EvC Forum: "Natural" (plant-based) Health Solutions

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Topic: "Natural" (plant-based) Health Solutions

Granny Magda

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Message 276 of 606 (822601)
10-29-2017 1:04 PM

Alternative Medcine Proponents Should Grow Up

It's a solid example of nutrition alone effecting a cure, it's not vague at all.

It certainly is vague. It fails to provide a detailed break down of Karen's treatment, it doesn't mention whether she has other illnesses, and we only have Karen's word for what her doctors told her — a major failing since patients frequently misinterpret what their doctors tell them.

And it is not an example of anything providing a cure, as Karen is not cured and still has cancer. No matter how many times you tell this particular lie, you will not make it true. Karen still has cancer and is not cured.

And I continue to claim it's not a single case.

Yeah, because of those fifty Youtube videos that you haven't even posted.

Nobody cares about your Youtube videos. Science is not conducted by Youtube video and nor is debate on this forum. I am under no obligation to debate bare links, so I am under no iobligation to accept into evidence a bunch of videos that you haven't even posted.

Arguing by video is a standard trick of the alt-med loon. It makes their claims harder to counter, because the critic must wade through hours of tedious videos and transcribe their contents. I am not playing that game. If you have evidence, please bring it in text format, not videos.

No-one is going to watch fifty half-hour long videos, so stop going on about them.

GM writes:

There are too many potential confounding factors; not least the possibility that she is missing out important information.

There's also the possibility that she isn't.

Exactly my point. By refusing to engage in meaningful analysis, Wark and his ilk destroy any chance they have of proving their case. Assuming for a moment that Karen is onto something big with her nutritional therapy, we'll never be able to tell, because she is wasting her time on meaningless videos.

One of the tragedies of alt-med is that the tiny handful of treatments that potentially might work are drowned out by an ocean of whackiness and sloppy methodology. This is the fault of alt-med itself. No-one else is to blame for their promotion of insane rubbish. Mike Adams and Joe Mercola both promote reiki, which is little more than faith-healing. No-one forces them to promote such piffle, they queue up to do it. That it discredits their entire field is very much their own fault.

There is a sense in which cancer is cancer and the anecdotes are quite consistent in their description of nutritional cures of cancers of all kinds.

Of course they're consistent; Chris Wark is a dishonest enough source that he doesn't bother to provide the counter-examples where people on nutri-woo treatments died early. He is not engaged in valid data presentation, only dishonest propagnada.

Fifty is a lot of anecdotes for that purpose. Your caveats are important for scientific rigor but I think this collection of mere anecdotes deserves a LOT more respect than they get, which would encourage the research they need but won't get if they keep being treated as the daydreams of idiots.

Again, if you have data, provide it in written form. Otherwise, your anecdotes will continue to be ignored.

And I continue to object to this example as blurring together the most likely effective alternatives with a bunch of wacko notions that probably don't work. It's utterly meaningless.

That's on the alt-med loons. It is their fault that alt-med is chock full of insanity. If they bothered to test their claims, they might be freed from such problems, but until then you can place the blame for this at the doors of people like Ty Bollinger and Joe Mercola, who enthusiastically spread nonsense.

It's interesting that the Gerson therapy seems to have been working to the extent that she started baring her arm, implying that the tumors had disappeared

No it isn't interesting, it's completely banal. From the linked article;

quote:
As of three years ago, she thought and taught that it had controlled her tumor, deluding herself into believing that just because tumors popped out of her skin and then disappeared it meant some sort of therapeutic effect had occurred. In actuality, it’s not at all uncommon for some cancers like epithelioid sarcoma to do just that. They grow to a certain size, erode through the skin, and then seem to disappear.

So what we see here is a completely ordinary occurrence that has been misinterpreted by an alt-med hack who had no idea what she was talking about. It's very sad, but it's nothing that suggests efficacy for Gerson.

In my opinion she should have had the drastic surgery when the tumors started to reappear.

It's not my place or yours to say whether she should have had the surgery or not; that was entirely her decision. But that decision should have been made on the basis of informed consent. Clearly, Ainscough was not well informed. Her nave belief in Gerson coloured her decision. That's not informed consent.

I couldn't get very far through that long blog which is bright white and hard on my eyes and repeated a lot of what was in the Jess Ainscough story, so if I miss what you think is important please copy it out for me.

Very well;

Unfortunately, Ainscough’s propensity for quackery has now claimed the life of her mother, who followed her daughter’s example and paid the ultimate price. Here’s what Ainscough wrote when her mother was first diagnosed:

My family has been pretty much consumed by this disease for almost four years, so when my mum was diagnosed with breast cancer in April this year we knew exactly how to deal with it. Following her diagnosis, my mum refused any sort of conventional interference. She said no to a mammogram and a biopsy, told them that she wasn’t interested in going down the path of surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, and instead chose the same therapy as me.

Which involved:

My mum, who has been my primary carer for the past 14 months, has just been told she has breast cancer. The carer suddenly becomes the patient and the former patient is now gearing up to become the primary carer. And because I’m still on the therapy myself, my amazing dad has stepped into the carer role as well (while still working six days a week). Mum is also on the full Gerson Therapy and she will have to stay on it for the next two years. She is now drinking 13 juices per day, having five coffee enemas per day and — much to her disgust — taking castor oil every second day. We’re now in this together! Our solid routine gets us through, but it’s just days like yesterday when I was sick and mum was feeling crook from castor oil that the pressure is on my dad to care for us both.

But what was her mother’s stage when she was diagnosed? We really don’t know. The video included with this post is private, and I can’t watch it. The best I can do is to make inferences from the limited information on the website. For instance, what we are supposed to learn from this video includes:

What my mum believes triggered her cancer.
The role hormones play in disease manifestation.
Why we believe that mammograms are useless, and even dangerous.
Why my mum refused to have her breast tissue biopsied.
Why she would refuse to have a lumpectomy (removal of the lump) and a mastectomy (removal of one or both of the breasts), and refuse to have chemotherapy and radiation.
Why Mum is so confident that Gerson Therapy will work.
The number one message she would like to get out to people watching this video.

From the limited information I can find about Sharyn Ainscough’s cancer, it seems to me that it was probably fairly early stage and therefore treatable with multimodality therapy including surgery plus chemotherapy, radiation, and/or hormonal therapy with a high probability of success. Unfortunately, Sharyn Ainscough followed her daughter’s path and opted for quackery. Once that happened, the end was inevitable. In fact, the natural history of untreated breast cancer is a median survival of 2.7 years. Her mother was diagnosed in April 2011. She died a few days ago. That’s roughly two and a half years, very close to the expected median survival of untreated breast cancer. Along the way, mother and daughter made the same rationalizations that I’ve seen from people who have chosen quackery time and time again. For instance, a few months after her mother began the Gerson therapy, Jessica Ainscough reported that her mom was having flare-ups:

When you choose Gerson Therapy as your weapon of choice, you must make peace with the fact that you are going to be in for some whopping healing reactions or flare-ups — how, where and the severity of the reaction is exclusive to each person. I guess I have been lucky because my flare-ups have been quite mild. My left arm swelled up (about a year ago and still hasn’t deflated), I’ve had headaches, a little nausea, a few days where I’ve been too exhausted to get out of bed, and countless days where I’ve cried uncontrollably and been moodier than a storm season, but the physical symptoms have been limiting. My mum, on the other hand, is having ALL of the textbook reactions. If we hadn’t gone to the Gerson clinic or spoken to fellow Gerson patients, I don’t think we would have been quite as prepared for what she’s been going through.

