• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Nature VS Modern Medicine and weeding out what truly works.

Do you believe in the farmacy trend?

  • I'm a hippy and I'm proud of it. Also, I have proof it works. No aluminum DO for me!

    Votes: 3 7.7%
  • I'm kind of a hippy, but I was brought up that way, and/or I like moral aspects of the trend.

    Votes: 4 10.3%
  • This is a thing? Who's Jenny McCarthy? I mean, I guess both are fine.

    Votes: 4 10.3%
  • Science trumps turnips all day. Beets and apples won't keep you from having eczema hunny, sorry.

    Votes: 24 61.5%
  • I don't really care at all. I can't afford either of them anyways.

    Votes: 4 10.3%

  • Total voters
    39

kyuuei

Emperor/Dictator
Joined
Aug 28, 2008
Messages
13,964
MBTI Type
enfp
Enneagram
8
We were reading some studies in class the other day I enjoyed and found interesting for people on any point on the spectrum: oxidation and oils.

We know oils can go rancid. Olive oil, coconut oil, etc. etc. They all can expire and be not-so-good after a while. And we sort of know that expiration dates are garbage things arbitrarily made up by companies to cover their asses.

But when you first open a package of oil, oxidation starts, and studies are showing more and more that sources of free radicals constantly tire our cells out.

This happens all of the time when we breathe. We take oxygen in, and it's a complex process converting it into something useful.. I'm convinced elves and dwarves in fantasy lands live 100x longer than humans because they can process oxygen better. Anyways, you always end up with free radicals, and anti-oxidants are vitamins that help with those. It's an argument I use to try and show people how.. silly it is to use 'poisons in the body' as an excuse for things, oxygen is absolutely poisonous and noxious to our cells as it is. We have to do a lot of work and energy just to convert it, distribute it, and use it. That's why, even when you're a vegetable, you'll burn calories just breathing.

But adding more sources of oxidation will mean even more work load. Similar to a heart that's having trouble beating as is, you don't want more fluid than necessary clogging up the lines. And many are already unavoidable.. But now they're thinking that oil starts oxidating the moment it touches air. Which makes sense.. but room temperature, and heated oil and especially heated and REUSED oil has so much oxidation that we have to process that too.

They're just broaching the subject. Determination of lipid oxidation products in vegetable oils and marine omega-3 supplements

Which wouldn't be tooooo distressing but look at everything that contains oil: Every fast food thing ever, almost any restaurant food dish, potato chips bought at the store, every dish ever cooked in a kitchen almost, products that go on the face and hair and nails... It permeates much of our lives really.

The simplest way to slow it down is to do what most people think you don't need to do: refrigerate your oils. Which can be a real pain when you're looking at EVERYTHING with oil in it.

It's one of those things that makes regular people go, 'omg I'll never get them all refrigerated I'm fine..' and hippies to clamor for some mini-fridges to fill with oils. But either way, the science is there and emerging.
 

kyuuei

Emperor/Dictator
Joined
Aug 28, 2008
Messages
13,964
MBTI Type
enfp
Enneagram
8
A concept I had never heard of before, but apparently has a really great terminology for what I refer to constantly as misrepresented hippy-stuff: Food woo - RationalWiki

"Woo" is basically what drives me nuts about it all. Fallacies like 'natural is good' 'I survived doing things this way why can't other people' 'people used to do it this way', etc. I listen to a show called Sawbones, a podcast on itunes and tune-in and everywhere else probably, and it goes through medical history of cures for various diseases. You know what else people used to do? Dunk their feet in poop thinking it'd protect them from measles or something like that. And just because you survived measles doesn't mean the disease isn't deadly.
 

prplchknz

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 11, 2007
Messages
34,397
MBTI Type
yupp
when the shit hits the fan: Belle Gibson and The Whole Pantry app: lessons from a liar

But the sad reality behind Gibson's dream story is that, it seems, the 'bunch of lies' came from her.

