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Why are most mfp users against holistic nutrition?

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Replies

  • Aaron_K123
    Aaron_K123 Posts: 7,122 Member
    Fyreside wrote: »
    @Aaron_K123 & @jseams1234 Thanks for the info. Good reading.

    Thanks @Fyreside, I think you made some good points and I do think there are opportunities for pharma to have poor buisness practices that can price gouge or are more profit motivated than they ethically should be. I think it would be foolhardy to claim otherwise, as for profit they are beholden to their share holders and there certainly are problems that go along with that. Cheers
  • jgnatca
    jgnatca Posts: 14,464 Member
    From what I can see here in Canada, in the cusp of legalization, is that there is plenty of BIG MONEY lined up to supply demand. For a popular natural product. Is it any coincidence that within a ten block radius of my home there are TWO vape shops, with branding and flashy signage, all ready to go?

    https://www.alberta.ca/cannabis-legalization.aspx
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,176 Member
    born_of_fire74 wrote: »
    mph323 wrote: »
    born_of_fire74 wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    There actually IS something we can do about it. Each of us plays a small role, at the least, in determining whether the culture promotes woo or promotes more scientific approaches. Whether it's considered an "of course, it's responsible" to have children vaccinated or take them to a doctor when sick or whether "eh, I thought I'd have someone check their aura."

    In the OP's case, she's considering whether to become part of the system promoting woo or whether to question and rethink that.

    I would agree that absent really, really extreme circumstances adults have self determination and can make even decisions I consider really unwise or based in superstition about their health, of course, and with respect to most of the stuff on MFP the only harm is maybe delaying doing something that actually would be more helpful. But that does not mean that our only alternative is to actually encourage the idea that crystals are the same as medicine or that if I might be sick or have a weight problem I should detox, since it's the "toxins" causing it. Saying "no, that's wrong, that's not scientifically supported at all," especially on a forum like this where there may be lurkers actually looking for information. And, ideally, giving good reasons for our opinions or links to actual respectable sites is a positive step.

    Saying "no, that's mean, you should never question what someone else does, even on the internet in a general discussion about the merits of holistic medicine" is in reality encouraging and promoting a culture that does not respect science and is hardly the only alternate to legally forcing people to see doctors or take medication.

    My objections have had nothing at all to do with kindness. I have not said anything about anyone being mean. I'm suggesting that there are all kinds of options to western medicine, many of which are proven to work as you admit yourself. The anti-woo crowd is doing itself a disservice, in my opinion, by severely limiting their health options and doing others a disservice by trying to prevent alternative medicine from being available as an option.

    I don't want to get surgery on my back and I don't want to manage my pain with medications. I'm currently happy and able to do my job as a result of the alternative treatments I receive. My hairdresser was miserable for years but has finally lost some weight and is happier and more energetic than she's been in years with her (totally suspect but somehow effective) blood type diet. Why is this such an affront to the anti-woo crowd? What business is it of yours in the first damn place?

    See, this is what I was talking about earlier - anecdotal evidence vs controlled studies. I'd buy it if someone could show me a legitimate blind study where people with identical symptoms were divided into random groups and given diets either conforming to their blood type or not. If the results showed verifiable improvement in the symptoms of those who ate the diet consistent with their blood type, and little or no improvement in the other group I'd be completely convinced, and would be advising others to give it a try.

    I'm not convinced by the blood type diet either. I wouldn't do it myself and I wouldn't recommend to anyone. If it's the magic bullet my hairdresser needed, however, what the hell do I care?

    You don't have to see a chiropractor if you don't want to but you not wanting to doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to. I'm not trying to get western medicine shut down because I use chiropractic; many western medicine proponents, OTOH, are trying to prevent me from having access to a chiropractor. You don't have to follow a blood type diet if you don't want but my flaky hairdresser should be able to if she wants to.

    To the bolded:

    This surprises me. My Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance plan pays for chiropractic treatment. I can even self-refer.

