articles that don't give you a way to track down the original, but giving you that way to track things down doesn't mean they aren't still doing a crummy job with their reporting, as we see here.

The original paper is Association of Bone Mineral Density and Dementia: The Rotterdam Study, published March 2023 in Neurology. This is a pretty technical article with a fair amount of math and things in parens etc. etc. and tables and lots of measurements. The table captions are often not the greatest, which makes it a bit harder to read and interpret. For example, in Table 1, items are listed as number(number) and this can be any of:

count (percent) -- this one's usually labeled in the table itself

mean (standard deviation)

median (interquartile range) -- these last two are NOT labeled in the table, so we don't know which set of numbers is which.

Great. Thanks guys. Assuming what's called a "normal distribution" mean (SD) and median (IQR) numbers will be similar, but they're not the same and I'm irritated they're conflated but OK. Soldiering on!

The original study looked at several different measures of bone density, and found only ONE of them to show predictive ability for dementia: the density of the femoral neck. This means that for their article, Eating Well should have looked at the results for femoral neck bone density, which we find in Table 2:

You have the actual numbers for 5 years, 10 years, and study end, as well as the hazard risk (HR) for each bone density tertile, with the highest tertile set as the standard. Numbers in the HR column have 1 as a reference point -- lower than 1 is lower risk than the highest tertile, and higher than 1 is higher risk.

The first thing I noticed is that neither 57 nor 90 occur in the femoral neck section at ALL. Those numbers from the Eating Well article are just not there. I also notice that the other numbers don't align even one little bit -- the number of total cases of dementia is different, for example. I do notice that the column with the 10 year followup has numbers in it close to 57 and 90 (49, 67, 86, totaled to 202) and that the overall numbers for the total study are much higher -- 201, 236, 229. Interesting.

At this point, I just straight-up search the paper for "90", and I find it in Table 2....in the total bone density section, which the paper's authors have said is NOT the section that showed possible predictive results. I search for "57", and also find that in total bone density, and also....wow the EW author straight up failed to read. This is actually worse than I thought.

Read across, these are the 5 year followup numbers (first 2 columns - count and HR), 10 year (middle 2 columns), and total followup numbers (last 2 columns).

We see our friends 57 and 90 in the 10 year columns. 90 is, as described in the EW article, in the lowest bone density tertile, but 57 is NOT in the highest bone density tertile. It's in the middle tertile. The actual number for the highest tertile is 68. Additionally, the total cases for 10 years is nowhere near that 688 number -- it's 215. We only get total case numbers close to 688 when we look at the study end numbers: it's 686, in this particular group. If we look at the study end case numbers for highest, middle, and lowest tertiles, we see WHY this particular measure can't be used to predict anything: they are 227 (highest), 227 (middle), and 232 (lowest) -- not significantly different from each other.

We can also see here that this group of people -- people who had total bone density measurements -- is not 3651, but 3633, which is listed across the bottom row. The overall STUDY had 3651, but not all of them had total bone density recorded.

Now we know that the author of the EW article did all of the following:

read the wrong part of Table 2

mixed up middle and high tertile results

reported 10 year results mixed with total followup results (this resulted in the weird math that alerted me something was very very wrong in the first place).

and the person who was supposed to review the article didn't have even the basic math skills to catch the problem -- which she absolutely should have, as a registered dietician. For giggles, I looked up program requirements for a BS in Dietetics. Programs require things like statistics and precalc -- not math heavy, but the math that alerted me to this problem is VERY basic statistical knowledge, like the kind they teach in 6th grade level statistics, which I know because it was literally in my 6th grader's curriculum this past school year. So a registered dietician DEFINITELY had enough math to catch this problem, and should have, and Eating Well should be ashamed of itself.

SO. What can we learn from this?