That swelling is probably lymphedema caused by her cancer obstructing the lymph vessels of the arm; so it’s not surprising that it’s never deflated. As for Sharyn Ainscough, she reported:

The left boob (the one with cancer) has what mum calls a string of pearls at about 12 o’clock high, a row of three or four small palpable lumps. She can feel action in this boob.
The right boob has also flared up, which was frightening at first before we realised that is was a healing reaction. Mum says it feels like a thickening with a swollen gland under the arm. She had a benign lump taken out of this boob about 15 years ago, so it is very likely that this is flaring up again as she heals.

No, what was likely happening is that the cancer in the left breast was growing and forming satellite lesions. What’s truly depressing about this post, however, is that virtually anything that a Gerson patient experiences is attributed to a healing reaction or a flare-up. For instance, in July 2012, when her mother wasn’t getting any better, a quack did a hair test and claimed that she was copper toxic. He also did live blood analysis (more utter quackery) and applied kinesiology (even quackier quackery) and concluded that she was suffering from candida. The result? Her mother was subjected to chelation therapy and anti-candida treatment, while Jessica Ainscough revealed her utter lack of understanding of cancer:

If Mum had followed conventional orders and had surgery or drug interference, there is no way that these underlying issues would have been addressed. Yet another reason why it is SO important to deal with the cause and not just eradicate the symptom. Lumps in breasts are not the issue. It’s the toxicity and deficiency of our bodies that cause an imbalance and lead to dis-ease.

How many times have we heard cancer quacks say this, that the cancer is not the problem but rather a symptom of the real problem or a protective reaction to the real problem? German New Medicine, Robert O. Young’s acid-base woo, Andrea Moritz’s quackery, Hulda Clark’s claim that liver flukes cause cancer, or many other alternative cancer cures, it’s a common theme in cancer quackery to claim that the cancerous tumor is not the true problem, a theme that the daughter echoes at every turn.

In the end, I have very mixed feelings here. As a cancer surgeon, I’ve made it very clear, particularly when it comes to Stanislaw Burzynski’s patients, that I don’t like to criticize cancer patients who choose quackery. I can completely understand why in their desperation they would be vulnerable to the blandishments of preachers of false hope. It’s ignorance and desperation, rather than ill intent. That resolve, however, wavers when I encounter a person like Jessica Ainscough. Think about it. She’s become a media figure in Australia because of her promotion of natural healing. She promotes Gerson therapy to cancer patients, and if you read the comments of some of her blog posts you will find people praising her for changing their lives by persuading them to choose natural treatments like the Gerson therapy (although how it is in any way natural to shoot coffee up one’s rectum has always evaded me). That means she might well have led cancer patients with potentially curable cancers to choose quackery instead of effective medicine, leading them to their deaths. Worst of all, her example led her mother, who, unlike her, appears to have had a very treatable, potentially curable breast cancer, to eschew surgery and other effective treatments, such as radiation and chemotherapy. The end result was a dead mother, while Jessica Ainscough saying:

I do want to say this though. I know some of you have cancer and are on Gerson Therapy or you love someone in this position, and I don’t want this news to deter you from believing in what you are doing. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt over the past few years it’s that no one cancer therapy is right for everyone, just the way no one diet is right for everyone. We all have different bodies, different minds, different histories, and different journeys.

As angry as this makes me, surprisingly I still don’t have it in my heart to be too hard on Ainscough. You might think that, seeing her mother die might have been a wake-up call that leads her to change the course she’s on, but I know human nature. She won’t. After all, if she admits that Gerson therapy is useless, even harmful, quackery that failed to save her mother, then she would be forced to acknowledge her role in the death of her mother. She would also be forced to accept that Gerson therapy can’t save her, either. These are both conclusions that Ainscough would likely find too painful to accept. On the other hand, such a jolt might be a good thing. She might not be beyond salvaging with a radical amputation. At the very least, it would be a very good thing if Jessica Ainscough stopped dissuading cancer patients from undertaking conventional therapy and persuading them to pursue the same self-destructive path that claimed her mother and is likely to claim her.

(Note that this was written before Jessica Ainscough's death.)

TLDR? The main point;

quote:
From the limited information I can find about Sharyn Ainscough’s cancer, it seems to me that it was probably fairly early stage and therefore treatable with multimodality therapy including surgery plus chemotherapy, radiation, and/or hormonal therapy with a high probability of success. Unfortunately, Sharyn Ainscough followed her daughter’s path and opted for quackery. Once that happened, the end was inevitable. In fact, the natural history of untreated breast cancer is a median survival of 2.7 years. Her mother was diagnosed in April 2011. She died a few days ago. That’s roughly two and a half years, very close to the expected median survival of untreated breast cancer.

Sharyn Aisncough seems to have had a very treatable cancer, but she rejected treatment in favour of woo. She followed a nutritional regime and it left her no better off than she would have been if left untreated. Which she essentially was.

You claimed that nutrition-based therapies don't kill people. You were wrong about that.

Some of the Gerson protocols do sound quaint

Given that Gerson therapy involves stuffing coffee up one's arse, quaint is not the word that I would have chosen.

Sharyn should have gone back to standard treatments.

She should have chosen them from the start. Gerson clearly did nothing for her. But again, it's not up to me or you. It was her decision. I just think that she made her decision under the influence alt-med misinformation.

So I'm not defending any particular treatment because sometimes they work and sometimes they don't,

A moment ago you were complaining about crazy stuff being lumped in with Faith-approved treatments. Now, you refuse to pick a specific treatment to approve. You can't have it both ways.

Chris Wark has the objective of showing that alt-med can work, he's not pretending to be a researcher, he is definitely a cheerleader and shows off the cases that worked.

Then you can't brag about how consistent his anecdotes are. Either the anecdotes present a clear picture of all the data, or they are biased to a particular view. You can't have it both ways.

Stop calling people quacks who are not pretending to be scientists.

No. Wark absolutely is pretending to a degree of expertise that he does not possess. He is selling people products that falsely claim to have medical benefits. As far as I am concerned, that makes him a quack.

Nevertheless I would agree that when it stopped working she should have had the surgery,

You are making the unwarranted assumption that surgery was still an option by the point where she finally realised that the nutri-woo wasn't working. It may not have been. She may never have been able to admit to herself that it wasn't working.

GM writes:

The problem with this reasoning is that by the time the alt-med patient has realised that the diet isn't working, it may be too late.

That can happen but that's a problem of judgment, not the treatment itself.

Judgement that has been clouded by the false claims of alt-med hacks.

It can also happen with standard treatment. People can bull-headedly stick to that too when it's stopped working.

False equivalence. I am talking about people who reject proven treatments in favour of the unproven (and disproved) claims of alt-med. People who take conventional therapies are not rejecting proven claims and they are accepting proven treatment.

You need to acknowledge that there IS evidence of the effectiveness of nutritional treatments in some cases,

I do not. You haven’t provided any.

Not so. There are some cancers that are slow-enough growing that trying diet changes is a reasonable option

That some cancers are more indolent certainly gives the patient more wiggle room. But it remains a fact that untreated cancer can progress beyond the point where it can no longer be treated. That is true even of indolent cancers.

