Community Detox / Alternative medicine / Homeopathy / Woo / CAM Scammers & Cows - The crazies who make $ off hating science, and the fools who love them

[wes]

Unless someone really fucks up storing concentrated (30% and up) hydrogen peroxide and/ or ozone, I don't think there's a danger of forming explosives. The only danger imo is the toxicity of those compounds and how corrosive they are.

Chem sperging over.

The HPS Scam incidentally mentions using 35% hydrogen peroxide in its protocol in between its 500 legal disclaimers that this will fuck your body up royally

It is called Oxygen Water in many countries around the world. In Spain it is called Agua Oxigenada, in Italy Acqua Ossigenata, in France Eau Oxigenee. In the United States we call it Hydrogen Peroxide (H202).

Also, holy shit, are they marketing to 8 year olds?

Spoiler: autism

:autism: I'm always a fan of chemistry sperging :autism:

 

[0 0]

Way back when I had to take a physiology course, ironically pretty late in my academic career. Since it's a class with zero entry requirements, it's filled with students fresh out of highschool or potential nurses. From my experience, both are the most likely to drop out of class or to ask the dumbest questions, but I had somebody in particular who looked absolutely dumbfounded whenever anything chemistry-related came up. At one point the class got onto the topic of the difference between "qualitative" and "quantitative" data and dilution. At that point, this lady asked "Then...what about homeopathic medicine?"

Homeopathic medicine, in case you don't know, is quackery which states that the more dilute a substance is, the more powerful it is, defying all laws of physics.

One of the students next to her very flatly jokes "that's more, uh, 'qualitative' medicine than what we're doing." Not understanding, she asked again,

"So how does homeopathic medicine work?"

I turned to her with as bright a smile and as bubbly a voice I could muster I said "it doesn't!" Then she furrowed her brow and stared into space as if overwhelmed by confusion.

I also have a story related to somebody I knew who kept trying to push homeopathic medicine on her and her family that I posted in a similar thread that I can repost here:

I don't have quotes but I can speak from experience. I grew up a with a guy who lived with his grandparents because his mother was bonkers. Well, that's not literally the reason why he lives with his grandparents, but sometimes when I came over, his mother was there being weird as always. I try to be polite as to not embarrass my friend, but she interpreted it as a genuine enjoyment of her company and would often come over and talk about the latest crackpot theory or new age medicine.

The earliest I remember was her talking about the tried-and-true chemtrails from overhead planes, but this was only the introduction into insane idiocy she would force her son and me into (or try, at least). One time I believe I was watching television with them, and out of nowhere she turns to me and asks "you know cancer is just a fungus, right?" She then tries to tell me that baking soda is not only a cure for cancer, it's a preventative and tried to get me to egg her son into sprinkling raw baking soda into his food. Since I "liked science," according to her, she thought I believed that nonsense. I didn't want to put her down, especially not in front of her son, so I just told her I'd have to research it.

The next wacky medicine she discovered was ear candling. In case you don't know, the process involves sticking a waxed paper tube in your ear with a wick on top, setting the wick alight, and then let it suck the "toxins" from your body through allegedly minute vacuum suction created through the flame. When you unravel the tube when you're done, you can even see the deadly "toxins" that was once in your body right in the tube! A good way to tell if something is new age health nonsense, by the way, is if the packaging mentions "toxins" or "leaky gut." In short, it's not real and the "toxins" in the tube are just candle wax. When I visited one day, she wanted me to try it. It was already too late for my friend's grandfather, who tried it and got a drop of hot wax in his ear for nothing. I already had heard of ear candling before, so I told her to burn one of the candles without putting it in somebody's ear and see what happens. I don't know if she tried it, but she stopped bothering with it afterwards.

The last new age medicine she tried to push was something my friend complained about, which was an alternative medicine headache remedy. When she tried getting me to use it, I took two and swore it was just two tiny lumps of sugar. I looked at the ingredients and reviewed the medicine online on my phone and, when I discovered that they genuinely were just sugarpills, I downed the whole bottle. She wasn't there, though, and thought I just hid the pills. To this day, she most likely believes I couldn't eat an entire bottle of tiny lumps of sugar--otherwise I'd be dead, right? It was only after that when I discovered that she absolutely swore by that medicine. My friend said that most conversations with his mother often devolved into her berating either him or his grandparents for using traditional (medically recognized) pain reliever instead of her method of the new age medicine and massaging pressure points.