Well, science communication is a skill set. Some people have worked very hard to develop that skill set and are excellent at it -- but lots of people do not have it, and even those who do can make mistakes. Many, many pop sci articles are not written by trained science communicators, or people with any education in how to read scientific articles, or people with good reading comprehension, even. It's very common for pop sci articles to have these sorts of errors in them. Therefore:

Always read pop sci articles with a skeptical eye. Ask yourself:

Do these numbers line up? Usually the math in pop sci articles is not very complex -- you can often do some basic arithmetic to make sure it even makes sense, as was the case here.

Does one part of the article seem to contradict another part of the article?

Do I feel confused about what exactly I'm being told? What's not clear about it?

Am I being told about HOW something works or WHY it works or both? Are those two things being conflated somehow?

Is there a link or way to find the original research? If not, my advice is to throw the whole article away. If yes, you can go check it out -- often just looking at the abstract or results section will be enough, and abstracts usually aren't paywalled even if the rest of the article is. You would be surprised how many times the abstract says "we found X" and the pop sci article says "the researchers found Y".

Could I explain this article to someone and have it make sense? If not, why not?

Is the article confusing correlation (these things happen together) with causation (one of these things causes the other)?

Pop sci articles, like other journalistic articles, are extremely subject to bias issues from the publication they're in. A lot of people tend to read pop sci articles as neutral, factual reporting, but they aren't! I mentioned EW's biases earlier -- the one I think is most relevant to how their article is written is a pervasive belief that if you just eat the right things in the right amounts you will be thin and healthy and stave off all kinds of problems. They close their article by mentioning that, although the study's authors are clear that this connection is unlikely to be causative, and that risk factors for low bone density and dementia have substantial overlap, readers should act like it might be causitive with diet and exercise choices that promote bone health. They were so excited to get to their point about fixing your diet that they didn't pay attention to the actual science they were reporting on. (Sidenote: actual scientific journal articles are supposed to be neutral, factual reporting. They also aren't actually that, but there are some measures in place around this to try to prevent the worst effects of bias.)

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

On Tuesday, a group of 22 Republican attorneys general, led by Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, sent a letter to the president and vice president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, accusing the organization of violating consumer protection laws by endorsing the use of puberty blockers. The letter also demands answers to 14 probing questions and extensive access to internal documents. While the letter carries no legal authority, states have increasingly used vague and broad consumer protection laws to investigate the records of gender-affirming care and abortion providers, often with little to no judicial oversight.

The letter, bearing the seal of the Idaho Attorney General's office, seeks to prohibit the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) from endorsing puberty blockers as a form of reversible gender-affirming care for transgender teenagers, using consumer protection laws as the basis. "Statements made by medical trade organizations, like the AAP, are subject to state consumer protection laws… misleading and deceptive statements of medical trade associations are connected to commerce and reach consumers," the letter states, asserting the authority of Republican-controlled states to challenge the AAP’s endorsement of puberty blockers and justify extensive investigations into the organization's documents.

The letter leans on flawed science and previous hit pieces from far-right, anti-transgender think tanks that have struggled to gain credibility in scientific and medical communities. It criticizes the organization for describing puberty blockers as “reversible,” a stance supported by several medical and scientific organizations, backed by studies, and decades of use in treating precocious puberty and other conditions. A review by the Sax Institute found that “two systematic reviews reported that puberty suppression treatment is reversible,” and that the treatment is “effective, safe, well tolerated, and reversible.” The letter heavily references the Cass Review. On the second page, for example, it asserts that the claim puberty blockers are reversible is false, “beyond medical debate.” To support this assertion, it cites the Cass Review, which identifies several "possible" irreversible consequences, such as interference with neurocognitive development, bone density, and “blocking normal pubertal experience and experimentation.”