He also pointed out that chemo takes a toll on all parts of the body so that since there was time and a good chance of success with diet, in her case that was the best option.

As caffeine pointed out, it is not unusual for Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia patients to not undergo chemo. Sometimes the disease is indolent enough that the benefits might not outweigh the risk. Nothing presented here is beyond the conventional medical understanding of WM. Karen's case is not especially impressive or exceptional. This is just another case of Chris Wark credulously over-interpreting an anecdote.

Yes, if we're talking "aggressive" cancer that may be true, but in the cases where I'm aware of diet change working, that was not the case, the time was available for going that route.

Not true. In Sharyn Ainscough's case, the cancer was a quite aggressive and dangerous breast cancer. She did not have the time to screw around with discredited nonsense and she paid the price for it.

And even with some fast-growing cancers it could be more reasonable to choose diet over the conventional approaches, there's no reason to assume that standard treatment is going to work either, or better, in some category of cases

Which aggressive cancers would you treat with nutrition? Specifically? And which specific treatment do you recommend? Where can you demonstrate that a nutritional treatment has a better chance that conventional therapies?

The people who are convinced of alternative treatments DO in many cases know better.

Then why do they make insane and moronic claims, like chemo being 97% lethal? Or Chris Wark's imbecilic claim that chemo is only effective in 2% of cases? Why would someone who knows so much spout such utter crap?

It makes no sense to ask Wark to do such research. He's not in any position to do that and it's ridiculous to criticize him for that.

Wark profits from the rubbish that he sells. He makes medical claims. That means that he should be able to back it all up. If he cannot or will not, he should refrain from selling unproven quack-cures.

Anyone who wants to peddle medical products should be able to clearly demonstrate efficacy. I am only holding alt-med to the same standards that exist for everybody else. If a rep from Phizer turned up at the FDA, looking to get a new drug approved, and all they had to show for it were a few Youtube videos, they would be laughed out of the building. If people like Wark are unable or unwilling to do better, then they only have themselves to blame if they are laughed at too.

And there is a difference between the beta (or alpha?) carotene in carrots and extracted or synthetic beta/alpha carotene. I'm told I shouldn't use the latter for my macular degeneration because it is associated with higher risk of lung cancer in former heavy smokers like me (and smoking is a causative factor in macular degeneration), but carrots are not a problem.

From what I've seen, the risk to smokers from beta-carotene probably applies to natural beta-carotene just as much as synthetic. The only difference between the two is the chirality. But everything that is in the synthetic product is also present in the natural product. Sources that I've looked at suggest that smokers avoid all beta-carotebne super-dosing, including natural beta-carotene.

It may be that super-dosing on carrots is not as safe as we thought.

It is also worth mentioning that Gerson Therapy in particular relies heavily upon supplements, including potassium, vitamin B12, pancreatic enzymes, thyroid supplements and Epsom salts.

Since they are engaged in trying to find a cure for their own cancer they can't be expected to sort out the effect of everything they are trying.

Exactly why they need reliable information, not partisan propaganda.

If they are doing a lot of different things and showing progress in the reduction of their tumors, they are just going to keep doing it all because something is working. A researcher might ask them to stop a particular protocol for a while so its effect on the progress could be identified, but how many cancer patients are going to do that on their own?

No-one is asking them too, and indeed, they shouldn't, as it would be meaningless. One cannot conduct a meaningful clinical study on a cohort of one person.

But this is all the scare language I was talking about.

It's not scare language. Sharyn Ainscough rejected the treatment that most likely would have saved her in favour of woo. It cost her her life. This is a real phenomenon. It remains unethical to offer false hope to the dying.

And it seems to me that desperate people are in fact more likely to do what their doctors tell them to do rather than seek alternatives. When the standard treatment fails, THEN they may get desperate enough to become vulnerable to quack methods,

No. Sharyn Ainscough rejected conventional therapy entirely, as did her daughter.

as long as good records are kept of each patient you can create a group just from the records for the purpose of comparing like with like.

Can you see now why I was unwilling to take your early my aunt's friend type anecdotes at face value?

GM writes:

Yes. Studies should be carried out by qualified professionals with the necessary expertise.

I totally agree. So why are you lambasting the alt-med people for not conducting such studies?

Because they want to skip the bit where they learn their trade and prove the efficacy of their wares and go straight to the bit where they pretend to be experts whilst making a fortune selling snake-oil.

This is like complaining that it's unfair when people who have no expertise in engineering aren't allowed to build bridges. Well of course they aren't! They shouldn't be allowed! And nor should unqualified frauds be allowed to pose as medical experts.

If alt-med people aren't willing to do the work, to study, train and qualify, then they shouldn't be selling cures, nor touting medical advice. No-one is stopping someone like Wark from doing the work that's involved in becoming a real oncology expert.

Seems to me that even a major change in dietary regimen could require housing patients and feeding them a controlled diet, so that exactly what they are eating could be tracked. It would be like going to a health spa so people would have to be free to do that, and it would cost a lot. Gerson conducts such a spa but the people themselves pay for it, and a researcher would need better controls anyway.

So in other words, the people at the Gerson Institute are well placed to do such research, but they choose not to.

Probably so, but they often start taking effect within the first three months by many reports I've seen, and continue to show progress from then on, so anyone who has the health to live that long could possibly benefit. But I agree that the logistics of establishing such research are probably prohibitive.

As it happens, I work for hospice charity. The average length of stay at our hospice is 12 days. This is a non-starter.

But you can't ask people who are engaged in seeking alternative methods to cure themselves or help others, to just stop doing that until such research is available, which is what you seem to be suggesting, or that they do it themselves although they aren't in a position to do that.

I am asking that people back up their claims with valid evidence. If they cannot do that, then absolutely, they should stop making those claims. If they are not in a position to validate their claims, that's very sad for them, but it's no excuse. People who make medical claims should back them up, end of.

What people do for themselves is their own business, but they should be properly informed, so again, proper testing is needed.

They are usually objecting mainly to the drugs such as antibiotics and hormones that are given to the animals that produce the meat and the dairy, on general health concerns.

In the UK and Europe growth hormones are banned, so this is a bit of a red herring. The fact remains that many alt-med gurus — Dr Greger for instance — are rabidly against all dairy, regardless of antibiotics and hormones.

Yes that's pretty standard, but it's also pretty general.

It is not general, it is extremely specific. Processed meats have been exhaustively demonstrated to increase risk of bowel cancer.

If cancer patients would benefit from eliminating meat altogether the doctor probably isn't going to be the one to tell them that.

Why the hell wouldn't they? This is some conspiracy theory level nonsense right here. Doctors want to cure people. If they knew that all meat carried a risk of cancer, they would have no reason to deny it. They aren't being paid off by the Meat Marketing Board or something.

GM writes:

So yeah, your doctor is quite likely to warn against excessive meat consumption. They won't tell you to give up all meat, or to drink gallons of carrot juice, but that's because real doctors tend to restrict themselves to what the evidence can support.

Meaning what research happens to have studied in enough depth, which leaves out a lot.