Gibson has admitted she does not have cancer of the blood, spleen, uterus or liver and that these were a 'misdiagnosis' by a mysterious doctor, whose existence has been questioned by her closest friends.

It reached a point where friends demanded documentary proof of her various cancers, which The Australian reported, she failed to produce.

One of the sad truths about Gibson's story is that we all tend to take stories of people's illnesses – as well as heroic accounts of recovery – at face value.

It is human instinct to show compassion and empathy to those who are suffering, mentally or physically.

As one former friend of Gibson's said: "At first you think you're a terrible person for questioning her illness. She was always vague about the cancer, where she was treated, her [medical] appointments."

Now, the questions are not just about Gibson's cancer diagnosis, but also about her supposed method of recovery.

Her story of beating the odds and becoming empowered again through her health transformation touched people in much the same way that many of us were touched by The Wellness Warrior, Jessica Ainscough.

Ainscough gained a huge following and a book deal by sharing her personal journey towards health.

When I spoke to her one year ago, the 29-year-old, I was told, was in "recovery mode".

Her story and determination were inspiring, but it soon emerged that her cancer had in fact not diminished but become more aggressive. Like her mother who took a similar alternative therapies route and died of cancer in 2013, after seven years battling the disease, Jess tragically lost her battle and died on February 26 this year.

Jess' family strongly rejects the suggestion that her life would have been extended with conventional treatment and say her treating clinicians said this was not the case.

But although lifestyle changes such as improving your diet and exercise can significantly reduce your risk of cancer, doctors warn against rejecting conventional treatments for alternative therapies if a person has been diagnosed with cancer.

"We would recommend that anyone undergoing cancer treatment speak to their doctor about what lifestyle changes may be suitable for them, including diet and exercise," Kathy Chapman, Chair, Nutrition and Physical Activity Committee, Cancer Council Australia, said in a statement. "In many cases cancer patients can, and should be, referred to a dietitian for specific food advice taking into account their situation.

"While generally maintaining a healthy lifestyle is useful, patients need to have a tailored plan focusing specifically on their situation. Some alternative and complementary therapies and special diets, although seemingly harmless, can be dangerous or interfere with conventional, evidence based, medicine.

"Once a patient has finished treatment, there is evidence that weight management and physical activity may improve their quality of life, reduce the risk of cancer recurrence and extend or increase cancer survival."

We all want to see people emerge triumphantly from their struggles. Sometimes people do. Devastatingly for the family, friends and followers of Jess, she did not.

The Belle Gibson story continues and she has promised an open letter addressing the accusations later this week. Regardless of her response and whether she can verify her health history, her story has raised questions about treading too delicately around such sensitive subjects and seeing the whole picture of human frailty in our search to emerge triumphant.
 

prplchknz

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 11, 2007
Messages
34,397
MBTI Type
yupp
The ‘paleo diet’ is pseudoscience: This is what our ancestral menu really looked like


Researchers Tom Hatley and John Kappelman noted in 1980 that hominids have bunodont – low, with rounded cusps – back teeth that show much in common with bears and pigs. If you’ve watched these animals forage, you know they’ll eat just about anything: tubers, fruits, leafy materials and twigs, invertebrates, honey and vertebrate animals, whether scavenged or hunted. The percentage contribution of each food type to the diet will depend (you guessed it) on the energetic value of specific foods in specific habitats, at specific times of year. Evidence from the entirety of human evolution suggests that our ancestors, and even we as modern humans, are just as omnivorous.

And the idea that our more ancient ancestors were great hunters is likely off the mark, as bipedality — at least before the advance of sophisticated cognition and technology — is a mighty poor way to chase game. Even more so than bears and pigs, our mobility is limited. The anthropologist Bruce Latimer has pointed out that the fastest human being on the planet can’t catch up to your average rabbit. Another reason to be opportunistic about food.

