Results for: Antioxidant
Down the Virtual Rabbit Hole: Kangan water®
The interwebs are more than a series of tubes, it has the power of endless distraction and tangents, a series of clickable rabbit holes that can drag you deeper and deeper into the alternative universes that are parallel with our own. One moment you can be on Science Based Medicine, grounded on the terra firma of reality, and then with a click...
Andrew Weil/AAFP Article Rejected by Slate
I was asked to write an article for Slate, the on-line magazine, about Andrew Weil’s selection as the keynote speaker for the 2012 AAFP annual scientific assembly. The science and health editor, Laura Helmuth, was initially enthusiastic about what I wrote, but eventually decided not to publish it. Here is the initial draft of my article. My comments follow. Original Draft of...
The antivaccine lie that just won’t die: The claim that shaken baby syndrome is really due to “vaccine injury”
One of the vilest ideas that antivaxers promote is the claim that shaken baby syndrome is in reality a "misdiagnosis" for vaccine injury. Come down the rabbit hole with me and see just how low antivaxers will go to promote this idea and use it to try to exonerate child abusers.
Andrew Weil’s Seasonal Supplements
Dr. Andrew Weil has teamed with Innate Response Formulas to develop a series of seminars and a line of products for “seasonally appropriate integrative strategies.” Seasonal Therapeutics is a system for adjusting diet supplement recommendations according to the season of the year. To kick off the program, a one-day seminar was presented by Weil’s colleague Tierona Low Dog in Boston on August...
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.
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,...
Cantron: A tale of false hope for cancer
A couple of months ago, a reader sent me an article that really disturbed me. In fact, I had originally been planning to write about it not long after I received it. It is, as you might imagine given my specialty and what disturbs me the most wehen I encounter quackery, a story of a cancer patient. Worse, it’s the story of...
The Forerunners of EBM
The term “evidence-based medicine” first appeared in the medical literature in 1992. It quickly became popular and developed into a systematic enterprise. A book by Ulrich Tröhler To Improve the Evidence of Medicine: The 18th century British origins of a critical approach argues that its roots go back to the 1700s in Scotland and England. An e-mail correspondent recommended it to me....
POM: Not So Wonderful
“POM Wonderful” is a brand of pomegranate juice. It is manufactured by a company owned by Linda and Stewart Resnick, California billionaires who pretty much single-handedly created a multi-million dollar market for pomegranate juice where none existed before. Or, as LA Times columnist Michael Hilzik wrote, It has long been clear that the most wonderful thing about Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice is...