It doesn't leave out Gerson therapy, which has been studied and found to be worthless;

quote:
Gerson regimen.
Cassileth B1.
Abstract
The Gerson regimen, developed by Max Gerson in the 1930s, is promoted as an alternative cancer treatment. It involves consuming fresh, raw fruit and vegetable juices, eliminating salt from the diet, taking supplements such as potassium, vitamin B12, thyroid hormone, pancreatic enzymes, and detoxifying liver with coffee enemas to stimulate metabolism. Gerson therapy is based on the theory that cancer is caused by alteration of cell metabolism by toxic environmental substances and processed food, which changes its sodium and potassium content. It emphasizes increasing potassium intake and minimizing sodium consumption in an effort to correct the electrolyte imbalance, repair tissue, and detoxify the liver. The coffee enemas are believed to cause dilation of bile ducts and excretion of toxic breakdown products by the liver and through the colon wall. None of these theories has been substantiated by scientific research. Despite proponents' claims of recovery rates as high as 70% to 90%, case reviews by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the New York County Medical Society found no evidence of usefulness for the Gerson diet. An NCI-sponsored study of Gonzalez therapy, which is similar to the Gerson diet, showed that patients with inoperable pancreatic adenocarcinoma who underwent standard chemotherapy with gemcitabine (Gemzar) survived three times longer and had better quality of life than those who chose enzyme treatment, which included pancreatic enzymes, nutritional supplements, detoxification, and an organic diet.

Source

But the main lack in the nutrition advice is that it has nothing to do with treating cancer once you have it. Warning of risk of cancer from this or that, fine, but there is no comparison with the alt-med application of specific nutritional protocols to treat and even cure the cancer.

I agree, there is a big difference. That is because food-as-risk-factor is well evidenced, whereas food-as-cure is not. Doctors don't use nutrition as a post-diagnosis treatment because it has never demonstrated efficacy. And quite right too.

It's a big chunk out of universal from what I've heard. And if doctors really did know much about nutrition it wouldn't be left up to sloppy healthcare policies.

Doctors don't control healthcare policy, politicians do. That your country has such a pisspoor healthcare system, isn't really my problem however. In my country, NHS hospitals have dieticians to ensure that they provide nutritious food. That US healthcare is amongst the worst in the developed world is not the fault of medical science or doctors.

Amygdalin is hardly a standard alt-med treatment from what I've been following.

There is no standard in alt-med. That's one of my major criticisms.

Still, amygdalin is toxic, but it is hailed as a miracle, not derided as poison.

And chemo actively makes people sick, aspirin doesn't.

The harmful side effects of aspirin are well known and I am amazed that you are ignorant of them. Aspirin can cause strokes, burst blood vessels and gastro-intestinal bleeding.

It works like a poison in its very work of supposedly treating the cancer; it's not a matter of dosage.

It very much is a matter of dosage. Low-end chemo is almost free of side effects; I should know. I have undergone chemotherapy myself (not for cancer, but chemo nonetheless). I felt no ill effect, had no hair loss and generally felt fine. I was permanently cured of a debilitating and potentially life-threatening illness. That I experienced no side effects, but was still cured was very much a function of dosage. To call the medicine that transformed my life for the better pouson is hyperbolic and borderline offensive.

Chemo is toxic stuff, no-one is denying that. But it is as toxic as it needs to be to do its job. It it wasn't, it would be worthless. Chemo has saved millions of lives and transformed cancer survival rates for the better. To dismiss it as poison is crude propaganda.

Did you read Message 265 on remissions?

You mean the one about that book you haven't read? Yeah, if I'm not going to accept a bunch of moronic Youtube videos that you haven't posted as evidence, then I'm certainly not going to accept a book that you haven't even read.

Your case is "strongly suspected" to be spontaneous remission, but since Turner found lots of cases regarded as spontaneous remission that weren't, I don't see any reason to think yours is an exception.

So you challenge me to find a case of spontaneous remission that doesn't involve alt-med. I provided one. You then claim that it must have involved alt-med, despite the fact that you have no evidence that this was the case.

If the very existence of a case of spontaneous remission is enough to prove in your eyes that alt-med must be responsible, why even ask?

The fact remains that spontaneous remission occurs and it needs to be controlled for in testing. This is done by using larger cohorts than the one-at-a-time case studies so beloved by cranks.

In summary, alt-med cranks want to have their case and eat it. They want to be able to claim whatever they want, sell whatever they want and they don't seem to think that they need prove their claims. That's bullshit. It's illogical, unethical and naive.

Anyone wanting to give medical advice or sell medical products should be subject to the same standards. Drug companies wanting to sell their wares have to adhere to strict licensing rules. All I am saying is that everyone should be subject to those same rules. Alt-med falls well short of this standard.

Alt-med proponents should grow up, do the research, put in the work and generally engage in proper medical practise. If they're not up to that challenge, they should probably shut the #### up.

Mutate and Survive

On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. - Charles Babbage

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	Message 279 by Faith, posted 10-29-2017 3:50 PM		Granny Magda has replied

Granny Magda

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Posts: 2462

From: UK

Joined: 11-12-2007

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Message 278 of 606 (822603)
10-29-2017 1:47 PM

Reply to: Message 277 by Faith
10-29-2017 1:29 PM

Re: Solutions Should Be Up To The Individual.

I'm not promoting Adams or Bollinger

You dedicated this post to promoting Bollinger's circus;

There's going to be a three-day conference on alternative methods of healing cancer online starting tomorrow. It's free but if a few of you sign up I can maybe get a reward for snaring you into it.

Even if you hate this stuff you can sign up and jeer or gather ammunition against them.

Here's the link:

The Truth About Cancer Conference

This one too;

The conference is underway and I'm really fascinated with it. Tons of research is being discussed, this isn't snake oil stuff. I could make this my career if I had the time to put into it.

And this;

You could register and watch a little if you like, or don't watch, it's easy to register, just email address and first name and so far all they've sent me is the titles of upcoming talks so I don't think you risk getting spammed. If enough people register at the link I get credit and maybe a free DVD or book. And in my opinion you could get some very useful information.

And this;

The conference is over and I just want to say I thought it was extremely good and inspiring. I feel sorry for the people who dismiss out of hand anything about healing strategies that don't agree with the medical establishment. I changed my mind about the presenter I tuned out because he seemed fringey, I was just impatient because he said he doesn't prepare for talks and he was slow getting started and I was tired so I tuned him out.

I think all the presenters had something important to say. A bunch of smart, knowledgeable and passionate people committed to learning and teaching everything they can about improving people's health through nutrition, which is an area of study doctors are simply not trained in. They covered a huge array of factors that contribute to cancer as well as factors that heal it.

The conference isn't online but there is a You Tube series by the convener Ty Bollinger with the same title, The Truth About Cancer in which he goes around the world interviewing people about cancer causes and cures.

So yes, you have been promoting Bollinger and his ridiculous course. And Bollinger is a total fraud.

And lest we forget, you have maintained an obstinate silence regarding the lies and misinformation that Bollinger and Adams spread. Acknowledge that and I'll stop bringing it up. Keep ignoring it and I'll keep reminding you of just how bad your sources are.

I do like Chris Wark but he's the only one I've followed at all, and some of the cures he highlights do seem rather miraculous in the light of all the failed chemotherapy and other standard treatments. He's not calling a product miraculous, he's calling the healing miraculous.

And as we have seen, he is wrong. None of the examples Wark provides go beyond what would be expected under standard medical expectations.

Mutate and Survive

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	Message 277 by Faith, posted 10-29-2017 1:29 PM		Faith has replied

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	Message 280 by Faith, posted 10-30-2017 11:55 AM		Granny Magda has replied

Granny Magda

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Message 308 of 606 (823628)
11-14-2017 2:41 PM

Reply to: Message 279 by Faith
10-29-2017 3:50 PM

Re: There's no point in attacking people for not doing what you think they should do

Apologies for my tardy reply. I've been away/busy/lazy.