Simple characterizations of hominid ecology are divorced from the actual, and wonderful, complexity of our shared history. The recent addition of pastoral and agricultural products to many modern human diets — for which we have rapidly evolved physiological adaptations — is but one extension of an ancient imperative. Hominids didn’t spread first across Africa, and then the entire globe, by utilizing just
 

93JC

Active member
Joined
Dec 17, 2008
Messages
3,989
Health Canada licensing of natural remedies 'a joke,' doctor says
Marketplace gets licence for children’s fever remedy with no scientific evidence


Popular over-the-counter remedies, approved by Health Canada as "safe and effective," may be supported by little to no scientific evidence that the products work, an investigation by CBC’s Marketplace reveals.

Canadians spend $2.4 billion a year on natural health products.While some products may have clinical trials or other scientific evidence to support their claims, many do not require any scientific proof, and there’s little way for consumers to tell the difference.

"It's frustrating that the government standards are not protecting the public the way they should be," Dr. Matthew Stanbrook, deputy editor of the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), told Marketplace co-host Erica Johnson.

This is "lending the veneer of approval to something that really hasn't demonstrated the science."

To test how little evidence is required to get Health Canada to license a product, Marketplace created a children’s remedy, applied for approval and received a licence.

[...]

Marketplace created a children’s fever and pain remedy called Nighton, which claimed to provide "effective relief from fever, pain, and inflammation" for children and infants.

[...]

To get a licence, Marketplace submitted an application in May, 2014, to Health Canada, and included photocopied pages from A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica by Dr. John Henry Clarke, a 1902 homeopathic reference book of ingredients, as evidence for its effectiveness.

In October, Health Canada approved the application for Nighton. (The product remains licensed, but was never manufactured or offered for sale.)

The product that Marketplace made up, "Nighton" (an anagram of "nothing"), contains a pair of mineral salts that homeopaths have claimed help prevent hemorrhages and cures fevers. In fact they have never been proven to do anything, but a couple pages of anecdotes photocopied out of a century-old homeopathic cookbook was accepted as evidence of their efficacy.

Iiiiiiiiiiiiinteresting...
 

kyuuei

Emperor/Dictator
Joined
Aug 28, 2008
Messages
13,964
MBTI Type
enfp
Enneagram
8
The product that Marketplace made up, "Nighton" (an anagram of "nothing"), contains a pair of mineral salts that homeopaths have claimed help prevent hemorrhages and cures fevers. In fact they have never been proven to do anything, but a couple pages of anecdotes photocopied out of a century-old homeopathic cookbook was accepted as evidence of their efficacy.

Iiiiiiiiiiiiinteresting...

You know, there was a part of me that wanted to jump-react to, "How interesting it would be if experiments like that happened in the US.." .. But there are a slew of them already in all kinds of forms. -_- I think I posted an article recently about supplements not being what they claim to be--to the point of potential danger to allergic people.
 

prplchknz

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 11, 2007
Messages
34,397
MBTI Type
yupp
there's something i think is bs called Xooma Worldwide

i saw one site that said it was legit but i suspect they're paying that site to say that. I have a friend who fell for that and she tried to sell me their stuff because they made her a sales person, i felt bad for not accepting but seems like hogwash to me.
 

Ivy

Strongly Ambivalent
Joined
Apr 18, 2007
Messages
23,989
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
6
Looks like a garden-variety multi-level marketing thing to me. Back away slowly.
 

Dyslexxie

Dope& diamonds.
Joined
Sep 2, 2015
Messages
1,250
I'm happy to see the results of this poll because I've heard way too much bullshit science being passed off as truth.

