Paul Saladino· MD
so the first type of study is an Interventional study where people are gathered and sometimes these are blinded but there there's some intervention they're given a pill they're given a supplement they're given a food something is taken away something is actually done those are the type of studies that get me the most curious because it's actually an experiment something is done they have to be controlled and we want to do a study like that with an animal-based diet soon I think it's going to happen at Utah State University with Stephen van velite so stay tuned for this guys but we want to do a pilot randomized controlled study with an animal-based diet versus a plant-based diet versus a standard diet when it comes to autoimmune conditions and that's what we're going to do there is take three groups of people probably 20 in each group and we're going to feed each group a different set of foods there's an intervention there we're doing something with those people and we're going to watch them we can't blind that study meaning they're going to know what they're eating the researchers are going to know what they're eating but that's what blinding and double blinding means that the participants and this and the researchers don't know what's happening but you were at least controlling it we're randomizing which just means that people are randomly assigned to each group and then we're controlling it meaning we're actually doing an intervention it's an Interventional study and that one will be very interesting so those are the type of studies that are interesting for me one type of diet versus another type of diet one type of supplement etc etc something out that's an Interventional study now there's a lot of nuance within those that you can go further but let's just talk about the second type of study which is an observational study sometimes called observational epidemiology and the difference between these two is really the difference between the zero yard line and the 75-yard line in the football field it's just it's completely different um there's there's you know or I guess there's no 75-yard line in the football field it's like you get it like the 25 yard or the 50-yard line of the football field I don't watch a lot of sports you guys know what I'm saying this is embarrassing uh you know so but in an observational study there is no intervention other than a survey you're watching people over time but there's nothing being done you're asking them how many eggs do you eat for breakfast how much kale do you eat for breakfast how many salads do you eat how much walking do you do how much time in the sun do you spend um you know all these things do you do you sleep eight hours a night and then and then you're either following them prospectively or you're looking back retrospectively you can go back in time or forward in time and you're looking at Health outcomes and you can only draw a correlation and anytime you have that word correlation or Association you have to kind of be a little skeptical and think Hmm I can't draw a positive inference I correlation is never causation so even when I'm talking about associations or observational studies in my work I'll try to point out this is an observational study you can't draw you know causation here but let's think about what could be going on as we talked about in this podcast the really dangerous studies with this generally involve diet because there's so much narrative in our culture around diet and if you followed any of my work you