Over the past few years, there has been an explosion of interest in how to improve your overall health through nutrition and medicine. People have a growing desire to understand their food and use it as medicine to keep them healthy.
Many people start this process by reading about nutritional supplements in the media or from friends. Then they choose which ones seem most promising so that they can try using them with some guidance.
This can be tricky because not all products contain what they claim. Some may even do more harm than good. It is important to know who puts out these products and why before you add anything new into your diet.
There are many types of diets that make claims about improving health. Diets like vegan, paleo, ketogenic, and raw foods are just a handful!
It is very difficult to determine which one will work best for you unless you experiment with those types of diets. A common theme across almost every diet mentioned here is eating lots of vegetables and other fruits.
Why? Because they are full of natural chemicals that help give you health benefits and promote weight loss. This article will talk about the science behind these nutrients and how they function to aid in your health goals.
Disclaimer: The information contained within this website is not intended to diagnose nor treat any disease, illness, or condition. All statements made herein regarding “diabetes reversal”, etc.
The process of scientific research
Many things we now take for granted as part of everyday life would not exist if scientists did not do their work in the past. Technology like laptops, smartphones, and self-driving cars would not be possible without important discoveries being incorporated into our daily lives.
The same is true of medicine. Without systematic studies to determine whether or not certain treatments are effective, people would still believe that drinking eight glasses of water makes your skin dry and itchy. Or that eating lots of sugar gives you weight loss benefits.
It is impossible to overestimate the importance of this work. Not only are there strong implications for how well various treatments work, but also what kind of treatments should be used since some don’t work at all!
Fortunately, there are many ways to conduct an experiment. Some experiments look at one thing and try to see how it works, while other experiments look at several different factors to see which ones have an effect.
Scientific experimentation is thus not a singular event, it is an ongoing process that keeps happening throughout history.
Here, I will discuss the basics of how experimental designs function and how they can be applied to studying health and disease issues. Then, I will talk about two types of experiments that play an essential role in shaping medical practice and technology — randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and observational studies.
The four stages of scientific research
All important discoveries were made through an iterative process that goes through several distinct, but related, steps. These include:
Stage one – Idea production
This is the most common stage for significant advances to occur. An idea may come to you while you are doing something else, or thinking about something different.
You can also be inspired by something you see or experience, or maybe you’re just feeling creative at the time.
Whatever the cause, this initial inspiration is followed by the formation of an hypothesis.
An hypothesis is like a question mark with a conclusion attached. With our current state of knowledge, we could describe it as ‘a possible statement”.
For example, let’s say you’re reading your favorite book and suddenly the author throws out a theory about what might happen next. You get the sense that he/she knows more than you do about the subject, so you write down the assumption and move onto another topic.
Research questions
As mentioned earlier, scientific research is focused on answering specific questions or topics. These are what we refer to as “research questions”. For example, when doing clinical trials, researchers ask if an intervention (or treatment) works better than a control group (or standard care).
A small portion of academic studies also use a controlled setting to investigate whether one theory is more accurate than another. This type of study is called empirical testing. Empirical tests compare two theories by having each student teach under either test or control condition for just one semester.
Both types of studies usually have you participate for enough time to get a solid statistical sample size. That means there must be at least eight classes per condition to ensure your results are statistically sound.
However, even though this is the case, it does not mean that these studies are necessarily meaningful. There are many reasons why studies need to be done with smaller samples sizes, which do not produce reliable data.
Another important thing to note about both clinical trial and empirical testing is that they only apply to individuals! They cannot conduct experiments on groups because people are all different and therefore may respond differently to the same treatments.
If you ever feel like you need to try out a new diet or fitness routine, check first to see if others have studied it and how it worked for them before investing in such products.
Subject matter expertise
A few years back, I worked with a company that had to figure out how to make its software work better. They hired me to help them and it was quite the learning experience!
One of my first tasks was to review their research tools. You see, this software they made didn’t really work at all. It wasn’t very intuitive or easy to use, which is why nobody used it.
I got through most of my time trying to fix the problem by just using the tool more — practicing on one project after another until I could get it working the way it should. This isn’t a bad approach if you’re doing something simple, but it doesn’t scale well when you have larger projects that require your full attention.
It’s like teaching someone to swim – unless they’ve practiced before, there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to do it properly the first time you ask them to. And making big decisions under stressful conditions can easily put people in an uncomfortable position, so most people never try.
The best option here is to teach people as a beginner, and then let them learn from there. Or give them some basic training and see what works for them.
That’s not always practical though, which is where subject matter expertise (SME) comes into play.
SME means knowing about a field beyond just having a cursory understanding of it.
Determining a topic
Choosing a topic is one of the most important things you will do as an author. You want to make sure that what you choose to write about is something that people are interested in and there’s enough material available for you to draw from.
As mentioned before, your topic can be anything – it doesn’t even need to make sense! A lot of writers get stuck trying to find their theme or focus.
The hardest part is determining how to approach your topic. Try out different approaches and see which ones work for you.
Selection of the research team
As mentioned earlier, not all scientific studies are equal. The conclusions you draw from a study depend on who conducts it and what they set as their goal for the experiment.
A researcher can put themselves in an objectively good position to get a certain conclusion by putting aside personal beliefs or experiences that could influence results. This is important because most studies have researchers that contribute to the outcome either as participants or observers.
Participants choose to be involved in a study, so making sure your contribution is meaningful to you (and others) is essential. Being aware of potential biases is also important so you don’t add to them unintentionally.
Observers watch events unfold, which makes ensuring everyone‘s honesty during a study crucial. Post-study interviews can help identify bias.
Time allocation
A major part of how academic research works is through time allocation. This is when an individual or group devotes their time to completing a project or research. They typically get paid for their efforts proportionally to how much time they spend working on it.
There are two main reasons why people choose to work on academic projects instead of doing something else with their lives. The first is because they are interested in learning more about that area, which takes up some time. The second is because it can be profitable, depending on what you apply your knowledge to.
Many students agree that studying science is difficult at times. There are so many different concepts and theories that it can feel like there’s no end to all of them.