    This seems like the very essence of acceptance by the mainstream medical establishment, to me.

    Things must be different elsewhere, I guess.
  • shaumom
    shaumom Posts: 1,003 Member
    Holistic places that I've seen have one problem: it is hard to trust that what they say is accurate. Mind you...sometimes it is. Sometimes they are absolutely right. But it always seems to be a mix.

    They often teach things that are not fully proven, or only have a study or two 'proving' them, or are more based on doctor discussion and articles re: their patients and personal experience. Which means they are MORE likely than medical schools to start teaching new information on the 'cutting edge,' as it were. Which means it has a higher chance to be partially or even fully incorrect.

    Although on the plus side, that means they may sometimes catch some new information that is completely true and just not accepted yet, or not studied enough to prove that it IS true (even if it is, in fact, true).

    So I'd say anything they teach - verify for yourself with outside sources and research and look up critiques, and then critiques of those critiques, and so on.

    Although to be fair, medical schools have the opposite problem than holistic ones, which can also lead to Incorrect information being taught. They are too slow to update their information, so outdated and wrong information is still taught for quite some time, in many cases.

    Medical knowledge in one country can seriously lag behind disseminating into the medical field in another country and so incorrect information is still taught for years, typically. Fructose malabsorption was treated for years in Australia, for example, when it was still viewed as imaginary here in the US. Now, it's completely accepted here and any GI doc can test you for it.

    Medical textbooks usually take 10-15 years to create, from start to finish, so doctors learning from them in school are typically that far out of date with current medical knowledge unless their professor has been keeping tabs on updated knowledge (will not all of them do. Possibly even most).

    Heck, I've gotten to experience this myself. My own disease has had previous knowledge of symptoms disproven, beyond a doubt, but it happened mostly in Britain. They were diagnosing the disease properly for at least 15 years before the USA started having doctors that were changing. The changes here started maybe 10 years back, and some medical schools are STILL teaching the outdated information.

    This is not new, nor unusual.

    And add on to this - the studies we are using to prove or disprove medical knowledge have been shown to be pretty unreliable for a while now. (This is a good summation of this particular problem http://nypost.com/2017/05/06/medical-studies-are-almost-always-bogus/ )

    So studies used to prove, or disprove, anything taught at your holistic school may not be accurate. But same goes for the medical schools.

    But as medical schools typically at least try to wait until there is a good body of evidence on new knowledge before they teach it, I think that they have less likelihood of teaching NEW incorrect information (one hopes). Holisitic schools don't seem to have that caution. So again...I'd verify anything you hear from the holistic school to double check, and triple check, that stuff.
  • Akariixo
    Akariixo Posts: 57 Member
    Conventional medicine (prescription medication, blood testing) vs. Alternative medicine (aromatherapy, acupuncture, massage therapy etc.)

    Conventional is backed by evidence, alternative is not.

    Alternative medicine can definitely work and is a great aide in treating whatever your symptom is however; it should be used alongside conventional methods for optimal benefits :)

    Not to say the holistic approach is a bunch of bs, I would recommend learning a lot about the subject before taking part in this practitioners recommendations.
  • BritishSpy007
    BritishSpy007 Posts: 431 Member
    Difficult to *kitten* to this... :/
  • clicketykeys
    clicketykeys Posts: 6,575 Member
    vingogly wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    But the advance of medicine and human knowledge is based on observation, experimentation, and recording and comparing results, not just "letting people do what works for them."

    It isn't a contest, but that doesn't mean that there is no such thing as accurate information or that medicine is some realm where truth is impossible to determine.

    from a NYT interview with John Caputo, professor of theology and philosophy at Syracuse University:
    I think that what modern philosophers call “pure” reason — the Cartesian ego cogito and Kant’s transcendental consciousness — is a white male Euro-Christian construction.

