Placebo Doctors

warning, this is a rant post and I'm not proofreading the grammer on this one

I am annoyed of these 'toxin cleanse diets' and 'purify your life' supplement lines that your friends and online gurus wants to sell you. 

Their main goal is to make you believe that all these GMO, gluten amino acids, hormones injected, carbs, junk, artificial sweetener, pesticide, 'chemical' pruducts are going to KILL YOU. 

By using fear tactic on the guillible consumers, gurus get people to buy their books, magic water, placebo pills, kitchen gadgets, bracelets, pink dildos and whatever they're selling.  Even a bunch of my friends and clients are doing it, which can be very irritating.  you know who you are.

This is how they do it. 
1. Create a problem - it doesn't have to be anything substantial, just sometime out of the thin air.  You fat? feeling low energy? have pain? stressed out? don't shop at whole food?  joint pain? has allergies?  If you do, i can help you!  

It's usually something that is so common that anyone living in the modern society will have at least 1 or 2 of them.

2. Propose a solution - some pill or gadgets that are backed by psudoscience that you should know about it and buy.

Take this here pill and your pain will go away and you will melt your body fat in no time. 

it's uaully endorse by some doctor or celebrity that doesn't even use the product. 

The funny thing is, most of the problems can be corrected by simply sleeping more, eating better or less, meditation, have a piece of steak, or taking a couple days off from work... oh but that's too much work for the lazy asses who just want to swallow a pill or drink a shake to fix everything!

3.  Create an urgency by instilling fear.

They will show you some sick person laying in bed, telling you how they should have done this and that, show you some rat studies about this cancer problem happening in china, or some mental developmental issue cause by mis-vaccinaions (even though it's probably genetic), conspiraciy theories, or the flouride in your water and toothpaste, and zombies taking over the world story.   We've all heard of them.
4.  place your order here with 3 easy payments of $29.99 and you'll get this extra bottle of crap for your cat to keep them from getting diabetes or scratching your couch or something stupid.

It's marketing101 and it's genius.

When actually looking at the research, their arguments are typically make believes, distorting facts that aren't conclusive yet or completely wrong.  They don't take into consideration of dosage or population variants being tested or how it applies to real world situations.

They will use correlations instead of cause and effect relationships to say they say they have the truth.

or they will blame the corporations or the man or the researchers' credential base on which side they're on instead of actually examine the studies themselves.  most of these people don't even read or have a medical/nutritional/science background...  and they don't have to when they have step 1-4 down for selling garbage to stupid, lazy people.

Do a search online and you'll find tons of these "toxin-removing" products being sold as scientific ways to restore your health and lose weight.  Their argument is usually about human being exposed to modern chemicals or processing methods that are supposbly poisonous and we ought to regularily have a "cleanse" to reboot are immune system. 

Methods like colon cleanse, juice fast, vegan substitute protein bars, low carb cupcakes, zero calorie sports drinks (lol, this one craps me up), or the eat this (what they sell) but not that (what they don't sell) meal replacements packages.  Do a search on Craiglist and you'll find tons of these.
When these placebo gurus get questioned about the evidence they used to back their arguments against a dietary trend or chemicals that are supposebly toxic for you (such as pesticide or genetically modified foods), they can only reference you some book or case studies they found that doesn't have any real world applications.  Mostly just theories and superstitions and stupid videos on youtube that doesn't mean anything.  just opinions.

and more stuff like the safety of consuming organic vs commercial produce, fast foods vs conventional food, or artificial vs snythetic incredients in foods.  Believe it or not, natural or organic is not always better.
http://www.dangerouslyhardcore.com/1891/the-sins-of-organic/

They like to make you believe that your kidney, liver, instestines, and metabolism are completely useless unless you buy their shit and give your body a brand new start.   It's all placebo anyways... unless you actually have a deficiency or a disease that warrants it, it's really all in your head.

