Performing Research on Pubmed

One of the students asked me to show them how they would perform research on www.pubmed.gov if they wanted to know what sugar did to their body.
1. Go to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
2. In the search box, type: sugar.
3. Over 100,000 articles were found; narrow the search.
4. Search: sugar review 2009 (to find reviews that were published in 2009).
5. Now try: effect of sugar humans review 2009
6. Still too many articles, try: processed sugar human consumption
7. Click on the "show" radio button; select "500" and press enter
8. Scan through the summaries. Summary #3, Summary #4, and Summary #5 look interesting.
Gastrointestinal effects of low-digestible carbohydrates.

Grabitske HA, Slavin JL.

Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2009 Apr;49(4):327-60. Review.

PMID: 19234944 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Related Articles
4:

Secular trends in food patterns of Guatemalan consumers: new foods for old.

Bermudez OI, Hernandez L, Mazariegos M, Solomons NW.

Food Nutr Bull. 2008 Dec;29(4):278-87.

PMID: 19227052 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Related Articles
5:

Refined food addiction: a classic substance use disorder.

Ifland JR, Preuss HG, Marcus MT, Rourke KM, Taylor WC, Burau K, Jacobs WS, Kadish W, Manso G.

Med Hypotheses. 2009 May;72(5):518-26. Epub 2009 Feb 14.

PMID: 19223127 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Related Articles

Next: read article #5;

Summarize: Research suggests that processed foods that contain high levels of sugar may be addicting (Ifland JR, Preuss HG, Marcus MT, Rourke KM, Taylor WC, Burau K, Jacobs WS, Kadish W, Manso G. Med Hypotheses. 2009 May;72(5):518-26. Epub 2009 Feb 14.) Scientists suggest that addictions to processed food containing a high sugar content are similar to other addictions, such as tobacco and alcohol addictions. Id. These scientists advocate broadening the criteria of DSM-IV to include processed foods with high levels of sugar. Id.

What is DSM-IV? Google it and find out!

Note: Always underline journal titles and book titles. Also underline "Id.", which basically means that the sentence is supported by the same references that was last presented in the paper.


Repeat until you have a paragraph.

Ideally, you would retrieve the original article. Older articles are readily available but 2009 articles may be not. You may then have to refine your search to include older articles.

Have your parent or guardian read through the paragraph and make suggestions on what you can do to make it clearer for the reader.

Remember, keep your reader in mind! Don't assume that they know what you are talking about.