    White is not “neutral.” “Pure” reason is lily white, as if white is not a color or is closest to the purity of the sun, and everything else is “colored.” Purification is a name for terror and deportation, and “white” is a thick, dense, potent cultural signifier that is closely linked to rationalism and colonialism. What is not white is not rational. So white is philosophically relevant and needs to be philosophically critiqued — it affects what we mean by “reason” — and “we” white philosophers cannot ignore it.

    That's the corruption resulting from an out-of-control postmodernism I mentioned earlier -- it comes from academia, but thanks to the media, we've all been affected by it. The claim of the postmodernists is precisely that "there is no such thing as accurate information". The insistence on observation, experimentation, and recording and comparing results is part of a dominating narrative constructed by white males to maintain their control. Here is the source interview in case you think I'm making this crap up:

    https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/02/looking-white-in-the-face/

    This is why I use the phrase "consistent, repeatable results" rather than simply "accurate information." One of the things that my (former!) boss said that really got under my skin was "perception is reality." And I'm like... no. It isn't. However, we are only able to respond to reality as we perceive it. So our perceptions affect the ways in which we react, and as our reactions then shape reality, perception does shape reality.
    Aaron_K123 wrote: »
    fitfreakymom wrote: »
    you really think that pharmaceutical companies want people switching to treating themselves? they make money off people depending on them.

    I actually think that there is some truth to this. Pharmaceutical companies do make profits from pain killers. Marijuana can be an effective way of dealing with chronic pain. Many pharma produced pain killers are addictive in a way that Marijuana is not. If people get medical leave to grow Marijuana in their yard for medicinal purposes and that becomes popular then that could cut into profits from the sale of pain killers.

    Where I lose you though is when you seem to imply this makes pharmaceutical companies evil somehow. Not sure how that follows. Also if you are claiming Marijuana has no drawbacks I'd disagree there as well. Smoking anything causes damage to your lungs that can result in serious health problems. If instead you are taking an extract like cannibus oil then you are purchasing that from some company that is making a profit, so not sure how that is any different than pharma.

    Yep - I can totally see pharmaceutical companies manufacturing prescription and/or OTC marijuana supplements and making money that way too. Again, processes can be patented. There's no reason they couldn't make money off it, which is why I'm skeptical of the claim that "Big Pharma" is who's really behind the resistance to legalization of marijuana.
  • deannalfisher
    deannalfisher Posts: 5,600 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    born_of_fire74 wrote: »
    mph323 wrote: »
    born_of_fire74 wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    There actually IS something we can do about it. Each of us plays a small role, at the least, in determining whether the culture promotes woo or promotes more scientific approaches. Whether it's considered an "of course, it's responsible" to have children vaccinated or take them to a doctor when sick or whether "eh, I thought I'd have someone check their aura."

    In the OP's case, she's considering whether to become part of the system promoting woo or whether to question and rethink that.

    I would agree that absent really, really extreme circumstances adults have self determination and can make even decisions I consider really unwise or based in superstition about their health, of course, and with respect to most of the stuff on MFP the only harm is maybe delaying doing something that actually would be more helpful. But that does not mean that our only alternative is to actually encourage the idea that crystals are the same as medicine or that if I might be sick or have a weight problem I should detox, since it's the "toxins" causing it. Saying "no, that's wrong, that's not scientifically supported at all," especially on a forum like this where there may be lurkers actually looking for information. And, ideally, giving good reasons for our opinions or links to actual respectable sites is a positive step.

    Saying "no, that's mean, you should never question what someone else does, even on the internet in a general discussion about the merits of holistic medicine" is in reality encouraging and promoting a culture that does not respect science and is hardly the only alternate to legally forcing people to see doctors or take medication.

    My objections have had nothing at all to do with kindness. I have not said anything about anyone being mean. I'm suggesting that there are all kinds of options to western medicine, many of which are proven to work as you admit yourself. The anti-woo crowd is doing itself a disservice, in my opinion, by severely limiting their health options and doing others a disservice by trying to prevent alternative medicine from being available as an option.

