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A year without caffeine (part 2)

bryanalexander.org

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Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#121
2 years ago, I was drinking 12 cups of coffee on an average day. More than that on days when I had night shifts. For some unknown reason I suddenly started reacting weirdly to all the caffeine. Somehow it sparked anxiousness in me. So I decided to stop drinking coffee altogether, since only a single cup would make me feel and behave strangely.

At first it was hard to concentrate, I had headaches, it was harder to wake up in the morning, etc. However, after two years I wonder why I was drinking coffee in the first place. I feel calmer and more relaxed nowadays and I'm capable of greater workloads now without feeling too exhausted.

Going without caffeine also made me appreciate the power and importance of sleep. In the fast-paced world we're living in, I believe people underestimate that. I honestly know people who think they can achieve more by sleeping less. In my opinion they couldn't be more wrong about it. A good night's sleep is what productive days are built upon.

Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#122
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that may be the dominant theory it doesn't appear to be true. I follow a doctor out of NJ who uses dietary intervention to successfully treat a lot of diseases most doctors will say are "incurable", including ulcerative colitis, IBS, lupus, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and diabetes (the adult onset type). He has an entire newsletter devoted to the following: Inflammatory Bowel Disease – Aggresive dietary mo…

If you're a lone voice in opposition to the medical and scientific establishment, then to take you seriously I'd expect to be seeing some pretty extraordinary evidence. Things that would make me more sceptical of your claims would include: 1. A glossy website with slick before/after photos that appears to be primarily an advertisement for your (expensive) courses. 2. Putting all of your evidence in a non-peer reviewe…

I agree with you on needing evidence, and as I said before, he references every claim in his books, in his newsletters, and even on his blog. As to whether they are solid references, I don't know. Most of them are from medical journals and studies I don't have access to.

But either way, who benefits? His entire plain consists of cutting out things like salt, sugar and added fats, and only eating vegetables, fruits, nuts, beans and seeds in some order (as a very basic summary). What does he have to gain aside from maybe selling a book? Once you know the plan most people need nothing else from him.

As to your lone voice claim, I haven't seen that. He works with several doctors, nutritionists, and researchers (NOT just Oz) and seems to have a thriving medical practice that has helped thousands of people.

As to the rest of your concerns:

1. What courses? I've never seen him sell any courses, unless you mean site membership, which is optional and for support only if you need it. Unless he has stock in all the major produce growers of the world, I'm not sure what he truly has to sell once a person buys the book and follows his plan. Everything else (like supplements) is optional and for support only if you need it.

2. $7 one time, not monthly. I'm puzzled why why these aren't free too. Like I said, he references every one of his claims, if you're into that. There are hundreds of references to various medical journals, papers, studies, etc. in his book Eat To Live, for example.

3. I think he uses H = N/C not as a true math equation, but as more of a shortcut to help people remember to get as many nutrients per calorie as they can (which is fundamental to his plan). I'm surprised you and others are getting hung up on this (and with such ridicule) without even bothering to understand it in context.

4. True, but what's his incentive? To sell more produce? He doesn't sell a miracle cure, and I can tell you right now that eating the way he wants you to eat is certainly not simple for me and many others. One thing I've noticed is that the bulk of people coming to him seem to be those (like me) who have spent years in pain due to "incurable" diseases, or people who have already had multiple bypass surgeries and everything else, and are sent home to prepare for death. It seems suffering provides extreme motivation.

5. I can't disagree with you on this one.

I can understand your skepticism a little, but it's not as if his website is a long form sales letter with javascript BUT WAIT popups when you try to exit it. Isn't one function of a website, I would say the primary function even, to market something? He markets his ideas and sells optional products for the benefit of his patients. What's shady about that? No miracle cure diets, pills, "free reports", etc. No long form sales letters.

I'd just hate for people to live a life of pain and suffering believing "inflammation in the colon has nothing to do with what is eaten" when it probably does, and when something can be done about it that doesn't necessarily involve their colon being removed and/or an early death.

Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#123
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a lone voice in opposition to the medical and scientific establishment, then to take you seriously I'd expect to be seeing some pretty extraordinary evidence. Things that would make me more sceptical of your claims would include: 1. A glossy website with slick before/after photos that appears to be primarily an advertisement for your (expensive) courses. 2. Putting all of your evidence in a non-peer reviewe…

@Newsletter subscriber: Also some other very common quack sign: > Overly focused on nutrition and supplements for healing all kinds of maladies. > Toxins everywhere > Fear mongering Seems very much you are wasting your 7$: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/your-disease-y... His formula doesn't make any sense. Health=micronutrients/kcal is a useless approximation. Implies that if you reduce kcal by switich…

> His formula doesn't make any sense. > It's pseudoscience.

This "formula" appears to be meant as a shortcut to remind people following his plan to eat higher micronutrient per calorie foods. I don't think it was ever meant to be a proper math equation or anything, and I'm surprised people are picking this one aspect out of context to ridicule it endlessly without truly understanding what Dr. Fuhrman means by it.

Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a recovered heroin addict I can say they're very different from going cold turkey. The symtoms may be the same but the intensity is the huge difference. Also, the mental process is very different too. Whenever people ask me what it's like I always say I'd rather have the pain of childbirth or terminal cancer. Pure hell is what it is. Oddly enough though, it's often times the more "benign" addictions that are harde…

"'What’s it like,' Karla asked me once, 'cold turkey off heroin?' I tried to explain it. 'Think about every time in your life that you’ve ever been afraid, really afraid. Someone sneaks up behind you when you think you’re alone, and shouts to frighten you. The gang of thugs closes in around you. You fall from a great height in a dream, or you stand on the very edge of a steep cliff. Someone holds you under water and…

I like that a lot!

Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a lone voice in opposition to the medical and scientific establishment, then to take you seriously I'd expect to be seeing some pretty extraordinary evidence. Things that would make me more sceptical of your claims would include: 1. A glossy website with slick before/after photos that appears to be primarily an advertisement for your (expensive) courses. 2. Putting all of your evidence in a non-peer reviewe…

I agree with you on needing evidence, and as I said before, he references every claim in his books, in his newsletters, and even on his blog. As to whether they are solid references, I don't know. Most of them are from medical journals and studies I don't have access to. But either way, who benefits? His entire plain consists of cutting out things like salt, sugar and added fats, and only eating vegetables, fruits, n…

> But either way, who benefits?

He's selling his books, his $7 newsletters and $50 / month memberships to some kind of club (or just $3000 for one-off lifetime membership!)

Re: his 'health equation'. It's obvious to you and me that you can't take it literally. But is is obvious to everyone? Particularly, is it obvious to the people he's marketing to? There's no need for a mnemonic to help people remember "get as many nutrients per calorie as you can". The equation is there to give a veneer of scientific legitimacy to his books and courses.

> I'd just hate for people to live a life of pain and suffering believing "inflammation in the colon has nothing to do with what is eaten" when it probably does.

The problem is that the medical establishment is, at best, undecided on whether diet is a factor in ulcerative colitis. I'm sure that there are some things the medical establishment is wrong about. But they are right about a great many things too.

Your claim that they are "probably" wrong is apparently based only on what this guy says on his website - a site that which seems to exist mainly to market his ideas, and sell his books, newsletters, nutritional supplements, foods and website memberships.

Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#126

I personally have never been a caffeine user. I had always assumed that if I used it regularly, my body would eventually counteradjust so that I would require coffee just to bring me back to my original baseline level of alertness. Can anyone comment on whether this is the case?

This is common with many types of drugs, especially stimulants. Your body's systems are homeostatic, they have a self regulating balance. When you introduce a drug that disrupts this your body attempts to compensate.

This is why users of stimulants, like caffeine, have to increase dosages over time to maintain the same effects. It's also part of why you have withdrawal.

Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#127
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not make salt or corn syrup a "drug", which is what brador asked about. Your definition is so broad as to make the term "drug" meaningless, as it means that even water is a drug. Yes, after swimming in the ocean waves for an hour, cold freshwater is pure pleasure, and if I haven't had enough water for a while I start to suffer from dehydration. A friend of mine has to eat a small amount every few others, el…

> That does not make salt or corn syrup a "drug", which is what brador asked about. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_addiction

I read that. It's one of the worse Wikipedia pages I've come across. Did you see that it cites the same paper twice, with different style for each one?

Anyway, I read the paper. It concludes "we suggest that sugar, as common as it is, nonetheless meets the criteria for a substance of abuse and may be “addictive” for some individuals when consumed in a “binge-like” manner. This conclusion is reinforced by the changes in limbic system neurochemistry that are similar for the drugs and for sugar. The effects we observe are smaller in magnitude than those produced by drug of abuse such as cocaine or morphine; however, the fact that these behaviors and neurochemical changes can be elicited with a natural reinforcer is interesting. _It is not clear from this animal model if intermittent sugar access can result in neglect of social activities as required by the definition of dependency in the DSM-IV-TR_ (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Nor is it known whether rats will continue to self-administer sugar despite physical obstacles, such as enduring pain to obtain sugar, as some rats do for cocaine (Deroche-Gamonet et al., 2004). Nonetheless, the extensive series of experiments revealing similarities between sugar-induced and drug-induced behavior and neurochemistry, as chronicled in Sections 4 and 5, lends credence to the concept of “sugar addiction”, gives precision to its definition, and provides a testable model."

As you can see (assuming my HN markup-foo is strong), sugar has not been shown to (or shown not to) lead to the definition of "dependency" for humans, which is a neglect of social activities. So this remains a conjecture with some supporting evidence, but not enough to make the statement that sugar is or even can be an addictive substance.

Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#128
post #103
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not make salt or corn syrup a "drug", which is what brador asked about. Your definition is so broad as to make the term "drug" meaningless, as it means that even water is a drug. Yes, after swimming in the ocean waves for an hour, cold freshwater is pure pleasure, and if I haven't had enough water for a while I start to suffer from dehydration. A friend of mine has to eat a small amount every few others, el…

I don't really know. I was explaining the above comment, not agreeing with it. One of the problems is that we have this value judgement associated with the word "drug." Once you label something a "drug", it acquires a negative connotation. One thing that distinguishes a drug from something like water is that you actually, physically depend on water; you cannot live without it. You can, however, live without sugar (th…

I hope that "drug" also acquires a positive connotation. Aspirin is a drug. Insulin is a drug. Penicillin is a drug. During pollen season, I reach for my loratadine.

Your definition is one characteristic between a drug and a non-drug, but it doesn't suffice. Meat is not essential, as the various vegetarians and vegans on this planet confirm. Does that make meat a drug? A Google search says that a few dozen people have asked, and answered that in the affirmative.

While Vilhjálmur Stefánsson and others showed that people can survive on just meat and entrails; are vegetables drugs?

Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#129
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That does not make salt or corn syrup a "drug", which is what brador asked about. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_addiction

I read that. It's one of the worse Wikipedia pages I've come across. Did you see that it cites the same paper twice, with different style for each one? Anyway, I read the paper. It concludes "we suggest that sugar, as common as it is, nonetheless meets the criteria for a substance of abuse and may be “addictive” for some individuals when consumed in a “binge-like” manner. This conclusion is reinforced by the changes…

(Sorry. It is enough to say that it "can be" an addictive substance. Too late to edit.)

Re: A year without caffeine (part 2)

#130

I personally have never been a caffeine user. I had always assumed that if I used it regularly, my body would eventually counteradjust so that I would require coffee just to bring me back to my original baseline level of alertness. Can anyone comment on whether this is the case?

Definitely. If I drink more than a cup of coffee (admittedly, coffee here is strong stuff) per day, I would get anxious, derpy, and a little physically dependent. I restrict my caffeine to one cup of coffee per day and one or two cups of tea in the afternoon for just that reason.
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