Sherry Chandler » Different from Ordinary Women
Different from Ordinary Women
Having been diagnosed with what they call “osteopenia,” or the beginnings of osteoporosis, you can imagine that I read with some care the report in Thursday’s NYTimes about a new study finding that supplemental calcium and vitamin D don’t do much to help women build and preserve bone. In all that news article, however, I think I was most bemused by this little passage here:
But such subgroup analyses are questioned by many statisticians, who point out that there always will be subgroups in a large study showing one effect or another, simply by chance.
Some subgroups, as happened in this study, will show a positive effect and others, as also happened in this study, will show a negative effect, but those effects often are nothing more than random fluctuations in the data. Over all, searching the data after the study is done in order to find subgroups that support a hypothesis can produce misleading results, statisticians say.
And, added David Freedman, a statistician at the University of California, Berkeley, who has written books on clinical trial design and analysis, women who take their pills as directed year in and year out are known to be different from ordinary women, so it is a mistake to generalize from them to the entire population.
So, I said to my long-time work companion, that means women like you, who stick diet and health regimens religiously, are fundamentally different from women like me, who are more apt to say, “Oh shucks, I forgot my fosamax again this week.” So please, was my metamessage, stop telling me I just need to get more exercise.
I’m more afraid than you are. That was her reply.
Not necessarily, said I. I may be more afraid than you, more in denial.
And it’s true. I may be. Or more fatalistic. More convinced that medicine is as much art as science and more apt to be annoyed by today’s headline: Women’s Health Studies Leave Questions in Place of Certainty . As if anybody ever has certainty.
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3 Comments
1. Gin replies at 19th February 2006, 8:33 am :
Last year I was diagnosed with osteopenia, but unlike you, I’m tickled to death with that. Three years ago I was diagnosed with osteoporosis. Diet, weight bearing exercise, calcium and prescription drugs combined to change that diagnosis. Get yourself out of denial. Take your medicine! And take the calcium, too. Another study will be done which will, of course, refute this one. (You realize if we wait long enough, everything we already know as “fact” will be challenged by a study of one sort or another.)
2. Fey Wren replies at 19th February 2006, 11:27 am :
“They” seem to be proving more and more that genetics has way more to do with our likelihood of getting this and that than diet and exercise. It’s kind of scary on the one hand, but liberating on the other. If we do our very best, we could still get dinged with something serious, but hey…at least we did our best.
And if we didn’t do our best? It probably didn’t make much of a difference anyway.
Dance. That’s the best thing for you. It builds muscle and that builds bone.
FW
3. sherry replies at 19th February 2006, 11:30 am :
Ah, but Gin! We all know you are no ordinary woman!
A great role model, too.
Very serious congratulations to you. That’s a remarkable achievement.
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