I haven't spoken to her much since my friend is now working on his master's abroad, but a quick glance at her social media reveals that she's still pushing whatever new age medicinal trends are popular on her friends and family. Her most recent bout of lunacy from what I could tell was that she popped out another kid now that my friend's off studying, and was bragging that she dumps water on the infant when it's hot out because babies don't have sweat glands and a lot of parents don't know that and let their kids die of hyperthermia. Which, as I'm sure you've realized by now, isn't true.

I could talk for hours about alternative medicine and quackery...so I will. I also was friends with a much older gentleman who was having problems relating to his spinal column. As far as he knew, though, it was just a problem with his back, so he went to see a chiropractor. I wasn't aware of this at the time--and he wasn't either, nor most people in general--but chiropracty is also alternative medicine, with its practitioners often needing zero medical experience or training. As such, they'll also push all their new-age nonsense and blame everything wrong with you as something wrong with your spine. Or "leaky gut," which is essentially an alternative medicine meme at this point. Lo and behold, the chiropractor immediately ruined his back and led to it being twisted around as if you were to take his spine and wring it like a wet towel. Said chiropractor insisting on doing even more strenuous experiments until the older gentleman did some research and found out about chiropracty being equatable to quackery.

However, I have a...I guess you can call it "favorite" example of alternative medicine ruining people. An old hoax and sign of quackery a long time ago when radiation was discovered was that radiation was good for you. Various products were sold around the time claiming to contain "radioactive material" that could regrew hair, restore youth, and cure disease. A particularly hilarious example is the radium drinking jar, which was said to contain active radium in its composition. The intent was to fill it with water, let it sit overnight, and down it in the morning to get your daily amount of healthy, life-giving radiation. Of course, it killed people, but not because of its intended mechanism. The "radium" contained inside was actually depleted, the jars instead contained radon (what some radioactive particles become once they are depleted) which was poisonous, killing its consumer. Oops.

Another thing that's really big about these people is anti-GMO, or "genetically modified organisms." Basically, genetic modification is just altering the DNA of plants or animals on a genetic level. It's super-limited, though. The best we can really do is essentially "copy" and "paste" genes from one plant or animal into another, or create DNA sequences which can only do the bare minimum (which is create a protein chain--arguably the simplest action DNA can possibly do). It is, however, excruciatingly hard to find good research on GMO when everything is polluted with paranoid, incoherent hysteria. Anti-GMO stuff is filled with nonsense like this:

I suppose "frankenfood" is an accurate descriptor since you are just meshing the best qualities of plants together, but the rest are pure nonsense. The best way to see GMO is basically seeing it as that we've been controlling the DNA of plants across decades of selective breeding and farming--all we're doing now is the same thing directly, with more control and in faster time. The hysteria involving GMOs doesn't ever stop, though. If you visit any website against it, you'll often find unsourced claims, or sourced claims which refer back to unsourced claims, or websites citing each other for the same claim in a loop. It's ridiculous. My favorite example (which was actually sourced) was that they link the explosive rate of soy allergies with the genetic modification of soy. Which is true, when soy begun being genetically modified in 1994, allergies did explode exponentially...along with the production and consumption of soy because it was genetically modified to increase yield.

Oops. Of course, the hysteria regarding GMO doesn't stop there, either--people have gotten killed because of the fear over genetic modification. Greenpeace--an anti-GMO organization--had brainwashed an African village suffering from a drought and famine by campaigning to warn them about a genetically modified shipment of food and seeds coming over to them, modified with the genes of some desert plants to increase drought resistance. Said genes have already been proven effective in sugarcane and thus, despite what Greenpeace believes, the seeds were sent for the sake of helping the Africans, not testing the seeds on them. Because of Greenpeace, the Africans rejected and destroyed the food and continued to starve to death.

Oops.

Another good source of stupidity is some of the more fanatical sides of veganism. This website in particular is one that, frustratingly, came up frequently when I was doing a quick study involving digestion a while back.