But it's clear from some examples that some have added years after standard therapy gave up on a person.

That is absolutely not clear, nor true.

None of Wark's homilies, at least none of the ones you've mentioned, have any evidence of anyone living beyond what might be expected. Wark's own case shows no such thing, Karen's case certainly shows no such thing. And doctor's don't "just give up" on people. They are honest enough to tell them when they have no cure, that's not the same as "giving up on them".

And besides, to say they don't "go beyond standard medical expectations" is already saying quite a bit, since obviously good food is a lot easier on a person than chemo and radiation and surgery.

You misunderstand. When I say that none of these cases exceed "standard medical expectations", I mean that they don't exceed the expectations even for a person who isn't being treated. Wark's survival, considered entirely in the context of his refusing chemo, is unremarkable. It is well within the norm. Karen's survival is quite ordinairy. As we have seen, 10% of WM patients are alive and well, with no chemo, after ten years. Armed with that information Karen's survival suddenly looks a great deal less impressive, certainly well within normal expectations.

Just to equate the different modes as you do here is a big plus for alt-med.

I am not equating them, nor should they be equated.

The cases cited by Wark show nutrition patients doing no better than we would expect from the more fortunate untreated patients.

There isn't much to misinterpret when she went to more than one doctor and none of them gave a hint of extenuating circumstances.

You don't know that. You only have Karen''s word from it, based upon her imperfect recollections. That applies to all of her story.

She had been a vegetarian before all this and dairy had been a big part of her diet. She didn't completely get rid of meat, had some organic chicken, also organic eggs.

That makes no sense. If she was vegetarian, she could hardly have been eating chicken.

Vitamin D, exercise, and replaced all cleaning products with "green" products,

How much vitamin D? In what form? How often?

How much exercise? Compared to how much before?

"And the phrase "green products" is entirely meaningless.

All this is too vague to be of use to any rational examination.

I don't think she's vague, though as usual I agree that a lot more research is needed to pin down the circumstances of any given case.

I don't agree actually. researching individual cases is pointless. It's only by studying multiple cases that one can detect the underlying trends. That's how meaningful insights are gained. Researching a single case might be somewhat useful, but it isn't particularly instructive, since the peculiarities of that single case might not apply equally across the board. That's a big part of why these case-by-case anecdotes are so worthless; they do nothing to separate a particular patient's unique experience from the whole.

I think outright lying is very rare, that people get things wrong or unconsciously exaggerate or anything else but lying is very rare.

Yes I shouldn't have said "cured" and I'm not sure why I lapsed into that.

Fine, you didn't lie. You misspoke. Again. Please stop misspeaking. Karen's cancer is not cured.

But she was as "cured" as she could have been on standard therapy,

Yes, she was "cured" as in "not cured".

If you mean to say that Karen is alive and asymptomatic, just say that. If you choose to attribute this to nutrition, I can't stop you, but you have no real reason to do so, especially given that Karen's case is not particularly exceptional.

she got her numbers down as far as possible on FOOD and other very ordinary interventions, as far as she could have on chemo, and that has to mean a lot,

Nonsense. It doesn't have to mean that nutrition was the cause. A single case study does not and cannot achieve such a distinction. The possibility remains that Karen would be just as well without her nutritional regime. Remember, 10% of WM patients are alive and asymptomatic after ten years even without treatment. Karen has managed twelve. That's impressive, but not mind blowing.

I would agree except that all I've been talking about is the nutrient blitz method, which stands out in Wark's program and in the cancer conference too, with very little of the other oddball stuff, which as a matter of fact I myself have not encountered in any of my own researches to any degree I'd call "drowning out" the effective methods. As a matter of fact I haven't even run across a mention of Reiki anywhere yet.. And Greger studies nothing BUT nutrition. I know you want to attack all of "alt-med" but that is not what I'm posting about: this thread is about Plant-Based Nutrition, as per the title.

Fair enough. I do think though that the willingness of some of your sources to embrace outright craziness undermines them as trustworthy sources. I am loathe to take medical recommendations from someone who thinks that homoeopathy is real or that you can heal with crystals.

In Greger's specific case, I agree that he doesn't go for that sort of stuff. His problems are more direct; he simply misrepresents studies to further his highly partisan vegan agenda.

You are calling Chris Wark dishonest for failing to provide information about failed nutritional cures. But oddly enough nobody has yet provided that information on this thread. I get the impression it doesn't really exist.

Are you ***ing kidding me?!

Nutrition failed to cure Abraham Cherrix. It failed to cure Jessica and Sharyn Ainscough. It failed to cure Bill Henderson. It has failed others. I can name more if you wish, but I think I make my point. Nutritionist quacks act like they can cure any ill through nutrition, but in actual fact they can point to little in the way of concrete success. Cancer patients who choose to treat their illness with nutrition can and do die. There are failures, but you won't hear mention of them on chrisbeatcancer. By concentrating only upon the positive stories and ignoring the failures, Wark creates a false narrative of overwhelming success, one that is not born out by examination of his claims.

But I think my overall position here is that we are NOW at a point that we COULD sort out the effective from the ineffective methods proposed by all the various alt-med sources, and NOW is the time when effective research could begin.

We have been at that point for decades, centuries even. The earliest mention of a crude clinical trial comes from - you're gonna like this - the Book of Daniel. The notion of a controlled experiment is nothing new. The modern clinical trial has existed since the 1950s at least, arguably as far back as the 1920s. That's plenty of time for the research that would vindicate the nutritionists to have been done. And it has been done to an extent, with no good evidence for nutritional cancer therapies.

I don't think anything is served by the constant labelling of alt-med people as charlatans and quacks

I don't see that anything is served by allowing quacks and charlatans too go unchallenged. In particular, I think that you do yourself a disservice by using quacks and charlatans as your sources.

and I don't think the necessary research is to be expected from the alt-med people who have experienced cures and feel they suffered at the hands of doctors too,

I don't really care who does the research, I only care that anybody making medical claims be able to back up those claims with hard evidence. If nutritionists and other alt-med types aren't up to that challenge, that's their problem.

Mutate and Survive

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Granny Magda

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Message 309 of 606 (823629)
11-14-2017 3:06 PM

Reply to: Message 280 by Faith
10-30-2017 11:55 AM

Re: Solutions Should Be Up To The Individual.

You claim that by promoting the Truth About Cancer Conference I'm promoting Ty Bollinger himself, which is absurd.

It's not. "Truth About Cancer" is literally Bollinger's trademark. It is the brand he uses to sell alt-med garbage. It is his primary web presence. The conference is merely another promotional vehicle for Bollinger and associated quacks. He is the host because it's his event. You can't expect to promote Bollinger's event without promoting its primary beneficiary.

He made one false statement according to you

According to me? Excuse me Faith, but are you somehow in doubt?

The claim that 97% of chemo patients die within five years is false. I have clearly demonstrated this. It ought to be obvious to any reasonable observer that this is nonsense, even at a glance. It is so plainly, so manifestly moronic that I am left with only three options;

Bollinger is insane,

Bollinger is an imbecile, or,

Bollinger is lying.

