Category: Herbs & Supplements
Are Berries the New Snake Oil?
Are berries a superfood? No, they're just good for you, like all fruit.
ASEA: Another Expensive Way to Buy Water
ASEA is an expensive way to buy salt water, backed up by an enormous number of sciencey-sounding buzzwords and no meaningful evidence, all wrapped up in a multi-level marketing scheme designed to separate the credulous from their money. Don't buy it.
Olympic Pseudoscience
Pseudoscience is rife within the sporting world, and reaches its apogee with the Olympic Games.
Red Yeast Rice and Cholesterol
While much of CAM is ridiculous or implausible, herbal remedies are an exception. Plants produce pharmacologically active substances; in fact, the science of pharmacology grew out of herbalism. Some herbal remedies have not been scientifically tested, but others have been tested and are clearly effective. Nevertheless, these are seldom if ever the best choice for treatment. One natural remedy stands out. Red...
The HCG Diet: Yet another ineffective quick fix diet plan and supplement
I contribute biweekly to Science-Based Medicine and could easily devote every post to writing about weight loss supplements, and never run out of topics. As soon as one quick fix falls out of favour, another inevitably replaces it. Some wax and wane in popularity. And pharmacies don’t help the situation. I cringe every time I walk down the aisle where weight loss...
Oxygen Is Good, Even When It’s Not There
Note: This article originally appeared in Skeptical Inquirer, 28(1), 48-50 & 55, January/February 2004. I’m recycling it now because I have been at The Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas instead of home at my computer writing new posts. It’s still timely: despite multiple debunkings and FTC actions, vitamin O is still for sale. Amazon has it for $4.80 an ounce. I’m no Mark...
Why Do They Do Studies Like This?
A recently published study claims to have shown that a proprietary mixture of velvet bean and Chlorophytum borivilianum improves sleep quality. The journal, Integrative Medicine Insights, is online, peer-reviewed, PubMed indexed, open-access, and it charges authors $1848.00 to publish their article. It advertises editorial decisions in 3 weeks and publication in 2 weeks after acceptance. I can see two reasons why authors...
Dr. Oz and Green Coffee Beans – More Weight Loss Pseudoscience
I can’t keep up with Dr. Oz. Just when I thought the latest weight loss miracle was raspberry ketone, along comes another weight loss panacea. This time, it’s green coffee beans. Eveyone knows Dr. Oz, now. Formerly a guest on Oprah, he’s got his own show which he’s built into what’s probably the biggest platform for health pseudoscience and medical quackery on...
5-hour Energy
What should you do if you feel tired? Taking a nap isn’t always possible. The ever-inventive capitalist marketplace has come up with another option. 5-hour Energy is a flavored energy drink sold as 2 oz “shots.” It was invented by Innovation Ventures in 2004. It is intended to counteract the afternoon slump, to increase alertness and energy, to help you stay sharp,...
Quackademic medicine trickles out to community hospitals
One of the major themes of this blog has been to combat what I, borrowing a term coined (as far as I can tell) by Dr. R. W. Donnell, like to refer to as “quackademic medicine.” Quackademic medicine is a lovely term designed to summarize everything that is wrong with the increasing embrace of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or, as...