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It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

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Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

#141

Post by ericb »

papsosouid wrote: post #128
ericb wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a tremendous amount of baggage in the loaded term "natural". But I think there might be a shred of reason to underlying the naturalistic fallacy if you interpret natural to mean "previously present in our evolutionary environment and therefore has previously exhibited evolutionary selective pressure on the development of our immune system and biochemistry." In other words, novel, isolated chemicals and proces…

That is a lovely hypothesis, but it has failed to stand up to testing. You go ahead and eat all natural poison ivy salads.

What I am stating is limited in scope, and your response is as disingenuous as it is snarky.

Your example likely demonstrates selective pressure within species--specifically urushiol in plants as a protective mechanism against herbivores. But you are arguing against the relevance of selective pressure. So you have beat up a straw man in which all things natural are better, but of course, I never argued that.

Do you believe in selective pressure? Do you think digesting cow milk conferred no evolutionary advantage? There ARE studies on the prevalence of the genes for digesting dairy milk, and I think they back me up.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/science/11evolve.html?_r=0

Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

#142

Post by papsosouid »

ericb wrote: post #141
papsosouid wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a lovely hypothesis, but it has failed to stand up to testing. You go ahead and eat all natural poison ivy salads.

What I am stating is limited in scope, and your response is as disingenuous as it is snarky. Your example likely demonstrates selective pressure within species--specifically urushiol in plants as a protective mechanism against herbivores. But you are arguing against the relevance of selective pressure. So you have beat up a straw man in which all things natural are better, but of course, I never argued that. Do you b…

>But you are arguing against the relevance of selective pressure.

No, I am arguing against pretending there is a correlation between "natural" and "good" when there is not. Like I very clearly said.

Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

#143

Post by Nursie »

stiff wrote: post #140
saalweachter wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My overconfidence is mostly coming from the long tail. Even if there are millions of distinct plant chemistries out there, a small number (say, 100) will account for 90% of the herbal remedies prescribed and taken. These will have been studied by scientific methods exhaustively. The next most common chunk will have received some cursory attention, and then you enter into the vast fields of the unknown. But the fields…

I agree with your reasoning, but you assume that the outcome of the research on a given plant will very quickly lead to a total understanding of its ingredients and effects and that it will always be feasible to develop a technological process to deliver the same complex of ingredients in the form of a pill, neither of which has to be the case.

For something to be interesting the outcome of research on a given plant should at the very least be that there is an effect to study, or it's not worthwhile. Nobody says "we don't understand how it works, therefore it doesn't work and we should throw it away".

Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

#144

Post by Cthulhu_ »

nathan_long wrote: post #21
api wrote: post #12

I have a friend who's into homeopathy and such, and I normally keep my mouth shut. But I have done some thinking about why. This friend is very smart, very intellectual, very curious, and not overly credulous. She's really a bit of a nerd. From my few conversations on the matter, the thing that's jumped out at me is this: She's drawn to alternative medicine because it's open source. Like many nerds, she hates closed…

>> The physical design of the spaces is better too. Go into an alt-med clinic and it feels warm, welcoming, calming. Go into a hospital or a conventional doctors' office and it looks like a car repair shop. I'm sure the feel could be improved, but I bet the main design goal in conventional offices is "surfaces that can be easily cleaned." Not very unlike a car repair shop, really.

> "surfaces that can be easily cleaned." Not very unlike a car repair shop, really.

Except, car repair shops (at least the ones I know) are rarely clean, ;)

Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

#145

Post by Nursie »

stiff wrote: post #123
stiff wrote: post #9

Calling the "naturalistic fallacy" a fallacy is a bit of an overstretch IMO, sure natural=better is not a rule true 100% of the time, but nevertheless until sufficient evidence has not been accumulated that some of the adjustments we make to our lifestyle are not harmful to us health-wise avoiding them is not an unreasonable heuristic to follow. One example is how it became clear in the last years in nutritional scie…

Thanks for all the downvotes, aggressive trolling, comments on "pixie dust", "spirit of the planet", "poultices" etc., very constructive discussion, very scientific...

You brought up poultices, or rather you linked to an article about them!

Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

#146

Post by Cthulhu_ »

up_and_up wrote: post #70
Nursie wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything in 'high doses' is a poison, even pure, distilled water. Herbs either contain active chemicals or they're a placebo. If they're a placebo they're as good as taking a sugar pill. If they contain active chemicals they contain unstandardised amounts and probably in concert with all sorts of other things that may or may not be helpful or harmful. Ayurveda is bullshit. QED.

> Ayurveda is bullshit My wife is an Ayurvedic practitioner, so yes I am biased, but I dont believe in every aspect of it. I can definitely say it is not "bullshit" and it is indeed helping many of her clients. She has people who come to her, that conventional docs have literally given up on. "We cant figure out what is wrong with your digestion, theres nothing more we can try" she hears stories like that all the tim…

> They are sleeping better w/o medication, they are not having anxiety attacks anymore, I could go on and on with her stories.

I would definitely attribute sleeping and anxiety problems as mental issues; medication will try to mess with the body's (brain)chemistry to fix it, but, whilst not into alternative medicine, I do think non-chemical treatments - psychology, relaxation therapy, physical therapy - can help with that category of ailments.

Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

#147

Post by hmsimha »

saalweachter wrote: post #138
hmsimha wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that plants can always be reduced to merely one of their components is an oversimplification. Ask anyone who smokes marijuana why different 'strains' of the plant have different effects, or why Marinol (the pharmaceutical name for THC) is perhaps more dangerous and less helpful or pleasant than the complex cocktail of cannabanoids in their natural delivery[1]. It's also why I'll drink green tea over taking g…

I am surprised you think this is a point in your favor. Yes, the primary active ingredient in marijuana is not sufficient. But you just said different strains of marijuana have different effects . Which strain is most effective for glaucoma? Which strain is most effective for pain management during chemotherapy? Which strain doesn't help with either of those things? The same questions can be asked for any plant. Medi…

I don't see how it fails to support my argument that by reducing a plant to one or a handful of alkaloids that represent a fraction of the body of the plants chemical makeup, we risk losing out on some of what the plant has to offer. I don't disagree that sometimes, that can be a good thing. However, it's not always; in the case of Marinol "While there has never been a documented human fatality from overdosing on tetrahydrocannabinol or cannabis in its natural form,[86] Marinol can lead to death"

Additionally, the process of isolating and combining the individual components of a plant in order to reproduce observed health benefits of the plant consumed as a whole can be a long and tedious process. Marinol's failure as a good substitute for most people who desire the effects of marijuana is a pretty good example of why, even in this age of science, it is still sometimes better to go back to the source. Green tea extracts, which I also mentioned, frequently consist of Green Tea Catechins, without including, or mentioning whether they contain, L-Theanine, an amino acid in Green tea that has been observed to have nootropic and mood-elevating effects. For someone who wants to reproduce the documented benefits of GTC, by all means go ahead and take the extract. But the benefits of green tea consumed in the traditional way have been enjoyed and observed both in studies over the last few decades, as well as by millions of people over the last thousands of years. Until we've rigorously studied every alkaloid contained in the plant individually, as well as the countless combinations and permutations of those alkaloids (also taking into account the innumerable relative concentrations in which they can be delivered and balanced), it will be hard for science to say whether the components of green tea are present in the most optimal way for X Y Z desired effects

Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

#148

Post by skittles »

babblefrog wrote: post #30

A couple of points: 1. Most or all of the mummies studied were from neolithic societies, not paleolithic. The only one that might be considered paleolithic is the Unangan, but even these are from decades after they were conquered by the Russians. So they may very well have had white flour and processed sugar in their diet. I couldn't find information about their diet during this period. 2. The time needed for natural…

Seems like even scientists don't have a good understanding of diet. I just watched a show that mentioned Henry VIII's diet. They mentioned how it made him fat because of all the meat he ate. I thought "that doesn't sound right" and looked it up. He didn't eat vegetables (considered peasant food at the time) and ate a lot of meat. What probably made him fat though was all the bread, desserts, ale, and wine mixed with sugar. If he stuck to meat and added some vegetables, he would have been fine.

Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

#149

Post by kyllo »

darkarmani wrote: post #47
kyllo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to post the same thing. This is its own fallacy. It was used to market estrogen supplementation, among other spurious remedies, to post-menopausal women. "Women didn't used to live very long after menopause--the life expectancy was only about 50. You need to take estrogen pills to keep you healthy into old age." This of course was people using statistics to lie. The average life expectancy was lower prima…

> This of course was people using statistics to lie. The average life expectancy was lower primarily due to high infant mortality. Life expectancy is NOT the average age at death. Just because lower infant mortality raises the life expectancy, doesn't mean that the average age at death hasn't gone up. I agree with your life expectancy claim do, but it doesn't mean the opposite is true either.

That's a true statement--infant mortality has declined and average age at death has also increased, but the increases in average life expectancy are much more greatly attributable to the former than to the latter.

The fallacy is "{disease} is a disease of old age, and people didn't used to live past {average caveman life expectancy}. Therefore humans almost never experienced {disease} until modern times." This is very far from the truth, and is usually delivered as part of a sales pitch. I was surprised to see it repeated in the OP almost verbatim. The article debunks several other fallacies but, disappointingly, perpetuates this one.

Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

#150

Post by analog »

freyr wrote: post #81
analog wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone claimed that the Paleo diet is unhealthy ? From what I've seen the only complaints against it are that the claimed reason for it's effectiveness are not well supported. I don't have any studies but it certainly seems healthier than the high-carb, low-fat diet which was promoted by the medical establishment for so long.

For what it's worth, U.S. World & News Report annualy assembles a panel of diet and health experts ( http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/experts ) to judge a variety diets. In 2011 and 2012, the paleo diet ranked as the worst. The criteria were health, weight-loss, and ease of following. In terms of nutrition, safety, rating for diabetes, and rating for heart health, it scored a 2/5, 2.3/5, 2.1/5, and 2/5 respectively…

That's pretty unscientific, purely based on the opinions of a collection of individuals.

It also completely ignores the very personal nature of a diet. What's easy to follow for one person will be very difficult for another.

And if you're rating a diet for heart health I'd like to actually see the rates of heart related illnesses for those following the diets.

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