    I don't want to get surgery on my back and I don't want to manage my pain with medications. I'm currently happy and able to do my job as a result of the alternative treatments I receive. My hairdresser was miserable for years but has finally lost some weight and is happier and more energetic than she's been in years with her (totally suspect but somehow effective) blood type diet. Why is this such an affront to the anti-woo crowd? What business is it of yours in the first damn place?

    See, this is what I was talking about earlier - anecdotal evidence vs controlled studies. I'd buy it if someone could show me a legitimate blind study where people with identical symptoms were divided into random groups and given diets either conforming to their blood type or not. If the results showed verifiable improvement in the symptoms of those who ate the diet consistent with their blood type, and little or no improvement in the other group I'd be completely convinced, and would be advising others to give it a try.

    I'm not convinced by the blood type diet either. I wouldn't do it myself and I wouldn't recommend to anyone. If it's the magic bullet my hairdresser needed, however, what the hell do I care?

    You don't have to see a chiropractor if you don't want to but you not wanting to doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to. I'm not trying to get western medicine shut down because I use chiropractic; many western medicine proponents, OTOH, are trying to prevent me from having access to a chiropractor. You don't have to follow a blood type diet if you don't want but my flaky hairdresser should be able to if she wants to.

    To the bolded:

    This surprises me. My Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance plan pays for chiropractic treatment. I can even self-refer.

    This seems like the very essence of acceptance by the mainstream medical establishment, to me.

    Things must be different elsewhere, I guess.

    my BCBS also pays for accupuncture and I can use my flexspending account for massage (if it is treatment for a medical issue and not just relaxation)
  • stevencloser
    stevencloser Posts: 8,911 Member
    Fyreside wrote: »
    jseams1234 wrote: »
    Really? That is the only reason? Purity, controlled dosage and the like have nothing to do with it?

    Let's say you need to dose someone with atropine... well, you got some belladonna growing the the back. Do you know how many chemicals besides atropine are in belladonna? Do you know how potentially dangerous some of them are at the wrong dosage? What about cost? What do you think is cheaper, purely synthesizing a compound in a lab or factory or farming, harvesting, processing and then still having to process and extract the specific compound from the sometimes thousands of others that may be present.

    You say that as if it's not possible to separate or isolate specific components of an extraction. And talk about it like there are no side effects to the synthetic variants lol. Tell you what, name one drug that's not patented, and I will concede my point entirely.

    Since drug patents aren't eternal, I'd say there's quite a few.
  • stanmann571
    stanmann571 Posts: 5,727 Member
    Aaron_K123 wrote: »
    Try telling the thousands of people who are getting real results treating child seizures with cannabis oil that it's hokum, because it doesn't have approval and a sufficient body of clinical testing evidence.

    Honestly i'd probably tell them exactly what you said, that it doesn't have a sufficient body of clinical testing evidence and has not shown to be effective. If they want to use it anyway I'm not going to stop them but I might suggest that they look into what seizure medicines HAVE been clinically tested and shown to be effective and that they might want to at least try those first. I mean, that is sensible right?

    When it's proven effective(and I suspect it will be), no doubt there will be several different extractions with different patents for patients to choose from.
  • jesspen91
    jesspen91 Posts: 1,383 Member
    WorkerDrone83 wrote: »
    @jesspen91 wrote: »

    Was it this?

    Oh man, I have to watch a movie now. Haha. I'll check it out, but my future trust in you is depending on the quality of the video. :p

    ETA- Turned out I really liked it. Well-played.

    Haha Tim Minchin is awesome!
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    I think the criminalization thing is a strawman, and extremely misleading in the context of this discussion. The blood type diet is dumb, but obviously it should not be outlawed and no one would claim that. And, like Ann said, my understanding is that insurance not only typically pays for chiropractic (at least for some conditions), but it was part of the general package for ACA.