Probably it's a bit of each. I don't know. All I know is that anyone who can utter such obvious tripe is a piss-poor source of medical advice and that spreading inane scare stories like this is reprehensible.

It wasn't a "course," it was a conference with dozens of independent speakers who all have their own area of interest, big difference.

Call it what you want, it was a circus, where a selection of loons, antivaxers and quacks prated their usual bunkum from a big stage in front of a credulous crowd.

How am I in any way promoting the convener of the conference about whom I know absolutely nothing except what you've been carrying on about?

You were practically begging people to sign up for his conference! In doing so you were promoting Bollinger and all of the loonies who he had on there, including dangerous antivaxers, quacks and charlatans.

My interest was in the different approaches to cancer presented at the conference and I could not care less about who convened it.

I appreciate that your interest was honest and I am not accusing you of being a liar or a lunatic. However, some of the people who you have been plugging are liars and/or lunatics. Bollinger is one such. Adams is another.

I don't believe that you actually want to spread misinformation or scare stories. I'm just trying to open your eyes to the kind of people you have been praising.

Mutate and Survive

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	Message 280 by Faith, posted 10-30-2017 11:55 AM		Faith has not replied

Granny Magda

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Message 363 of 606 (829971)
03-19-2018 8:36 AM

Reply to: Message 358 by Faith
03-18-2018 7:49 PM

Re: evidence mounts in favor of plants over meat

However, we now raise animals for meat with drugs and other methods that aren't good for us or the environment,

You say "we" but this kind of practise is far from universal. Meat farming in Europe for instance uses less intensive methods than those typical in the USA. This is less an argument for avoiding meat and more of an argument for eating better meat. Of course that is going to be more expensive, but such is life.

In any case I'm talking about studies that show the benefits of going plant-based, lots of them.

Perhaps your point would be better made by actually presenting these studies.

And just some simple facts such as that vegetarian Seventh Day Adventists live longer than the rest of us.

Is that a fact? Or is it just a claim you heard on a TV show? Do you have a link to this study?

Most cultures of the world don't eat great amounts of meat anyway you know.

You do realise that everyone already eats a predominately plant-based diet, right? I mean, it's meat and two veg, not veg and two meat. This advice is so basic as to be a banal observation. Every dietitian in the world will tell you to eat a diet primarily based on fruit and veg. It's nutrition 101.

Pushing the notion of "plant-based" is ridiculously vague to the point of being meaningless. If I ate nothing but fries, I would have a 100% plant-based diet and my diet would be terrible. It's more complex than that. For example, Omega-3 is harder to source in a vegan diet. Unless you're good at managing your diet you may well find it easier to keep some meat, fish and dairy in your diet to cover those bases.

I don't disagree with the notion that processed foods are bad for us or that diets should be mostly plant-based. I guess I'm just surprised at your apparent astonishment. This is all completely mainstream, obvious, ubiquitous nutritional advice that any doctor or dietitian would give you.

Mutate and Survive

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	Message 358 by Faith, posted 03-18-2018 7:49 PM		Faith has replied

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	Message 364 by Faith, posted 03-19-2018 11:06 AM		Granny Magda has replied

Granny Magda

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Message 374 of 606 (829986)
03-19-2018 4:35 PM

Reply to: Message 364 by Faith
03-19-2018 11:06 AM

Re: evidence mounts in favor of plants over meat

What I don't understand is the hostility that is such a regular feature of any discussion here of any topic that's somewhat off the beaten path.

It's not hostility, it is - as NoNukes pointed out - simply scepticism. I think you are making big claims in extremely vague terms and on the basis of thin evidence.

I'm not stupid,

Didn't say you were Faith. Please stop taking things so personally.

I know what the standard diet is so I wouldn't be pushing something that is really just the standard recommended diet under a different name.

I didn't intend to imply that. I just think that you are being rather loose in your terminology. The term "plant-based" is meaningless. All diets are plant based.

A lot of the advice you're advocating boils down to "Eat more fruit, veg and whole grains. Eat less processed foods, meat and dairy.", which is about the least surprising advice ever. I don't see any specific evidence being presented here for anything that goes beyond that.

There are at least a dozen different systems with similar protocols though there are also differences between them so that one food may be considered essential on one diet though forbidden on another.

Which is a pretty strong indicator that they are all equally faddish. This really is exactly what we would expect to see if all these diets were pseudo-science.

I saw the statistic on the Seventh Day Adventists in a recent video I watched at Netflix, maybe the one called "Food Choices" or possibly "In Defense of Food."

Right. But you haven't actually seen the study. You haven't read it and don't have a link to it. For all you know it could be the most accurate study in scientific history or a worthless piece of junk. But, whatever, right?

Of course he's an extreme because he was seriously overweight

Therein lies the problem. Was this guy's health improved by the innate healing power of a plant-based diet? Or was it just that his previous diet was awful? Given only an anecdote in a youtube video, we can't say. I continue to be perplexed by your apparent enthusiasm for worthless anecdotes.

Mutate and Survive

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	Message 364 by Faith, posted 03-19-2018 11:06 AM		Faith has replied

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	Message 375 by Faith, posted 03-19-2018 9:07 PM		Granny Magda has replied

Granny Magda

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Message 414 of 606 (830056)
03-20-2018 2:37 PM

Reply to: Message 375 by Faith
03-19-2018 9:07 PM

Re: A couple of studies

Joe Cross is a juicing guru himself these days, this is no anecdote, it is the story of his reversal of his obesity and ill health which he documented in the film "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead."

(Bolding mine)

That's what an anecdote is, in this context; a story. It is simply impossible to logically prove or disprove any causal hypothesis on the basis of a single self-reported case study.

Yes his diet was totally lousy before, so I guess you could argue that he'd have benefited from any dietary change for the better.

Yes! Obviously this has to be true. It could hardly be otherwise.

I think his obvious glowing health shows more than that myself

I'm curious; just what do you think this single case study shows? Above and beyond the banal observation that improving one's diet will improve one's health I mean.

I had been rather loose in discussing these things but I thought I'd also said enough over many posts to tighten it up some and I don't think you read any of that.

I've been reading along. You talk about a great variety of different regimes, going into little detail on any of them. It comes across as rather scatter-shot. Taking a specific concrete example which you feel you can get behind and going into detail might be a good idea.

And here's a Wikipedia discussion of the Seventh Day Adventist Studies. I'm sure you can find the actual research in the References section.

I think you mean this;

Vegetarian Dietary Patterns and Mortality in Adventist Health Study 2 | Lifestyle Behaviors | JAMA Internal Medicine | JAMA Network

This study is impressive, but one of the problems with it is that it lumps a lot of non-vegetarians into its "vegetarian" group, including pesco-vegetarians and "semi-vegetarians" (AKA meat-eaters). Where it does differentiate, the outcomes are not as you might expect. Pesco-vegetarians, for instance, had a slightly lower mortality rate than vegans.

I also note that this doesn't agree with your position on the subject;

quote:
No significant associations with reduced cancer mortality were detected.

So if you're going to side with this study, you have to side against the nutrition-beats-cancer crowd.

Mutate and Survive

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	Message 375 by Faith, posted 03-19-2018 9:07 PM		Faith has replied

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	Message 415 by Faith, posted 03-20-2018 3:53 PM		Granny Magda has replied

Granny Magda

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Message 418 of 606 (830067)
03-20-2018 5:07 PM

Reply to: Message 415 by Faith
03-20-2018 3:53 PM

Re: A couple of studies

A story that is filmed is more than an anecdote recounted by the subject himself.

