Science-Based Medicine

Feb 27 2012

Dr. Oz revisited

Published by David Gorski under Cancer,Energy Medicine,Science and the Media
Comments: 218

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218 responses so far

218 Responses to “Dr. Oz revisited”

# sarah007on 27 Feb 2012 at 7:51 am

Well maybe David if the CDC and the NIH didn’t keep cranking on about swine flu pandemics that are not happening their credibility might get off the floor. There is no point whining on and on about quackery when the biggest orthodox health orgs in the world are full of it.

The idea that you can replace natural immunity with artificial herd immunity has no basis in fact, it’s a theory, people have woken up to this.

Have you seen the new Harvard study on factory feedlot farmed milk being carcenogenic, whereas milk from cows who eat raw grass does not ? Probably not.
# SkepticalHealthon 27 Feb 2012 at 7:52 am

I couldn’t get more than a third of the way through this article without having to quit reading because it enrages me so. My wife DVRs Oz and I look at the “info” on the shows sometimes, amd it seems that one in two or one in three shows is featuring quackery now. I simply cannot understand the anti-intellectual movement that is taking over America. It’s as if it’s trendy to believe in stupider and stupider things. Each of these beliefs is so ridiculously stupid and yet people believe them due to the naturalistic fallacy. They’ll willingly shove handfuls of dubious quality and efficacy unknown supplements and vitamins that actually increase mortality, heart disease, and cancer down their throats, but the moment you suggest a statin because their LDL is double what it should be, they freak out because “its medicine!” Mesnwhile these quack idiot are suggesting lethal diets (Kat James, Sally Fallon) that promote high (saturated) fat diets which only reinforce bad behavior (sure! You can be healthy by eating bacon, butter, and steak all the time!)

My mothers’ father died of a heart attack at age 50. My mother is lazy and has not exercised in twenty years. She has elevated cholesterol and was started on a statin years ago. Her liver enzyme raised slightly (I’m talking about 20 IU/L over upper limit of normal.) Bevause of the naturalistic “propaganda” on statins she freaked out and quit taking her statin. She’s been so brainwashed by these naturalistic idiots that she is convinced the stain will cause liver failure. Meanwhile she has been misled in terms of diet and is eating a diet high in saturated fats. So she has family history of early cardiac death, doesn’t exercise, is overweight, eats poorly, and does not take a statin. My mother will die early because of assho1es like Oz, Mercola, Weil, and Hyman. I do not refer to these bastards as doctors, because they should not be advocating anything that does harm to patients, and in my opinion, they do harm patients.

I do not understand how this idiocy is so pervasive in America, but I sincerely appreciate the efforts of sites like this and it’s authors, and all of the rest of you who run blogs and make people aware of medical quackery.
# tgobbion 27 Feb 2012 at 8:33 am

“Mercola’s final claim is basically the naturalistic fallacy on steroids. To hear him tell it, shoes are the root of all evil. You shouldn’t wear them any more than you have to because, well, they keep the soles of your feet from contacting Gaia the earth. Here’s what he says on Dr. Oz’s website…”

Although it’s so long ago that I no longer remember the source, I know I once read that Jerome Rodale (“Prevention” magazine founder) believed that walking barefoot in the morning dew was a terrific way to pick up the earth’s energy. Rodale, you may recall, is the guy who claimed that he was going to live to be 100 because of his “health” practices. He only missed his goal by 28 years, dying at 72 of of a heart attack (or stroke) while taping an interview for a late-night TV broadcast! He claimed “I’m going to live to be 100, unless I’m run down by some sugar-crazed taxi driver.”
# Aliaon 27 Feb 2012 at 8:54 am

Hey, I do love the part about walking barefoot – if only because I have very sensitive feet and most shoes will rub my skin. And of course I’m lucky enough to work from home for half a day, where nobody cares if I sit in front of my computer barefoot.

My mother in law is unfortunately a fan of alternative therapies. She doesn’t watch dr Oz (we’re not American) but she reads all those colourful magazines that advertise supplements, homeopathy, touch healing and so on. And she’s very unhappy, when we turn all her bright ideas down.
# Bogeymamaon 27 Feb 2012 at 10:15 am

There’s a Canadian journalist who writes skeptically about medical topics, and she interviewed Dr. Oz a few weeks ago. She tried to make him cough up why his shows are so full of crap: (sorry, don’t know how to make the link clickable.)

http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/02/14/dr-oz-faith-healer/
# sowellfanon 27 Feb 2012 at 10:19 am

To the extent that grounding works, I think it’s because it makes people feel like hobbits. Perhaps they could test whether glueing hair to their feet makes for a greater effect size.
# nybgruson 27 Feb 2012 at 10:29 am

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

The thing that all quacks and pseudoscientists conveniently forget is that all untruths pass through the first 2 stages in exactly the same manner.
# WilliamLawrenceUtridgeon 27 Feb 2012 at 10:40 am

Heh, I’m reading Bogeymama’s link. There’s one fantastic line:

I’d take you back to a time of 1,000 years ago, in little villages where there was always a healer. They didn’t do hernia operations on you. They heard you, they listened to you, they let you tell your story.

And a month later you died of gangrene. How Oz thinks that “healing” (i.e. helping people feel better about their illnesses) comes before “treatment” (i.e. actually preventing people from dying) I’ll never understand.

And some other interesting ones:

Fifteen per cent of what goes through your body goes through undigested. So it’s not quite calories in. Also, we have different flora in our guts and those flora help you absorb calories differently—not huge differences—but we’re looking more and more at that.

Really, it’s about the 85% of calories that actually get absorbed into your body, isn’t it? That’s the meaningful in part of “calories in”. And if the bacterial flora has only a tiny inflence on the number of calories absorbed, why focus on it? Why bother with the 0.5% difference that gut flora makes on your “calories in” when the important part is the 99.5% purely based on how much mayo you put on your ham sandwich?

We spend three-quarters of the show in subtle ways going at those same points, trying to get that message across in a way that resonates with you.

Really? So the episode on raspberry ketones spent 25% of the time on the ketones, and 75% on how important it is to eat right and exercise? It’s not just one minute at the end saying “you have to exercise”? It’s surprising he has any viewers.

If you went line by line through the show and try to figure out what part of it is glitzy stuff, like icing on the cake, and what part is the meat of the cake, I bet that’s the right ratio: three-quarters is meat and potatoes, hard-core stuff you got to do but that’s the medicine. And if you just give people medicine, no one is going to watch the show. You have to give people information that seems like it’s novel and different and actionable. And do it in a way that’s defensible and exciting. Otherwise, you’re not going to have a show.

First, it’s amusing he makes reference to “meat and potatoes” in a discussion about the importance of diet to weight loss

Second, “you have to be exciting otherwise you won’t have a show” just comes across as “we basically have to ignore the real science so we have a show”. Astonishing.
# BobbyGon 27 Feb 2012 at 10:41 am

@SkepticalHealth -

“I simply cannot understand the anti-intellectual movement that is taking over America. It’s as if it’s trendy to believe in stupider and stupider things.”
___

Like these guys.

http://www.bgladd.com/ConstitutionalExpert.jpg
http://www.bgladd.com/TeaBagger.jpg

Welcome to the Proudly Ignorant Idiocracy. The world has simply gotten too complex, crowded, and frightening for a lot of people.
# DevoutCatalyston 27 Feb 2012 at 11:17 am

@tgobbi

That would be The Dick Cavett show, and Mr. Cavett’s account of it — complete with the asparagus boiled in urine quip — is pretty good,

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/when-that-guy-died-on-my-show/
# qetzalon 27 Feb 2012 at 11:33 am

The logical explanation for the reduction in inflammation is that the Earth’s negatively charged antioxidant electrons enter the body and neutralize positively charged free radicals in the body.

Riiiight! Like the superoxide radical, which is negatively charged. Or the hydroxyl radical, which is uncharged. Or nitric oxide, also uncharged. How about the peroxy radicals that often result when hydroxyl radicals react with lipids in the cell membrane? Uncharged. OK then, what about peroxides, which aren’t truly radicals, but are a major type of reactive oxygen species that can cause damage in biological systems? Uncharged.

Positively charged free radicals do exist, but I’m not aware of any that play a significant role in biology. Certainly not at the level of the above neutral and negatively charged radicals.

This is something that always tickles me about CAM. Everything always has to have some simple, definitive explanation, which is always delivered as if it were proven fact – no how much the evidence may be lacking or (as in this case) contradictory. Just once I’d like to hear a (s)CAM artist say something like “I believe grounding is really good for you (based on all these unscientific anecdotes), but I’m not sure why it works!”
# Earthmanon 27 Feb 2012 at 11:55 am

“…sitting, working or sleeping indoors connected to conductive systems, transfering the energy from the ground into the body. ”

If using such a device I would not want to have a nearby lightning strike. Sounds horrendously dangerous to me.
# CarolMon 27 Feb 2012 at 11:56 am

It all makes sense that this should happen now, as the Baby Boomers hit retirement age, carrying all the baggage from the Sixties.
Health worries, and time on their hands to watch daytime TV. There never was a lot of respect for science there.

They’re a prime audience for this crap.
# Earthmanon 27 Feb 2012 at 12:07 pm

“…the earth’s surface is highly conductive…”

Errr, well, as a soil scientist I can say the opposite is true. Soil is a pretty good insulator. It is possible to get a bit of a charge through it if the soil is moist or wet, but it is still a pretty good resistor if there is none or only a little electrolyte in the soil water, which is the normal situation. Salt works as an electrolyte, and the only places you get good soil conductance is where you have large concentrations of salt in the soil – indeed we use electrical conductance as a measure of salt content.
# superdaveon 27 Feb 2012 at 12:12 pm

If you can sell people the health benefits of walking barefoot, I am pretty sure now that you can make up damn near anything and get people to buy it.
# Earthmanon 27 Feb 2012 at 12:27 pm

Oh, and if you think that my second post contradict my first….lightning has an enormous voltage so even though the soil is a pretty good insulator it has a big enough charge to cause a localised area of high voltage where it hits. Indeed the insulation of the soil slows down the dispersal of the lightning charge such that there are extreme effects within a small area around the strike. If the earth was highly conducting then the lighting would just disperse into the ground, but instead it blows things apart because the charge cannot get away fast enough.
# sarah007on 27 Feb 2012 at 12:48 pm

Skeptical health ranted “My mother will die early because of assho1es like Oz, Mercola, Weil, and Hyman”

Not true actually, if she dies, and that I don’t say lightly, it is because as you said she eats a saturated fat diet and doesn’t excersise. If she wants to live statins are irrelavant. It is this lie that doctors promote, ie you can abuse your body because we can sell you a drug that lets you, what the hell is your point you numpty!
# bgoudieon 27 Feb 2012 at 1:17 pm

“Have you seen the new Harvard study on factory feedlot farmed milk being carcenogenic, whereas milk from cows who eat raw grass does not ? Probably not.”

No Sarah we haven’t and you know why, because there is no actually study on that. Dr Ganmaa Davaasambuu has made claims of a correlation between levels of estrogen compounds in milk fat and cancer rates in certain countries, but there is as of yet nothing that shows actual evidence of there being any causation.

Just so you understand, getting your information from places like Natural News is the same as going to Answers in Genesis for geology or The Watcher Files for details about politics and exobiology.
# sarah007on 27 Feb 2012 at 1:36 pm

Septikal health said “They’ll willingly shove handfuls of dubious quality and efficacy unknown supplements and vitamins that actually increase mortality, heart disease, and cancer down their throats”

How’s this for a medical anecdote, masquerading as a hard science fact then? And you wonder why people are starting to realise that doctors are ranting ill informed nutters?

Bobby G rightly pointed out ““I simply cannot understand the anti-intellectual movement that is taking over America. It’s as if it’s trendy to believe in stupider and stupider things.”

Yeah like presidents that bomb third world countries to bring peace to the world and norks in white coats who tell us we are all going to die, again, from some viral crap that is spreading unseen. How about raising the debt overdraft allowance to 100 trillion so you can carry on spending.

There is so much anger on this site, you need some Reiki or maybe a nice smelly massage.
# SkepticalHealthon 27 Feb 2012 at 1:43 pm

@sarah, I’m ashamed to even reply to someone as utterly devoid of intellect as yourself, but with regards to my statement of vitamins and supplements increasing the risk of mortality, heart disease, and cancer, you should look up the results of the ATBC, NORVIT, SELECT, Iowa Women’s Health, and PHS II trials. You’re a true fool.
# rwkon 27 Feb 2012 at 1:59 pm

@sarah007
Thanks for extracting the Michael out of this bunch. They need it constantly. It’s now more fun than
angering to check these posts regularly.
# liladyon 27 Feb 2012 at 2:22 pm

Please do not feed the Troll 007.

Dr. Oz on his website states,

“Dr. Mercola claims that a process called “grounding” or “earthing” can significantly change your health. Grounding or earthing refers to contact with the Earth’s surface electrons by walking barefoot outside or sitting, working or sleeping indoors connected to conductive systems, transfering the energy from the ground into the body. Emerging research supports that this may result in reduced pain, better sleep and less inflammation. The logical explanation for the reduction in inflammation is that the Earth’s negatively charged antioxidant electrons enter the body and neutralize positively charged free radicals in the body. To get this benefit, Dr. Mercola recommends grounding or earthing sheets, made with fine thin strands of silver and which connect to an outlet; these cost about $200.”

This is interesting. Here is Mercola’s “take” on the dangers of electromagnetic fields/sleeping with electric blankets which “…connect to an outlet.”

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/02/24/Is-Your-Electric-Blanket-Safe.aspx

Joe should be culling the old articles on his blog, before he goes on the Dr. Oz show touting energy fields and earthling sheets.
# EricGon 27 Feb 2012 at 3:52 pm

question for sarah007

“…with artificial herd immunity has no basis in fact, it’s a theory, people have…”

might you kindly explain how facts are superior to theories?
# sarah007on 27 Feb 2012 at 5:58 pm

rwk, thanks for that. Tell all your friends that they don’t like it up em, to log on and enjoy flushing.
# Pmanon 27 Feb 2012 at 7:32 pm

Would love to see SBM delve into some of the harder hitting issues of our medical time – stents + CAD, for instance.
# Harriet Hallon 27 Feb 2012 at 7:47 pm

@Pman,
See http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/an-owners-manual-for-the-heart/
Among other things, it points out that stents do not prevent future heart attacks.
# Pmanon 27 Feb 2012 at 7:56 pm

http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20120227/stents-overused-stable-heart-patients

My question will be, will the cardiologist who chooses to continue to place stents in stable CAD patients (assuming it’s a black and white issue, which it’s not) be given the ‘quack’ label if their intervention conforms to current physiological thinking despite being unproven in the literature? For the subgroup in question, it’s a placebo intervention.
# Harriet Hallon 27 Feb 2012 at 8:14 pm

@Pman,
As that article says, the practice is slowly changing in response to new and better evidence. “Most people are trying to do the right thing and are following the appropriate use criteria to make sure these interventions are being given for the right reasons,”

This is not an example of quackery, it’s an example of science in action. When the standard of practice changes, doctors who continue obsolete practices become liable for lawsuits.

And as you say, this is not black and white yet.
# papertrailon 27 Feb 2012 at 9:39 pm

I’m so glad you’re taking Mercola and Dr. Oz to task here on SBM. It is crazy how popular Mercola is becoming, just astounding. I first saw Dr. Oz’s name when he came out in support of John of God’s fake surgery. This faker shoves metal up your sinus cavity to supposedly heal cancer, or whatever. Oz reported to the media that maybe the brain is stimulated by the probe.

I think the world is going mad, falling for all this garbage. I’m not sure what can be done to redirect it. To me, the biggest threat to medical advancement is that resources are going to “integrating” voodoo with medical practice. I wouldn’t mind if they kept it under the umbrella of religious and spiritual support.

We are not talking about stupid people here; I know brilliant, often well-educated, professional people who use (and recommend, and defend) homeopathy, reiki, silver, acupunture, etc. I see a strange disconnect. What can be done to change the direction? Nasty won’t do it; logic only seems to persuade some that are on the fence. Maybe petitions to medical schools and hospitals so that they know there are many people who don’t support this trend away from science-based practices? I’m sure part of their motive is that they need the business/money that “alternative” medicine and spiritual support brings in. People want it, that’s what I’ve been told.

Anyway, thank goodness for SBM and other sites like this!
# Lytrigianon 27 Feb 2012 at 11:11 pm

The earth is a vast reservoir of naturally produced electrons.

Naturally produced electrons? As opposed to… what? All those nasty ARTIFICIAL electrons cranked out by Big Pharma’s notorious electron mills?

Strange they’ve neglected the industry that’s practically obsessed with grounding. Electronics manufacturing of any kind must be very careful about electrostatic discharge (ESD), a fancy word for the kind of sparks you get after dragging your feet across the carpet and touching something metal. Only, in the world of microelectronics, the tiniest sparks that you’d never even notice can destroy a chip. So EVERYTHING is grounded, including the workers, who at the very least wear conductive straps connecting their ankles to the ground. They might also wear a wrist strap that grounds them to their workbench, which is itself grounded, and they sit on metal-framed stools that are grounded too. By this logic, workers in electronics assembly must perforce be healthier than all the rest of us put together, since they spend their entire workdays grounded.

Right? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
# jimbog81on 28 Feb 2012 at 12:57 am

Mixing science with pseudoscience is a dangerous game–for patients, not “doctors”. After all, these “doctors” make money off of it. One has to wonder how many people have become seriously ill or have died as a result of listening to such people’s “medical advice”. What’s worse is these scam artists are everywhere.

I searched Google for videos before I started writing this post and arbitrarily picked any video as an example as to how rampant and how ludicrous this quackery has become. I searched “wheat allergy” because it’s the new black. Or is wheat allergy soooo 2011? I’m not even sure. I don’t keep up with these trends. And that’s exactly what these “doctors” are doing, turning diseases into trends–real actual diseases. They take a real disease, pervert it so much that they create an entirely new fake disease, market this new disease to the masses, and then sell them the cure.

I could write pages and pages as to why this is extremely dangerous for people who may actually have the real version of the disease.

Below is the link to the random video I chose. I you were have awake in any high school science class, red flags should be going up when you watch this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAK-SfOYMCE

(Actually, I shouldn’t say I randomly chose this video. I clicked on it because the thumbnail had what looked like an ACTUAL doctor giving a lecture.)
# stanmrakon 28 Feb 2012 at 1:06 am

Apparently, no one here has bothered to investigate any of the double-blind studies that have been done on the effects of earthing. Any real believer in science wouldn’t make blanket statements like those made here without actually checking the evidence.

The derogatory comments made here about earthing exhibit a complete lack of understanding of even the basic concept!
# stanmrakon 28 Feb 2012 at 1:24 am

Actually, Lytrigian, Earthing was “discovered” by a cable executive who has more experience with grounding than anyone here. He didn’t “neglect” the electronics industry – he worked in it his whole life!

And the person who tried to compare earthing with electric blankets? Learn some basic electrical principles before you shoot off your mouth.
# liladyon 28 Feb 2012 at 1:33 am

“Any real believer in science wouldn’t make blanket statements like those made here without actually checking the evidence.”