    What I suspect MAY be referred to here is that yeah, a number of people were upset by chiropractic care being part of mandated coverage under ACA -- but obviously those arguments (which have not won out) are not the same as outlawing it.

    Similarly, I would object to my insurance (and definitely mandated insurance) covering many kinds of "holistic" practice that are, in fact, bunk (again, help from a non accredited nutritionist or a "doctor" who attended the school OP is talking about and is obviously not a real doctor and who is prescribing detoxes or the blood type diet). Here in Chicago there are a bunch of places that sell a "detox diet" -- basically a week of overpriced (and I mean OVERPRICED) juices. Yes, I would be annoyed if my insurance covered that sort of nonsense, or, I dunno, a visit to a psychic.

    It is important to be able to draw lines and this idea that seeing a psychic might help someone, so who are we to say insurance should not cover it, seems like the worst sort of pop postmodernism (to run with the point that someone else made and I agreed with earlier).

    Of course, saying I don't think detoxes should be covered by insurance doesn't mean I think they should be outlawed. Like I said, there are plenty for sale, and I'm good with that.

    I'm also not aware of massage therapy (to bring up something else mentioned that I think is great and reputable) being likely to be banned. So I'm curious what the fear is (and what anyone said to lead to this "it shouldn't be illegal" changing of the goalposts, especially as if we recall the THREAD is actually about whether OP is being ripped off.

    For the record, I'm not that big on making consensual things illegal, and that I think they are dumb ripoffs doesn't change that in this case.
  • VintageFeline
    VintageFeline Posts: 6,771 Member
    stevencloser wrote: »
    fitfreakymom wrote: »
    I will use what works for me and if smoking a plant takes care of my body pain and my head then I will do that before popping a pill made in a lab.

    What "Big Pharma" could do would be extracting the active ingredient that helps with your condition so you wouldn't have to hurt your lungs with hot smoke.

    I mean, I hear it's a great garnish for pizza.........

    But yeah, proper extractions, different strains tested so we can make a better assessment of best application etc would be great. I'd be interested in the medicinal side of it myself but am not about to make myself a guinea pig when 1. it's still illegal in the UK and therefore 2. you don't know what you're buying. I know there are strains that might be able to help me and others that would possibly be a terrible idea.
  • clicketykeys
    clicketykeys Posts: 6,575 Member
    My specific mention of NOT wanting to criminalize non-peer-reviewed therapies was in response to the assertion by @born_of_fire74 that "the anti-woo crowd" is "trying to prevent alternative medicine from being an option."

    I would like to know what they were referring to, if not legal status.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    edited October 2017
    vingogly wrote: »
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    But the advance of medicine and human knowledge is based on observation, experimentation, and recording and comparing results, not just "letting people do what works for them."

    It isn't a contest, but that doesn't mean that there is no such thing as accurate information or that medicine is some realm where truth is impossible to determine.

    from a NYT interview with John Caputo, professor of theology and philosophy at Syracuse University:
    I think that what modern philosophers call “pure” reason — the Cartesian ego cogito and Kant’s transcendental consciousness — is a white male Euro-Christian construction.

    White is not “neutral.” “Pure” reason is lily white, as if white is not a color or is closest to the purity of the sun, and everything else is “colored.” Purification is a name for terror and deportation, and “white” is a thick, dense, potent cultural signifier that is closely linked to rationalism and colonialism. What is not white is not rational. So white is philosophically relevant and needs to be philosophically critiqued — it affects what we mean by “reason” — and “we” white philosophers cannot ignore it.

    That's the corruption resulting from an out-of-control postmodernism I mentioned earlier -- it comes from academia, but thanks to the media, we've all been affected by it. The claim of the postmodernists is precisely that "there is no such thing as accurate information". The insistence on observation, experimentation, and recording and comparing results is part of a dominating narrative constructed by white males to maintain their control. Here is the source interview in case you think I'm making this crap up:

    https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/02/looking-white-in-the-face/

    So interesting. Thanks for sharing.