These claims, however, are not well-supported by evidence. For instance, the assertion regarding neurocognitive development in the Cass Review is entirely speculative. In contrast, the Sax Review found that transgender youth who received gender-affirming hormone therapy demonstrated better cognitive development compared to those who did not, meaning that gender affirming care actually improved the cognitive development for many trans youth through a reduction in negative psychological symptoms. It likewise states that one study making this assertion did not control for ASD and anxiety, which have proven impacts on cognitive development. Other studies on brain development primarily focus on sheep or on youth experiencing precocious puberty. Similarly, bone density concerns are frequently cited to justify bans on puberty blockers. However, the Sax Review notes that bone density reductions are “within one standard deviation of normal,” and that bone density is restored once puberty resumes. Additionally, most youth in the studies showing bone density reductions were deficient in vitamin D, according to the Sax Review. This is why the informed consent form for puberty blockers addresses this risk and its mitigation, stating, “It is important that patients on Lupron Depot® take other measures to protect their bones: keeping active and ensuring good calcium and Vitamin D intake.”

22 Republican AGs, led by Idaho’s Raúl Labrador, sent a letter to the American Academy of Pediatrics’ President and Vice President to discourage them from endorsing gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers by falsely calling them “irreversible” and cited the discredited Cass Review.

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So bot of them are heavily based on real life humans when it comes to apperance because i am boring but i wanted to put some subtle changes to indicate that neither of them are humans and to give an oportunity for them to have wow you are not like us shock moments when they interact.

So the first species? is the one with the most oportunity for fun anatomy changes. Their bones and muscles are not thicker but they are denser. So they can have immpresive feats of strenght and endurance. I know this would mainly be noticabel by touch. I am not troubeled by this. What could be some changes to their skeletal structure that would allow stronger muscles to anchor better to bones or some uniqe muscle structures in nature that allows for more tissue to be packed into smaller spaces. Also am i understanding it right that this would mean they need more food and would be more sensitive to a lack of oxigen? My second idea ties into that i wanted to give them different blood for better suply. I originaly wanted to just make it thicker with higher iron content but i realized that having ticker blood means the heart needs to pump harder to achive the same blood floow. I found my second solution while browsing your blog whic is giving them the blood particel that makes blood blue beside standard hemoglobin. But i know very littel about how that would influence their anatomy, would that make their blood purpel or another color? Would that mean that their skin has a light purpelis, or a greyish tint?

The third one is a freeby. So its well known that human anatomy is kind of a mess, especialy the spine. What changes would you, as an anatomy nerd make to make humans more efficent humans? I had the idea to give them more muscles around their ears, harder and sharper nails and hardier teeth in general and slighly pontier canines (yes that one is for the visual) as a kind of vestigal trait from back their hunter gatherer days but other than that I am stuck. Do you have any anatomical traits that could indicate a healing factor. I know its kind of vague but i don't know how to better word it.

The other guys, who i took to call mages for distintction because i am abundant in creativity, are kind of boring because their main trait that separates them from humans is having magic whic doesnt realy translate into anatomy. They channel it through their senses, voice and movements. I had the idea that they could have different voices that are more sing-song, but i think that would be more cultural norm, could there be some anatomical difference that helps it. My other idea was giving them on average more slender limbs, and more flexibel joints to allow for more gracefull and controlled movements. My other two ideas are that since magic produces heat they could develop thicker, darker fire resistent patches on their skin on parts where they frequetly direct their magic. Other than that i have no idea.

Sorry, this is long and rambly I understand if you don't answer it. I am also sorry for the grammar, english isn't my first language. I would be grateful for the smallest help. Thank you for even reading through this monstrum.

okay, so there is a lot to go over here! let's break it down point by point.

1: increased bone and muscle density. what does this mean? bone density refers to the internal structure of the bones. bones must be porous in the center because that's where the marrow is! it acts as a blood factory, basically. having porous bones allows for blood to flow through, and it also allow us to have more durable bones without making them so heavy. too little bone density makes them fragile, but too much bone density makes them heavy and more likely to snap because of poor shock absorption. so there's an important balance to find for the density.

muscle density jut means more muscle packed into a smaller space, and it is correlated to increased strength. I can't find much on what might be considered "too dense" for muscles, but since it's often determined by a ratio of fat to lean muscle, I think it's important to note that fat is important for the body and having less of it tends to create other problems. Intramuscular fat provides energy directly to the muscles, which is why humans are so good at endurance walking. it's one of the reasons we have such nice round butts! So you also need to keep in mind how to balance the muscle density with the body fat here.

