Please, mind, this is only showing correlation. No cause/effect relation.
It might be that people who have GI problems are more likely to skip breakfast. Or there might be something else that causes both.
Be careful when reading studies...
It might be that people who have GI problems are more likely to skip breakfast. Or there might be something else that causes both.
Be careful when reading studies...
In many cases, I found really absurd causal claims, plus a total ignorance of confounding and causal inference techniques.
It is shocking that many researchers in biology and medicine have never heard about many of the topics surveyed in e.g. Chapter 36 of Kevin Murphy's second book [1].
The reason is that the set of human behavior is so fast and unfathomably complicated. Any two aspects of life are surely correlated by many factors that are influenced by lifestyle.
Besides, large biobanks provide a wealth of observational data which can be explored using causal inference. One can always use a RCT on promising hypotheses.
Turns out laying down for hours and having stomach acid wash up into your esophagus and irritating it makes it somewhat unpleasant to eat. It takes me a while after getting up for everything to settle before I can eat.
This also substantially raises my risk of GI cancers.
We know there’s a causal link between things like GERD and GI cancers. This could just be showing a relationship between GERD and skipping breakfast which has a much clearer method of action than “not eating food first thing in the morning gives you cancer”.
It is extremely important to not overreact to reports of correlation without causation.
A report that something is linked to cancer can be worrying, but is not yet enough to make inferences.
Here is a list of things that are linked (correlated) to each other:
* years of experience programming and a chance of getting cancer
* number of births and chance of getting osteoporosis
* having a surgery and dying of surgery-related complications (can't have complications if you don't have surgery)
* GDP and a chance of getting diagnosed with cancer at a young age (generally, the higher GDP the higher the chance your cancer gets caught earlier or at all -- in many poor countries nobody cares what you died to)
Etc.