I made the BLANKET STATEMENT and I provided the link to what Mercola reported two years ago about the dangers of ELECTRIC BLANKETS and their “dangerous electromagnetic fields”:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/02/24/Is-Your-Electric-Blanket-Safe.aspx

Now he is touting earthling sheets and the wonders of electromagnetic fields. I suggest you contact Mercola to see why he has flip-flopped on his opinion. Did he actually “check the evidence”?
# Lytrigianon 28 Feb 2012 at 1:41 am

@stanmrak — LOL! An executive! In cable, no less. Sorry, but that’s not sufficient cred. Maybe he took a few days to look over things “on the floor” and had to ground himself then — although that’s far from normal in the cable business unless you’re pawing around inside graphics hardware or something — and then noticed how much better he felt. Sure. He was on his feet walking around, not sitting on his executive butt all day. That’d make most people feel better.

No, I don’t know that for a fact. But it’s at least as plausible as the idea that the earth’s “natural electrons” somehow fix you up.

Just so you know, I’m speaking from firsthand experience having spent several years supporting an electronics assembly line when I routinely had to ground myself. No, some cable executive does not have more experience in it than I do.

Please provide references to your double-blind studies. I’m sure there would be interest. Lacking that, the idea fails a basic plausibility test.
# sarah007on 28 Feb 2012 at 2:12 am

ATBC Skeptical health, just one thing again the trial with vitamin A used artificial vitamin A, which funnily enough has the exact opposite effect on cancer as the real thing. I wonder how you got to the point where quoting a study,( like others on the hay is the same as raw grass, corn is the same as grain therefore……..)
That is not testing anything but the researchers deviceiness, stupidy or grant funding convinced you that this SBM was the real macoy?

However hard you medical scientists try you can’t reduce everything to molecule chains and synthesis nature, nothing to do with god or religion either.

Everytime I wonder who is right in this large mess I just think back to swine flu and it all becomes clear, the people still dying from heart disease, cancer, asthma that wasn’t even listed as a fatal condition, just debilitating before the advent of bronchdilators. You have a hell of a marketing task on your hands.

Keep painting, the rust is shining through.
# papertrailon 28 Feb 2012 at 3:38 am

“I wonder who is right in this large mess I just think back to swine flu…”

The only “mess” was that the pandemic wasn’t as bad as people worried it would be (better to be prepared just in case, though), and the vaccine was not available early enough to prevent more cases and save more flu complications and lives.

CDC reported: “…impact from vaccine and antiviral treatment are as follows: 713,000 to 1.5 million cases, 12,300 to 23,000 hospitalizations, and 620 to 1,160 deaths averted. Of these, 713,000 to 1.5 million cases, 3,900 to 10,400 hospitalizations, and 200 to 520 deaths were averted as a result of the vaccination campaign (CDC, unpublished data, 2011), whereas the use of influenza antiviral medications is estimated to have prevented another 8,400 to 12,600 hospitalizations and another 420 to 640 deaths.”

“… estimates of the burden of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, which resulted in approximately 43 million to 89 million cases, 195,000 to 403,000 hospitalizations, and 8,900 to 18,300 deaths, including 910 to 1,880 deaths among children aged <18 years, during April 2009–April 2010 (3). CDC-supported evaluations have shown that the vaccine was effective in preventing influenza medical visits during the pandemic (4). However, because there was early widespread circulation of the 2009 H1N1 virus, many persons in the United States became ill before vaccine was available."
# sarah007on 28 Feb 2012 at 5:04 am

Papertrail said “The only “mess” was that the pandemic wasn’t as bad as people worried it would be (better to be prepared just in case, though)”"because there was early widespread circulation of the 2009 H1N1 virus, many persons in the United States became ill before vaccine was available.”

This is a joke, what preparation was that then Pt?

(CDC, unpublished data, 2011) Who the hell believes these guys and you are quoting them as evidence, where was your head during this bollocks?

“estimates of the burden of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic,” Lots of science there then!

It is getting funnier PT, keep it up I can’t wait for the next round of evidence.
# papertrailon 28 Feb 2012 at 5:27 am

Earthing? Life expectancy since the days of humans walking barefoot has gone up. And since the world of alternative treatments depends on correlation always meaning causation, wearing shoes and sleeping in beds causes increased longevity.
# sarah007on 28 Feb 2012 at 6:41 am

Gobbit said “To hear him (mercola) tell it, shoes are the root of all evil. You shouldn’t wear them any more than you have to because, well, they keep the soles of your feet from contacting Gaia the earth.”

2 weeks ago a good friend of mine had mortons neuroma, the doctor explained the pathway of treatment. Steroid injections, if no good cut out the nerve.

Went to alt med who told her to take off her shoes and walk barefoot as much as possible for the next week. The pain has now gone.

What the fuck was the doctor on? Protocols and research guidelines. Funnily enought orthopedic research shows us that cultures that wear shoes get bunions, MN in fact all of the foot pathologies, hammer toe……

Barefoot cultures don’t. So you can package it up as wacky but experience is more real than medical research, yet again. God, and I am not religious, I hope you get bunnions, you deserve the best medicine has!
# qetzalon 28 Feb 2012 at 7:47 am

@stanmrak

Apparently, no one here has bothered to investigate any of the double-blind studies that have been done on the effects of earthing.

How about you give us a link? No need to link to *all* of them, of course. (Probably waaay too many for that!) Just point out one of the most compelling.
# David Gorskion 28 Feb 2012 at 8:02 am

Stanmrak should be very careful what he wishes for. He might just get it. I have looked at a couple of the studies touted by Earthing advocates as “evidence.” I also saw a more recent one that doesn’t look so hot either. If stamrak’s really nice to me, maybe I’ll do a followup post next Monday looking at the “evidence” for Earthing in more detail.
# sarah007on 28 Feb 2012 at 9:36 am

“If stamrak’s really nice to me, maybe I’ll do a followup post next Monday looking at the “evidence” for Earthing in more detail.”

Is this peer review David?
# stanmrakon 28 Feb 2012 at 10:01 am

sarah007, it’s “peer review” as practiced by the medical and pharmaceutical industry. Also known as “cherry-picking.”
# Scotton 28 Feb 2012 at 11:00 am

I don’t care in the least what “double blind studies” stanmrak claims support the validity of earthing. It’s in the same category as homeopathy. Even if the studies demonstrate that there is SOMETHING happening (i.e. they reject the null hypothesis), it wouldn’t actually support earthing. The prior probability of that is so low compared to innumerable other explanations (up to and including deliberate fraud) that no possible such study could be convincing.

Refute all the basic science that says it’s impossible FIRST. Only then would direct tests of “earthing” have any meaning.
# stanmrakon 28 Feb 2012 at 11:07 am

lilady – I don’t know much about electricity, but enough to know that an Earthing Sheet is not the same as an electric blanket, just because they both have wires running thru them and plug into a socket. The blanket has electrical current running thru it, and produces an electromagnetic field that can be measured. An earthing device has no current running thru it, and no electrical field. Actually, it is said to dissipate any effect from AC electrical fields. This again can easily be measured on a human body using basic electrical meters.

Most of the comments here seem to lack even a fundamental grasp of science-based arguments; they instead reek of prejudice and skepticism without any investigation. “If Dr. Oz says it, it must be BS” seems to be the main criteria for judgment, often, the only one.
# stanmrakon 28 Feb 2012 at 11:09 am

Scott – thank you for illustrating my point so clearly.
# Scotton 28 Feb 2012 at 11:26 am

Hardly. If anything, it illustrates just how much you’re demanding open-mindedness to the point where one’s brains fall out.

No single study (heck, no thousand studies) of “earthing,” however large or well designed, can have any prayer of refuting the entire body of electromagnetism. Which is what would be required to accept the hypothesis being advanced. Pretending otherwise is the complete antithesis of science and skepticism.
# stanmrakon 28 Feb 2012 at 11:46 am

Sorry, Mr. Gorski, but you have disqualified yourself as a legitimate peer-reviewer on the subject of Earthing. You’ve already demonstrated your bias by posting half-baked opinions as facts, as if you had actually done some serious research.
# Quillon 28 Feb 2012 at 11:47 am

Ooh. I’d love to see a post about “earthing” and all the wonders it brings. If there isn’t enough evidence I’d like to apply for funding for a study. It will involve three groups. The control group will sleep under regular blankets, the earthers will sleep under the grounding blankets, and the third will (attempt to) sleep under standard blankets but with an active fifteen-foot tall Tesla Coil in the room. (Ok, I confess: I’m not so much interested in doing the study as getting enough loot to buy my own fifteen-foot tall Tesla Coil. But still. I bet I could get funding from NCCAM if I throw in some post-sleep therapeutic touch or something.)
# Calli Arcaleon 28 Feb 2012 at 11:49 am

Lytrigian:
That’s exactly what I was thinking too!

Earthing is definitely done in the high tech industries. And if it has the health benefits claimed, then we shouldn’t expect to see many health problems among the workers at, for instance, Foxconn’s big factories in China….

If somebody wanted a grounding mat for their mattress, one can easily be purchased at an electronics supply source. A brief Google search showed me where I could get a six foot grounding mat, 30″ wide, with one snap and a grounding cord, for $67.46, plus shipping and handling. I wonder how much the woo-woo ones cost? (Google is my friend: a small mat is sold for $49.99, with a $10 discount that is currently being offered. Very little information on the site is provided to ascertain the performance of the mat. So I strongly get the impression that if you want to try grounding your way to better health, don’t get ripped off by the health stores. Buy it from an electronics supply house. Heh — and the store I found selling that links to the Dr Oz video discussed above!)

And whether or not they actually work? Well, I know when I’m grounded at work, I can’t perceive any difference at all. I have to check the light on the box that I plug my strap into. Which is why those boxes test for a proper ground at all times — human beings can’t actually perceive it. They emit a very loud squeal if a proper ground is not achieved. Oh, and by the way, lying on a mat probably won’t ground you very well, given how hard it is to get a good ground through the damn strap, which puts bare metal to my skin. Standing on a grounding pad barefoot and working on exposed ESD-sensitive product would possibly get you fired at my company. It would certainly get you a warning. (And not just because we have closed-toe-shoe requirements in the manufacturing facility. Because our computers are freakin’ expensive, and we can’t afford lots of failures due to ESD damage.)
# sarah007on 28 Feb 2012 at 1:06 pm

Hi Stanmrak “Most of the comments here seem to lack even a fundamental grasp of science-based arguments; they instead reek of prejudice and skepticism without any investigation.“

It’s called Septik thinking, nothing to with science really. The big problem is they always default to published papers, when you read them they are testing something else and then they magically become evidence. The vitamin studies on effects on pathologies are ridiculous, they use synthetic vitamins and then claim they have no effect!
# nybgruson 28 Feb 2012 at 1:44 pm

ok, sorry, I couldn’t resist:

just because they both have wires running thru them and plug into a socket. The blanket has electrical current running thru it, and produces an electromagnetic field that can be measured. An earthing device has no current running thru it, and no electrical field.

So moving ions through wires doesn’t generate an electrical or magnetic field? REALLY? I mean, lets just be really frakkin’ clear here… the ENTIRE POINT of the “earthing blanket” is to REMOVE the deadly positive ions via the “natural” negative ones. How, in any universe, is that NOT a current through a wire????

Actually, it is said to dissipate any effect from AC electrical fields.

Home Depot called. They need their shovels back.

How, dear sir, would you propose that an electrical field (AC or otherwise) would be dissipated WITHOUT MOVING ANY IONS OR CURRENT?

I don’t know much about electricity,

That is so abundantly clear you could have just finished your post there.
# David Gorskion 28 Feb 2012 at 1:48 pm

Most of the comments here seem to lack even a fundamental grasp of science-based arguments; they instead reek of prejudice and skepticism without any investigation. “If Dr. Oz says it, it must be BS” seems to be the main criteria for judgment, often, the only one.

You have it backwards. The message is not, “If Dr. Oz says it it must be BS.” The message is, “Dr. Oz is promoting BS, and here’s a particularly egregious example.”

There, fixed that for ya.
# David Gorskion 28 Feb 2012 at 1:51 pm

Sorry, Mr. Gorski, but you have disqualified yourself as a legitimate peer-reviewer on the subject of Earthing. You’ve already demonstrated your bias by posting half-baked opinions as facts, as if you had actually done some serious research.

I’m sorry, Mr. stanmrak, I just can’t stop laughing at the incredibly obvious way you call me “Mr.” instead of “Dr.” It’s so childish and just plain obvious that I had to chuckle heartily, given how many others like you have done it. Thanks. You brightened an otherwise not-so-great day.
# mdstudenton 28 Feb 2012 at 2:00 pm

“To get this benefit, Dr. Mercola recommends grounding or earthing sheets, made with fine thin strands of silver and which connect to an outlet; these cost about $200.”

Is there any health myth Dr. Mercola hasn’t exploited to make a buck?
# MerColOzcopyon 28 Feb 2012 at 2:04 pm

I am new here, first post, so be gentle:)

I have to admit I watched Oz and subscribe to Mercola. I liked Oz because of the segments he use to do on symptoms that could be signs of serious illness. Lately it’s all about supplements and diet. I remember that segment with Dr. Steve Novella, I was kind of pissed at him because he kept his cool and made some very valid points. And how dare he challenge my Dr. Oz:)). I actually went to Mercola’s website from info on the Oz. show. I just read the “Story at a Glance” section and usually not the whole piece.

Recently I went to the comment section to challenge some of the stuff he talks about. I was very surprised and some what amused how the comment section is set up. You are given a label and description like; Dissenter, Stumbler, Getting Started, Novice User, all the way to Founder, Mercola himself. There is also a point system. In all, I think I made comments on three topics, and went from “Getting Started” to a “Dissenter”…which means in Mercola’s own words “This user has posted comments that are in disagreement with the Mercola.com community; their comments should be viewed with caution.” My Last comment on his article “The Silent Time Bomb on Your Plate – When Will Your Moment of Truth Arrive?”, was deleted and I received this message in my email. “Content contained within your posting violated our terms of service and your posting has been deleted. Repeat or flagrant offenses of this nature may result in your account being banned”.

This is the comment that was deleted:

Mercola, really??? If the statement, “(CAFOs), all driven by large corporations whose chief motivation is maximizing profit”, is true, then how can this be valid, that “small independent farms cost more to operate and are less profitable is a myth that has been disproven by science”???

Comparing $150/acre to $3000/acre is just ridiculous. You know there is farm land in places other than California!!!, where the growing season is 3 or 4 months. Lets see, would I rather spend all my time on 10 acres, at $3000/acre ($30,000), or about 200 hours on 3000 acres at your number of $150/acre. ($450,000) By the way, guys have been making $400-$500/acre in the last few years with round-up ready Canola, that’s $1.2-$1.5 million. Maybe if some of your readers would go and replace the cheap migrant workers that work the fields across the US, that $3000/acre would probably be a loss.

Speaking of maximizing profits, instead of selling pills over the internet…go do some organic farming, you seem to know how profitable and great it is. Or maybe selling pills to puppets is maximizing profits???

And also, do you really believe land that just three years ago, that was growing GMO’s for the previous 10, and is now growing organic grops, has no volunteer GMO’s in the final product???

I guess you have to read the article to see my point.

So, to come to this site and see that postings seem not to be censored was great, if they were I guess “Sarah007″ would have been long gone:)) I am happy to say that I never ordered anything from Mercola. Though my favorite thing he has is a make shift bidet that plumbs into the water supply on your toilet. I live in the country and that water temperature comes at about 34 deg.F, ooouch!! He even has a video promoting this thing.

Anyways a quick comment about grounding, I heard bare foot, in the rain, on a golf course, holding lightning rod, in a thunderstorm, works really well!!!:)) As far as the Dr. Oz show, I am sad to say I think it has “Jumped the Shark”. Also, I am really glad that Dr. Oz does still believes in some Science Based Medicine and had the Colonoscopy.

Thanks for this Site:))
# Scotton 28 Feb 2012 at 2:48 pm

Holy mackerel – 34 degree water’s no fun in any context, but the thought of a 34 degree BIDET makes me shudder (literally).

Welcome to SBM – I hope you continue to enjoy it.
# WilliamLawrenceUtridgeon 28 Feb 2012 at 2:52 pm

It’s funny when quacks criticize skeptics for providing (so they claim) biased evidence – then provide no evidence, citations or substantiation. Or criticize peer review as providing no guarantee of quality (as if we weren’t aware of that, ignoring that peer review is but one aspect of the scientific process, not all of it). Or criticize the scientific community for being baised because Big Pharma keeps bribing them, ignoring the money and fame that CAM practitioners accrue by pretending to be iconoclasts when really they’re little more than self-interested hypocrites. Unless Joe Mercola has stopped shilling his products on his website and started giving them away for free? I mean, if his products really worked he is doing the world a great disservice by not actually proving it. If he’s right about his products, his greed and selfishness at refusing to conduct any actual research is killing people. How people reconcile “Big Pharma is bad because they just want to make money” with “Joe Mercola is good and deserves to make money” is beyond me.

The problem is a fundamental lack of parity in how each group treats evidence. While skeptics ask “where is the evidence and how good is it”, quack-followers ask “what evidence supports what I already wanted to believe”. Then Gish gallop an enormous number of empty insults and ignorant accusations. While skeptics attempt to ground their beliefs in evidence and reality, quack-swallowers don’t even realize how wrong and ignorant they are. The groups are playing by fundamentally different rules – skeptics and scientists require evidence to make a claim; for woo-ers the claim is the evidence. If they can think of any reason to reject information they don’t like, then that immediately means the information is wrong.
# Calli Arcaleon 28 Feb 2012 at 4:35 pm

stanmak:

Actually, it is said to dissipate any effect from AC electrical fields.

Wait a second — I missed this the first time through.

Grounding mats are not intended to dissipate any effect from AC electrical fields. They are intended to dissipate *static* electricity. If you are receiving a charge from an AC current, being ground may not be such a great thing, actually.

Watch a lineman at work to see why. They “latch on” to the high voltage wires, becoming part of the AC electrical circuit so that they can safely manipulate them. Then, they carefully leave the circuit when they are done. They take great care not to become grounded during this process, because if they do, they become *toast*.

Static electrical fields are real, and there are meters that you can get to detect them. And grounding mats will help dissipate them. So will grounding straps and ionizers, and of course you must take care not only to prevent charge build up in yourself, but also in the device you’re working on — charged device model discharges account for far more field failures than charged body model discharges. Also consider that the majority of discharges are below the human pain threshhold; you will not be aware of them. With modern electronics, it is possible to destroy a product with a discharge a thousandth of what a human being can feel. Seriously. (There is luck involved, of course. It all depends on exactly *which* circuit trace burns through during the discharge.)

Of course, all of these do in fact move electrons around; ESD protection is all about:

1) avoiding charge build up (keep static generators such as paper away from exposed product, use antistatic pouches and mats which do not generate charge, use tools rated for the same)

2) shielding against rapid discharges (variations on the theme of a Faraday cage)

3) allowing for a constant ground to continuously dissipate any static charge that is being generated despite your best efforts (grounding mat, grounding strap, ionizer)
# Lytrigianon 28 Feb 2012 at 5:26 pm

@stanmrak:

You’ve accused Dr Gorski of “cherry picking”. Why don’t YOU provide some references to papers YOU think are good evidence then?

Come on. What do you have to lose?
# weingon 28 Feb 2012 at 5:32 pm

@Lytrigian,
These ignorant stupid trolls just say there is a paper that supports their ludicrous fantasies or a lab report that says their never immunized cat is immune to rabies. Their attitude is “Papers? Papers? We don’t need no stinking papers. We have the truth.”
# papertrailon 28 Feb 2012 at 5:40 pm

@sarah007
RE: Morton’s Neuroma:

From the Mayo Clinic site: “Morton’s neuroma may occur in response to irritation, injury or pressure. Common treatments for Morton’s neuroma include changing footwear or using arch supports. Sometimes corticosteroid injections or surgery may be necessary.”

