Disqus - Latest Comments for sprague

Re: Continous Glucose Monitoring, food testing and diet decision-making | Quantified Self Experiments

sprague — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 15:22:27 -0000

You might enjoy these other CGM resources, including open source repos: https://diycgm.com/

Re: New results from Viome - Richard Sprague

sprague — Mon, 01 Feb 2021 19:28:31 -0000

I'd have done the FODMAP regardless. Instant relief is hard to beat.

Re: The perils and pitfalls of “doing your own research” about COVID-19 (or any other science)

sprague — Wed, 05 Aug 2020 10:27:25 -0000

My test for the truth of a claim: what will do, how you will react if later evidence definitively proves it one way or another. Would it fundamentally affect how you reason about the world, or would it simply confirm the limitations that you admitted up front?

Sadly, much of this piece will not stand up well if, say, HCQ ultimately turns out to be effective in some cases, or if mask-wearing turns out to be less effective than today's "consensus" thinks. That's not to defend these alternatives, but rather to point out that the author's reasoning depends on an appeal to authority rather than on the scientific method itself.

Re: Data ignorance is making COVID restrictions worse than they need to be » Publications » Washington Policy Center

sprague — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 23:47:41 -0000

Meanwhile, I had fun crunching the change in COVID cases after Gov. Inslee instituted a mandatory face mask requirement:https://richardsprague.com/.... Let me know if you'd like help putting together similar data presentations.

Re: New results from Viome - Richard Sprague

sprague — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 18:07:00 -0000

Good catch! I hadn't noticed that. Interestingly, Viome found it only in this sample; it wasn't present when I took the viome test 6 months ago. It's also not listed in the GutBiome+ results from the same sample. Unfortunately Viome doesn't report abundances, so it's hard to say if this had any real effect.

Re: Watching Microbiome Changes in Mexico

sprague — Mon, 14 Oct 2019 22:31:36 -0000

I used the Ubiome Explorer test kit $89

Re: How to Use Probiotics to Improve Your Health [transcript]

sprague — Sat, 06 Apr 2019 18:21:40 -0000

Great podcast! Chrisopher: there's been no significant technical change to uBiome since your Python uploader, so it'd be interesting to hear how Jason is able to get such fantastic consistency and clinical utility out of his tests.

Re: An interesting high fiber experiment

sprague — Thu, 04 Apr 2019 18:32:27 -0000

Yup, already tried this. It makes a big difference: https://psm.personalscience...

Re: Viome and DayTwo Updates - Richard Sprague

sprague — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 20:57:52 -0000

I haven't had time to watch this one (yet), but I've seen previous years' microbiomesummits and thought they were meh, okay for beginners. You might check Elizabeth Bik (a microbiome scientist friend and potential PSI advisor) who fact-checked this documentary on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/Microbi...

My opinion is that she's a little too picky: yes, there are errors but the overall gist is what beginners need to take away.

Re: What’s happening to my mouth microbiome?

sprague — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 17:07:32 -0000

Thanks, Jeremy. I *did* check. The lab (aka Zac) says the OTUs are different. Is there a way for me to tell via my FASTQ file? i.e. can I do a BLAST or something to look for those specific sequences?

Re: Using Viome to Analyze and Improve Gut Microbiome and Metabolic Health

sprague — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 18:59:19 -0000

Thanks for posting! Your results are very similar to mine. Maybe they sent us the same report by mistake :-). Interestingly, my InsideTracker recommendations are *very* different: It says I should go vegan and eat oatmeal and potatoes daily, whereas both DayTwo and Viome say that would be bad. How does your InsideTracker advice compare?

p.s. the gut microbe report only shows which microbes are transcribing RNA, so you shouldn't expect it to sum to 100%. The Viome transcriptomics technology is totally different from what you'd get from uBiome, DayTwo or others.

Re: Richard Sprague: How to analyze a uBiome sample in Excel

sprague — Mon, 18 Dec 2017 23:56:51 -0000

uBiome doesn't release those numbers, but you can download information for healthy users on their official PLOS publication: S3 Table: http://journals.plos.org/pl...

Re: Gut microbiome testing services comparison

sprague — Fri, 17 Nov 2017 22:45:02 -0000

For more details about DayTwo: https://medium.com/neodotli...
Re: ubiome, Explorer ($89) gives you far more information than Smartgut, including Phylum and other taxonomic rank info. Smartgut is technically a "clinical" test, which is a legal distinction relevant only to insurance plans. It's definitely not "free".