    While I do think it is very important for us to delve into how our personal position and experiences influence our view of reality, that is not the same thing as thinking as there is no such thing as reality or that the world is essentially unknowable to us.

    I do see versions of this type of thinking showing up all over the internet (and probably real life too, I just tend to debate more on the internet) -- that we can never know what is really true so we just have to respect everyone's opinion.
  • neenaexp
    neenaexp Posts: 38 Member
    Awesome thread!
  • deannalfisher
    deannalfisher Posts: 5,600 Member
    born_of_fire74 wrote: »
    I’m not sure where I said anything about criminalization. Please point that out. Chiropractic, massage and acupuncture are all de-listed services that standard provincial health care doesn’t pay for. Some people with additional health insurance can have coverage but everyone else pays out of pocket for it. This means it is not as available as traditional, western medicine and is what I meant when I said western medicine proponents actively limit access to alternative health care.

    I fully admitted that I’ve brought in a straw man to this discussion, based on previous discussions I’ve had with the anti-woo crowd. The trouble is that it’s difficult to know what is woo and what is not as it changes depending on who you are talking to. At this point, we’ve established that some alternative medicine is not woo to some of you. That’s great. But this thread is also full of people telling the OP that she will be preying upon sick people if she pursues other types of alternative medicines. And this is another way in which people are trying to prevent others from having access to alternative medicine. If no one goes to school to be a chiropractor, a massage therapist, an acupuncturist, a holistic whatever the hell OP wants to be, there will not be anyone to offer to those services to the adult people who want to access them.

    Please do continue to take my comments to their limits of absurdity though or simply gloss over the inconvenient parts; such classy debate.

    that seems to be a fundamental difference between Canada single payer; US personal insurance and Australian single payer

    Canada - SP doesn't cover
    US - personally bought insurance covers depending on the policy
    Australia - SP covers (my mom uses Chiro quite frequently and its covered; and when I visited last time, i was technically still covered because I was under 25 even though I hadn't lived at home in 7yrs)
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,176 Member
    deannalfisher wrote: »
    born_of_fire74 wrote: »
    I’m not sure where I said anything about criminalization. Please point that out. Chiropractic, massage and acupuncture are all de-listed services that standard provincial health care doesn’t pay for. Some people with additional health insurance can have coverage but everyone else pays out of pocket for it. This means it is not as available as traditional, western medicine and is what I meant when I said western medicine proponents actively limit access to alternative health care.

    I fully admitted that I’ve brought in a straw man to this discussion, based on previous discussions I’ve had with the anti-woo crowd. The trouble is that it’s difficult to know what is woo and what is not as it changes depending on who you are talking to. At this point, we’ve established that some alternative medicine is not woo to some of you. That’s great. But this thread is also full of people telling the OP that she will be preying upon sick people if she pursues other types of alternative medicines. And this is another way in which people are trying to prevent others from having access to alternative medicine. If no one goes to school to be a chiropractor, a massage therapist, an acupuncturist, a holistic whatever the hell OP wants to be, there will not be anyone to offer to those services to the adult people who want to access them.

    Please do continue to take my comments to their limits of absurdity though or simply gloss over the inconvenient parts; such classy debate.

    that seems to be a fundamental difference between Canada single payer; US personal insurance and Australian single payer

    Canada - SP doesn't cover
    US - personally bought insurance covers depending on the policy
    Australia - SP covers (my mom uses Chiro quite frequently and its covered; and when I visited last time, i was technically still covered because I was under 25 even though I hadn't lived at home in 7yrs)

    A tiny qubble, but: In the US, it's my employer-provided big-insurer insurance covering chiropractic treatment. . . which to my mind makes chiropractic look even more like part of the hidebound mainstream, as those types of plans tend to be pretty woo-averse for cost reasons. It wouldn't surprise me to find, somewhere in the US, that there's a plan you could purchase individually that would cover far-woo things, if you were willing to pay the bucks for it.
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