Meat-eaters: have claws

Herbivores: no claws

Humans: no claws


Meat-eaters: have no skin pores and perspire through the tongue

Herbivores: perspire through skin pores

Humans: perspire through skin pores


Meat-eaters: have sharp front teeth for tearing, with no flat molar teeth for grinding

Herbivores: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding

Humans: no sharp front teeth, but flat rear molars for grinding


Meat-eaters: have intestinal tract that is only 3 times their body length so that rapidly decaying meat can pass through quickly

Herbivores: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.

Humans: have intestinal tract 10-12 times their body length.


Meat-eaters: have strong hydrochloric acid in stomach to digest meat

Herbivores: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater

Humans: have stomach acid that is 20 times weaker than that of a meat-eater



Meat-eaters: salivary glands in mouth not needed to pre-digest grains and fruits.

Herbivores: well-developed salivary glands which are necessary to pre-digest grains and fruits

Humans: well-developed salivary glands, which are necessary to pre-digest, grains and fruits


Meat-eaters: have acid saliva with no enzyme ptyalin to pre-digest grains

Herbivores: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains

Humans: have alkaline saliva with ptyalin to pre-digest grains

Based on a chart by A.D. Andrews, Fit Food for Men, (Chicago: American Hygiene Society, 1970)

This site also espouses a claim common among the particularly insane vegan community, which is that the human body is not fit to eat meat, and meat actually remains in the human digestive system and rots away. For some reason. And of course none of this nonsense is cited, or cited incorrectly so that the study is impossible to find.

Anyway, that's all I can recall from the top of my head, but if you're interested in new-age quackery and fake magical nonsense, a good person to follow is James Randy, retired magician and public speaker who has made a career of debunking this nonsense. James Randi's own organization is famous itself for offering I believe a $100K reward for proving the existence or effectiveness of paranormal or alternative medicine stuff, although the challenge has been since rescinded after nearly two decades of failures attempting to claim it.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Can we also add that chiropractors get very, very butthurt about being called quacks, up to the point that they collectively sued Simon Singh in 2008 over it.

 

[wes]

Spoiler: Wall of replies

Way back when I had to take a physiology course, ironically pretty late in my academic career. Since it's a class with zero entry requirements, it's filled with students fresh out of highschool or potential nurses.

I took physiology my first semester at university and it was like watching flies drop. By the time we were taking our midterms, the room was a ghost town. (Though the professor was admittedly a huge bitch.) It's always as soon as the chemistry (and the muscular system) ramps up that people start panicking, even though it's not even that complicated at 101 level physiology; it's not like you have to memorize the chemical composition of every codon. Though these people seemed to be frightened by the idea of memorizing anatomical position. Luckily I never came across a woo-pusher, but the professors I had would probably strike that down at once.

Homeopathic medicine, in case you don't know, is quackery which states that the more dilute a substance is, the more powerful it is, defying all laws of physics.

But muh flushes and cleanses!!!

I could talk for hours about alternative medicine and quackery...so I will. I also was friends with a much older gentleman who was having problems relating to his spinal column. As far as he knew, though, it was just a problem with his back, so he went to see a chiropractor. I wasn't aware of this at the time--and he wasn't either, nor most people in general--but chiropracty is also alternative medicine, with its practitioners often needing zero medical experience or training.

I've seen a lot of Scientologists go into chiropracty, unsurprisingly.

Anyway, that's all I can recall from the top of my head, but if you're interested in new-age quackery and fake magical nonsense, a good person to follow is James Randy, retired magician and public speaker who has made a career of debunking this nonsense.

Other famous hollistic stooges include Majid Ali, Gary Null, and Mercola. (Eugh.)

I just remembered something interesting related to this; there was a hollistic doctor (whose degree wasn't even in proper medicine) that shilled out a bunch of woo like creams and oils at massively gouged prices. She was huge with local homeopaths, and was also big on how healthy you could be. However, with all her healthy eating and supplements, she ended up dying of Stage 4 Breast Cancer in a relatively quick fashion.