So, it makes sense that walking barefoot, and thus removing the offending irritant for awhile, could also work. No need for anyone to invoke implausible, convoluted notions of “earthing”. My (science-based) doctor told me to change shoes, which worked for me.

RE: The CDC’s estimates about h1n1: You’re balking at honest use of the word “estimate”? The scientific process is usually not about absolutes; it’s a dynamic process involving uncertainties and probabilities. How easy do you think it is to discern the effects of an intervention on huge populations? Even their lowest estimates of averted cases show that having prepared the public by distributing the vaccine widely was well worth the effort, saving disease burden and lives.

Your knee-jerk reaction to the CDC exemplifies the crux of the tension between your general posture and mine (and probably most people posting here). We are on opposite sides on the question of what constitutes credible information or sources.

The CDC is a (mostly, nothing is perfect) credible source; they employ a broad range of experts; they are remarkably transparent (look how VAERS is right out there); and they are continually scrutinized from outside their own agency and held accountable. On the other hand, I see Mercola, Oz, and others like them as replete with red flags – dubious, fringe, profit-motivated, suspect, deceptive – but not always, which makes them appear credible to the public.

I think most people here seek the preponderance of the most plausible and credible scientific evidence and question the opposite. If you can’t even begin to go there, then you close yourself off from what this blog can offer.

@Dr. Gorski, I’m looking forward to your Earthing analysis. Btw, I saw one site warning against using their earthing blanket during a storm. Problem is, lightning doesn’t always provide a warning before it strikes, especially in the middle of the night when you’re sleeping. If only I could dispense with ethics, I can contrive some kind of BS product and get sooooo rich.
# EricGon 28 Feb 2012 at 5:53 pm

@sarah007

you said:

“”…the root of all evil. You shouldn’t wear them…”

2 weeks ago a good friend of mine had mortons neuroma, the doctor explained the pathway of treatment. Steroid injections, if no good cut out the nerve.

Went to alt med who told her to take off her shoes and walk barefoot as much as possible for the next week. The pain has now gone.”

let me share a story:

1 week ago (more recent than your story) my BEST friend had mortons neuroma, of far worse a nature than your not as good of friend. the naturopath he went to suggested earthing. he almost died.

he went to the doctor, the doctor told him to change his shoes. he now has a 73″ vertical and can play the piano with his toes.

i think my anecdote beats yours – in any event, they cancel each other out. so you were telling me about facts and theories…?
# sarah007on 28 Feb 2012 at 5:58 pm

PT said “The scientific process is usually not about absolutes; it’s a dynamic process involving uncertainties and probabilities.”

Dynamic hey, what open to publication bias, funding bias and plane old belief bias.

“We are on opposite sides on the question of what constitutes credible information or sources and question the opposite .If you can’t even begin to go there, then you close yourself off from what this blog can offer. ”

This is the funniest statement I have read yet, there are about 5 or 6 medical zealots on this blog, about as convincing as a JW reading from the bible! They actually believe in the woo of swine flu!

I am struggling to find what this blog has to offer, do you have any idea how ridiculous it looks? I am devil advocate for a bit and gee whiz, no defence is offered, just took the hook.
# sarah007on 28 Feb 2012 at 6:00 pm

Weing, wong again “Their attitude is “truth?truth We don’t need no stinking truth. We have papers.”
# papertrailon 28 Feb 2012 at 6:36 pm

Just a SECOND ago, my SOUL MATE presented with a CRIPPLING cased of mortons neuroma, and I gave him a HOMEOPATHIC dose of all-natural electrons diluted 200C (yes, extremely powerful stuff), and he…well, he appeared to be running just fine when he bolted for the door, so he must have been cured.

Seriously, how long will it be before someone will try to market homeopathic natural electrons?
# papertrailon 28 Feb 2012 at 6:39 pm

“I am devil advocate for a bit and gee whiz, no defence is offered, just took the hook.”

What does this mean? You’ve been faking your real position or what?
# EricGon 28 Feb 2012 at 6:45 pm

@ papertrail

I just consulted my psychic. In the future, my very own mortons neuroma will cause a zombie apocalypse. I have secured the fate of human kind by carrying around a 10,000 year old crystal of salt secured from the highest point of the Himalayas, painted with organic heirloom tomato resin to resemble Joe Mercola’s profile. While I discourage any attempts to understand this, I do expect thanks for freeing this lot from brain-eating doom.
# WilliamLawrenceUtridgeon 28 Feb 2012 at 6:56 pm

My favourite thing in the world is absolutism, because it decisions so much easier! If something isn’t absolutely perfect, it’s obviously worthless! By the FSM, I’ve been paying attention to evidence and nuance when I should have simply ignored everything but what I think is right!

For that matter, I could parlay my ignorance into certainty! Why bother understanding anything when I could just assume I’m right and never bother actually checking? Surely my common sense is better than hundreds of thousands of PhDs and MDs arriving at a consensus, backed by the complete eradication of a dangerous disease, right? I know, I’ll call everyone who insists on evidence to be zealots, that way I don’t even have to consider their arguments!

The most important thing is to completely avoid dissenting information. And above all, never, ever actually learn anything about how science is really done. Just assume you know and ignore any indications to the contrary.
# Lytrigianon 28 Feb 2012 at 7:03 pm

@weing — We must be as fair as possible. If there are studies, they should be looked at. I suspect that the positive ones fall into one or both of the following categories: 1) Small pilot studies, either single-blinded or unblinded, that tend toward false positives that evaporate when a large, well-designed experiment is carried out; or 2) Not really a positive at all, but with some interesting statistical tricks in the analysis to make it look as if it is.

Honestly, though. Sara? You’re the only person I’ve encountered who can turn the fizzling of a potentially deadly epidemic into bad news. You must be young. My grandparents both lived through the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918, and both lost siblings. Nearly every house on their block lost at least one person to the disease. Better an occasional false alarm than that we should ever be unprepared for such a thing ever again.
# weingon 28 Feb 2012 at 7:15 pm

@Lytrigian,
I would also add 2 more, no studies at all, just claims that there are studies, and studies that show something completely different but requiring the ability to be able to read and understand.
# Lytrigianon 28 Feb 2012 at 7:34 pm

Oh, there are always studies. The naturopath at my local herb shop is happy to whip out the “research” on just about anything he’s ready to sell you. (He used to work in the supplements aisle of the local organic food store, but quit when they insisted he avoid making specific medical claims.) It was pretty much always some kind of unblinded experiment carried out on a few dozen subjects 10 or 20 years ago, but it was there.
# weingon 28 Feb 2012 at 7:58 pm

I guess you are right. But, I’m not sure whether these trolls are capable of even doing that.
# papertrailon 28 Feb 2012 at 8:14 pm

@EricG
“I just consulted my psychic. In the future, my very own mortons neuroma will cause a zombie apocalypse. I have secured the fate of human kind by carrying around a 10,000 year old crystal of salt secured from the highest point of the Himalayas, painted with organic heirloom tomato resin to resemble Joe Mercola’s profile. While I discourage any attempts to understand this, I do expect thanks for freeing this lot from brain-eating doom.”

Yes, but what you didn’t realize was that your psychic was channeling my energy when she came up with that prediction, as I am an Indigo adult as well as a crystal star child, sent to this planet with new DNA, making me immune to all disease, as proven by UCI. Thank you for resonating your vibration to receive my message.

Oh man, we could be rich!
# Chrison 28 Feb 2012 at 8:47 pm

papertrail, is your new DNA double or triple stranded? That could make a difference in the crystallization of your telepathic frequencies.
# papertrailon 28 Feb 2012 at 9:18 pm

Chris, this website will “scientifically” explain all about my starchild dna. http://www.starchildproject.com/dna2011marchlaymans.htm

Seriously, practically all you have to do is make something up, then Google it, and voila, there’s some sciency looking website promoting it.

I’ll sue if someone steals my homeopathic natural electrons remedy.
# Chrison 28 Feb 2012 at 9:34 pm

I am so glad I had already placed my beer on the table before clicking on your comment. That is hilarious.
# SkepticalHealthon 28 Feb 2012 at 10:42 pm

I’m rather embarrassed to admit this, but I recently lost my temper and yelled at a “energy healer” who was going on about sucking negative ions out of a patient and making snide comments about medical doctors. I laid into her so hard verbally that she became belligerent, but it was when she said “I’m a healer” that my incredulity flared to epic proportions. If I have one flaw (and I have many) its that I’m not known for suffering stupidity.

It’s just fascinating how evident the Dunning-Kruger effect is in the SBM trolls. The general knowledge base between a medical doctor and these promoters of quackery is about a thousand times bigger than the Grand Canyon, or as we say in Ghana the Akosombo gorge. They promote the most ridiculous quackery and utilize modalities that are as useless as a young girl to a priest. In contrast, by the time a medical doctor earns their degree, we are capable of everything from managing disease to doing basic surgery and delivering babies (of course, residency is required to actually master these skills. Keep in mind this means 7 to 9 years of education after college.)

The knowledge we possess is simply lightyears ahead of an idiot that believes they are sucking “negative ions” out of a persons feet with a “foot detox” machine, or that we can cure disease with pure water, or that cracking a back removes mystical interference in the nervous system, or that they are “removing toxins” with ear candles. It’s seriously laughable. It’s just so damn ridiculous. Which leads me to my point. With trolls like sarah and stanmrak, it’s just hilarious reading their posts because they truly are incapable of appreciating the vast difference in knowledge between “us” and “them.”

Sure, as medical doctors we simply can’t be aware of everything. Today I was reading about curcumin and how it actually promotes colorectal and lung cancer and has never been shown with randomized controlled trials to be effective in any human condition and that humans are essentially physiologically incapable of obtaining blood concentrations that could possibly by remotely therapeutic, and wasn’t surprised that it is the latest garbage being promoted by the “natural” crowd. But I would never expect nor fault a colleague for being unaware of these potential benefits. Nobody can know all this crap. Especially when the “natural” crowd is constantly promoting different crap everyday.

…..
# Chrison 28 Feb 2012 at 11:06 pm

SkepticalHealth, have a virtual beer on me.

By the way, I’m not a medical doctor. Just a parent of kid who turned out to be much too interesting, so I’ve spent a bit too much time in hospitals, waiting rooms, doctors’ offices, therapy observation rooms, special ed. school meetings. Well, you get the picture.

I have been dealing with these people in real life, starting before the internet, and when we thought it was great that our new computer had a 10 Mb hard drive. It wastes too much energy to get mad at them. Mostly they deserve a roll of the eyes and a giggle at their expense.

Even though I almost choked on a peach when someone in real life suggest I try cranial sacral therapy for my son’s severe speech disability, I did love the look on her face when I replied that a light head massage was not going to fix damage in Broca’s Area an inch or so past the scull (I just guessed the distance). She avoided me from then on during the rest of the function. Pity, I was going to ask how waving of hands reduces abnormal heart muscle from HCM.
# MerColOzcopyon 29 Feb 2012 at 1:16 am

Dr. Gorski, about Chlorella, if it can in fact bind mercury and heavy metals, can it also bind to other essential vitamins and particularly nutritional minerals consumed in food, or is it that discriminate?
# MerColOzcopyon 29 Feb 2012 at 1:26 am

SkepticalHealth, where were you reading about curcumin and how it actually promotes colorectal and lung cancer? Thanks.
# mdstudenton 29 Feb 2012 at 8:18 am

@ SkepticalHealth

“The knowledge we possess is simply lightyears ahead of an idiot that believes they are sucking “negative ions” out of a persons feet with a “foot detox” machine, or that we can cure disease with pure water, or that cracking a back removes mystical interference in the nervous system, or that they are “removing toxins” with ear candles.”

It’s not the uneducated trolls that bug me. As you said the Dunning-Kruger effect can be easily invoked to rationalize their stupidities. I lose sleep over the “educated” quacks like Dr. Oz or Dr. Mercola who have completed medical school and are licensed physicians.
# DWon 29 Feb 2012 at 8:36 am

“Mostly they deserve a roll of the eyes and a giggle at their expense.”

Well, except that they really do cause untold harm. My parents fell for every single bogus health claim promoted by a charlatan that is out there – I swear they did not miss one. If they had back the money they forked over to con artists (medical and others, but the medical was a huge portion of it), they’d be on easy street. Just the other day, my mother got a mysterious check for $600 in the mail that it took us awhile to figure out the origin of. Turns out, about 10 years ago they signed on to some class action suit against the manufacturer of some preposterous herbal concoction that had ended up killing a couple of people. She didn’t even remember anything about this lawsuit. It wound through the courts and eventually a handful of victims got a few hundred dollars each. She has no recall of what they actually paid the guy, but I’m certain it was way more than $600.

And still, my father died miserably, after developing leukemia, having two heart attacks, and finally a stroke that left him paralyzed. Years of “supplements,” protein powders, mystical cures, herbs, and naturopathy etc. somehow didn’t stave all this off. Taking the Plavix the doctor prescribed might have been a better idea, but he thought – much like the vicious nonsense that Sarah promotes here – that the doctor was trying to kill him.

This is the REALITY of CAM. The people who supposedly got cured by, like, taking their shoes off, rather than taking the doctor’s advice, are mythical. They don’t exist. These are lies. If you got cured because you took your shoes off, maybe you had a little ache or pain, but nothing was really seriously wrong with you in the first place. This is the basis of all the “testimonials.”

My parents were extremely vulnerable due to other problems in their lives. But they aren’t the only ones. CAMsters make a living off folks like that. My mother was paying HUNDREDS per month to her local “natural foods store” until I finally got control of their finances. I felt like going into the place with an Uzi. (I didn’t …)
# DWon 29 Feb 2012 at 8:39 am

And the “Sarah’s” of the CAM scene always show their hand – they show the viciousness right below the surface, i.e., on another thread Sarah suggested that fat people should pay higher taxes, and the parents of fat children should be thrown in jail. This tells you a lot. I think serious mental disorders are prevalent in the CAM-promoting population. (Someone should do a study.) Sarah’s entire way of relating to other humans is deranged.
# sarah007on 29 Feb 2012 at 10:52 am

“Surely my common sense is better than hundreds of thousands of PhDs and MDs arriving at a consensus, backed by the complete eradication of a dangerous disease, right?”

Just give it the context of swine flu and the whole sentence falls into a dark void of medical anecdote!

“I lose sleep over the “educated” quacks like Dr. Oz or Dr. Mercola who have completed medical school and are licensed physicians.”

Doesn’t mean you are right though, maybe they saw something that you were blind to?

“And still, my father died miserably, after developing leukemia, having two heart attacks, and finally a stroke that left him paralyzed. ” So are you telling us he did no orthodox treatments at all for the leukemia?
# Scotton 29 Feb 2012 at 11:11 am

As you said the Dunning-Kruger effect can be easily invoked to rationalize their stupidities. I lose sleep over the “educated” quacks like Dr. Oz or Dr. Mercola who have completed medical school and are licensed physicians.

Dunning-Kruger is an even stronger explanation there. “A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing,” after all. Oz and Mercola aren’t scientists – it’s been often lamented here how little real science is in medical school, as opposed to a more mechanistic level of understanding. So they don’t have the ability to properly evaluate sCAM claims. But since they’ve been through grueling medical training, they THINK they do.
# EricGon 29 Feb 2012 at 11:28 am

@ papertrail

ftw. i cant compete with the tri-level nature of your cosmic dna. that being said, should you or a loved one turn into a zombie, i charge three easy payments of $129.95 to bring them back.
# DWon 29 Feb 2012 at 11:38 am

Sarah “So are you telling us he did no orthodox treatments at all for the leukemia?”

You can’t actually read, can you?
You are really offensive.
# mdstudenton 29 Feb 2012 at 12:21 pm

@ Scott

“So they don’t have the ability to properly evaluate sCAM claims.”

Or maybe they’re just con-artists with no moral qualms in exploiting the general public’s lack of medical understanding in pursuit of fame and riches.
# SkepticalHealthon 29 Feb 2012 at 12:46 pm

@ MerColOzcopy:

A great start is here:

Burgos-Morón E, Calderón-Montaño JM, Salvador J, Robles A, López-Lázaro M. The dark side of curcumin. Int J Cancer 2010, Apr 1;126(7):1771-5.

Link to full PDF:

http://personal.us.es/mlopezlazaro/2010.%20Int%20J%20Cancer.%20The%20dark%20side%20of%20curcumin.pdf
# Chrison 29 Feb 2012 at 1:28 pm

mdstudent:

It’s not the uneducated trolls that bug me. As you said the Dunning-Kruger effect can be easily invoked to rationalize their stupidities. I lose sleep over the “educated” quacks like Dr. Oz or Dr. Mercola who have completed medical school and are licensed physicians.

DW:

Well, except that they really do cause untold harm.

I guess I should have been more clear that I meant the random consumer and advocate of the alt-med nonsense, the real life versions of Troll007.

When I was on a listserv for my son’s disability I tried to steer people away from cranial sacral therapy, chelation and relying too much on supplements. I know at least once I had to alert the list moderator that our emails were being used to spam cures (one involved magic soap).

Once at a conference organized by the organization the grew out of that listserv a person in the audience asked the presenter about the use of cranial sacral. Despite being a nationally recognized expert on the disability she had no clue on what the question was about. I had to pipe up and explain. So not only is it disappointing that people who should know better promote nonsense, other real medical care providers do not have a clue what nonsense it being promoted to their patients.

DW, I am terribly sorry about your parents. I know and understand your frustration because it has happened in our family. I have had arguments with my niece over the validity of homeopathy, and we had a family member dive deeper into mental health issues after deciding the naturapath knew more than the psychiatrist. I actually found it easier to discuss this with people who are not relatives, and I suspect that there may be something that makes it easier to listen to folks outside ones own family.

After the death of our relative we were given her computer to wipe and donate to charity. I was a bit evil and looked into the emails, and it was frightening. DW, she was on listservs that consisted almost entirely of people like Troll007. They were there promoting all of the nonsense we’ve seen spouted here lately, plus there were a set of email newsletters from a Mercola wanna-be. Plus complaints about their family members who could not be converted to the “truth.” Going through the computers of some of these people postmortem would could be several psychology PhD theses.
# DWon 29 Feb 2012 at 1:46 pm

Thanks Chris, you are right. I’m still trying to get my mother off various awful mailing lists (not online, just US mail). (My parents’ online adventures were another story.) They are just appalling to look at, I have to toss them immediately or my blood pressure goes up. Many of the organizations operate very unethically. I’ve had to write letters threatening legal action if they won’t cancel an automatic credit card charge for “health newsletters,” that sort of thing.
# sarah007on 29 Feb 2012 at 2:05 pm

Sarah “So are you telling us he did no orthodox treatments at all for the leukemia?”

You can’t actually read, can you?
You are really offensive.

I asked you did he have any orthodox treatment for the leukemia?, what is offensive about that?
# DWon 29 Feb 2012 at 3:21 pm

He did no “orthodox” treatment for the leukemia because it was never symptomatic. He did all kinds of batshit crazy “natural” treatments for the leukemia and everything else under the sun. He was persuaded by one “naturopath” (or some Deepak Chopra-type idiot, I don’t remember) that cancer would go away if you took enough vitamin C. He was obsessed with “building his immune system” to fight the cancer, for years. His nephew who is a doctor tried to tell him that building his immune system was a nice thing but might just as well help the cancer as hinder it, but this didn’t impress him.

