General Medical issues thread

[Quickstatus]

people who consume chocolate every day don’t exercise as much as others?

They accounted for it: Read further down: "Participant and Study design", "Demographic, clinical measurements and physical activity"
Table 1 suggests the high chocolate consumers has slightly higher physical activity but P 0.99 suggesting that the differences in physical activity between the groups were random so it can't be intepreted in any way other than the 3 groups all did some physical activity and it was not possible to determine which group did more.
The 3 groups appeared to be closely matched in other factors as well. Any P<0.1 is high significant and is not due to chance

 

[drron]

Correlation versus causation right there. Maybe people who consume chocolate every day don’t exercise as much as others?

But I exercise because then I can have a chocolate a day.

 

[Pushka]

They accounted for it: Read further down: "Participant and Study design", "Demographic, clinical measurements and physical activity"
Table 1 suggests the high chocolate consumers has slightly higher physical activity but P 0.99 suggesting that the differences in physical activity between the groups were random so it can't be intepreted in any way other than the 3 groups all did some physical activity and it was not possible to determine which group did more.
The 3 groups appeared to be closely matched in other factors as well. Any P<0.1 is high significant and is not due to chance

Not really convincing evidence there. Even the language. 'Suggests'. 'Some physical activity'. 'Not possible to determine which group did more'. 'Appeared to be closely matched'.

 

[andye]

Not really convincing evidence there. Even the language. 'Suggests'. 'Some physical activity'. 'Not possible to determine which group did more'. 'Appeared to be closely matched'.

You may be onto something there. The "daily" group had a higher calorie intake but lower weight (and had higher socioeconomic status)
But...exercise is thought of as being protective from osteoporosis

Data is always fascinating. Add up lean + fat and there is 2.4 kg difference in rarely and only 1.5 kg in daily. Maybe big-boned people avoid chocolate

 

[Quickstatus]

Not really convincing evidence there

Sure, those are just my words.
They did list a lot of the confounding factors and did adjust for it and
The bone density univariate analysis - comparing each group with one variable is highly significant (table 2 P 0.002) .
The bone density multivariate analysis is also significant (table 2 P 0.019 fully adjusted model using the combination of variables in supercript 4)
The important signal here is the daily chocolate eaters have a (significant P 0.02) slightly lower BMI.

The TL;DR summary is that it is enough of a signal to consider chocolate as potentially deleterious to bone health. Does that mean stop eating chocolate?. Of course not, but it is just one of the variables that people should consider.

Of course the researchers also mentioned the weaknesses of the study

and had higher socioeconomic status

All 3 groups were thought to be of higher socioeconomic status.
Interestingly they recruited Women over 70 from Western Australia randomly drawn from the Electoral roll

And the researchers are by no means minnows: