Essay6: how you and I can find answers to longevity/health/nutrition questions

How can you find answers to your questions about health, nutrition, and others?  Let me describe the steps I take.  These are the methods I recommended for my students to research information for their nutrition posters.

  1. Carefully refine your question to be as specific is possible. Try to find specific unique words beyond health or medicine.
  2. First do a key word search of my website. Go to nutritioninvestigator.org. Scroll down a little to the Search box. This will find all the pages where your key word is entered.  For instance, niacin gave me 72 hits. At each page you click on, you may need to use find to locate the specific word you are looking for, as there may be many articles on the page.  [I now have a page counter, and my website gets about 2,500 visits per week!]
  3. If you do not find your answer on my website, do a key word search using google, but include nih, which is the National Institutes of Health where all good references are archived. For example, niacin, nih, 2 million gave hits. Just niacin gave 61.5 million hits.  But of the 2 million, you will first find information written at NIH, and then articles archived there.  Articles have abstracts and conclusions at the start.
  4. If you still have not found the information you are looking for, or do not understand what you find, you are welcome to email me. I try to answer readers’ questions. If they are of general interest, I put them in my weekly newsletter.

There was just an NPR program on how short American lifespans are right now compared to 20+ other nations.  I believe a key factor is the lack of good information about health and nutrition. Thanks for reading my newsletter to stay informed.

-Roc, Nutrition Investigator.