So, no I was not trying to tell you that he did no orthodox treatment for leukemia. I was saying that despite many years of taking natural organic everything, eating mainly crap sold to him by the “natural health foods store” to do things that you tout, like “restoring gut flora,” and submitting to treatment by nuts like yourself, he came down with cancer, heart disease, and stroke ANYWAY. Get it? Two heart attacks, and two strokes, fourteen months in a nursing home, paralyzed, speaking gibberish, and finally not speaking at all. There’s no magic that guarantees a person won’t get ill, Sarah. He was JUST LIKE YOU, he believed ALL THE CRAP YOU BELIEVE, and he died horribly of all sorts of painful and completely incapacitating ailments anyway, unable to walk, talk, or sit up.

This is the real story of CAM. You are fooling yourself, and hurting people at the same time. Real people – old people in wheelchairs, Sarah. There’s plenty of them. You think they don’t exist, probably because you are much younger and still able to fantasize you’ll live forever and never suffer any pain if you eat your lentils and wheat grass. It isn’t true. Sorry.
# EricGon 29 Feb 2012 at 4:56 pm

great story from seedmagazine:

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/on_curing_everything/

i suspect that science will win the race over woo – i suppose woo would first have to adopt germ theory to approach the starting line…
# WilliamLawrenceUtridgeon 29 Feb 2012 at 7:16 pm

Ya gotta be careful with Kary Mullis though. Developed polymerase chain reaction, denies HIV causes AIDS, climate change and takes a lot of drugs.

The idea does seem neat
# papertrailon 01 Mar 2012 at 3:03 am

DW, what you describe is sad and frustrating, and all too familiar within my own family too. My mother refused cancer treatment for a long time and made me crazy with fear while she tried her various “alternative” techniques, believing the tumor was shrinking. She did finally go for conventional treatment after pressured by us, her kids, and even though she lived many years and died of something else, she never stopped blaming the doctors and her cancer treatments for everything that ailed her after that. (Cancer treatments are awful, I agreed with her about that, but she did live.) My father was a perpetrator of a dubious therapy, helped some people, they felt, but hurt others by overstating his credentials and what he could do for them while taking their money. Almost landed himself in prison. Ugh, haven’t thought about this in a long time.

I knew several people who died of cancer after putting off treatment to try alternative things first. Later I found out that conventional treatment may not have changed the outcome in these cases anyway. i hate cancer!
# ConspicuousCarlon 01 Mar 2012 at 8:56 am

Does Stan Mrak still promote his 100-year-theory of heart disease? It’s the most moronic thing I have ever seen, but he seems happy with it.

For those who don’t know, Mrak’s view on the causes of heart disease is based on his foolish observation that 100 years ago hardly anyone had heart attacks. Of course, he fails to notice that 100 years ago most people didn’t have heart attacks because they were all dying of infections at age 50, leaving them very little time to have heart attacks in their 60′s. (If Sarah007 ever develops a sense of creativity, maybe this is the level of nonsense she can rise to.)

For those who already know, why don’t we keep bringing this up whenever he wanders in, until he finally admits that he was/is an idiot? “Sorry Stan, but before we respond to your wacky comments on filthy barefoot hippies, we need you to address one of your previous blunders.”
# EricGon 01 Mar 2012 at 11:16 am

@WilliamLawrenceUtridge

i suppose that might be a regretful side effect of being a “non-specialist” – he feels content to comment on things in which he….well, by his own admission, lacks expertise. just a brief look at his wiki page…pretty wacky guy. lol
# Geoffon 01 Mar 2012 at 1:16 pm

So earthing definitely sounds like a bunch of woo on the surface, and in fact it may be. I don’t have any personal experience, so I can’t really speak to it either way. Having said that, it is recommended by Dave Asprey of Bullet Proof Executive, and in the past I have found his advice to be very sound and in line with my own experience, so I am willing to give it its fair shake.

Dave recommends earthing specifically for improving sleep and getting rid of jet lag. He has quantified this benefit for himself using a device called a Zeo, which is actually a pretty precise device that tracks brain waves via a headband that is functionally the same as the kind used in sleep studies. I do have a Zeo, and plan on self experimenting with earthing in the future. Until then, I’m just relaying information, but let’s not write it off out of hand just because we don’t understand the mechanisms.
# Harriet Hallon 01 Mar 2012 at 1:41 pm

@Geoff,

The way to find out if something works is to study it with the methods of science. Personal experience and the advice of someone you trust are not reliable guides to truth.

I wrote about the Zeo at
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/zeo-personal-sleep-coach/
Even if you see a change in Zeo readings, that may not be reliable evidence that you are better off. And it would not prove that the Zeo changes were due to the earthing.
# WilliamLawrenceUtridgeon 01 Mar 2012 at 1:57 pm

You could do an n=1 challenge-dechallenge-rechallenge to test it though. Have someone (other than you) flip a coin. If it comes up heads, they unplug the grounding mat. Tails, they plug it in. Have them note the state of the equipment. Independently note the quality and quantity of your sleep (with the Zeo, you’d probably use your sleep score). After a month, do some math or something. You’d have your answer.

If you really want some fun, flip a second coin. If it comes up heads, you get to peek at whether the mat is plugged in. Tails, you don’t. Some fancier math, maybe a graph or table, you’d have another, possibly more interesting answer.

Add a third coin and they’d plug in/unplug your Zeo machine. Note the quantity and quality of your sleep before looking to see if it was on. Hire someone to do the math for you.
# sarah007on 01 Mar 2012 at 2:22 pm

DW “He did no “orthodox” treatment for the leukemia because it was never symptomatic.”

DW “no I was not trying to tell you that he did no orthodox treatment for leukemia.”

What does that mean. I am pushing you for facts DW because if I was claiming death by medicine you would do the same. So if he had orthodox treatment during the early acute phase his heart and vascular system would have been affected, if he was elderly more so. If this damage was done when he first went that route no amount of eating moon dust would change that.

DW “I was saying that despite many years of taking natural organic everything, eating mainly crap sold to him by the “natural health foods store” to do things that you tout, like “restoring gut flora,” and submitting to treatment by nuts like yourself, he came down with cancer, heart disease, and stroke ANYWAY. Get it?”

No I don’t at all get it. According to you and your type you can eat what you like and it makes no difference because it was all genetic, he was going this route whatever he did. What I see in your post is trying to blame everything else. Parents dying is shit, absolutely, but if his first brush with leukemia treatment ruined his health you cant blame him rebelling against that and trying something else.

Without a context, your interpretation of events in this story don’t make sense.
# sarah007on 01 Mar 2012 at 2:28 pm

Hi Carl

Maybe you’ll tell us we are all going to die from swine flu!
# DWon 01 Mar 2012 at 2:42 pm

Papertrail, yes the CAM world has a very seedy underside. The image these people like to portray of themselves as wholesome and happy is not reality. Reality is a lot of underhanded shit – a lot of taking advantage of vulnerable people. It’s often connected to “multilevel marketing,” pyramid schemes, and preying on the gullible and undereducated. The real crime is when these gullible people are truly hurting individuals, elderly, disabled, or mentally handicapped. It is one thing to be 30 and robust, and convince yourself you’re improving your chi or something, with some silly herbal concoction. No real harm done. It’s another matter when you’re telling old people with multiple serious ailments that you can cure their cancer, and they follow this advice instead of medical advice. They are responsible for a lot of misery.
# Geoffon 01 Mar 2012 at 2:58 pm

@Harriet

“The way to find out if something works is to study it with the methods of science. Personal experience and the advice of someone you trust are not reliable guides to truth.”

This is a non-sequitor. Just because the methods of science are how you prove definitively whether or not something works does not mean that personal experience and the advice of someone you trust are not reliable GUIDES to truth. Things work in empirically before they are proven to work scientifically.
# SkepticalHealthon 01 Mar 2012 at 3:13 pm

@Geoff, there is something called “a priori knowledge” that usually guides research. We usually suspect (an educated guess) that something works in a certain way due to prior knowledge and then devise an experiment that allows us to accept or reject the hypothesis. There is no “a priori knowledge” that “earthing” does anything whatsoever, so it’d be ridiculous to perform an expensive double-blinded randomized controlled trial to see if “earthing” is effective for treating jet lag. Wouldn’t it make more sense to see if “earthing” has any actual effect on the body instead of just assuming that it does and then going from there?

That is precisely the same mistake a lot of CAM research makes. They assume something works, and then try to find some way to justify it. They’ll perform some quack modality, and then measure every possible thing in the body and then mine the data looking for any chance difference that they can manipulate to be “statistically significant” and then make a claim about the sCAM modality that has absolutely zero clinical relevance. That’s not science, it’s closing your eyes and throwing darts.

Or, to put it another way: earthing is a stupid idea, and it’s stupid to believe that it’s going to cure jetlag.
# qetzalon 01 Mar 2012 at 3:23 pm

Geoff,

Personal experience and advice from someone you trust certainly have some value as guides. That doen’t mean they are always reliable. In a case like yours, with subjective outcomes like ‘better sleep’ and ‘less jet lag,’ where placebo effects and observer biases are major confounders, advice and personal experience are very unreliable. That’s a key lesson of science.

If you do try to test this yourself, I agree with WLU. The minimum you should do is get a helper to randomly connect or disconnect your ground on different nights, without you knowing which. Otherwise, your knowledge of whether you’re grounded could easily affect your sleep directly.
# Geoffon 01 Mar 2012 at 3:33 pm

@SkepticalHealth

Not all experiments have to be expensive, or double blind. Yes, if we wanted to definitively prove that earthing works, we would need to perform such an experiment, but we could perform many inexpensive experiments that will confirm or deny Dave’s empirical finding prior to setting aside the resources to do this in a systematic way. All of this would fall under the category of “a priori knowledge.” Larger, more difficult and expensive studies have been done based on more dubious findings. For example, anything related to saturated fat and heart disease.
# Geoffon 01 Mar 2012 at 3:36 pm

@qetzal

Placebo effect may play a role, but observer bias should not. As far as I know, a Zeo doesn’t care whether you ground yourself on a mat before jumping into bed or not.
# SkepticalHealthon 01 Mar 2012 at 3:44 pm

@Geoff, I clicked through to your blog and saw you eat a paleo diet? Are you one of those “cholesterol deniers”? Ie, you think that saturated fat is perfectly good for you?
# DWon 01 Mar 2012 at 3:46 pm

“Otherwise, your knowledge of whether you’re grounded could easily affect your sleep directly.”

Absolutely! This is the reason the sleeping pills I have in the medicine cabinet help me sleep, even though I don’t usually take them!
# Geoffon 01 Mar 2012 at 3:57 pm

@SkepticalHealth

Not the time or the place to have that debate, but yes, I eat a less restrictive version of the paleo diet (more closely resembles the Perfect Health Diet from Paul Jaminet, although I also include sugar and corn, though don’t necessarily recommend that for everyone), and in my opinion a diet that is wheat and vegetable oil free but very high in saturated fat will not cause heart disease.

I operate from the premise that the human body is healthy under environmental conditions that it has evolved under. A result of this premise is that foods are either unhealthy or neutral. There is no such thing as a “health food” per-se. Saturated fats, for a variety of reasons, fall into this neutral category.
# Harriet Hallon 01 Mar 2012 at 4:08 pm

@Geoff,
“Not the time or the place to have that debate”
This is not the place to have any debate based on opinions alone. It’s the “Science-Based” Medicine blog.
# papertrailon 01 Mar 2012 at 4:20 pm

“I operate from the premise that the human body is healthy under environmental conditions that it has evolved under.”

You can build an untold number of faulty beliefs on top of faulty premises. Why in the world would you start with that unsupportable premise?
# Geoffon 01 Mar 2012 at 4:24 pm

@Harriet

Doctors live in a bubble. You’ve all been trained based on the same information, most of which is science based and some of which is not. The doctors who post on here do their best to avoid biases, and we all appreciate that, but some biases are extremely pervasive, and have been a part of the knowledge base for long enough that every single one of you has been brought up on on them your entire medical careers despite the fact that the original findings were based entirely on pseudoscientific nonsense.

There is a community of self-experimenters out there that can inform some of these discussions. For example, two scientists can banter back and forth about whether a vitamin a derivative used to treat acne causes Crohn’s disease in .00000whatever percentage of people, but you’d make a lot more clinical progress if you had someone interject into that debate the fact that he has numerous anecdotes of people reversing Crohn’s via dietary interventions.
# Geoffon 01 Mar 2012 at 4:28 pm

@papertrail

I start with that premise for a variety of reasons. Number one is that evolution is the unifying theory of biology, and nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution. Second is that all animals thrive in their natural environments, and I have no reason to suspect that humans would be different. Third is that there are a number of anthropological examples of human populations that are almost entirely free of modern disease, as well as documented case studies of their kin transitioning into modern cities and experiencing all of the diseases that their ancestors did not.
# papertrailon 01 Mar 2012 at 4:36 pm

RE: earthing. Seems to me that there are thousands of these kinds of claims. It’s not just that the mechanism is unknown, it’s that there is no reason to think that it does anything beyond an imagined effect because, in the least, the proposed mechanism for what is taking place makes no sense at all based on what is well known about electricity. I don’t even know that much about electricity and even I can see that it’s bogus.

I don’t understand why some people are so trusting of their own assessment of what is causing what, when I see every day how easy it is be wrong. And yet I am called closed-minded. No, while I see multiple possibilities, my critics see ONE. It must be the acupuncture, or it must be the arnica crap, or it must be that my body’s free-radicals were neutralized by the earth’s negative charge that somehow made its way up a wire and into my cells through my $600 magic blanket.
# qetzalon 01 Mar 2012 at 4:40 pm

Geoff,

The Zeo may not care, but you’re the one reading and interpreting the Zeo’s outputs. If you know whether you slept grounded or not, that may bias how you do that reading and interpreting. Obviously, the potential for that depends a lot on what kinds of outputs the Zeo gives. But even seemingly straightforward outputs can be subject to observer bias.
# Geoffon 01 Mar 2012 at 4:45 pm

@papertrail

RE: earthing – I totally agree. I was pretty surprised when Dave wrote about it, but as I said, I trust his judgment to a point; he has a long track record of rigorous n=1 testing; so his saying that it works is sufficient for me to consider it worth testing on an n=1 basis, particularly since I struggle with sleep.
# papertrailon 01 Mar 2012 at 4:59 pm

@geoff

David who? I don’t see anyone promoting it named David.
# papertrailon 01 Mar 2012 at 5:14 pm

Oh, you must mean Dave Asprey. Haven’t looked at that.
# weingon 01 Mar 2012 at 5:16 pm

“in my opinion a diet that is wheat and vegetable oil free but very high in saturated fat will not cause heart disease.”

Well. That is only an opinion.
# Geoffon 01 Mar 2012 at 5:16 pm

Yea, I mean Dave Asprey. Here’s his post on the subject: http://www.bulletproofexec.com/earthing/
# papertrailon 01 Mar 2012 at 5:17 pm

@geoff
“Second is that all animals thrive in their natural environments, …”

Trut, except when they don’t.
# papertrailon 01 Mar 2012 at 5:17 pm

I meant “true,” except when they don’t.
# Geoffon 01 Mar 2012 at 5:19 pm

@weing

I offered my opinion in response to a question about my opinion: “@Geoff, I clicked through to your blog and saw you eat a paleo diet? Are you one of those “cholesterol deniers”? Ie, you think that saturated fat is perfectly good for you?”
# SkepticalHealthon 01 Mar 2012 at 5:45 pm

@Geoff, you are correct that there is no need for a debate. Your opinions on diet are absolutely wrong and are just as dangerous as those of the Weston A. Price Foundation. You simply want a certain lifestyle, so you molest science to fit your world view. The belief that saturated fat doesn’t lead to heart disease is completely wrong. Here, let’s get you started:

Astrup, Arne, Jørn Dyerberg, Peter Elwood, Kjeld Hermansen, Frank B Hu, Marianne Uhre Jakobsen, Frans J Kok, et al. 2011. The role of reducing intakes of saturated fat in the prevention of cardiovascular disease: Where does the evidence stand in 2010? Am J Clin Nutr 93 (4): 684-8
“Current dietary recommendations advise reducing the intake of saturated fatty acids (SFAs) to reduce coronary heart disease (CHD) risk, but recent findings question the role of SFAs. This expert panel reviewed the evidence and reached the following conclusions: the evidence from epidemiologic, clinical, and mechanistic studies is consistent in finding that the risk of CHD is reduced when SFAs are replaced with polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). In populations who consume a Western diet, the replacement of 1% of energy from SFAs with PUFAs lowers LDL cholesterol and is likely to produce a reduction in CHD incidence of ≥2-3%. No clear benefit of substituting carbohydrates for SFAs has been shown, although there might be a benefit if the carbohydrate is unrefined and has a low glycemic index.”
-> For every 1% of saturated fat replaced by polyunsaturated fats there is a 2-3% reduction in coronary heart disease. So, a 10% replacement leads to 20-30% reduction in coronary heart disease.

Bhupathiraju, Shilpa N and Katherine L Tucker. 2011. Coronary heart disease prevention: Nutrients, foods, and dietary patterns. Clin Chim Acta 412 (17-18): 1493-514.
“Diet is a key modifiable risk factor in the prevention and risk reduction of coronary heart disease (CHD). Results from the Seven Countries Study in the early 1970s spurred an interest in the role of single nutrients such as total fat in CHD risk. With accumulating evidence, we have moved away from a focus on total fat to the importance of considering the quality of fat. Recent meta-analyses of intervention studies confirm the beneficial effects of replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fatty acids on CHD risk. Scientific evidence for a detrimental role of trans fat intake from industrial sources on CHD risk has led to important policy changes including listing trans fatty acid content on the “Nutrition Facts” panel and banning the use of trans fatty acids in food service establishments in some cities. The effects of such policy changes on changes in CHD incidence are yet to be evaluated. There has been a surging interest in the protective effects of vitamin D in primary prevention. Yet, its associations with secondary events have been mixed and intervention studies are needed to clarify its role in CHD prevention. Epidemiological and clinical trial evidence surrounding the benefit of B vitamins and antioxidants such as carotenoids, vitamin E, and vitamin C, have been contradictory. While pharmacological supplementation of these vitamins in populations with existing CHD has been ineffective and, in some cases, even detrimental, data repeatedly show that consumption of a healthy dietary pattern has considerable cardioprotective effects for primary prevention. Results from these studies and the general ineffectiveness of nutrient-based interventions have shifted interest to the role of foods in CHD risk reduction. The strongest and most consistent protective associations are seen with fruit and vegetables, fish, and whole grains. Epidemiological and clinical trial data also show risk reduction with moderate alcohol consumption. In the past decade, there has been a paradigm shift in nutritional epidemiology to examine associations between dietary patterns and health. Several epidemiological studies show that people following the Mediterranean style diet or the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet have lower risk of CHD and lower likelihood of developing hypertension. Studies using empirical or data driven dietary patterns have frequently identified two patterns – “Healthy or Prudent” and “Western”. In general, the “Healthy”, compared to the “Western” pattern has been associated with more favorable biological profiles, slower progression of atherosclerosis, and reduced incidence. Evidence on changes in dietary patterns and changes in CHD risk is still emerging. With the emergence of the concept of personalized nutrition, studies are increasingly considering the role of genetic factors in the modulation of the association between nutrients and CHD. More studies of genetic variation and dietary patterns in relation to CHD are needed.”
-> Saturated fats = bad; PUFA = good.