Wikipedia defines anecdotal evidence thusly;

quote:
Anecdotal evidence is evidence from anecdotes, i.e., evidence collected in a casual or informal manner and relying heavily or entirely on personal testimony.

This case is primarily personal testimony. No matter how thorough, this can, at best, be described as a study with a cohort of one. That is pathetic. Single case-studies are meaningless.

I remain curious as to what you think this example proves. He improved his diet. His health improved. That is no big whoop.

There is room for error, but there is always room for error. At some point you have to trust people.

Nullius in verba.

Not perfectly, nothing is perfect, nobody is perfect, but everybody here seems to want some kind of absolute perfection.

You misunderstand. No-one is calling for perfection. No-one can achieve perfection. The scientific method exists for this precise reason, to maximise breadth and accuracy of knowledge and minimise ignorance and error. The scientific method - and the attitude of sceptics - exists because we cannot achieve perfection, not despite it. It's a feature, not a bug.

Why the blanket sour refusal to accept what people say? What makes your skepticism automatically superior to their conviction?

What makes a desire for evidence superior to blindly accepting whatever I'm told by people on the internet? Really? You're really asking me that?

Just because we cannot attain perfect knowledge doesn't mean that we have to swallow everything we see on the internet and whilst I'm sure you're not quite that gullible, I do suspect that you may have opened your mind a little too far on this topic.

Following a particular system wouldn't prove anything and I couldn't pick one to defend because I haven't settled on any particular version myself, I'm still checking it out and trying different things.

You don't have to defend anything. Just pick a specific sub-topic and dive deep into the evidence. Actually read the studies, rather than just accepting them because someone referenced them in a video. You don't have to bring it here, you could do it just as personal research. It might prove more enlightening than watching youtube videos.

I read most of the article at your link and it overall shows benefits from a vegetarian diet, with the usual messy uncertainties and deviations

It's your link, you cited the study, I just fetched it for you.

The Adventists study does not support is the claim you made for it. It includes non-vegetarians in its "vegetarian" group. It explicitly finds no reduction in cancer mortality.

the right direction to go in is pretty clear: up the plants, down the animal sources and out the processed foods, except the plant emphasis should be pretty drastic.

I absolutely agree. Multiple lines of evidence agree that the average person should be eating more fruit and veg, less processed foods, etc. That is the position of mainstream dietary science though, it's not a fringe opinion.

We agree on the generalities; vegetarianism tends to be healthy, processed foods are bad for you,, that sort of thing. It's on the specifics that I am sceptical. I don't think that there is clear enough evidence available to say what the absolute optimal diet might be. I don't think that vegetarian/vegan diets are quite the panacea you seem to see them as. And I most certainly do not see any evidence that diet can cure cancer. That remains pure fantasy.

There are enough people Chris Wark has interviewed who claim to have cured their cancers with diet and other lifestyle changes that in my opinion it is reasonable for the information to lead other people to try it themselves.

They claim to have cured their cancers, but the truth is that not a single one of them can demonstrate that they cured their cancers with diet. None of these people really know whether they cured themselves or whether they just got lucky. As we have seen, these miraculous cures are nothing of the kind and can usually be attributed to surgery, as in Wark's case.

Most of the people interviewed started out getting informed of what their prospects were on standard treatment and how much time they had to experiment with other methods before trying a drastically changed diet. Then they get tested at intervals to see if it's working. If it doesn't work they've left room to go on the standard treatment.

Dangerous horseshit. Any oncologist will tell you that early discovery and treatment are paramount in cancer treatment. Any delay lowers the chances of patients surviving over time. Encouraging people who know that they have cancer to delay reputable treatment is grossly irresponsible. This advice, should anyone be foolish enough to follow it, could cost someone their life. In the specific case of nutritional therapies it is especially absurd to present nutrition and conventional cancer therapies as being mutually exclusive choices, since in many cases a patient might well do both simultaneously.

This kind of thinking is how alternative medicine kills people.

Mutate and Survive

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	Message 415 by Faith, posted 03-20-2018 3:53 PM		Faith has replied

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Granny Magda

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Message 421 of 606 (830072)
03-20-2018 5:44 PM

Reply to: Message 419 by Faith
03-20-2018 5:21 PM

Re: A couple of studies

Huge studies also are dealing with too many complications to give a reliable result though.

That's always going to be the weakness of studies like this which deal with huge cohorts over long periods of time. To be fair to the authors of the Adventists study, they go to some lengths to control for confounding lifestyle variables.

As I said I think we get better information from small controlled studies like Esselstyn's.

Well cleaner data, sure, but the health outcomes we're talking about can take decades to become clear. You can't keep test subjects cooped up for that long.

This trade-off between accuracy of data and breadth of data is one which statisticians are familiar with. It's worth remembering that all studies on diet are necessarily going to face these sorts of problems. It is a genuinely challenging field.

The best that you or I can do is to engage with the research and try to bear the limitations of any given study in mind in deciding how much weight to give it.

Mutate and Survive

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	Message 419 by Faith, posted 03-20-2018 5:21 PM		Faith has replied

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	Message 423 by Faith, posted 03-20-2018 6:17 PM		Granny Magda has replied

Granny Magda

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Message 424 of 606 (830077)
03-20-2018 6:17 PM

Reply to: Message 422 by Faith
03-20-2018 5:59 PM

Re: A couple of studies

It's a big whoop because most people just keep going through life with whatever problems they have, such as his overweight and his immune deficiency skin disease, knowing vaguely they aren't eating or living right but just going on doing it because they don't really know what is causing what for sure, and accepting the medicine approach to everything because it's pushed by doctors,

Let me stop you there.

If someone is overweight and overeating, they are absolutely not "accepting the medicine approach". They are, in fact, wantonly flouting it. The guy's doctor would have told him to lose weight; that is the mainstream advice. His doctor might also have told him that certain skin conditions are exacerbated by weight, another piece of mainstream advice. When he finally chose to follow that advice, his health improved. Big surprise.

Nothing but juiced fruits and vegetables cured this guy.

But did the fruits and vegetables actively cure his skin condition? Or did it simply improve in response to the weight loss facilitated by a healthier diet? We can't possibly say from only a single example.

That IS a big whoop. It CURED him.

It is a big deal for him personally. But you know perfectly well that's not what I meant. From an evidential viewpoint this anecdote proves nothing beyond conventional expectations.

The only claim I made for the Adventist study was that it showed greater longevity for Adventists over nonAdventists and for vegetarian Advantists over nonvegetarian Adventists, that's all.

The study's inclusion of blatant non-vegetarians in its "vegetarian" group substantially muddies the waters around that claim.

Mutate and Survive

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Granny Magda

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Message 427 of 606 (830096)
03-21-2018 2:25 PM

Reply to: Message 426 by Faith
03-20-2018 9:03 PM

Re: A couple of studies

Well, remind me, did the blatantly nonvegetarian vegetarian group live longer than the defined nonvegetarians or not?

Some did, some didn't. The pescaterians fared better than the vegans. Why not try reading it yourself. This is, after all, the study you cited. If you can't be arsed to even read the studies you cite I don't see how anyone can take you seriously when you talk about them.

GM writes:

faith writes:

Actually we can.

No we cannot. As caffiene attempted to explain to you, a single case is not enough to determine cause.

