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

sciencebasedmedicine.org

171–180 of 205 posts

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

#171
post #22

I'm getting kind of an asshole reputation for always arguing with friends who are deeply into C/AM. But I'm also starting to realize it's exactly like arguing with a religious person - there is absolutely nothing you can say to make them realize their faith is based on fallacies. There is absolutely no correlation between the general intelligence of a person and the ridiculousness of their belief claims. You could be…

I wonder if this disparity only arises at the high end of intellect/education. Below that, I find men and women to be indistinguishable in terms of what kind of beliefs and thoughts they will hold (gender-related issues aside). But, it does seem that well-educated men are more likely to develop a hardline obsession with science and rationality. I think emotion and sentiment have a lot to do with it. It's easier for u…

One theory that I've read (unfortunately, even though this is a science thread, I have no studies backing or rejecting this) is that as men are evolutionarily less valuable than women (for reproduction), the genetic variations are more pronounced in men than in women. This would mean that at the high end of intellect, more men are smarter/more rational than women, but the reverse happens at the low end; more men are also stupider than women. In statistical terms, IQ (even though intelligence is not linear) has mean 100 for both sexes, but s1 > s2, where s1 is standard variation for men, and s2 is standard variation for women.

My anecdotal evidence confirms this, but unfortunately only on the high end (my male classmates got more top grades than women, though one of the smartest people I know is a female) and in a single dimension of intelligence (I'm a mathematician).

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

#172
post #167
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice use of selective quoting. Heres another. "Other aspects of naturopathic medicine, like healthy nutrition, have been shown to lower the risk of illnesses such as heart disease and cancer. Some aspects of naturopathic medicine may be useful when used along with conventional medical treatment." Like I said, you're simply choosing to ignore the evidence. If you'd like to stay ignorant of it then that's your right an…

Claiming decent nutrition or exercise as an aspect of CAM is disingenuous at best, and at worst a way to propagate charlatanry. "Look, we do this common sense thing, therefore the rest of our stuff must be true!" Eating well, getting rest and exercise, these things are not alt med, not naturopathic, not 'integrative', they are well supported aspects of evidence based medicine.

Well I suggest you take up your objections with the American Cancer Society because that's where the quote is from. Here's their contact form.

http://www.cancer.org/aboutus/howwehelpyou/contactus/index

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

#173
post #172
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claiming decent nutrition or exercise as an aspect of CAM is disingenuous at best, and at worst a way to propagate charlatanry. "Look, we do this common sense thing, therefore the rest of our stuff must be true!" Eating well, getting rest and exercise, these things are not alt med, not naturopathic, not 'integrative', they are well supported aspects of evidence based medicine.

Well I suggest you take up your objections with the American Cancer Society because that's where the quote is from. Here's their contact form. http://www.cancer.org/aboutus/howwehelpyou/contactus/index

I'm not American, so it's not really for me to bother them. Also it's not really false, is it?

"Other aspects of naturopathic medicine, like healthy nutrition, have been shown..."

Perfectly true information. Just irrelevant because those are aspects of mainstream medicine too.

--edit-- but were I american and had medical credentials to my name, yes I absolutely would be writing to them to protest the existence of that page in its entirety. As it stands I'm just a British skeptic.

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

#174
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It doesn't follow the western model of logic, which is why uninformed people who cannot understand subtleties insist on displaying their boarishness. For instance ayurveda says the stomach has digestive fire, it does not give you a list of chemicals which break down food. Rather it seeks to strengthen that digestive fire. If you want to peek in there with a catheter and say "Nope, there is no fire, ayurveda is bullsh…

You ascribe an overly reductionist viewpoint on scientific thought.

The scientific analysis would be to note that 'digestive fire' might not literally be a fire (just like 'I've got the runs' doesn't mean that I want to run).

The corresponding experiment would be "if person X is treated with Y1 then does outcome Z occur with any statistical difference compared to treatment with Y2", where "Y2" can be "doing nothing."

This has nothing to do with peering inside the body, only with outcomes.

Once a difference has been identified, then it's reasonable to try to identify how 'digestive fire' might map to aspects of the body.