Jakobsen, Marianne U, Eilis J O’Reilly, Berit L Heitmann, Mark A Pereira, Katarina Bälter, Gary E Fraser, Uri Goldbourt, et al. 2009. Major types of dietary fat and risk of coronary heart disease: A pooled analysis of 11 cohort studies. Am J Clin Nutr 89 (5): 1425-3
“BACKGROUND: Saturated fatty acid (SFA) intake increases plasma LDL-cholesterol concentrations; therefore, intake should be reduced to prevent coronary heart disease (CHD). Lower habitual intakes of SFAs, however, require substitution of other macronutrients to maintain energy balance.
OBJECTIVE: We investigated associations between energy intake from monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs), polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), and carbohydrates and risk of CHD while assessing the potential effect-modifying role of sex and age. Using substitution models, our aim was to clarify whether energy from unsaturated fatty acids or carbohydrates should replace energy from SFAs to prevent CHD.
DESIGN: This was a follow-up study in which data from 11 American and European cohort studies were pooled. The outcome measure was incident CHD.
RESULTS: During 4-10 y of follow-up, 5249 coronary events and 2155 coronary deaths occurred among 344,696 persons. For a 5% lower energy intake from SFAs and a concomitant higher energy intake from PUFAs, there was a significant inverse association between PUFAs and risk of coronary events (hazard ratio: 0.87; 95% CI: 0.77, 0.97); the hazard ratio for coronary deaths was 0.74 (95% CI: 0.61, 0.89). For a 5% lower energy intake from SFAs and a concomitant higher energy intake from carbohydrates, there was a modest significant direct association between carbohydrates and coronary events (hazard ratio: 1.07; 95% CI: 1.01, 1.14); the hazard ratio for coronary deaths was 0.96 (95% CI: 0.82, 1.13). MUFA intake was not associated with CHD. No effect modification by sex or age was found.
CONCLUSION: The associations suggest that replacing SFAs with PUFAs rather than MUFAs or carbohydrates prevents CHD over a wide range of intakes”

Mozaffarian, Dariush, Renata Micha, and Sarah Wallace. 2010. Effects on coronary heart disease of increasing polyunsaturated fat in place of saturated fat: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Plos Med 7 (3): e1000252
“BACKGROUND: Reduced saturated fat (SFA) consumption is recommended to reduce coronary heart disease (CHD), but there is an absence of strong supporting evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of clinical CHD events and few guidelines focus on any specific replacement nutrient. Additionally, some public health groups recommend lowering or limiting polyunsaturated fat (PUFA) consumption, a major potential replacement for SFA.
METHODS AND FINDINGS: We systematically investigated and quantified the effects of increased PUFA consumption, as a replacement for SFA, on CHD endpoints in RCTs. RCTs were identified by systematic searches of multiple online databases through June 2009, grey literature sources, hand-searching related articles and citations, and direct contacts with experts to identify potentially unpublished trials. Studies were included if they randomized participants to increased PUFA for at least 1 year without major concomitant interventions, had an appropriate control group, and reported incidence of CHD (myocardial infarction and/or cardiac death). Inclusions/exclusions were adjudicated and data were extracted independently and in duplicate by two investigators and included population characteristics, control and intervention diets, follow-up duration, types of events, risk ratios, and SEs. Pooled effects were calculated using inverse-variance-weighted random effects meta-analysis. From 346 identified abstracts, eight trials met inclusion criteria, totaling 13,614 participants with 1,042 CHD events. Average weighted PUFA consumption was 14.9% energy (range 8.0%-20.7%) in intervention groups versus 5.0% energy (range 4.0%-6.4%) in controls. The overall pooled risk reduction was 19% (RR = 0.81, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.70-0.95, p = 0.008), corresponding to 10% reduced CHD risk (RR = 0.90, 95% CI = 0.83-0.97) for each 5% energy of increased PUFA, without evidence for statistical heterogeneity (Q-statistic p = 0.13; I(2) = 37%). Meta-regression identified study duration as an independent determinant of risk reduction (p = 0.017), with studies of longer duration showing greater benefits.
CONCLUSIONS: These findings provide evidence that consuming PUFA in place of SFA reduces CHD events in RCTs. This suggests that rather than trying to lower PUFA consumption, a shift toward greater population PUFA consumption in place of SFA would significantly reduce rates of CHD.”

Clarke, R, C Frost, R Collins, P Appleby, and R Peto. 1997. Dietary lipids and blood cholesterol: Quantitative meta-analysis of metabolic ward studies. BMJ 314 (7074): 112-7.
“OBJECTIVE: To determine the quantitative importance of dietary fatty acids and dietary cholesterol to blood concentrations of total, low density lipoprotein, and high density lipoprotein cholesterol.
DESIGN: Meta-analysis of metabolic ward studies of solid food diets in healthy volunteers.
SUBJECTS: 395 dietary experiments (median duration 1 month) among 129 groups of individuals.
RESULTS: Isocaloric replacement of saturated fats by complex carbohydrates for 10% of dietary calories resulted in blood total cholesterol falling by 0.52 (SE 0.03) mmol/l and low density lipoprotein cholesterol falling by 0.36 (0.05) mmol/l. Isocaloric replacement of complex carbohydrates by polyunsaturated fats for 5% of dietary calories resulted in total cholesterol falling by a further 0.13 (0.02) mmol/l and low density lipoprotein cholesterol falling by 0.11 (0.02) mmol/l. Similar replacement of carbohydrates by monounsaturated fats produced no significant effect on total or low density lipoprotein cholesterol. Avoiding 200 mg/day dietary cholesterol further decreased blood total cholesterol by 0.13 (0.02) mmol/l and low density lipoprotein cholesterol by 0.10 (0.02) mmol/l.
CONCLUSIONS: In typical British diets replacing 60% of saturated fats by other fats and avoiding 60% of dietary cholesterol would reduce blood total cholesterol by about 0.8 mmol/l (that is, by 10-15%), with four fifths of this reduction being in low density lipoprotein cholesterol”

Hooper and Lee. 2010. Meta-Analysis of rcts finds that increasing consumption of polyunsaturated fat as a replacement for saturated fat reduces the risk of coronary heart disease. Evidence Based Medicinedoi:10.1136/ebmed1093. Web.
“A 2011 systematic review from The Cochrane … A 2011 systematic review from The Cochrane Library analyzed 48 studies conducted between 1965 and 2009 and included 65,508 participants. All studies reduced or modified participants’ dietary fat or cholesterol for at least six months by at least 30 percent. It was found that reducing saturated fat by reducing and/or modifying dietary fat reduced the risk of having a cardiovascular event, such as heart attack, stroke and unplanned heart surgery, by 14 percent. Of the 65,508 participants, 7 percent had a cardiovascular event. “The findings are suggestive of a small but potentially important reduction in cardiovascular risk on modification of dietary fat, but not reduction of total fat, in longer trials. Lifestyle advice to all those at risk of cardiovascular disease and to lower risk population groups, should continue to include permanent reduction of dietary saturated fat and partial replacement by unsaturates. The ideal type of unsaturated fat is unclear”. In a summary it goes on to say “there are no clear health benefits of replacing saturated fats with starchy foods”.”

Mensink, Ronald P, Peter L Zock, Arnold D M Kester, and Martijn B Katan. 2003. Effects of dietary fatty acids and carbohydrates on the ratio of serum total to HDL cholesterol and on serum lipids and apolipoproteins: A meta-analysis of 60 controlled trials. Am J Clin Nutr 77 (5): 1146-55
“BACKGROUND: The effects of dietary fats on the risk of coronary artery disease (CAD) have traditionally been estimated from their effects on LDL cholesterol. Fats, however, also affect HDL cholesterol, and the ratio of total to HDL cholesterol is a more specific marker of CAD than is LDL cholesterol.
OBJECTIVE: The objective was to evaluate the effects of individual fatty acids on the ratis of total to HDL cholesterol and on serum lipoproteins.
DESIGN: We performed a meta-analysis of 60 selected trials and calculated the effects of the amount and type of fat on total:HDL cholesterol and on other lipids.
RESULTS: The ratio did not change if carbohydrates replaced saturated fatty acids, but it decreased if cis unsaturated fatty acids replaced saturated fatty acids. The effect on total:HDL cholesterol of replacing trans fatty acids with a mix of carbohydrates and cis unsaturated fatty acids was almost twice as large as that of replacing saturated fatty acids. Lauric acid greatly increased total cholesterol, but much of its effect was on HDL cholesterol. Consequently, oils rich in lauric acid decreased the ratio of total to HDL cholesterol. Myristic and palmitic acids had little effect on the ratio, and stearic acid reduced the ratio slightly. Replacing fats with carbohydrates increased fasting triacylglycerol concentrations.
CONCLUSIONS: The effects of dietary fats on total:HDL cholesterol may differ markedly from their effects on LDL. The effects of fats on these risk markers should not in themselves be considered to reflect changes in risk but should be confirmed by prospective observational studies or clinical trials. By that standard, risk is reduced most effectively when trans fatty acids and saturated fatty acids are replaced with cis unsaturated fatty acids. The effects of carbohydrates and of lauric acid-rich fats on CAD risk remain uncertain.”

Micha, Renata and Dariush Mozaffarian. 2010. Saturated fat and cardiometabolic risk factors, coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes: A fresh look at the evidence. Lipids 45 (10): 893-905
“Dietary and policy recommendations frequently focus on reducing saturated fatty acid consumption for improving cardiometabolic health, based largely on ecologic and animal studies. Recent advances in nutritional science now allow assessment of critical questions about health effects of saturated fatty acids (SFA). We reviewed the evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of lipid and non-lipid risk factors, prospective cohort studies of disease endpoints, and RCTs of disease endpoints for cardiometabolic effects of SFA consumption in humans, including whether effects vary depending on specific SFA chain-length; on the replacement nutrient; or on disease outcomes evaluated. Compared with carbohydrate, the TC:HDL-C ratio is nonsignificantly affected by consumption of myristic or palmitic acid, is nonsignificantly decreased by stearic acid, and is significantly decreased by lauric acid. However, insufficient evidence exists for different chain-length-specific effects on other risk pathways or, more importantly, disease endpoints. Based on consistent evidence from human studies, replacing SFA with polyunsaturated fat modestly lowers coronary heart disease risk, with ~10% risk reduction for a 5% energy substitution; whereas replacing SFA with carbohydrate has no benefit and replacing SFA with monounsaturated fat has uncertain effects. Evidence for the effects of SFA consumption on vascular function, insulin resistance, diabetes, and stroke is mixed, with many studies showing no clear effects, highlighting a need for further investigation of these endpoints. Public health emphasis on reducing SFA consumption without considering the replacement nutrient or, more importantly, the many other food-based risk factors for cardiometabolic disease is unlikely to produce substantial intended benefits.”
# Harriet Hallon 01 Mar 2012 at 5:56 pm

@Geoff,
“you’d make a lot more clinical progress if you had someone interject into that debate the fact that he has numerous anecdotes of people reversing Crohn’s via dietary interventions.”

No, you don’t make clinical progress by debating. The value of anecdotes is that they can suggest things that might be worth testing with scientific methods. Even an n=1 self-experiment is only a starting point: there are many ways it can lead to false conclusions.
# Geoffon 01 Mar 2012 at 6:01 pm

@SkepticalHealth

You don’t understand heart disease at all. You don’t understand the biological role of lipoproteins in the body. You don’t understand the relationship between heart disease and oxidized LDL. You don’t understand the relationship between chemical stability of a fatty acid and its ability to oxidize in the blood stream. You don’t understand the relationship between particle size of the LDL particle and it’s ability to oxidize in the bloodstream. You don’t understand how saturated fat effects particle size. You don’t understand how contradictory it is to say that eating a diet high in saturated fat causes heart disease when weight loss diets reduce heart disease risk (on a weight loss diet, the balance of calories come from your fat tissue, most of which is saturated and monounsaturated fats).

In addition, the most thorough meta-analysis on the subject, done by the Cochrane Collaboration in 2001, found no link. Large, long term studies have all gone down in flames. I’m sorry, but you don’t have a leg to stand on. Even Dr. Harriet Hall of SBM, who I have many public disagreements with, has stated on more than one occasion that the evidence is dubious.
# weingon 01 Mar 2012 at 6:20 pm

“You don’t understand heart disease at all. You don’t understand the biological role of lipoproteins in the body. You don’t understand the relationship between heart disease and oxidized LDL. You don’t understand the relationship between chemical stability of a fatty acid and its ability to oxidize in the blood stream. You don’t understand the relationship between particle size of the LDL particle and it’s ability to oxidize in the bloodstream. You don’t understand how saturated fat effects particle size….”

And you do? BTW, you forgot particle number. It’s the beta lipoproteins that matter. Regarding the role of lipids in health and disease I suggest you get a copy of the recently published Review Article “The Human Plasma Lipidome” http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1104901
# Chrison 01 Mar 2012 at 6:38 pm

Geoff:

In addition, the most thorough meta-analysis on the subject, done by the Cochrane Collaboration in 2001

I’m only an engineer, but even I know that in an area of active research anything over ten years old is ancient history.

Doctors live in a bubble. You’ve all been trained based on the same information, most of which is science based and some of which is not.

I highly recommend you read Dr. Hall’s autobiography. Or at a minimum read the blurb about her here.
# EricGon 01 Mar 2012 at 6:46 pm

@ geoff

then why do most zoo animals live longer in captivity?

Anecdotes are funny because they are so useful in some domains and critically unimportant in others. Would you withold trust that “the french laundry” is delicious until there was random controlled trials of the food? silly. your friend says…its good. you go, agree or not, end of story. its the very foundation of film, food and literary evaluation. as it stands, it is all a matter of personal taste.

“does Apple make great mp3 players and tablets?” is also a matter of anecdotal reporting, and the sole industry determinant. A “clinical trial demonstrating their statistically significant preferance when compared to a placebo ipod” is absurd.

there are a thousand instances where the ONLY thing I would trust is an anecdote. medicine is not one of those cases. its an area of “knowing” that *requires* science. I find it equally absurd to say, “my friend stan says acai berries make you strong” or “1000 people think chanting keeps the demons away.” the evidence must match the claim. what is at stake simply requires something more than “I/we/he/she or (most devastatingly) they feel it might work and have no reason to think otherwise.” the distinction between “know” and “think/feel/believe” requires an equally distinct method of arriving at the respective conclusions.
# EricGon 01 Mar 2012 at 6:48 pm

aww, my html pun got erased. in any event, geoff, only the first statement is directed at you. the remainder is sort of just to the open air. I am not calling on you to refute that or not.
# Harriet Hallon 01 Mar 2012 at 7:08 pm

@Geoff,
“You don’t understand how contradictory it is to say that eating a diet high in saturated fat causes heart disease when weight loss diets reduce heart disease risk (on a weight loss diet, the balance of calories come from your fat tissue, most of which is saturated and monounsaturated fats).”
You don’t understand the difference between dietary fat and cannibalizing your own body tissues.
# nybgruson 01 Mar 2012 at 7:27 pm

been a while Geoff. Glad to see you are still spouting the same, tired, wrong ideas.

Let me be unambiguous about this… you are wrong. period. end of story. I’ve debated and destroyed you enough times. It’s gotten rather old for me. But when complete ignorami like yourself trot out evolution in such a wrong way to try and offer some sort of support for their wrong ideas, it really gets my goat. But for the newbies here to the forum – have at it. Geoff is just as bad as troll007 except that he is at least cogent and tends not to flood the fora with his wrongness quite as much. Nothing gets through and he thinks himself an expert on evolutionary biology, anthropology, and of course molecular biology. My undergraduate degrees were in evolutionary biology and anthropology and my post-grad work was in molecular pharmacology. Try and understand for a moment Geoff – you are wrong. It isn’t even worth me getting into the details of why anymore for many reasons, including the one Dr. Hall just pointed out.

Did I mention that you are incorrect?
# SkepticalHealthon 01 Mar 2012 at 7:45 pm

@Geoff, thank you for writing an entire paragraph of things that you assume I don’t “understand” while you actively promote and utilize a diet that directly results in increased cardiovascular disease and death. I think your hair spray is eating into your brain.
# Geoffon 01 Mar 2012 at 7:51 pm

@EricG

Lack of predators, no risk of malnutrition, antibiotics… Zoo animals often get the same diseases of affluence as humans and pets though, and putting them on an evolutionarily appropriate diet reverses these diseases.

@weing

I have a pretty good understanding of what is known to this point, it’s not perfect, but certainly enough to be actionable. You, along with everyone else on here, is more than welcome to continue avoiding saturated fats in your diet, you’re not going to really “hurt” yourself by avoiding them unless you replace them with PUFA, in which case you will have problems. The only real thing to be weary of in doing so is that you’ll be missing out on a number of fat soluble vitamins that are pretty hard to get elsewhere.

@Chris

There have not been any large scale studies done since then that would change those conclusions.

@Harriet

From the perspective of your mitochondria, there is no difference. By the time that any dietary fatty acids hit the bloodstream, they are chemically identical to fatty acids made in the human liver via lipogenesis, as well as fatty acids released from the fat tissue for fuel. The same can be said for free glucose from a digested potato versus fasting glucose. Honestly, I really don’t know how you could deny this point. Then again, if I am missing something, please point it out. I have an open mind, it’s just that to this point you’ve yet to give me any reason to change my opinion.
# papertrailon 01 Mar 2012 at 7:52 pm

geoff said: “Yea, I mean Dave Asprey. Here’s his post on the subject…”

That’s your credible source?! I give up.
# Harriet Hallon 01 Mar 2012 at 7:54 pm

My husband just had an interesting thought about the evolutionary/paleolithic diet. We have good evidence that our ancestors practiced cannibalism. Extending the logic of evolutionary diet proponents, would they classify that as something we should consider for an optimally healthy diet?
# papertrailon 01 Mar 2012 at 8:13 pm

Geoff said: “In addition, the most thorough meta-analysis on the subject, done by the Cochrane Collaboration in 2001, found no link.”

Here’s the latest conclusion
Cochrane summary 2011
“Cutting down or changing the fat we eat may reduce our risk of heart disease”

Authors’ conclusions:

The findings are suggestive of a small but potentially important reduction in cardiovascular risk on modification of dietary fat, but not reduction of total fat, in longer trials. Lifestyle advice to all those at risk of cardiovascular disease and to lower risk population groups, should continue to include permanent reduction of dietary saturated fat and partial replacement by unsaturates. The ideal type of unsaturated fat is unclear.
# Harriet Hallon 01 Mar 2012 at 8:16 pm

@Geoff,

“if I am missing something, please point it out.”

You are missing all the evidence that indicates that saturated fat is a risk factor for heart disease.
You are missing the fact that you don’t have any evidence that switching to a high saturated fat diet prevents heart attacks.
You are missing the fact that ketosis is not required for weight loss.
# DWon 01 Mar 2012 at 8:23 pm

“We have good evidence that our ancestors practiced cannibalism.”

Ha! I’m sure the paleodiet folks can work this in somehow. Remember, cannibals boiled their friends and roasted their enemies.
# nybgruson 01 Mar 2012 at 8:27 pm

Then again, if I am missing something, please point it out. I have an open mind, it’s just that to this point you’ve yet to give me any reason to change my opinion.

