Results for: Antioxidant
Legislative Alchemy 2016 Update: Acupuncturists win; naturopaths and chiropractors don’t (so far)
Legislative Alchemy is the process by which state legislatures transform pseudoscience and quackery into licensed health care practices. By legislative fiat, chiropractors can detect and correct non-existent subluxations, naturopaths can diagnose (with bogus tests) and treat (with useless dietary supplements and homeopathy) fabricated diseases like “adrenal fatigue” and “chronic yeast overgrowth,” and acupuncturists can unblock mythical impediments to the equally mythical “qi”...
New Study Questions fMRI Validity
One way to describe our overall editorial stance at SBM is that we are criticizing medical science in a constructive way because we would like to see higher standards more generally applied. Science is complex, medical science especially so because it deals with people who are complex and unique. Getting it right is hard and so we need to take a very...
The THRIVE Experience: Masterful Marketing, Short on Substance
My daughter told me about the latest health fad among her group of acquaintances. She knows people who are spending $300 a month on the THRIVE program and claiming miraculous results. With a skeptic for a mother, my daughter knew enough to question the claims and do her own research; she was not impressed. She concluded that THRIVE was essentially selling caffeine...
Supplements, Lies, and a Lengthy Transcript
On October 21, 1993, there was a hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee for Labor and Human Resources, with the long-winded title: Examining How the Federal Government Should Regulate the Marketing and Use of Dietary Supplements and Related Measures, Including S. 784, To Strengthen Federal Standards with Respect To Dietary Supplements. S. 784, sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, would eventually be enacted...
Beetroots Don’t Cure Cancer
Alternative medicine, like all good marketing, is largely about creating a narrative. Once you have sold people on the narrative, products essentially market themselves. That narrative has been evolving for literally centuries, although it seems to have accelerated with the advent of mass media and now the internet. It is optimized to push emotional buttons in order to sell products. There are...
Puritan’s Pride Vitamin Advisor Gives Questionable Advice
The Puritan’s Pride website has a Vitamin Advisor that claims to provide a personalized supplement plan, with expert recommendations chosen just for you. In my opinion it is deceptive, designed not to provide evidence-based personalized health advice, but to sell their products; and one can only wonder what kind of “experts” would support such ill-advised recommendations. Stephen Barrett and I have just...
The consumer lab rat: More questions about supplement safety
Do you take a vitamin or dietary supplement? Over half of all American adults do, making this a $30 billion dollar business. Many of us even take supplements in the absence of any clear medical or health need. I’m often told it’s a form of nutritional “insurance” or it’s being taken for some presumed beneficial effect – like Steven Novella outlined in...
Don’t drink hair bleach
Hydrogen peroxide is consumed and injected in alternative medicine practices as a sort of "cure all". Is there any evidence to back this up? And how safe is it to inject or consume?
Naturopathy vs. Science: Diabetes Edition
Diabetes already requires care from multiple medical professionals, including physicians, nurses, dietitians, and pharmacists. Should naturopathy be included?
Aging and Longevity: Science for Spring Chickens
We’re all going to die, but we don’t like to think about it. I’ll reach the proverbial threescore years and ten next month, so I’ve been thinking more about it, wishing I knew some reliable way to ensure that I would live many more years and remain fully functional until I suddenly collapsed like the Deacon’s wonderful one-hoss shay. There are myriad...