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Showing posts from March, 2017

Climate Change is Causing Diabetes?

The British Medical Journal (not The Onion) reports that global warming is linked to type 2 diabetes, speculating that the mechanism is brown adipose fat, based on a few small association studies that sound like they didn't have a control group. The media are repeating the story without a hint a skepticism. What could possibly be wrong with a hypothesis that an imperceptible change in the climate could be causing high blood sugar levels? Human evolution began in equatorial Africa--a warm climate. According to migration maps, all of our ancestors were in warm climates until around 40,000 years ago. Comparing diabetes maps of the US and the world with average temperatures, diabetes doesn't look like it relates to hot regions. Most people are indoors most of the time--and almost all of us have air conditioning. In fact, the number of households with air conditioning has gone up in line with diabetes. Maybe that's the cause (not really). Stumped? Consider what d