I have a coworker who has a fear of GMOs and that's fine, he can do that if he wants, but he's completely ignorant as to what that actually means. Without GMOs modern agriculture on the large scale we have it couldn't exist. Plants in their original state would've not had the capacity to feed any significant populations, so being anti-GMO to me is an ignorant thing to be, especially since most plants genetic makeup isn't changed. It's literally taking the best tomatoes and breeding them with the best tomatoes - what's wrong with that?
Everyone's too overcome with the idea that Monsanto is ruining the world to truly understand how agricultural science works. But that's fine, these people can grow their own damn food and leave ours alone.
The food industry is regulated to such a large scale that there is nothing inherently unsafe about it (at least not to outweigh the benefits), so I don't really bother changing anyone's mind on this because most are too caught in the loop that 'everything is bad and everyone wants to kill us!!11!1'

In regards to anti-vaxxers I don't even bother anymore. I don't have time for make belief peddled by dumbass celebrities like Jenny McCarthy. Since when is that broad an expert on anything in this world?
 

93JC

Active member
Joined
Dec 17, 2008
Messages
3,989
Word to the wise: if your kid has bacterial meningitis don't give him vitamins, mineral supplements and olive root extract.

"Parents on trial in meningitis death of toddler defended use of natural remedies in police interview"

Asked by the officer whether he considered himself an expert in naturopathic remedies, Stephan said no.

"Do we have a formal education? No. Are we educated in it? Absolutely," he said. "Has it worked for us in every single scenario in the past before this? Yes."

Ezekiel was regularly given vitamin and mineral supplements, said his father, who is a vice-president of Truehope Nutritional Support Inc., a natural remedies company founded by his father, Anthony Stephan.

"And then when he was sick there, we were giving him, above and beyond that, the olive root extract, which is an antifungal, antiviral, it's a very powerful one,"



Of course these parents were found guilty of killing their kid, which didn't stop the father from posting a screed against the medical system on his Facebook page...
 

GIjade

New member
Joined
Dec 19, 2015
Messages
618
MBTI Type
INFJ
Yeah, when it involves anyone other than yourself - someone in your charge, go the traditional route, i.e. allopathic.
 

GIjade

New member
Joined
Dec 19, 2015
Messages
618
MBTI Type
INFJ
I've seen this really huge trend lately where people just believe what they want to believe. No one looks at studies being done in these areas, no one seems to really care if data exists. Stoners frequently post about how someone claimed they gave their kid cannbis oil on the pacifier and a brain tumor diminished and it must be because of the cannabis.. Jenny McCarthy cries about vaccines.. and modern medicine had to have extensive studies showing that kangaroo care (a cheaper--aka free--, more viable alternative to incubators) beat incubators and analgesia when it came to preterm infants becoming more viable.

There's this wonderful aspect of medicine where it is discovering new things, and trying things out.. and merging old world ideas with new world concepts.

Yet, there are plenty of people that would say they get all of their medicine from eating organic food. That they eat vegan and that cures them of all their ailments. There's this notion from these websites that circulate frequently that doctors are the 'bad guys', as if they go through 12 years of school to put up with grumpy, unappreciative people because they're going to make a fortune off of these people, or as if one bad doctor makes the whole lot of them quacks.

I had a girl the other day talk about how terrible aluminum is for you. When I told her if she's ever taken even one anti-headache medicine even as a baby that she's already had more aluminum in her system than using deodorant for a year will ever cause she thinks I'm going ballistic. I told her vegetables don't "detox" the body like that--aluminum stays forever pretty much.

I find the idea inspiring for an individual--but dangerous for the masses. No one is going to get hurt thinking their deodorant is bad for them. They just aren't. It doesn't hurt anything. But then when they're told they need this hypertension medicine otherwise their heart will fail, and they think it's poison because someone told them there's aluminium in all modern medicines... non-compliance leads to worse issues. There are people using people's terrible cancer stories to push their agenda. Raw vegan eaters saying that cancer can be cured with diet alone... and talking online about how sad they felt for cancer deaths when they could have just eaten more bananas.