There are well more than trillions of possible treatments, so as a strategy a scientist will use a model of how the body works in order to prioritize the investigation. For example, the presence of a single butterfly between 50 and 100 meters away certainly does not affect most people's digestion, and can be put very low on the list of parameters to explore.

The only part of the "western model of logic" which applies is determining if the treatment had an beneficial effect. If you say that that doesn't apply, then you also throw out the possibility of determining if a treatment isn't actually effective.

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

#175
post #20

I agree with a lot of what this article says regarding the "naturalistic fallacy",etc. However, this quote is an example of shallow thinking that drives me nuts: "Of course, it’s hard not to note that cancer and heart disease are primarily diseases of aging, and life expectancy was so much lower back in the day that a much smaller percentage of the population lived to advanced ages" Life expectancy FROM BIRTH has ris…

>Life expectancy FROM BIRTH has risen dramatically, but if you rule out those who died before they reached 5 years old, and rule out violent deaths and/or viral/bacterial plagues, you begin to realize that life expectancy is not much higher today. That is a myth. Life expectancy is much higher at all ages. In ancient Rome, the life expectancy for a 15 year old was 52. In modern first world nations, life expectancy at…

And you don't think the life expectancy for a 15 year old being 52 didn't have to do with deaths due to disease/violence?

Let's look at a familiar group of people who had zero access to antibiotics nor modern medicine. America's founding fathers:

"For their era, the 1787 delegates (like the 1776 signers) were average in terms of life spans.[15] Their average age at death was about 67. The first to die was Houston in 1788; the last was Madison in 1836.

Secretary Charles Thomson lived to the age of 94. Johnson died at 92. John Adams lived to the age of 90. A few—Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Williamson, and Wythe—lived into their eighties. Either 15 or 16 (depending on Fitzsimons's exact age) died in their seventies, 20 or 21 in their sixties, eight in their fifties, and five only in their forties. Three (Alexander Hamilton, Richard Dobbs Spaight and Button Gwinnett) were killed in duels."

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

#176
post #48
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am someone totally open to the idea that there are herbs/food/whatever out there that have health benefits. What I never get about people into 'herbalism' is that they just say things and expect everyone to know them to be true. "X herb is good for digestion!" "X herb is good for relaxation!" How do they know this? Never once has one of them showed me a double blind study done that shows this to be true. In America…

the FDA method of approving poisons like modern medicines may not be a relevant methodology for herbs. Before you get all upset I called your favorite prescription medicine a poison, think about what it really is. A poison if taken in high doses. Ayurveda states there are 3 ways to cure disease. Food, herbs and poisons. Modern allopathy is only the third, poisons. It has very little information on how to cure through…

"Ayurveda states there are 3 ways to cure disease. Food, herbs and poisons."

That, of course, is wrong. There are additional way to cure a disease. Unless of course that you're using "poison" as a catch-all term to mean anything which isn't food or herbs, in which case it it's a rather useless redefinition to mean simply 'neither food nor herb.'

For example, radiation therapy for cancer is neither a food nor herb, so by definition you place it into "poison", even though it doesn't act like any chemical poison. There's a certain logic to that assignment - radiation treatment is not something an otherwise healthy person would do - but it's a treatment that no traditional Ayurveda practitioner ever considered.

UVB exposure (ie, sunlight or phototherapy) can be an effective treatment for some people who are vitamin B deficient because of malabsorption syndromes (like Cystic fibrosis and short bowel syndrome) which prevent them from absorbing vitamin D through their diet.

Since UVB can cure a disease but is neither a food nor an herb, it must be a poison, right? But UVB is something that healthy people get all the time, so it wouldn't normally be considered a poison. In fact, it could be removed completely, so long as there were other source of vitamin B. Still, you might say that UVB is a food instead of a poison. The problem there is that too much exposure to UVB increases the risk of cancer. Is it both a food and a poison?

Oxygen therapy is useful as part of many treatments, including aborting cluster headache attacks. Perhaps oxygen is also a food? Bu too much oxygen leads to oxygen toxicity. So it is definitely a poison, right? Interesting that we require poison in order to breath.