Ever heard of apolipoproteins? Free fatty acids? Albumin? Hormone sensitive lipase? You know, those things that do, in fact, make triglycerides from diet different from those synthesized in the liver different from those released from adipocytes? Of course you haven’t.
# SkepticalHealthon 01 Mar 2012 at 8:35 pm

@Geoff wrote:

. You, along with everyone else on here, is more than welcome to continue avoiding saturated fats in your diet, you’re not going to really “hurt” yourself by avoiding them unless you replace them with PUFA, in which case you will have problems.

I’m sorry, but I have to believe you are just trolling. You simply can’t be that misinformed. Are you that dead set on a paleo diet that you will honestly believe such utter nonsense? We have actually quantified the decrease in cardiovascular disease achieved by replacing SFAs with PUFAs. And you’re sitting here saying the exact opposite (albeit, with absolutely zero proof.)

You are free to use the paleo diet if you think you are going to lose weight or whatever, but don’t be so naive as to trick yourself into thinking that it’s actually healthy. It’s not. And you don’t have a leg to stand on.

Jakobsen, Marianne U, Eilis J O’Reilly, Berit L Heitmann, Mark A Pereira, Katarina Bälter, Gary E Fraser, Uri Goldbourt, et al. 2009. Major types of dietary fat and risk of coronary heart disease: A pooled analysis of 11 cohort studies. Am J Clin Nutr 89 (5): 1425-3.

Mozaffarian, Dariush, Renata Micha, and Sarah Wallace. 2010. Effects on coronary heart disease of increasing polyunsaturated fat in place of saturated fat: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Plos Med 7 (3): e1000252.

Etc. I can’t be bothered to go upstairs and go through the dozens of other studies I have in my database and paste them, these are several of the ones I’ve already pasted in this thread.
# Geoffon 01 Mar 2012 at 8:37 pm

@Harriet

When I said “if I am missing something, please point it out,” I meant specifically with regard to the idea that dietary fatty acids are chemically identical to those in one’s fat tissue.

To the question of cannibalism, I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that human meat would be significantly different from pork or really the meat of any other omnivore. Humans can achieve optimal health on a wide variety of diets, from 0% carbohydrate, 95% carbohydrate, and pretty much any meat source can be considered “healthy,” as animals use techniques like running, hiding and fighting to fend off predators, unlike plants, for which poison is typically their anti-predation method of choice.
# DWon 01 Mar 2012 at 8:40 pm

“So if he had orthodox treatment during the early acute phase”

So you still can’t read. I’ve said the opposite of what you write above. The exact opposite.
You missed my point COMPLETELY. Even after it was repeated, in extremely clear English.
You really do need to consider that your thinking is messed up.

“his heart and vascular system would have been affected, if he was elderly more so. If this damage was done when he first went that route no amount of eating moon dust would change that.”

If this damage was done …. huh? You’re inventing things. I said plainly he did not have orthodox treatment for leukemia. EVER. For the heart disease, also, he refused medical treatment. Get it? He did EXACTLY WHAT YOU WOULD PRESCRIBE, dearheart. And it killed him.

Nope, sorry, you can’t blame it on doctors. He ignored everything they ever told him. I think he might have taken the Plavix for about 3 days while I was there, ‘cus I was yelling at him every day to take it. Then he quit.

“No I don’t at all get it. According to you and your type you can eat what you like”

What? Again you cannot read. I have never said anything remotely like that, nor is it remotely what I believe. There is very strong evidence, Sarah, that your thinking is impaired. Can you fix that with diet? No – only education.

“and it makes no difference because it was all genetic, he was going this route whatever he did. What I see in your post is trying to blame everything else. Parents dying is shit, absolutely, but if his first brush with leukemia treatment ruined his health you cant blame him rebelling against that and trying something else.”

There was no first brush with leukemia treatment. You made that part up. I said nothing like that. Go back and read it – you invented it. My posts say the opposite. You did not ever grasp what the first post I wrote about it said.

Without a context, your interpretation of events in this story don’t make sense.
# DWon 01 Mar 2012 at 8:56 pm

“To the question of cannibalism, I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that human meat would be significantly different from pork or really the meat of any other omnivore. Humans can achieve optimal health on a wide variety of diets, from 0% carbohydrate, 95% carbohydrate, and pretty much any meat source can be considered ‘healthy,’”

Uh wait, are you agreeing cannibalism would be okay then?
# Geoffon 01 Mar 2012 at 8:57 pm

@SkepticalScience

“albeit, with absolutely zero proof”

It is a logical impossibility to prove a negative. If I were to engage you in a debate about saturated fat, I would have to go through every single one of the studies you cited individually and explain what variables are confounding the results. While I am completely capable of doing that, it would be a lot of thankless effort, so I am going to abstain.

It is much easier to use heuristics to explain why the idea that saturated fat causes heart disease doesn’t make sense, and round it out with the fact that the quality of evidence available with respect to saturated fat causing heart disease is too low to overturn the null hypothesis that would be established by those heuristics.

That said, for a complete debunking of this nonsense, feel free to dive into all 600 pages + 200 pages of citations of “Good Calories, Bad Calories.” To be clear, I don’t actually eat low carb, nor do I think that low carb is necessarily optimal, but Gary’s debunking of the lipid hypothesis is complete and indisputable.
# Geoffon 01 Mar 2012 at 8:58 pm

@DW

Strictly from a health perspective, yes. From a moral perspective, only as a last resort in defense of one’s own life.
# SkepticalHealthon 01 Mar 2012 at 9:20 pm

@Geoff, that’s so cute. When I was 18 I would use the “you can’t prove a negative” gambit and think that I was making a meaningful point. Now that I’m well into my 30s I’ve realized its “put up or shut up.” (Geez, how obnoxious I must have been at 18.) We’re asking for a substantial amount of proof that shows replacing SFAs with PUFAs is unhealthy and increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. So far all you have is… nothing? This is actually another rather fascinating example of the Dunning-Kruger effect. You’re an IT guy with Lego man hair who supports a fringe diet and you’re coming into the a forum populated with medical professionals and scientists telling us that we don’t know anything and that you have “seen the light” and “figured out the secret” that we all are just too dumb to understand. Truly foolish.
# DWon 01 Mar 2012 at 9:34 pm

Nice, so we’ll be sleeping in shifts if your nutty dietary ideas catch on.
# Harriet Hallon 01 Mar 2012 at 9:43 pm

@Geoff,

“for a complete debunking of this nonsense, feel free to dive into all 600 pages + 200 pages of citations of “Good Calories, Bad Calories.”
I did. I don’t consider it “a complete debunking.” I read both of Taubes’ books and I was not as impressed as you were. See
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/why-we-get-fat/

Did you miss the part where he admitted his ideas have not been tested?
And the part where his diet recommendations differ from the evolutionary/paleo diet.
# weingon 01 Mar 2012 at 9:59 pm

@Geoff,

“It is much easier to use heuristics to explain why the idea that saturated fat causes heart disease doesn’t make sense, and round it out with the fact that the quality of evidence available with respect to saturated fat causing heart disease is too low to overturn the null hypothesis that would be established by those heuristics.”

Did you ever wonder why the quality of evidence for what you disagree with is too low to overcome the heuristics? Do you ever wonder whether you could be wrong?
# Chrison 01 Mar 2012 at 9:59 pm

SkepticalHealth:

You’re an IT guy with Lego man hair

I was a structural engineer, does that help? I had to quit working because I gave birth to a much too interesting baby (the seizures were the first clue). Don’t worry, I was already subscribing to Skeptical Inquirer, I already knew that a real skeptic (and a good engineer) will admit to being wrong.

I confess that my only “mommy instinct” is to model the behavior I expect from others. Though I do sometimes resort to mocking those who really really deserve it. And you do not want to hear what I virtually scream into my laptop.
# nybgruson 01 Mar 2012 at 10:21 pm

When I said “if I am missing something, please point it out,” I meant specifically with regard to the idea that dietary fatty acids are chemically identical to those in one’s fat tissue.

Ahem.

Ever heard of apolipoproteins? Free fatty acids? Albumin? Hormone sensitive lipase? You know, those things that do, in fact, make triglycerides from diet different from those synthesized in the liver different from those released from adipocytes? Of course you haven’t.

Yes, the FA and TG portions are identical when they are stored and utilized. They are NOT identical when they are transported through them things that get the atherosclerosis. Very different indeed.
# Geoffon 01 Mar 2012 at 10:28 pm

@SkepticalHealth

I didn’t say that substituting PUFA for SFA would increase heart disease, I said that it would increase mortality. That said, if you eat a diet that is otherwise perfect, substituting PUFA for SFA can only increase the likelihood of heart disease, as there is nowhere to go from zero but up.

@Harriet

I was referring specifically to his examination of saturated fat, dietary cholesterol, the lipid hypothesis and the diet-heat hypothesis in Good Calories, Bad Calories. WWGF is a children’s book by comparison.

As far has his dietary recommendations, I don’t buy his carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis, and while I think that it is possible to achieve optimal health on a diet that stays within his guidelines, I also think that it is possible to achieve optimal health on a diet that completely flies outside of the guidelines (e.g. 95% of calories from potatoes, the rest from meat and fish).

@weing

Absolutely I’ve wondered, I didn’t get converted to my current beliefs about nutrition overnight, believe it or not I am a skeptic at heart. You can’t imagine how resistant I was to giving up wheat, the fact that I gave systemic scleroderma to myself as a result of its overconsumption be damned. The reason that the quality of evidence is so low is because SFA aren’t actually unhealthy, despite the efforts of hacks like Ancel Keyes try to will it to be so.
# Geoffon 01 Mar 2012 at 10:37 pm

@nybgrus

I said specifically free fatty acids, not dietary triglycerides. The composition of the dietary triglycerides are completely irrelevant to health, as triglycerides cannot pass across the intestinal barrier without first being broken into free fatty acids. Palmitic acid from the diet is identical to palmitic acid made in the liver is identical to palmitic acid released from fat tissue. QED
# Linda Rosaon 02 Mar 2012 at 12:04 am

Is Oz getting worse? True, he is reaching more people, and that is worse. But he’s certainly no odder. He is probably only calculating in when and how to introduce CAM to the public.

In 1995, Dr. Oz had started a rudimentary complementary medicine program in the cardiac department at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York. He worked with Julie Motz, a public health student and self-described “radical energy healer.” Yes, Oz preferred to refer to Motz as a “Reiki” practitioner, but that seems more caution on his part. While Motz did “energy chelation” (aka Reiki or TT) before and after surgery, her antics in the surgical theatre were far more bizarre. Motz claims that Oz was concerned about the reaction of his colleagues to his CAM center and, in particular, worried that referrals would dry up.

Motz was a psychic jack-of-all-trades. She was a great devotee of perinatal psychology. Motz claimed she inserted her consciousness inside the bodies of Oz’s patients during surgery, and that while there she looked around for unresolved *in utero* trauma that blocked “energy” needed for surviving surgery. An example of such trauma might be the long-repressed memory of a pregnant mother who would not cooperate with the fetus in making a placenta. In one case, Motz determined that a patient being operated on by Oz had a repressed desire to die, so she told him to go ahead and do so. Motz also did “hello” and “good-bye” rituals when Oz did heart transplants, and calmed angry organs and panicky veins that hadn’t been prepared for surgery. In that world of Motz and Oz, patients were being reduced to something akin to an agglomeration of surreal cartoon characters.
# weingon 02 Mar 2012 at 12:22 am

“You can’t imagine how resistant I was to giving up wheat, the fact that I gave systemic scleroderma to myself as a result of its overconsumption be damned.”

Who convinced you of that “fact”?
# sarah007on 02 Mar 2012 at 2:01 am

DW “He did no “orthodox” treatment for the leukemia because it was never symptomatic.”

DW “no I was not trying to tell you that he did no orthodox treatment for leukemia.”

You have completely avoided answering this. I would never discuss close familly on a blog but you brought it up. For the record I know quite a few people who have gone down the alternative route for cancer with varied results. Two Lymphoma between the lungs, one did orthodox died on life support couple of months after starting orthodox treatment. This patient developed a ‘chest infection’ so the doctors said we will sedate you and put you on a life support machine and give you massive doses of antibiotics. Took 2 weeks to die in a chemical coma. The other who had the same tumour type in similar area which was a co incidence decided to do Gerson and went back home. She still lives, 15 years after first diagnosis with no relapse.

Another with multiple tumours in the liver and one metastatic elsewhere started Gerson, in 3 months the tumours in the liver had reduced from 6 to 1 and the metastasis was 1/3 the size. The oncologist who had seen him was stunned. The holdiays came and this patient decided to take time off from juicing and coffee enemas against advice from person mentoring him as his system was in the middle of systemic cleaning. In 6 weeks he got one more tumour back in the liver and was pressurised into doing chemo. After chemo and radiation for metastasis he developed a cataract and auditory nerve damage. Then the cancer spread to the lungs, spleen and pancreas and adrenals. Patient carried on smoking and drinking against advice from his alt med but the medical specialist told this patient this would make no difference, you can eat what you like. He also carried on juicing but stopped the coffee enemas, as far as the partner was concerned the patient was doing ‘everything’. Juicing the right foods provides break down biochemistry, if you don’t support the liver excretion with coffee enemas the system backs up. So this patient did the worst of both, a shotgun wedding of mix and match.

He died in a lot of pain, the partner still believes this patient tried everything but those who know about these approaches also know that the strict plan was not followed, how do I tell at the funeral friends that knew this patient, that he was doing brilliantly when he followed the plan but as soon as the medics got hold of him they killed him and that was still smoking and drinking too.

I am truly sorry DW that you went through what you did but having spent many years being aware of proper alternatives, yes I grant there is total shit out there, when I have consistently seen brilliant results with people who really get on the programme I also find that the total story of those that went the alternate route and failed miserably the total picture usually reveals that they didnt, or that the first orthodox treatment they underwent was the real culprit. This doesn’t help your grief but I didn’t bring that up. It is hard for me to write this because someones nuts are on the table in the middle of a great big mess.

You need to get help with your grief over this because sharing it here is not going to help you.
# sarah007on 02 Mar 2012 at 7:04 am

DW “He did no “orthodox” treatment for the leukemia because it was never symptomatic.”

DW “no I was not trying to tell you that he did no orthodox treatment for leukemia.”

So we now see the same ‘editing and medical peer review’ because my considered answer to this has been removed. So:

I can now assume that from the orginal diagnosis and first round of acute treatment for leukemia the patient’s CV system was damaged. The patient then moved to chronic status with no symptoms but then proceeded to have CV events due to chemo that eventually proved non recoverable. It is totally logical to see how someone being subjected to this treatment regieme would rebell and consider anything else, that doesn’t make the course of action right but non the less it is understandable.

Doing the alternative doesnt mean mix and match, as I explained in the post that has been removed. It is sad to me that DW has presented only half of a story and been left very unhelped by this site which only serves to add more gasoline to his fire.

I know plenty of people who have done Gerson and totally recovered from cancer, I also know many who have not done the whole programme and not survived, this is not a failure of Gerson it is a failure to comply with the requirements of the programme which is not easy. Steve Jobs didn’t die of alternatives he had plenty of ops like having his pancreas and liver transplanted, to blame his death on alts is misreprentation.

DW you need help elsewhere to find closure and move on, this site is too poisonous to take this any further and out of respect for your grief I am moving on.
# DWon 02 Mar 2012 at 7:56 am

Sarah. You simply cannot read.
THERE WAS NO TREATMENT, acute or otherwise. He did not have chemo. He did not “mix and match.” What part of “He had no treatment” can you not understand, no matter how many times I repeat it? You are certain that a treatment he did was bad for him – a treatment he never had. You are completely irrational.
# DWon 02 Mar 2012 at 8:01 am

DW “He did no “orthodox” treatment for the leukemia because it was never symptomatic.”

DW “no I was not trying to tell you that he did no orthodox treatment for leukemia.”

I see now. You are pasting these two in together because you think I contradicted myself.

The problem lies in your reading strategies, dear.

I said “I was not trying to tell you … x,y,z” because I was trying to tell you SOMETHING ELSE. I was telling you that you had missed my point. The point never had anything to do with any orthodox treatment he had for leukemia (because he never had any). I advised you then to go back and re-read, but you did not read trying to get my point – you read looking for what you already believed, and not surprisingly, found it. This is an interesting example of CAM reasoning.

Maybe it was just the two negatives in that sentence that blew your mind. You figured if I wasn’t trying to tell you a certain thing, I must have been trying to tell you the opposite. That’s not the case. I was trying to tell you SOMETHING ELSE that you have yet to grok.

I’m guessing this sort of low-level reading skill and poor reasoning skills explains what often happens when CAMsters try to make sense of medical or scientific literature.
# nybgruson 02 Mar 2012 at 9:10 am

The composition of the dietary triglycerides are completely irrelevant to health, as triglycerides cannot pass across the intestinal barrier without first being broken into free fatty acids.

Just keep shooting yourself in the foot. Dietary fatty acids are not absorbed as FFAs. They are absorbed as TGs and packaged up into chylomicrons with ApoB48 via exocytosis into the intestinal lymphatics. So yes, in fact the do pass straight through that intestinal barrier without being broken down into FFAs. The TGs that are released for energy from adipose tissue (i.e. completely non-dietary origin) are transported as FFAs in the blood via albumin.

Completely. Different.

When I said “if I am missing something, please point it out,” I meant specifically with regard to the idea that dietary fatty acids are chemically identical to those in one’s fat tissue.

Yep. They are different. The interact differently with all the cells in the body. But why am I even bothering?
# WilliamLawrenceUtridgeon 02 Mar 2012 at 9:31 am

sarah, I wish I were as lucky as you. I knew three people that tried the Gerson protocol, followed it to the letter (with all that caffeine, it was a very unpleasant period) and all three died in agony, much more quickly than other people they met in support groups with similar types and stages of cancer. One developed heart arrhythmias and panic attacks, something she had never experienced before trying coffee enemas. I still keep in touch with the people in the support groups through an e-newsletter the group circulates to encourage each other. Most have had their cancer completely cured through conventional treatment, and a small number experienced significant remission – I only hope the next round of chemotherapy will keep helping.

I only wish my three friends had gone the conventional route. They might be alive today, and I wouldn’t have had to watch them die without any dignity.
# DWon 02 Mar 2012 at 10:06 am

“panic attacks”

That doesn’t seem surprising with large amounts of caffeine.

The whole thing sounds a bit sadistic. Of course, chemo can be ghastly, but these very bizarre and arduous regimens that have no evidence base are pointlessly cruel. It’s just my theory, but I think religious notions of sin and punishment lurk beneath the surface of these people’s motivations.
# stanmrakon 02 Mar 2012 at 10:32 am

I have been using a grounding sheet on my bed for 4 months now. All I can say is that it is fantastic – maybe the best investment I’ve ever made! I have never had sleeping problems in my life, but now I only need to sleep 5 hours a night, down from my previous 6 or 7. The amazing thing is how refreshed I feel when I wake up; I never would have thought it possible, even though I’ve never had any complaints. Then, there’s the lower back stiffness I’ve had for the last 15 years – virtually gone, and getting better by the week, even though I sit at a computer all day and rarely exercise!

My point is that if you insist on dismissing (even ridiculing) everything that hasn’t been “scientifically proven,” and refuse to even consider trying something like this, you will miss out on a world of health benefits that you don’t realize are available, because science hasn’t fully “proven” it. All you’d be left with for sleeping issues is Lunesta and Ambien. Sweet dreams.
# Scotton 02 Mar 2012 at 10:46 am

@ stanmrak:

The problem is that you have no idea whether the grounding mat is responsible. Belief and expectation that it will work are very powerful things, especially with something as both subjective and psychologically linked as sleep patterns.

Doing good science is the ONLY reliable way humans have ever come up with to know whether there is any health benefit whatsoever.
# DWon 02 Mar 2012 at 10:58 am

Long-term follow-up. Long-term follow-up.

The world of CAM runs on testimonials like stanmrak’s.

They get away with it because there is no long-term follow-up. We need to hear from stanmrak on this in six months, again in 12, again at 2 years, again at 5 years, and again at 10 years. I am fairly certain that stanmrak will have lost his enthusiasm for this silly gizmo and will have quietly understood, at some point, that it probably wasn’t actually doing what he thought it was doing way back when. Or he’ll simply stop using it at some point without giving it much thought, maybe vaguely wondering later why he quit using it or why he was using it in the first place? After all, he told us he didn’t have sleeping problems in the first place. But by then, who cares? He won’t give it a lot of thought at that point and won’t be on an internet forum talking about it then. If something else has changed in his health status, for instance, the back pain has gotten worse, it will be attributed to various other causes and the silly New Age sleeping cure long forgotten.

It’s nothing unusual about stanmrak. It’s just human nature. We’re all enthused over the latest gizmo. In terms of health, we have science to weed out, over the long term, the things that we got excited over that really didn’t do anything special.

The people who sell these things know this full well, but since it is hardly useful in selling it to you, they won’t be mentioning it. You can sell virtually anything using testimonials like stanmrak’s, it does not remotely matter whether the gizmo has any plausible means of efficacy or not – just totally doesn’t matter. We are all sheep!
# SkepticalHealthon 02 Mar 2012 at 10:59 am

@stanmrak, … that last post has to be deliberate trolling.
# DWon 02 Mar 2012 at 11:25 am

“that last post has to be deliberate trolling.”

Seriously … why do such things strike us as blatantly obviously not to be taken seriously, yet to some people it’s like wow, well if Stan has been using it for 4 months, I guess I’d better get one for my bed too?!

It’s like my elderly mother with her junk mail. I keep trying to introduce the simple principle that flyers that arrive in the mail saying things like, “I have been using a sleep mat on my bed for 4 months now …” can be moved immediately to the recycling bin? They don’t require your thoughtful consideration; they can be re-pulped, and hopefully the paper will be put to a better use the next time round. For now, it goes in this plastic bin under the sink which we set out on the curb on Tuesdays.
# sarah007on 02 Mar 2012 at 12:03 pm

William said”Most have had their cancer completely cured through conventional treatment, and a small number experienced significant remission – I only hope the next round of chemotherapy will keep helping.”

This is going nowhere unless we tot up a real list of who is making it and who is not, science is a science of disproof, not proof. My experience of the Gerson therapy has been largely a good one, my experience of the chemo route has been a horrible one, not me as patient but knowing others.

I know people who have done nothing but Gerson and survived, like the conventional route there are people who die whatever is done. So far the ones that didn’t survive after some asking or just knowing from seeing were not doing it to the letter. I am certainly not trying to say you are not being honest, I just don’t have an answer to this conundrum. DW I am sorry you had such a shit time, there are no points to score here. It is a shame that this site seems to have a lot of people who have come here because of really crap experiences and there is nothing here to help these people. Venting crap at people is not going to bring closure so that one can move on. I genuinly would like this to happen, carrying this horrible anger is not healthy.

I have no wish to contribute to your agony DW and can see no way to move this forward at all, especially on this forum. It runs the risk of just becoming some kind of macabre circus of I said you said she said. If I have added to your anger I am sorry, sincerely.

If the medical science community was really interested in moving all this on something has to stop this mudslinging, it’s too distructive to be useful and brings the whole world of theraputics into disrepute.
# WilliamLawrenceUtridgeon 02 Mar 2012 at 12:20 pm

My point is that if you insist on dismissing (even ridiculing) everything that hasn’t been “scientifically proven,” and refuse to even consider trying something like this, you will miss out on a world of health benefits that you don’t realize are available, because science hasn’t fully “proven” it.

If something genuinely helps people sleep, by selling it directly to customers instead of researching and proving it, companies are actually responsible for depriving the majority of the world from taking advantage of a genuinely helpful sleep aid. Something that genuinely works would be trivially easy to demonstrate under well-controlled conditions. It could then become part of the therapeutic repertoire of sleep aids that exist today. Of course, this would be fantastic for everyone and the company would make lots and lots of money. They don’t test it, of course, because they probably know it’s very unlikely it does work. Say what you want about Big Pharma, at least they genuinely put money into testing their products – because there’s good reason to believe they’ll be effective (of course, if they are they then exaggerate how effective they are and try to spin the results, but that’s another problem). Makers of sleep mats have two choices – test and either fail (thus losing credibility) or succeed (and become wildly successful making lots of money) or don’t test and sell a small number of products to those uninterested in knowning if they work. It’s a gamble; prior probability gives you a sense of the odds.

Skeptics don’t ridicule all things that aren’t scientifically proven – just the ones that make incredibly strong claims that fundamentally contradict science we are already quite confident is correct.

All you’d be left with for sleeping issues is Lunesta and Ambien. Sweet dreams.

Have you ever heard of “sleep hygiene”? What about the recommendation to get regular exercise as a way of improving sleep quality? How about the last page of this fact sheet that lists 13 tips to improve the quality of sleep? The recommendations include avoiding drugs – including alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, and explicitly mention prescription medications (“Avoid medicines that delay or disrupt your sleep, if possible. Some commonly prescribed heart, blood pressure, or asthma medications, as well as some over-the-counter and herbal remedies for coughs, colds, or allergies, can disrupt sleep patterns.“). In fact, the closest to a recommendation to take drugs is to see a doctor. Once again, CAM pushers don’t actually represent the reality of science-based recommendations. The first instinct is not to prescribe drugs, it is to change habits (often encouraging other healthy habits like exercise along the way).

My point is – science based recommendations often include free options that promote good overall health. CAM recommendations, when not co-opting science, are often wallet-draining ones like unproven herbs, unnecessary vitamins, expensive services like acupuncture, lengthy (and costly) consultations and, getting back to the original comment, totally unproven devices based on magical thinking and concepts that contradict real knowledge.

Skeptics don’t say “I will never believe what you say”, they say “test it before you ask anyone to spend money on it”. CAM practitioners replies usually include ad hominen attacks of closed-mindedness, claims their “incredibly effective intervention” can’t be tested, attacks on the scientific process, shoddy testing, ignoring inconvenient negative results and recommendations to buy their products.

And you accuse Big Pharma of being unethical.
# bgoudieon 02 Mar 2012 at 12:30 pm

I put up a new calendar in my bedroom this January. In the last two months I’ve slept better than I have in the previous year. There must be a connection right? What’s more the painful cramps and tingling I was having with my right hand went away about the same time. (yes I had surgery on it of them just before that, but what are the chances that could be what fixed things? After all it was invasive and changed my natural wellness state as it healed.)

I know there’s no currently “scientifically proven” reason for a calendar to make these changes, but who are we to say that anything we think is true has any actual relevance to what is going on in the world? After all people once thought bats were a kind of bird and the whale was a fish.

My point is that if you limit yourself to the laws of physics, chemistry, or biology you will miss out on this kind of potential healing. Life can be so much simpler if you just stop requiring evidence before making up your mind.
# weingon 02 Mar 2012 at 12:42 pm

“All you’d be left with for sleeping issues is Lunesta and Ambien. Sweet dreams.”

You forgot Propofol, you know, the one MJ used.
# mousethatroaredon 02 Mar 2012 at 1:17 pm

stamrack “My point is that if you insist on dismissing (even ridiculing) everything that hasn’t been “scientifically proven,” and refuse to even consider trying something like this, you will miss out on a world of health benefits that you don’t realize are available, because science hasn’t fully “proven” it. All you’d be left with for sleeping issues is Lunesta and Ambien. Sweet dreams.”

When I was having sleep problems my doctor recommended exercise…hmmm. Which do you suppose is a more “holistic” health choice, exercise or a grounding mat?
# SkepticalHealthon 02 Mar 2012 at 1:27 pm

I wonder how lung until somebody, or if people already do, starts selling “extra conductive” bed sheets to ground people better while sleeping? Instead of thread count, people will worry about conductivity ratings… of cotton and linen. lol. “Come experience the power of QUANTUM BEDSHEETS that LINEARLY ACCELERATE NEGATIVE IONS towards the earth and IMPROVE ENERGY, BODY BALANCE AND WELLNESS. Only $599.99 for a king size set. Warning: Do not wash these sheets because the dryer’s static charge will counterbalance the conductive flow. Ohm.”
# WilliamLawrenceUtridgeon 02 Mar 2012 at 1:35 pm

Don’t be ridiculous SkepticalHealth. They’d never use conductivity ratings, you could measure it.

Now quantum, that’s something you can’t measure. You should trademark “quantum bedsheets” ASAP so you can collect the royalties.
# mousethatroaredon 02 Mar 2012 at 1:44 pm

If I used quantum bedsheets, I’d be afraid that I’d wake up in an alternate universe next to one of my ex-boyfriends who my alternate self didn’t have the wisdom to dump…and I’d never be sure if my cat, who sleeps under the bed, is alive or dead.

That’s how much I understand physics.

I think I’ll stick to my flannel sheets and trying to get more exercise.
# EricGon 02 Mar 2012 at 5:32 pm

@ geoff

you said “Second is that all animals thrive in their natural environments”

then i said, “then why do most zoo animals live longer in captivity?”

then you said “Lack of predators, no risk of malnutrition, antibiotics”

so…your definition of “thriving” includes getting eating and dying of malnourishment and disease? have any evidence to support your claims coming after that? house pets, probably – people overfeed their pets like crazy. wild animals in captivity…i’d say their diet is pretty carefully monitored.

I’d be interested to see that they *dont* eat an evolutionarily appropriate diet to begin with. many animals are fairly intolerant to food variety (marsupials come to mind) as well that there is evidence that they 1st) diverged in diet 2nd) suffered health consequences that were 3rd) restored with a better diet.
# DavidRLoganon 02 Mar 2012 at 8:04 pm

Re saturated fats, who honestly thinks posting an abstract ought to be persuasive? One needs to look at the data in the paper and determine if it should be interpreted in such a way as to actually support the conclusions of the authors. This meta-analysis (abstract!) has the opposite conclusion most of you are pushing regarding the saturated fats. So what now? The answer is far from “obvious”, as some of you have claimed (or is my abstract the winner?)

http://www.ajcn.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009.27725.abstract

More Sat fat issues. “Saturated Fat” is too vague to be meaningful. The medium-chain fats in coconut oil are going to have different effects on metabolism than others. Ditto the polyunsaturates. And meat itself is not always (wholly) saturated fat. Most of the fats we feed farm animals are PFU’s and will displace some saturates in their tissues.

Re our life in industrial civilization, neither side mentioned the moral hazard associated with putting animals in captivity (is your diet really the only thing that determines your well-being?) . But, aside from that, the bulk (90% +) of our decreased mortality in this here society comes from four factors: quitting smoking (since the 1950′s), less violence/better protection, penicillin and basic sanitation. So, I think most of what’s been said is too coarsegrained. Without our *awful* civilization we will not survive long. But also, most of our longevity comes from these factors and not from pharmaceutical intervention. A more moderate view is in order.

Best,
-David Logan, University of Nebraska
# Chrison 02 Mar 2012 at 9:10 pm

Mr. Logan, you don’t think that curbing smallpox, diphtheria, tetanus and other vaccine preventable diseases might have had a small effect?
# SkepticalHealthon 02 Mar 2012 at 10:05 pm

@DavidLogan,

David, here is a link to the full text of the article of which you posted the abstract:

http://www.ajcn.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009.27725.full.pdf

Your homework tonight is to read this full study and figure out why your posting of it is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand, particularly to the posts that I have been making.
# DavidRLoganon 02 Mar 2012 at 10:15 pm

Thanks for the comment, Chris. Yes those vaccines have a substantial effect upon longevity. I do think, however, if you were able to talley the total number of human life-years saved by vaccines since the advent of civilization, it would pale next to the number of years saved by sanitation (all the babies that have been born! the food we have available!), safety (violent deaths are hundreds of times more common in non-industrial societies), etc. (of course these factors are not mutually exclusive)

BUT it’s worth considering, of course, that microorganisms aggregate best in large industrial societies. It’s not at all obvious the net effect of industrialization should only include the people it cures and not the people who died from, say, horrible sanitation in the early cities or even the people who need to be cured. Or do you wish to argue it is obvious?

But my point is not to tread on vaccines, which HAVE obviously saved millions of lives. My point is to question some earlier posts, which painted a one-sided picture of both those who call themselves “paleo” and the readership of this blog.

I personally don’t partake in paleo. The body’s not meant to run on such a high percentage of ketones: they’re a highly protective fuel but only at the expense of a global stress response. Over the long term, the results of paleo are not impressive. But still I think some of paleo’s core “ideals” (for one: that not every industrial intervention has improved health) have some merit.

Just “some” merit. That’s all I’m saying…hopefully doesn’t sound so bad to you.

-David
# DavidRLoganon 02 Mar 2012 at 11:30 pm

Skeptical Health,

Thanks but I have a copy (have a copy of all the papers mentioned in this thread, except for the one about curcumin…thanks for the heads up, btw…extremely interesting and the first I’ve heard…that’s why I read this blog!).

But clearly that paper is not “irrelevant” to the conversation. Please be more careful with your words! We’re talking about the virtues (or lack thereof) of saturated fats. Any piece of evidence about these guys, no matter how crappy (and I don’t agree with you about the crappiness of this one) is-by the definition of relevant-relevant. If you’d like to discuss this matter with me in a sciencey way, feel free to email me davidrusselllogan@gmail.com and we can discuss the many problems of the PFU’s including how they become AGE’s 20+ times faster than fructose syrup. I’ll be happy to discuss these issues with you in a polite, professional, and (most importantly) NUANCED manner. If you’d like to know, my current view (subject to change!) is that reducing fat across the board is a good idea, but that some of the saturates (eg coconut oil) are quite protective.

But if you can’t accept these issues as controversial, what can I say? There are different saturated fats, and they have different effects on different metabolisms in different tissues given different nutritional statuses and different delivery mechanisms (!!!). It’s not at all obvious that the jury is in on all of them based on the studies you’ve mentioned, much less that your sweeping generalizations about them in this thread are justified. Nutritional biochem is a controversial, complicated topic. If you can’t accept that, as a scientist and skeptic I’m obliged to suggest you’re missing out on some fun!

Have a nice evening, and thanks again for your interesting contributions to this site and thread.

-David
# weingon 03 Mar 2012 at 12:43 am

” If you’d like to know, my current view (subject to change!) is that reducing fat across the board is a good idea, but that some of the saturates (eg coconut oil) are quite protective.”

I’ve heard that mentioned before (about coconut oil). Do you know what studies this comes from? I’d like to check them out.
# Chrison 03 Mar 2012 at 2:31 am

Mr. Logan:

I do think, however, if you were able to talley the total number of human life-years saved by vaccines since the advent of civilization, it would pale next to the number of years saved by sanitation (all the babies that have been born! the food we have available!), safety (violent deaths are hundreds of times more common in non-industrial societies), etc. (of course these factors are not mutually exclusive)

Pray tell! Do tally them up for us. Tell us exactly how sanitation saved us, while at the same time delayed infection by polio until a later age when it was more of a problem. Do tell us how diphtheria was better served by dog sled races to provide serum than vaccines (you do know about Balto and the Iditarod?). Then tell us how measles was prevented though sewer treatment. We all want to know!

Give us data, because we all crave data over profound declarations.
# papertrailon 03 Mar 2012 at 2:32 am

The earthing debate seems a no-brainer, to me. The saturated fats debate, not so easy.
# WilliamLawrenceUtridgeon 03 Mar 2012 at 5:15 am

Expect the discussion to shift from “coconut oil” to “virgin coconut oil”. Actual discussions of coconut oil by proponents focus on rat studies, “miraculous” properties of the oil by vanity press, the usual nutjob crowd of Mercola-heads making claims unsupported by evidence, and the like. Actual recommendations by health associations for populations that consume large amounts of coconut oil are generally “reduce and replace with unsaturated fats”.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9100083
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19641346

There is some question over whether the medium chain (saturated) fatty acids in coconut oil might be better for you than the saturated fats found in meat, but the evidence is not conclusive.

http://www.jlr.org/content/36/8/1787.full.pdf
http://www.ajcn.org/content/77/5/1146.full?ijkey=846a72387ebc0d82545acd5442a0c3a9e9fc3566

Mayo basically says “there’s no evidence to think it’s anything but a normal saturated fat”:
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/coconut-oil-and-weight-loss/AN01899

And the FDA says “it’s saturated fat, which should be avoided”:
http://www.fda.gov/Food/LabelingNutrition/ConsumerInformation/ucm192658.htm

There’s also the usual “it improves a surrogate marker for health, therefore it can help you live forever!” claims based on tentative studies like this one:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=8094827

And there’s some claims that since coconut oil has some of the same fats as breast milk, it’s exactly like breastmilk in every way!!!! sourced to a rather low-on-the-totem-pole fringe journal:
http://www.sljol.info/index.php/CMJ/article/download/1351/1200 (pdf)

Often the “scientific” basis for claims are found in quack nutter books and badly written articles like this one:
http://medind.nic.in/jac/t06/i1/jact06i1p16.pdf

Coconut oil might merit it’s own article actually – it’s popular among the CAM crowd and the research base is shaky.
# weingon 03 Mar 2012 at 8:45 am

@WLU,

Thanks. I was hoping they had something more substantial than this. When I was an intern, I had an Indonesian resident that told me that they would use coconut milk, directly from the nut, for fluid replacement during diarrhea epidemics. He could have been pulling my leg, though.
# SkepticalHealthon 03 Mar 2012 at 9:00 am

WLU, I agree with your assessment.

I’m currently writing an article on the Weston A Price Foundation, and one or their board members, a medical doctor who practices homeopathy and other garbage, suggests eating three scoops of coconut oil per day for Herpes:

http://www.westonaprice.org/ask-the-doctor/herpes

I almost feel like I’m giving away my hidden trove of comedy gold, but for anyone who wants hours of comical reading of bad medical advice, check this out: http://www.westonaprice.org/ask-the-doctor/
# DavidRLoganon 03 Mar 2012 at 9:18 am

Chris,

Didn’t mean to ruffle your feathers. I didn’t say sanitation cured measles (do you really attribute that to me?). I said the advent of civilization allowed for species other than humans to thrive (dogs, cats…and yes, some microorganisms). Therefore it’s hard to count the net effect of civilization upon microorganisms. I consider this part of my argument completely unassailable (or do you think dogs and cats are less numerous now?) and therefore the argument over.

Obviously the number of human lives saved by each intervention is beyond the scope of this thread. As I mentioned few of the effects of civilization are mutually exclusive, so it would be hard to calculate how many lives are saved by each intervention. It seems plausible to me (not a declarative sentence!) that sanitation and the factors I mentioned account for the greatest part of our longevity, and that the advent of civilization itself has been breeding ground for microorgranisms humans have struggled with throughout the ages. You disagree, that is fine. Hopefully it is ok with you to speculate about such matters on an internet forum

I await your next sarcastic response. Otherwise, have a nice day and thank you for helping me to think about my views.

Best,
-David
# DavidRLoganon 03 Mar 2012 at 10:38 am

@WLU @SkepticalHealth @Weing

WLU thank you for the resources (to all three: to whom does “they” refer? Hopfully not me!)

