Results for: Antioxidant
Stem Cells for Macular Degeneration: Meticulous Science vs. Unethical Carelessness
Rigorous scientists stabilized a patient’s macular degeneration with a cutting-edge stem cell treatment; less rigorous scientists misapplied stem cell science and left three women blind.
Dietary Associations with Cardiovascular and Diabetic Mortality: “Bacon, soda, and too few nuts”?
A recent study attempted to quantify the association of ten dietary factors with deaths from cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Headlines about the study were misleading.
Daniel and Tana Amen’s Book The Brain Warrior’s Way: Standard Health Advice Mixed with Misinformation and Fanciful Ideas
Daniel Amen, the media-savvy psychiatrist and promoter of SPECT scans, has teamed-up with his wife Tana to write a self-help book that hopelessly muddles good medical advice with misinformation and speculation.
Dietetics: Embracing Integrative and Functional Medicine?
The Accreditation Council for Education in Dietetics is planning on changing the accreditation standards for requirements Registered Dietitians to include integrative and functional nutrition as core components. This should worry science-based practitioners, and the general public.
“Functional medicine” in practice
"Functional medicine" is a form of quackery that combines the worst aspects of conventional medicine and alternative medicine. Specifically, it combines massive over-testing with a lack of science and a "make it up as you go along" ethic, all purportedly in the service of the "biochemical individuality" of each patient. Don't believe the hype. It's mostly quackery.
Declining Dementia
Dementia is a significant health burden of increasing significance as our population ages. Worldwide the prevalence of dementia is 5-7% in people 60 years and older, with risk doubling every 5 years after age 60. About 5.4 million Americans are living with dementia. Dementia is a general category referring to a chronic decline in overall cognitive function. The most common cause of...
German alternative cancer clinics: Combining experimental therapeutics with rank quackery and charging big bucks for it
You think that Mexico has the most quack cancer clinics? Don't be so sure of that. When it comes to clinics peddling a mix of snake oil and a dash of real medicine, Mexico's got nothing on Germany.
Ultraviolet Blood Treatment Revisited
If there is one thing this election cycle has demonstrated it’s that, when ideology or emotions are involved, people can be entirely immune to facts. The narrative takes control, reinforced by motivated reasoning and confirmation bias. Even worse, people tend to think they are actually informed, and are confident in their opinions, even when they are grossly misinformed. Regular contributors here frequently...
“Glyconutrients,” Mannatech, and Ambrotose: Marketing, Not Science
It has been a long time since I first became aware of Mannatech, the multilevel marketing company that sells “glyconutrient” dietary supplements. After its claims were debunked and it lost a court case, it had dropped off my radar; but last month it came roaring back in the form of an email from a reader in South Africa. He said his in-laws...
Parabiosis – The Next Snakeoil
The pattern has repeated so many times that it is truly predictable. Scientists turn their eyes to one type of treatment that has theoretical potential. However, proper research from theory to proven treatment can take 10-20 years, if all goes well. Most such treatments will not work out – they will fail somewhere along the way from the petri dish to the...