The issue is, as Nursie stressed, that "the dose makes the poison". Paracelsus said that almost 500 years ago, and it's still true. Even in Ayurvedic assignments of different treatments.

Ayurveda says that nutmeg is an herb, right? It's used as a medicine because of its sedative properties. But eat 10 or so of the seeds and there's a good chance you will die. So, an herb can also be a poison?

Obviously then the three categories are not that distinct. I would argue that they are blurry enough as to be unusable. Life is not so simple as to classify treatments into three distinct groups.

And I don't know what you mean by "Modern [medicine] ... has very little information on how to cure through food." Beriberi, rickets, scurvy, pellagra, kwashiorkor, Korsakoff's syndrome, and Wernicke's encephalopathy are just some of the diseases which modern medicine has cured through food. For several thousand years, beriberi was endemic in Asia, because polished white rice was a staple food.

What is the Ayurveda treatment for handle that disease, and was it developed before or after modern medical researchers identified that it was nutrition deficiency? (Hint: it was after.)

(PS: ultrasonic waves are used to break up kidney stones. That's cure for a disease, no? Are ultrasonic waves food, herb, or poison?)

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

#177
post #172
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claiming decent nutrition or exercise as an aspect of CAM is disingenuous at best, and at worst a way to propagate charlatanry. "Look, we do this common sense thing, therefore the rest of our stuff must be true!" Eating well, getting rest and exercise, these things are not alt med, not naturopathic, not 'integrative', they are well supported aspects of evidence based medicine.

Well I suggest you take up your objections with the American Cancer Society because that's where the quote is from. Here's their contact form. http://www.cancer.org/aboutus/howwehelpyou/contactus/index

Just to be clear, your primary reference is The American Cancer Society, which is a non-profit charity. You know it's not a scientific research organization, right? And one which has a rather mediocre rating, as charities go?

Why do you pick specifically that reference, which sits very carefully on the fence in order to find something good about naturopathic therapies? ("good diet" and "counseling" are, of course, quite common recommendations of any doctor)

Why not reference an actual research organization which also has patient outreach? I'm thinking specifically of The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, of the NIH, at http://nccam.nih.gov/health/cancer/camcancer.htm . They've gotten into political hot water because it was started and funded to find how if CAM is useful, only to report that no, it nearly isn't useful at all.

That site NCCA describes only on the treatments which are specific to CAM, and not shared with standard medical practice.

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

#178
post #150
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree.

Although, many of the individuals are nutritionists at reputable scientific institutes, so hopefully their opinions are informed by scientific studies. There's no guarantee of that, of course, but at least their credentials are stated up front (unlike the many nutrition experts you'll find in any given message board).

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

#179
post #3

and this is why I wish the paleo-fanatics would stop harping on the "evolutionary based" part. I eat pretty much paleo. I avoid grains, I limit dairy consumption, I avoid a lot of sugar in my food. However, a lot of the "science" behind paleo is bullshit. The name & culture is the worst thing that could have happened to the diet. Food is important to your health. I eat a lot of vegetables, high quality meat, and avoi…

Mat Lalonde (PhD Organic Chemist, Harvard) does a good job of dispelling the bullshit Paleo arguments. At the end of the day though, he still follows a generally Paleo diet. One of his talks: http://vimeo.com/27570335

This is great. Thank you so much for showing me this.

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

#180
post #177
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I suggest you take up your objections with the American Cancer Society because that's where the quote is from. Here's their contact form. http://www.cancer.org/aboutus/howwehelpyou/contactus/index

Just to be clear, your primary reference is The American Cancer Society, which is a non-profit charity. You know it's not a scientific research organization, right? And one which has a rather mediocre rating, as charities go? Why do you pick specifically that reference, which sits very carefully on the fence in order to find something good about naturopathic therapies? ("good diet" and "counseling" are, of course, qu…

I did a quick google search and it was one of the first references that came up. I only have to provide a citation that CAM sometimes works to disprove Nursies assertion that CAM "doesn't work".
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