Post by Scott on Jan 21, 2021 10:18:04 GMT -8
I think my experiments emphasize my focus on "what do we know"?
The problem with the referenced account is that there are too many uncontrolled factors. For one, rice was just one ingredient; after the gerbils fell ill did the OP remove *only* the rice in the diet, or were other ingredients in the mix also changed?
Rice does not seem to be a significant source of calcium. According to the International Osteoporosis Foundation, a serving of rice has 4mg of calcium; a serving of pasta has 26mg, lentils have 40, yogurt has 207. Further, though some studies linked excess calcium to heart disease (and others have disputed this), this was due to taking calcium supplements; I'm not aware of instances where dietary calcium has been high enough to potentially lead to heart disease.
There has also been an issue with arsenic contamination in rice (where we should also limit our rice intake) but without knowing how much rice the gerbils were getting it's impossible to know if this was a factor.
There are other possibilities here: though the mix is a reasonable link to the deaths of the OP's gerbils, it's not the only one. There could have been a one-time contaminant in the water, which was used up around the same time the mix was changed. Or something, e.g.,. a fungus, in one of the ingredients (this past fall, when I went to load up my bird feeder with the seed mix leftover from last spring, I discovered a fungus had grown in the sealed bag, so I tossed the whole thing). Changing out the old mix could have eliminated the contaminant.
But without being able to test that specific batch of gerbil food mix, we will never know what the cause was. And I think all of us can agree that we don't want to perform experiments using, no pun intended, our gerbils as guinea pigs.
Interesting story. My uncle had been the chief of cardiology at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, PA. This was before I was born, the 1960s I guess, back before gerbils were widely available as pets. Apparently, there's something about them that makes them useful in studying heart disease in humans (exactly what I couldn't say; my uncle died back in 2003, so I can't ask). He had plenty of gerbils in the hospital lab, so he gave some to my siblings, which quite a few years later led to my being given some as pets.
The problem with the referenced account is that there are too many uncontrolled factors. For one, rice was just one ingredient; after the gerbils fell ill did the OP remove *only* the rice in the diet, or were other ingredients in the mix also changed?
Rice does not seem to be a significant source of calcium. According to the International Osteoporosis Foundation, a serving of rice has 4mg of calcium; a serving of pasta has 26mg, lentils have 40, yogurt has 207. Further, though some studies linked excess calcium to heart disease (and others have disputed this), this was due to taking calcium supplements; I'm not aware of instances where dietary calcium has been high enough to potentially lead to heart disease.
There has also been an issue with arsenic contamination in rice (where we should also limit our rice intake) but without knowing how much rice the gerbils were getting it's impossible to know if this was a factor.
There are other possibilities here: though the mix is a reasonable link to the deaths of the OP's gerbils, it's not the only one. There could have been a one-time contaminant in the water, which was used up around the same time the mix was changed. Or something, e.g.,. a fungus, in one of the ingredients (this past fall, when I went to load up my bird feeder with the seed mix leftover from last spring, I discovered a fungus had grown in the sealed bag, so I tossed the whole thing). Changing out the old mix could have eliminated the contaminant.
But without being able to test that specific batch of gerbil food mix, we will never know what the cause was. And I think all of us can agree that we don't want to perform experiments using, no pun intended, our gerbils as guinea pigs.
Interesting story. My uncle had been the chief of cardiology at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia, PA. This was before I was born, the 1960s I guess, back before gerbils were widely available as pets. Apparently, there's something about them that makes them useful in studying heart disease in humans (exactly what I couldn't say; my uncle died back in 2003, so I can't ask). He had plenty of gerbils in the hospital lab, so he gave some to my siblings, which quite a few years later led to my being given some as pets.