What people really need to do is having regular appointments with their doctors who will run actual tests to see if they have x, y, z.  Instead of trying to diagnose their health issues themselves.

most people will live pretty healthily (unless influenced by genetic defects) by not smoking, stay in school, brush teeth, get regular sleep, play a sport, maintain a lean physique, and pay their taxes.

read this: 
Organic Foods, The Real Story - Jamie Hale
http://www.maxcondition.com/page.php?148

When you encounter these placebo, snake-oil selling gurus (hopefully with a skeptical mind), these are typical reactions you'll get from them if you ever question their brand.

1) They can't back their claims, period.  For their products nor against an effect of a supposely toxin negatively effecting your health where you need to by their products.  They may be able to pull up some reports from some science writer to support their claim but never with randomize clinical trials on human showing a significant cause-effect relationship between the substances tested and the body.

2) when they do find one, the dosage are usually way off which means whatever chemicals they're referring to has no real applications to the way we live and eat.  Maybe on your pet rat, but not you.

3) They will bring up case studies, surveys, and historical reports that shows 'associations', 'links', and 'correlations' but not cause & effect relationships of what their product actually does or how certain artificial substances in our environment has a significant effect on the body.

Tall people have big feet
tall people wear big shoes
wearing big shoes will make me taller...

you may think wtf kind of logic this is but it's rampant in the scientific community!

read this article for more examples: http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=365

4) blame the man, the media, the big corn company, the big FDA and ADA, blame the researchers, the scientists, doctors and physicians for their ignorance and greed.... but never actually discuss the topic at hand.

Mercola and his fans are classify to be one of those but you'll find tons of these types online.  Another popular site that these placebo loving gurus like to read is Naturalnews.com

Instead of actually having an open conversation about huamn metabolism, they'll steer the thread of the dialogue to something political or moral that has nothing to do with science or how the body works.

or they'll pull a straw man on you.
http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=485

5) Question your credentials and authority on the subject when what they should be doing is crituque the content of your research.  This is why I stop talking when people start to bash my credentials instead of investigating the reality of how things work. 

6) When gurus can't back their claims, they will criticize your research by saying that it's funded by big companies therefore it's biased.

Mike Howard - It's intellectually lazy to dismiss a study due to funding source. Methodological quality should always trump where the funding came from.

"Why bother reading them science stuff when conclusions are made up and favored by the man?"

Alan Aragon (Girth Control) -
"Funding source is a very unique threat to external validity. The catch-22 is that research increases the body of scientific knowledge, but research costs money.  The bigger the financial 'muscle' of a commercial entity, the better its fitness for supporting research.  The problem then becomes one of ethics.  Should scientific journals be allowed to publish industry-funded research on their product?  if the data is sound, and the trials are well designed, then theoretically the funding source shouldn't be factored into the validity assessment."

 So who are these people that hates science?

snakeoil salesman - "FDA is lying to you! Consuming sweet&low can kill you!  I have nothing to back what I just said though, but FDA is evel!"  

Here's a study that shows industry funded research are actually done with higher quality compared to non-industry funding research in well respected journals.

Is funding source related to study reporting quality in obesity or nutrition randomized control trials in top-tier medical journals? K A Kaiser, S S Cofield, K R Fontaine, S P Glasser, L Thabane, R Chu, S Ambrale, A D Dwary, A Kumar, G Nayyar, O Affuso, M Beasley and D B Allison

 

Background:

Faithful and complete reporting of trial results is essential to the validity of the scientific literature. An earlier systematic study of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) found that industry-funded RCTs appeared to be reported with greater quality than non-industry-funded RCTs. The aim of this study was to examine the association between systematic differences in reporting quality and funding status (that is, industry funding vs non-industry funding) among recent obesity and nutrition RCTs published in top-tier medical journals.

anyways, read the reference articles above to get more info on how to save more money and have better relatinoships with foods and your body.

In the comment section below, I've also listed a tons of fears tactics salemans tried to scare the public with to make a quick buck but never help anyone and can potentially cause a lot of damange on a person's mental and physical health.