As I made clear in an earlier post, I don’t think the evidence for coconut oil is conclusive. I don’t think lauric acid is the same as breast milk nor do I think CNO will help you live forever. And WLU, I use refined-not virgin-CNO for me and my family (not tablespoons…I cook with it!) because I don’t like the taste of coconuts

Clearly we have a different perspective. To me, the “might” evidence, the effects on animals, and the positive experiences I’ve had with this food warrant further study. To you, it warrants the damocles sword of skepticism to fall on coconut oil as soon as possible. That’s too bad. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t find the large cultural studies persuasive toward a positive argument regarding a single nutrient. Metabolism is too complicated-nutrients are protective in some circumstances and not in others-for studies with such large numbers of uncontrolled confounding factors to say something meaningful. In absence of further data, I’m obligated as a scientist to say “I don’t know” and I worry about demonizing or worshipping coconut oil before there is more evidence. We should leave that sort of thing to Joe Mercola.

FWIW, I really didn’t mean to ruffle anyone’s feathers on here. I realize you’re all a bit edgy having to deal with the Weston Price trolls and so on. But I love SBM and have the utmost respect for the editorial board. I only chime in when I think stuff is more controversial than “earthing”…and obviously the metabolism of fats is that controversial. I don’t think it’s in the spirit of this board to respond to criticism by comparing people to Weston Price zealots etc. saying ‘now the conversation will digress to virgin oil’ etc. We all have students, residents, interns, etc. (for me just students) and at least I consider it my job to treat their criticism much differently. If we pretend that the current literature has uncontroversial, unassailable answers to questions of nutrition for all people in all situations, we are no better than those we rile against here on SBM. (cue cheesy music)

Have a nice morning everyone.

-David
# DavidRLoganon 03 Mar 2012 at 11:16 am

@WLU

A more pointed comment: can you post a full text of the second paper (Zevenbergen et al)? That’d be great if so, otherwise I’ll get it on interlibrary. My head almost exploded when I saw they’re recommending margarines. I’m very interested in what “substantial improvement” is going to mean there. If you don’t put it up in the next few hours I’ll go ahead and order, so no biggie.

Also, the Mayo link is pretty worthless. No data, no experiments, a couple paragraphs and I doubt an LD/RD speaks for the whole MC. I think undergraduate chemistry is probably harder than the RD qualifying stuff.

ALSO, the FDA link didn’t work. I tried searching but couldn’t find it? Can you please repost?

Thanks,
-David
# SkepticalHealthon 03 Mar 2012 at 11:18 am

@David, I’m curious what wonderful benefits you experienced by using coconut oil?
# Harriet Hallon 03 Mar 2012 at 11:28 am

@DavidRLogan,

“To me, the “might” evidence, the effects on animals, and the positive experiences I’ve had with this food warrant further study.”

No argument with that! We only object when people claim certainty without the further study.

“If we pretend that the current literature has uncontroversial, unassailable answers to questions of nutrition for all people in all situations,”

I don’t think SBM is guilty of that.
# DavidRLoganon 03 Mar 2012 at 12:10 pm

@Harriet Hall

Thank you. And I agree the second point was an overstatement. The OP’s on SBM are always free from that sort of thing. However, it is a problem in the comments (which is one reason I rarely chime in).

@Skeptical Health

Thanks for asking! (though I’m unsure if you’re sincere) I said they were “positive” not “wonderful”.

Well I get my bloodwork done every few weeks because I’m obsessed with this topic. After the addition of coconut oil I saw that some of the indices for which I’m looking got better. But that’s not evidence! So I went back to my normal way of eating for about a month and tested again. I’ve written down everything I eat for the last five years and how I feel, slept, etc. so I have a decent control for four weeks. I’ve worked it out I get the same nutrition about every month and also I followed a strength testing protocol something similar to used by the baseball trainer Eric Cressey.

Anyway after a month of no CNO and a month on I can say it made the difference in the relevent parameters. Also I noticed during the CNO month I have greater tolerance to the cold/dry weather here in Nebraska.

But of course I’m not saying this is more than anecdotal crap. I’m alot healthier than most people so I can’t say what the effect would be in others. Maybe coconut oil is a huge stress, got damaged in my body and then I had elevated metabolism due to inflammation! I don’t know, but it did pique my interest.
# DWon 03 Mar 2012 at 12:35 pm

” I’ve written down everything I eat for the last five years and how I feel, slept, etc. ”

Good grief … that is so obsessive, it’s far from a way to get objective data on anything. I urge you in the interests of mental health to stop such a practice! There are other components to one’s well being than just nutrition. If you had back the time you’ve spent on the narcissistic project of recording your personal food intake, geez, think of the things you could do with your life.

It’s pointless anyway. It reminds me of the crunchy-granola mothers on forums like Mothering.com exchanging misinformation about food allergies. They’ll say something like, “My son had a hard boiled egg this morning. A few minutes later, he hit his sister. Therefore, hard boiled eggs make my son aggressive. Therefore, my son has an egg allergy.” This is the only kind of data you can get from writing down everything you eat and then trying to correlate it with how you slept or how you feel. It is just a route to crazy.
# Chrison 03 Mar 2012 at 1:07 pm

Mr. Logan:

It seems plausible to me (not a declarative sentence!) that sanitation and the factors I mentioned account for the greatest part of our longevity, and that the advent of civilization itself has been breeding ground for microorgranisms humans have struggled with throughout the ages. You disagree, that is fine. Hopefully it is ok with you to speculate about such matters on an internet forum

The title of this blog includes the words “science based”, not “speculation based.” So do not be surprised when you are asked to justify your statements with real data. It works better if you actually provide supporting documentation when you post speculations.

If you read a bit of history, you will learn that many people lived long lives over the past few centuries. Both Leonard Euler and Benjamin Franklin lived long lives (and you may want to research why the latter changed his mind on smallpox variolation). The trick to a long life up until the mid-twentieth century was surviving childhood. It was quite common for a family to lose multiple children to infections (my grandmother had two brothers who died before age seven). Another bit of history you should check out is the rubella epidemic of the early 1960s.

The bit about “civilization” is a ironic when you learn that there were several civilizations in the Americas that were wiped out. The Incas were not just wiped out by Spanish guns, but by their infections. There is a reason that Jared Diamond’s book is titled Guns, Germs and Steel. Another book is 1491 by Charles Mann. There are descriptions of thriving communities along the American east coast by Europeans who first ventured there, only to be gone by the time the next European ship came by.

So before you again speculate on medical achievements, and downplay one very important factor, actually learn about it. One place to start is:
http://www.historyofvaccines.org/
# SkepticalHealthon 03 Mar 2012 at 1:14 pm

@David,

Thank you for answering my question, without actually answering the question.
# WilliamLawrenceUtridgeon 03 Mar 2012 at 6:33 pm

Weing, coconut water (not coconut milk, which is a suspension made from mashed or grated coconut meat) is actually a sterile (I think!) source of nutrients and electrolytes. It makes sense that it would be a reasonable, low-tech substitute for sterile saline, so not that crazy.

I look forward to the post on Weston Price, I’ve heard they’re pretty nutty.

David, we get a lot of idiots with no appreciation of science who think that preliminary studies on rats are adequate to make global recommendations about how the entire world should eat. If you’re not one of them, great – time will tell. Actually, most people don’t even know about the rats – Joe Mercola or Gary Null says coconut oil is great (and you can buy it for just $19.95 per 100ml, virgin oil squeezed from the meat by nubile maidens on exotic tropical islands untouched by toxins or vaccines and the death rates due to infectious diseases are substantial) and they don’t need any other evidence.

A point I can make here is that skeptics ask for evidence making recommendations. If you think that your own experiences are enough to make recommendations to other people that fly in the face of recommendations made to date to avoid saturated fat, I would suggest that perhaps you might not be as scientific as you might want. I acknowledge that coconut oil might not be as bad for you as beef tallow – but I’m not sure. I am, however, quite sure that virgin coconut oil is recommended by quacks and loons well in excess of the evidence base.

FDA link – http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/UCM239579.pdf

As for recommendations about soft margarine, it’s usually made with mono- or poly-unsaturated fatty acids, for which there is an excellent evidence base regarding their health benefits. An obvious exception being those containing trans fats.

Your changes were to a marker of health, proxy measures are both open to abuse and just that – proxies. They’re a good starting point, but there’s always the chance that the proxy measure has no effect on long-term health or death due to CV disease.

Chris – both excellent books, good recommendations. I think it was Diamond, or perhaps a book on smallpox that I read, that made the point that smallpox itself was unusually lethal due to the “arms race” between the human immune system and the virus itself. Essentially multiple cycles where the virus would kill off the most vulnerable parts of the population (exerting selection pressure for more resistance to smallpox), then mutate to a version that was more lethal. Lather, rinse, repeat, and by the time it hit an immunologically naive population in North and South America, it was devastating with estimates of up to 95% lethality. Whether Mann is correct in his estimates of the levels of civilization and population in the Americas is questionable, but there’s no question smallpox was a horribly, horribly devastating disease on the continents.
# Chrison 03 Mar 2012 at 7:07 pm

I believe Mann was quoting William McNeill on the population figures for the Americas. I know I had read about those years ago in McNeill’s Plagues and Peoples. In that book McNeil mentions that the disease did not have to be that lethal, in that it affected many of the adults who provided for the very young (and sometimes very old). What often happen is that when those responsible for growing and hunting food are too sick to do that, many more people starve than die from the disease.
# SkepticalHealthon 03 Mar 2012 at 7:35 pm

WLU, where can I get this squeezed by virgins coconut oil?
# papertrailon 04 Mar 2012 at 5:09 am

“Well I get my bloodwork done every few weeks because I’m obsessed with this topic.”

Yikes! Sounds too much like you’re doing a lot to yourself for the quality of a homeopathic proving rather than a scientific study. Won’t your results still suffer from all the weaknesses, if not meaninglessness, of n=1, non-blinded experience?

And noticing better tolerance to cold weather after CNO, that seemed to just come out of the blue. You probably could notice a lot of things after eating CNO that likely have nothing to do with it. Were you hypothesizing that eating CNO should lead to better cold tolerance? I thought the issue was whether or not cardiavascular events could be prevented.
# papertrailon 04 Mar 2012 at 5:35 am

…whether or not cardiavascular events could be prevented – or at least not promoted.
# DavidRLoganon 04 Mar 2012 at 8:59 am

Thank you everyone for the excellent replies and thoughtful comments/criticism (particularly WLU and Chris).

I admit there was a point where I got way too weird and did not explain myself fully haha. I think I get so fired up about nutrition I am prone to vagueness/typing without thinking.

Looking forward to talking with you guys and gals on future threads.

Thanks again this has been fun. The curcumin study and hearing your perspective has made me temper my opinions a bit/see where they can be explained in better detail.

Have a nice Sunday.

-David
# papertrailon 04 Mar 2012 at 2:14 pm

@DavidRL,
I, for one, appreciate your honesty (weirdness, or whatever you want to call it) and sharing what you’re doing. It was interesting, and your politeness is refreshing.
# lizditzon 04 Mar 2012 at 11:25 pm

@DavidRL appears to be part of the “personal metrics” (movement? something anyway…) also known as The Quantified Self (QS)

His bloodwork obsession (why spend on that?) aside, regular readers may be interested in reading an introduction to the subject, an article at Wired called Know Thyself.

Elite athletes do this sort of measurement regularly. A number of parents of non-verbal autistic children also track (less obsessively) to see if they can suss out things that improve (or impair) their children’s quality of life.

Other people with mood disorders use some form of QS tracking to help with quality of life. Some people have started QS projects as part of a weight-loss or fitness-improvement effort.
# DWon 05 Mar 2012 at 8:00 am

Thanks Liz. I see a value for such “tracking” when it’s for a particular medical purpose, or time-limited, like a food diary when you’re beginning a weight loss program etc. It seems to me that writing down everything you eat for 5 years is something that’s gotten a bit out of control; you’ve maybe solved one problem but created others.
# SkepticalHealthon 05 Mar 2012 at 12:57 pm

Completely self-serving, but I just finished a post detailing the quack backgrounds of some of the members of the board of the Weston A. Price Foundation:

http://www.skepticalhealth.com/2012/03/05/weston-a-price-foundation-dangerous-dietary-advice/
# Quillon 05 Mar 2012 at 4:57 pm

@SkepticalHealth:

I don’t mind your tooting your own horn. Your post about the people at WAP was very interesting. I’d heard about them for a while but didn’t know much about them. Eeep. While the original Dr. Price sounds like an interesting person with an inquisitive mind, the foundation that bears his name seems wacky and the leaders not qualified to be making so many recommendations. Heck, any recommendations!
# TGA, Dr Ken Harvey and SensaSlim News « Victorian Skepticson 06 Mar 2012 at 7:03 am

[...] changing the subject to complementary medicine, I’d like to highlight this excellent post at the Science Based Medicine blog (US). In addition to Oprah Winfrey, daytime television in Australia occasionally includes the Dr Oz [...]
# Wendy Hugheson 07 Mar 2012 at 7:20 pm

It is unfortunate that Weight Watchers has adopted Dr. Oz in their promotion. There is nothing inherently unhealthful about the Weight Watchers Points Plus program. I am a stone skeptic, and I’ve lost 45 lbs. since June 2011, and have not had to suffer deprivation nor engage in any woo that I could detect. It is a simple program of classification of foods into points by analysis of fiber, protein, carbs and fats, and budgeting the amounts ingested daily. All fruit and most vegetables are zero points, so as long as you don’t hate fruit and vegetables, and get a little exercise most days of the week, you can lose weight easily without being hungry. I was disappointed that Dr. Oz became their poster boy. Next meeting I go to, I plan to wear a shirt that says “Friends Don’t Let Friends Watch Oprah”
# heirsoloon 11 Mar 2012 at 1:16 am

Your article “Dr Oz revisited”. Section: Eggplant – A “cure” for cancer.

You state that someone named Dr Bill Elliot Cham who BASICALLY claims
that eggplants cure skin cancer. In this context your term BASICALLY
has no scientific meaning.

Furthermore, nowhere does Dr Cham claim that eggplants cure skin
cancer, on the contrary, he claims the opposite. Eggplants do not
cure skin cancer and what Dr Cham claims (and proves by his, and other
independent scientists medical publications) is that solasodine
rhamnosyl glycosides (BEC) present in the Devil’s Apple and in the
Eggplant cure, by medical definition, basal cell carcinoma and
squamous cell carcinoma in humans and that BEC cures internal cancers
in animals.

Since the heading of your organization is “Science – Based Medicine”
which supposedly explores issues and controversies in the relationship
between science and medicine I will only address your inadequate
issues on Curaderm and Dr Bill Cham relating to Science – Based
Medicine.

Herewith a small sample of several articles recently published by
various independent scientists on Curaderm and its active ingredients.
This work has taken over a quarter of a century. I invite you to
read these articles and also take note of the references in these
articles to help you broaden your understanding of science in general
and of the benefits of Curaderm.

- B. E. Cham, “Intralesion and Curaderm BEC5 topical combination
therapies of solasodine rhamnosyl glycosides derived from the Eggplant
or Devil’s Apple result in rapid removal of large skin cancers.
Methods of treatment compared”. Int. Journal Clinical Medicine, Vol.
3, 2012. In press.

- B. E. Cham and T. R. Chase, “Solasodine Rhamnosyl Glycosides Cause
Apoptosis in Cancer Cells. Do They Also Prime the Immune System
Resulting in Long Term Protection Against Cancer?” Planta Medica, Vol.
78, 2012, pp. 349-353.
doi:10.1055/s-0031-1298149.

- T. R. Chase, “Curaderm BEC5 For Skin Cancers, Is It? An Overview,”
Journal Cancer Therapy, Vol. 2, 2011, pp. 728-745.

- B. E. Cham, “Topical Solasodine Rhamnosyl Glycosides Derived from
the Eggplant Treats Large Skin Cancers: Two Case Reports,”
International Journal Clinical Medicine, Vol. 2, No. 4, 2011, pp.
473-477.
doi:10.4236/ijcm.2011.24080

- L. H. Goldberg, J. M. Landau, M. N. Moody and I. J.
Vergilis-Kalner. “Treatment of Bowen’s disease on the penis with low
concentration of a standard mixture of solasodine glycosides and
liquid nitrogen”. Dermatologic Surgery, Vol. 37, 2011, pp. 858-861.

- S. Punjabi, L. J. Cook, P. Kersey, R. Marks and R. Cerio,
“Solasodine Glycoalkaloids: A Novel Topical Therapy for Basal Cell
Carcinoma. A Double-Blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled, Parallel
Group, Multicentre Study,” International Journal Dermatology, Vol. 47,
2008, pp. 78-82. (Zycure is Curaderm).
doi:10.1111/j.1365-4632.2007.03363.x

I hope after reading these articles and examing their references, you
will realize that your article on Curaderm and Dr Cham is incorrect.

You have used other statements regarding Dr Cham to fuel your war
against Dr Oz and Dr Mercola. It is not my purpose to engage in your
controversies other than to state that your conclusions of Dr Cham are
unfounded, uninformed and outrageous.

This brings into contention your credibility on your other views of
Science – Based Medicine.
# David Gorskion 11 Mar 2012 at 11:22 am

One can’t help but think you’re being disingenuous when you harp on my discussion of Dr. Cham’s claims. First of all, straight from the Curaderm website, we find, “Curaderm BEC5 Eggplant Skin Cancer Cream by Dr. Bill Elliot Cham” and:

Curaderm BEC5 Skin cancer treatment made from the extract of the eggplant and available (in some countries) for Non-Melanoma skin cancer & Sunspots as a cream in a topical cream.

In fact, you’re being silly in your level of pedantry when you focus on the word “basically.” I mean, seriously. People sometimes accuse me of having no sense of humor about such things, but if you seem to beat me in humorlessness in that you can’t recognize obvious sarcasm when you see it. When I see someone focus like a laser on a single word in a statement like that, I know they have little substantive to say.

As for the publications, one notes that the International Journal of Clinical Medicine (where two of the articles are published) is an open source journal that is not indexed in Medline when I checked this morning. Sorry, but if the journal is not indexed in Medline then I don’t bother trying to chase it down (well, with one exception that would take too long to go into here). The reason is that the bar for being indexed in Medline is pretty low; so if a journal is not indexed in Medline it’s generally not worth a busy clinician-researcher’s time. As for the other publications, they’re mostly case reports with one randomized study. You’ll also notice that my links to PubMed searches above turn up Punjabi et al and Goldberg et al, two of the studies you list above; so it’s not as though I ignored them. Did you bother to click on my links? That’s what they’re there for. It’s not as though I was hiding anything. It’s rather that I was unimpressed by the evidence Dr. Cham arrays. To make you happy, perhaps I will add a sentence explaining why this small clinical trial doesn’t justify the claims being made for it.
# Harriet Hallon 11 Mar 2012 at 12:57 pm

@hiersolo,
Dr. Gorski said that the eggplant treatment might work but that currently available evidence doesn’t support Cham’s claims. His presentation was openminded and accurate. His point was that the statement from the TV show that “a skin cream made of eggplant extract can cure cancer” was a misleading teaser. It clearly was.

Now you have presented your evidence and Dr. Gorski has explained why it doesn’t convince him. Your suggestion to an MD/PhD cancer specialist to “broaden your understanding of science in general” is condescending, insulting, and in very poor taste.

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Dr. Oz revisited

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