 

[0 0]

Spoiler: Wall of replies

I took physiology my first semester at university and it was like watching flies drop. By the time we were taking our midterms, the room was a ghost town. (Though the professor was admittedly a huge bitch.) It's always as soon as the chemistry (and the muscular system) ramps up that people start panicking, even though it's not even that complicated at 101 level physiology it's not like you have to memorize the chemical composition of every codon. Though these people seemed to be frightened by the idea of memorizing anatomical position. Luckily I never came across a woo-pusher, but the professors I had would probably strike that down at once.





But muh flushes and cleanses!!!



I've seen a lot of Scientologists go into chiropracty, unsurprisingly.


Other famous hollistic stooges include Majid Ali, Gary Null, and Mercola. (Eugh.)

I just remembered something interesting related to this; there was a hollistic doctor (whose degree wasn't even in proper medicine) that shilled out a bunch of woo like creams and oils at massively gouged prices. She was huge with local homeopaths, and was also big on how healthy you could be. However, with all her healthy eating and supplements, she ended up dying of Stage 4 Breast Cancer in a relatively quickly fashion.

Reminds me of breathanism or whatever it's called (edit: breatharianism, which is just needlessly complicated to spell). I'm not sure if it's been touched on in this thread, but it's the idea that you can get all your energy from the air around you, a feat not even plants can muster in all their self-sustainability. You're intended to completely remove food and water from your diet and replace it with nothing but deep breathing. I think three people have died--one woman and an elderly couple--attempting to follow its teachings according to a book that was popular for a while. Said people have died either from thirst or starving themselves, which is phenomenal because of the sheer level of willpower it would take for them to live in a country known for excess and somehow die from malnutrition.

I haven't gone farther than reading the Wikipedia article and a few news reports on this, but it's a 10/10 read absolutely worth looking into. The two big highlights are the two big purporters of this thing. The first one, a man, got pretty popular among new-age medicine and dieting circles from breatharianism and was caught leaving a 7/11 with a handful of Twinkies and a hotdog when he was supposedly meant to be practicing his techniques. He dismissed being caught by saying he was being pressured due to the social environment.

The other, a woman with the nonsensical stage name of Jasmuheen, was on 60 Minutes and was confronted with how her teachings led to people's deaths, and she had the audacity to say that they were performing it incorrectly. When asked to prove the validity of breatharianism, she faltered immediately and said that the air in the area was unclean. So they took her into the Himalayas, far away from any pollution, and she claimed that she could perform her techniques excellently. Within two weeks or so, her body weight dropped around a quarter, her heartrate doubled, and she had all the signs of severe dehydration (discoloration of the eyes, loss of skin elasticity, and so on)--and she still insisted that her teachings were working. 60 Minutes quickly ended the trial in fear that she would kill herself in her desperation to prove the feasibility of her teachings. And of course, she waives her near-death experience as her proving breatharianism is real because 60 Minutes didn't end the trial to save her life, no, they just realized that they couldn't disprove her after two weeks and gave up. It's a wondrous read.

Oh right, another thing, these quacks will try to trick people into thinking they have a medical degree by adding the suffix of "N.D." to their name. It's an intentionally dubious descriptor--especially how similar it is to "M.D.," or "medical doctor," the suffix for an actively practicing and licensed doctor. "N.D.," of course, standing for "natural doctor," and it's as prestigious and legitimate as you'd expect.

 

[MysticMisty]

I could talk for hours about alternative medicine and quackery...so I will. I also was friends with a much older gentleman who was having problems relating to his spinal column. As far as he knew, though, it was just a problem with his back, so he went to see a chiropractor. I wasn't aware of this at the time--and he wasn't either, nor most people in general--but chiropracty is also alternative medicine, with its practitioners often needing zero medical experience or training. As such, they'll also push all their new-age nonsense and blame everything wrong with you as something wrong with your spine. Or "leaky gut," which is essentially an alternative medicine meme at this point. Lo and behold, the chiropractor immediately ruined his back and led to it being twisted around as if you were to take his spine and wring it like a wet towel. Said chiropractor insisting on doing even more strenuous experiments until the older gentleman did some research and found out about chiropracty being equatable to quackery.

Way back when I was in second or third grade a chiropractor came and talked to my class. Some of it was really basic shit about properly lifting heavy objects (even though we were elementary school students) but most of it was about how having a perfectly straight spine was really important and only a chiropractor can determine if it is or isn't, so be sure to get our parents to make that very important appointment today! My mom was outraged the school allowed such a thing to go down, and as far as I know they never did anything like that again.

