alt Hacker News5-10 points isn't marginal just because there is measurement variance to account for. And just because there's variance doesn't mean you can't fuzz out real numbers. It's like thinking you can stop a timing attack with sleep(random()).
I'd be very skeptical of defending something like high blood pressure. People do the same with high cholesterol. It's a bunch of cope and wishful thinking that they're very different from everyone else who gets heart disease, our #1 killer.
Replies
Except those two don't really matter when predicting heart attack or stroke risk. HRV results, EKG results, labile hypertension; these are the indicators of whether or not you're at a risk for a heart attack or stroke. Getting a regular stress test is more important than blindly throwing anti-hypertensives at someone who may not need them in the first place.
My smart ring detects if there are potential arrhythmia, same with the Apple Watch. Wearables are far more effective at determining heart attack risk than measuring blood pressure which fluctuates in correspondence with your circadian rhythm.
There was a point in history where medics were not aware of concept of “normal body human temperature”.
Then somebody took a sample of people, and measured their body temp and also asked if they were feeling well.
Average among those who felt well was 36.88 °C (98.38 °F) and that was declared normal. (Then in geneal education books it was rounded+shifted and any variation found by the study forgotten)
I found it quite interesting, because I knew normal temp value whole my life, but never even stopped to think where it came from. (I guess in passing thought I imagined that this value was fundamental constant of the universe derived from quantum physics)
My conclusions:
- Studies by necessity are performed on groups on people.
- when it comes to healing an individual, medical knowledge is huge and complex network of rules of thumb (that work on average but there is no such thing as whole medicine field tailored for you)
- there is no better way (listening to your doctor is a good idea)