Looking up urticaria pigmentosa finds no association with weight gain or loss.

Of course had you actually told me that it was urticaria, instead of vaguely referring to a "skin condition", I might have responded differently. This is what I mean when I say that you are being sloppy with terminology.

Now I know what we're actually talking about, I can respond properly.

There are to major problems here.

Firstly, hives, even chronic hives, can and does clear up of its own accord. The typical duration for chronic sufferers is one to five years. So it is impossible to rule out the possibility that Cross simply got better for reasons unrelated to diet.

Secondly, urticaria is typically treated with diet, yes, even in mainstream medicine. It is caused by allergies, often allergies to specific foods. So yes, Cross's hives were probably cured by diet, but not because he exposed himself to the healing powers of juice, but, much more likely, because his change in diet led him to exclude the substance that had been triggering his hives. Further, this approach to treating hives is utterly mainstream; there is nothing here that surpasses the mainstream medical understanding of hives.

All told, now I know that Cross had hives, this anecdote seems even more pathetic and pointless. There is no insight here that goes beyond what any mainstream doctor would tell you.

I conclude it was the juicing that cured it,

An unsupported conclusion. It's more likely that he simply stopped exposing n=himself to an allergen when he changed his diet rather than being actively cured by juices.

It's a big deal for the plant-based point of view, and it's a big deal for those of us trying to get off the diet loop and find something that really works and that's unquestionably good for us.

It's not a big deal if you are only echoing what real clinicians have already been telling you. It is especially unimpressive when alt-med practitioners tout their methods and insights as being an alternative to mainstream medicine, only to end up parroting what doctors have long known to be the case. This is part of a familiar pattern of alt-med proponents attempting to co-opt the insights of scientific medicine as if they were their own and falsely label mainstream practises - such as dietary interventions - as "alternative".

He didn't choose to do a conventional diet, he was looking for a radically healthy way of life

He chose to switch to a diet that was much lower in saturated fat, lower in calories and lower in refined carbs, just as any mainstream doctor would have told him to.

However, no one anecdote, or study, or dietary system, is convincing by itself, at least not for me. I've needed to see lots of films and talks and interviews to get as convinced as I am of all this.

Sure, I hear where you're coming from. However, the plural of anecdote is not data. If you round up a whole bunch of anecdotes, each of which individually amounts to nothing, you still end up with nothing.

And the many statistics that show health problems correlated with meat and dairy are a big part of the convincing too.

Faith, no-one is disputing that some health problems are caused or exacerbated by diet. But just because some problems can be tackled through diet doesn't mean that all are.

I agree that most of the diets you're talking about are healthy; I just take issue with the claims of active curative properties, for which I see little evidence, especially in the case of nutritional cancer therapies.

Mutate and Survive

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	Message 426 by Faith, posted 03-20-2018 9:03 PM		Faith has replied

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	Message 428 by Faith, posted 03-21-2018 2:39 PM	Granny Magda has not replied
	Message 429 by PaulK, posted 03-21-2018 2:41 PM	Granny Magda has replied
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Granny Magda

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Message 430 of 606 (830099)
03-21-2018 2:43 PM

Reply to: Message 423 by Faith
03-20-2018 6:17 PM

Re: A couple of studies

Esselstyn took a group of people with severe heart disease, which worked itself down to 18 individuals

It's a little more complicated than that. He started with 24 patients. He lost 6 because they couldn't stick with the program. That in itself is a major problem. A regime that people can't stick to is useless.

There was no control group. A study with a cohort of 18 is no control is spectacularly poor. This is a major problem.

Further, 9 out of Esselstyn's 18 had previously has coronary bypass surgery and two had undergone angioplasty of a coronary artery. To exclude these surgical interventions as possible causal factors is bizarre and wilfully ignorant.

Also, Esselstyn's patients were all on cholesterol-reducing drugs, including statins.

This is a terrible study.

I also note that Esselstyn's regime is very extreme. He thinks you shouldn't eat oil, of any kind, ever. He is against eating nuts. He says "Do not juice". He seems quite the quack. I don't see that the two of you share much common ground.

Mutate and Survive

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	Message 423 by Faith, posted 03-20-2018 6:17 PM		Faith has replied

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	Message 431 by Faith, posted 03-21-2018 2:54 PM	Granny Magda has replied
	Message 432 by Faith, posted 03-21-2018 3:05 PM	Granny Magda has replied

Granny Magda

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Posts: 2462

From: UK

Joined: 11-12-2007

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Message 433 of 606 (830102)
03-21-2018 3:06 PM

Reply to: Message 429 by PaulK
03-21-2018 2:41 PM

Re: A couple of studies

Hi Paul,

Yeah, some interesting stuff came out last year on preventing so-called "pre-diabetics" from developing full-blown diabetes and even reversing existing type II diabetes, with diet. It's promising stuff, but I have to say that the diets being recommended are nothing like the extreme diets Faith is touting, they're just low-fat, calorie-restricted diets. Nor is it particularly surprising that diabetes is susceptible to diet-based treatments, given that it is a disease closely tied to diet.

I agree that anecdotes are the calling card of a quack. Another indicator of whackiness seems to be that the quacks love to claim actual cures. Not preventative effects or risk mitigation or anything sensible that we might all agree on, but actual full-blown cures. They just have to go too far. When I hear nutritionists make these claims my sceptic sense starts tingling...

Mutate and Survive

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	Message 429 by PaulK, posted 03-21-2018 2:41 PM		PaulK has not replied

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	Message 435 by Faith, posted 03-21-2018 3:14 PM		Granny Magda has replied

Granny Magda

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Posts: 2462

From: UK

Joined: 11-12-2007

Member Rating: 3.8

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Message 437 of 606 (830107)
03-21-2018 3:19 PM

Reply to: Message 431 by Faith
03-21-2018 2:54 PM

Re: A couple of studies

Yes Esselstyn is extreme and I know I couldn't follow his program.

Pointless to have a regime you can't follow.

I hope this kind of study will be repeated with a less extreme regimen.

From my reading of Esselstyn's FAQ, I doubt that he would approve of any less zealous regime.

He asked for the most difficult cases and was given these so I doubt the ones you mention who had had surgery were somehow less complicated as you seem to think.

It's not that. It's that half his sample group had undergone surgical treatments that could be the actual cause of their improvements. This invalidates the study.

AND I'm sure those who were on drugs came off them when the diet improved their conditions.

Oh you're sure. I mean, you don't actually know either way and can't be bothered to find find out, but nonetheless, you're sure.

You are extremely quick to claim certainty from a position of ignorance.

Mutate and Survive

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	Message 431 by Faith, posted 03-21-2018 2:54 PM		Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
	Message 441 by Faith, posted 03-21-2018 10:03 PM		Granny Magda has replied

Granny Magda

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(1)

Message 439 of 606 (830109)
03-21-2018 3:23 PM

Reply to: Message 435 by Faith
03-21-2018 3:14 PM

Re: A couple of studies

Watch Lim's presentation.
Watch Forks over Knives.
Watch What the Health

No.

I haven't even watched The Last Jedi yet, I'm not about to waste my time watching a bunch of tedious videos about nutrition.

This remains a debate forum. If you have something to say, bring it. Defend it. Debate it. If you can't be bothered with that you have no business posting to a debate forum. If you want to promote nutri-woo without having to defend it, post it on your blog.

Mutate and Survive

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