 

[Cripple]

Way back when I had to take a physiology course, ironically pretty late in my academic career. Since it's a class with zero entry requirements, it's filled with students fresh out of highschool or potential nurses. From my experience, both are the most likely to drop out of class or to ask the dumbest questions, but I had somebody in particular who looked absolutely dumbfounded whenever anything chemistry-related came up. At one point the class got onto the topic of the difference between "qualitative" and "quantitative" data and dilution. At that point, this lady asked "Then...what about homeopathic medicine?"

Homeopathic medicine, in case you don't know, is quackery which states that the more dilute a substance is, the more powerful it is, defying all laws of physics.

One of the students next to her very flatly jokes "that's more, uh, 'qualitative' medicine than what we're doing." Not understanding, she asked again,

"So how does homeopathic medicine work?"

I turned to her with as bright a smile and as bubbly a voice I could muster I said "it doesn't!" Then she furrowed her brow and stared into space as if overwhelmed by confusion.

I also have a story related to somebody I knew who kept trying to push homeopathic medicine on her and her family that I posted in a similar thread that I can repost here:



I could talk for hours about alternative medicine and quackery...so I will. I also was friends with a much older gentleman who was having problems relating to his spinal column. As far as he knew, though, it was just a problem with his back, so he went to see a chiropractor. I wasn't aware of this at the time--and he wasn't either, nor most people in general--but chiropracty is also alternative medicine, with its practitioners often needing zero medical experience or training. As such, they'll also push all their new-age nonsense and blame everything wrong with you as something wrong with your spine. Or "leaky gut," which is essentially an alternative medicine meme at this point. Lo and behold, the chiropractor immediately ruined his back and led to it being twisted around as if you were to take his spine and wring it like a wet towel. Said chiropractor insisting on doing even more strenuous experiments until the older gentleman did some research and found out about chiropracty being equatable to quackery.

However, I have a...I guess you can call it "favorite" example of alternative medicine ruining people. An old hoax and sign of quackery a long time ago when radiation was discovered was that radiation was good for you. Various products were sold around the time claiming to contain "radioactive material" that could regrew hair, restore youth, and cure disease. A particularly hilarious example is the radium drinking jar, which was said to contain active radium in its composition. The intent was to fill it with water, let it sit overnight, and down it in the morning to get your daily amount of healthy, life-giving radiation. Of course, it killed people, but not because of its intended mechanism. The "radium" contained inside was actually depleted, the jars instead contained radon (what some radioactive particles become once they are depleted) which was poisonous, killing its consumer. Oops.

Another thing that's really big about these people is anti-GMO, or "genetically modified organisms." Basically, genetic modification is just altering the DNA of plants or animals on a genetic level. It's super-limited, though. The best we can really do is essentially "copy" and "paste" genes from one plant or animal into another, or create DNA sequences which can only do the bare minimum (which is create a protein chain--arguably the simplest action DNA can possibly do). It is, however, excruciatingly hard to find good research on GMO when everything is polluted with paranoid, incoherent hysteria. Anti-GMO stuff is filled with nonsense like this:

View attachment 500803

View attachment 500804

View attachment 500805

I suppose "frankenfood" is an accurate descriptor since you are just meshing the best qualities of plants together, but the rest are pure nonsense. The best way to see GMO is basically seeing it as that we've been controlling the DNA of plants across decades of selective breeding and farming--all we're doing now is the same thing directly, with more control and in faster time. The hysteria involving GMOs doesn't ever stop, though. If you visit any website against it, you'll often find unsourced claims, or sourced claims which refer back to unsourced claims, or websites citing each other for the same claim in a loop. It's ridiculous. My favorite example (which was actually sourced) was that they link the explosive rate of soy allergies with the genetic modification of soy. Which is true, when soy begun being genetically modified in 1994, allergies did explode exponentially...along with the production and consumption of soy because it was genetically modified to increase yield.