Re: Perpetrator of Fraudulent Vaccine Scare Speaking in Stowe

sprague — Fri, 12 May 2017 13:39:31 -0000

Tom,
I agree with you about Wakefield’s fraud and the miserable anti-science that characterizes the antivax movement, but the real argument against mandatory vaccination is more complicated. What do you think about the following: There’s no question that vaccines save lives, but like the misguided efforts to stop all forest fires, maybe we just make things worse when we thwart something Nature needs.

Until fairly recently, the measles virus was omnipresent. Just about everyone carried it; just about everyone had an immune system that prevented it turning into something serious. Many people, for genetic or other reasons, died from measles.

By vaccinating *everyone*, the measles virus is no longer floating about. Human and primate immune systems, which evolved over millions of years to expect the measles threat, are suddenly exposed to a world where there is no threat — and they go haywire.

That’s why there is no association between autism and *specific individuals* who are vaccinated. It doesn’t matter whether *your kid* gets the vaccine. Autism and other chronic conditions happen because some people’s immune systems, born to expect the threat of measles, are not challenged properly at a key moment of childhood.

Or so goes the theory. I have no idea whether this is true or not — nobody does — but what if it turns out that society has to choose between many tragic deaths from infectious viral diseases like measles, or similarly tragic pathologies like autism, allergies, or diabetes?

Re: The House Health Plan Makes Your Genes a Preexisting Condition

sprague — Fri, 05 May 2017 16:05:19 -0000

In what sense is it "insurance" if everyone pays the same, regardless of risk? If genetic information lets us know in advance that your healthcare will cost more, then taxpayers can decide, for humane reasons, to subsidize you, but insurance companies should focus on risk, not certainty.

Re: Tough Love in China

sprague — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 11:57:53 -0000

So true. You shouldn't let your kid grow up to think childhood was the best time of his life.

Re: 48: Is Your Glucose Metabolism Unique to You? – Eran Segal & Lihi Segal

sprague — Fri, 13 Jan 2017 00:30:47 -0000

Interesting that he thinks shotgun sequencing is worth considerable extra cost. Just a couple of base pairs can often make a big difference in gene function, but their algorithm would have to be tested on a lot of people before you'd see patterns that wouldn't be visible at the 16S level. For many (most?) microbes, 16s can see pretty well at the species level.

(btw, great podcast as always!)

Re: Food-safety regulation thwarts start-up’s dream to bring you home-cooked meals

sprague — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 14:22:57 -0000

Re: last paragraph, there already *is* a channel for regulatory experiments: it's called Federalism. Josephine is too good of an idea. Somewhere, a more tolerant county or state government out there is already trying this, if not in the US then in another country.

Re: How The Micro Biome Regulates Health: Jessica Richman of uBiome

sprague — Wed, 04 May 2016 17:29:44 -0000

Great podcast! You can learn more about that WEIRD paper Jessica mentions here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3...

Re: For Teachers, Access To The Scientific Literature is Priceless

sprague — Thu, 17 Mar 2016 17:29:08 -0000

I don't know the legal status, but I've had good results on Facebook with "Free Scientific Papers". Post what you want in their status field, and they send you the paper soon afterwards. https://www.facebook.com/Fr...

Re: Richard Sprague: A gut bacteria for caffeine metabolism?

sprague — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 12:57:55 -0000

I think 4x means a gut that is metabolizing caffeine four times more than other guts in the sample. The caffeine is eaten, then broken down by bacteria. Drinking lots of coffee just ensures there will be more such bacteria; drink less and eventually they will die off and it'll be harder to metabolize the caffeine (until they bloom again).

I drink a couple cups of coffee per day. I bet you are missing the unknown bacteria that processes this. If you send me your uBiome results, I'll compare to mine and maybe we can figure out which one it is.

Re: Richard Sprague: A gut bacteria for caffeine metabolism?

sprague — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 12:22:51 -0000

Yes, interestingly uBiome shows I'm also way overexpressed 4x +. I'll have a blog post soon where I am still trying to figure out what that means

Re: Experimenting with a Gut Cleanse

sprague — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 18:35:18 -0000

I took 3+ liters of Golytely (polyethylene glycol). Is there a differenc with a naturopathic cleanse?

Re: New Year, Better Gut

sprague — Tue, 08 Dec 2015 01:02:18 -0000

Still curious to see your update!

Re: Richard Sprague: A mistake in my fourth uBiome sample?

sprague — Sun, 06 Dec 2015 23:05:55 -0000

I trust uBiome's results -- I think they're as accurate as anyone else -- but a gut sample is more complicated than, say, a blood sample. . Bacteria are not uniformly distributed, so it's possible you happened to swab an area with fewer Bifido. In my experience you need several samples to get a rough idea of which bacteria you host. If you send me your taxonomy files, I'd be happy to take a look and see if I can suggest something.