Doctors have preached for a long, long time now that sleep, water, exercise, a wholesome diet, and emotional support are all important approaches to health. But clearly they aren't enough.. and they cannot make grown people do any of those things. So they do what they CAN for those people--and frequently that means more medicine. It's not like they're the life police. And that somehow has gotten them a terrible rep the past few years. At the VA they were delighted that I didn't want surgery right away, and instead picked a more rigorous and annoying but less invasive physical therapy option. There are breakthroughs in modern medicine that can only be accounted for with things like medicines and vaccines, though, and the two things I think can work in great order with one another... if people didn't make it such an us vs them thing.

This isn't even counting the fact that I feel all of this detox mumbo-jumbo is just people trying to make bucks off expensive over priced organic food and off of people that want to believe there's a new, cool way of doing things based on ancestors and some Native American rawhide scroll or something.

And there's vague things as well that we don't really know the effects of... people believe x is poisonous and hormone-acting, and it might very well be true.. antibiotics are creating superbugs, and that's true as well.. so there's pushes in the right direction for safer food as a result of people who walk with these 'farmacy' ideals.

Has anyone else noticed this trend lately? Have you gotten caught up in the mix of it all? For those that believe in detoxing.. is it a purely spiritual thing, or do you believe there is evidence for it physiologically? I don't mean you switched from processed food to whole foods and got better.. I mean you stopped all aluminum coming into your body and you noticed that you no longer have headaches, nausea, etc. etc. Or you put a chlorine filter in your shower and started drinking 'alkalizing water' and now your foot fungus is gone. That sort of thing. Do you believe the placebo affect had any power in this?

Anyone want to vent about their stupid, but sweet friend that believes x or y, or brags about how a vaccine has never touched them and they're super healthy because kale is the best thing since dinosaurs can post as well.

OMG, really?!? This post is really fucked up.
 

GIjade

New member
Joined
Dec 19, 2015
Messages
618
MBTI Type
INFJ
I'll see if I can restrain myself and not post here. It might turn into a... problem.
 

Mole

Permabanned
Joined
Mar 20, 2008
Messages
20,284
What is interesting in Australia at the moment is that we are moving back to evidence based medicine.

We are now refusing to fund medicines or practices that show no evidence of efficacy.

In context I think this is part of the move back to a society based on authority rather than a society based on feeling good.

Better to do good now, we think, than feeling good.
 

Chrysanthe

New member
Joined
Jun 7, 2015
Messages
742
Enneagram
9w1
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
I almost bought into the detoxification business (Spirulina, Chlorella, Niacin, Apple Cider Vinegar, Alkaline Diet, Veganism, etc.)... I stopped researching stuff like this because I realized I would never be able to afford it. At the time my intentions were to awaken my Third Eye (the pineal gland) and gain more control over my life through strict dieting but I never really got far enough... as far as I know it could still be plausible.
 

Thalassa

Permabanned
Joined
May 3, 2009
Messages
25,183
MBTI Type
ISFP
Enneagram
6w7
Instinctual Variant
sx
I'll see if I can restrain myself and not post here. It might turn into a... problem.

Yeah. It's difficult to debate with someone who doesn't recognize the right of human beings to deny invasive medical care, and who doesn't have alarm bells knowing that their nation in particular profits from illness and obesity, while doctors in other nations are doctors because they want to help people, not collect astronomical salaries. Also, people turn naturally to homeopathic medicine when they're poor and uninsured, and there's something fundamentally wrong with a profession that requires of their "medical personell" torturous lack of sleep, de rigeur, and nurses are thankful to "only" work 16 hours...medical professionals are the number one group of people likely to become addicted to pharmaceuticals, because the way they are treated is ironically unhealthy. Also many health problems in the US ARE ACTUALLY FOOD RELATED.

Do some people take it too far? Probably. Some people don't understand that herbs can still be toxic, or that while aspirin is preferable to liver killing advil, it's not necessary to take white willow bark, because aspirin is mostly just high concentration of white willow bark, lol.
 
Top