Essentially, what is the purpose of the denser bones and muscle? simply increasing the density does not automatically mean these people will be stronger and have greater endurance. Having very dense muscle might make them good at performing short bursts of strength, like quick sprints, fast hard punches, etc. and having dense bones might make them more sturdy, giving a strong brace to their dense muscles. but they may also be more prone to exhaustion if they don't have intramuscular fat, and if their bones are too dense they might break faster and be less useful for blood production and blood flow.

2: blood color. as for changing the material their blood uses to carry oxygen, I have had trouble finding any sources on how efficiently different colors of blood actually carry oxygen. As far as I'm able to determine, haemocyanin, the blue blood component in molluscs, is better suited for low oxygen? Most sources on this are highly academic and I don't understand a lot of the vocabulary.

So, maybe these are smaller people, living in a low oxygen environment. Perhaps it's a warm climate, allowing survival with less fat, and their dense muscles and bones make them very good at quick bursts of strength and speed with lower endurance compared to the average human. they would be very lean, and I imagine their bones would be shorter and a little thicker to minimize the chance of breaks.

If anyone else here is a better expert on the fine points of what exactly dense bones and muscles as blue blood would mean for a humanoid species, please add your thoughts! As I've said, I'm not an expert on biology haha, I only know what I can find through internet research and a lot of it is academic vocabulary that's a little beyond my knowledge. and a lot of it is also niche topics that are difficult to find studies on, like the efficiency of different blood colors. I will note, however, that red blood seems to correlate most with vertebrates, while the other known blood colors correlate to invertebrates! the blood circulation of these groups can be very different!

the blood color might affect the skin tone a little, but it depends a lot on how translucent or pale their skin is, what pigments are coloring their skin, and what color their blood vessels are. humans have red blood, but some of our veins look blue! it does have a stronger color effect for blush though!

3: what traits would make humans more efficient? depends on what we're making more efficient! the spine is wack because we stand upright. our knees are wack because we walk bipedally. our teeth look like this because we are omnivores. we're very very good at all of those things, especially compared to other creatures. sharper teeth and claw-like nails would certainly make us more efficient as hunters, but only if we were hunting with our bodies as our weapon! humans are very very good at making and using tools. personally, as a human who spends most of her time sitting down (because of my creative work) I would appreciate having the butt pads that allow other primates to sit on tree branches for extended periods of time without going numb. and just in general having a body that didn't feel so stiff and sore from sitting in one position for so long.

4: anatomical traits that indicate healing factors: hard to say! the animals in real life that can regrow their limbs don't really have any special outward indicators of it until it's actually happening! like lizards and amphibians that can drop their tails or lose a leg and just cut off the circulation to the open wound and start growing a fresh limb. you might have some luck studying how all of that works, it's a pretty fascinating process!

5: voice anatomy: your mage people might have different vocal cord structure! perhaps theirs has more flexibility than the average human, and maybe they also have better lung capacity. This would allow a broader vocal range, volume range, and increase vocal endurance somewhat.

6: dark thick skin to resist heat: callouses could certainly develop with frequent magic use, just as they develop for physical activities (like the callouses on my hands from holding a pencil or holding yarn and thread over my finger for crochet). Melanin, the pigment that makes skin darker, is not actually for heat resistance. it inhibits UV radiation somewhat. so I don't think darker patches would really occur as a form of resistance to magical heat, though the skin would likely grow tougher in those areas. They may also develop anatomy that's more efficient for regulating body temperature. Large ears full of veins, for example, or maybe they'd have longer fingers and some form of membrane between their fingers that only exists to release heat.