View attachment 500807

Oops. Of course, the hysteria regarding GMO doesn't stop there, either--people have gotten killed because of the fear over genetic modification. Greenpeace--an anti-GMO organization--had brainwashed an African village suffering from a drought and famine by campaigning to warn them about a genetically modified shipment of food and seeds coming over to them, modified with the genes of some desert plants to increase drought resistance. Said genes have already been proven effective in sugarcane and thus, despite what Greenpeace believes, the seeds were sent for the sake of helping the Africans, not testing the seeds on them. Because of Greenpeace, the Africans rejected and destroyed the food and continued to starve to death.

Oops.

Another good source of stupidity is some of the more fanatical sides of veganism. This website in particular is one that, frustratingly, came up frequently when I was doing a quick study involving digestion a while back.



This site also espouses a claim common among the particularly insane vegan community, which is that the human body is not fit to eat meat, and meat actually remains in the human digestive system and rots away. For some reason. And of course none of this nonsense is cited, or cited incorrectly so that the study is impossible to find.

Anyway, that's all I can recall from the top of my head, but if you're interested in new-age quackery and fake magical nonsense, a good person to follow is James Randy, retired magician and public speaker who has made a career of debunking this nonsense. James Randi's own organization is famous itself for offering I believe a $100K reward for proving the existence or effectiveness of paranormal or alternative medicine stuff, although the challenge has been since rescinded after nearly two decades of failures attempting to claim it.

Oh Christ the GMO people. Yeah I go more into this as I have taken a buttload of plant science classes, but I have a splitting headache rn.

But I will say the reason why the GMO seeds are blue/green is because they're coated in fertilizer and the coating also makes them easier to plant via a seeder. Without the coating there's no way to tell a GMO seed from a normal one.

 

[OG 666]

CureZone is a popular website for these types, with posts dating back to 2001. I'm pretty sure the layout hasn't been updated in that time, because navigating the forums is a fucking headache. There was a thread about them awhile back, but it didn't get very far.

Anyways, here are some highlights.

Diarrhea and blech smell like rotten eggs/sulfur
Wife is dying of a brain tumor, so she's been treating it with cyanide, cottage cheese, and ozone. Husband wants to know if anyone can tell him why her shit smells so bad.

Candida Vs Turpentine
This guy kept drinking turpentine to try and cure those evil yeast infection parasites. Despite experiencing severe fatigue, headaches, and diarrhea, he believed this to be the "die-off" process for the infection. This is an update from his 3rd round of "turps" treatment.

Black worms from inner testicles
Claims to have a black worm living in his nut sack. He is NOT crazy.

 

[Donovan the Man]

Every time on any website when someone says any critical about chiropractics people will come out of the woods to talk about how great it work for their bad backs. Will no shit at best a chiro does is give a massage and that always makes people feel better. On a rare chance you get a chiro that does actual evidence base physical therapy, but they are few and far in between. You can get the same results from going to a license physical therapist and massage therapist to avoid getting a brain steam stroke. If you really like crystals and lavender essential oils so much I have no doubts a massage therapist will happy oblige.

Chiros aren't covered by insurance because they are real doctors, they are covered because it's cheaper than $100,000 orthopedic surgery.

 

[0 0]

CureZone is a popular website for these types, with posts dating back to 2001. I'm pretty sure the layout hasn't been updated in that time, because navigating the forums is a fucking headache. There was a thread about them awhile back, but it didn't get very far.

Anyways, here are some highlights.

Diarrhea and blech smell like rotten eggs/sulfur
Wife is dying of a brain tumor, so she's been treating it with cyanide, cottage cheese, and ozone. Husband wants to know if anyone can tell him why her shit smells so bad.
View attachment 500976

Candida Vs Turpentine
This guy kept drinking turpentine to try and cure those evil yeast infection parasites. Despite experiencing severe fatigue, headaches, and diarrhea, he believed this to be the "die-off" process for the infection. This is an update from his 3rd round of "turps" treatment.
View attachment 500994

Black worms from inner testicles
Claims to have a black worm living in his nut sack. He is NOT crazy.
View attachment 501003

I've heard about alternative medicine types dismissing failure the same way that second guy does. It's like that old military expression, "pain is weakness leaving the body," but taken literally. It's done to handwave their crappy medicine either not working or making their condition worse. If you take an alternative medicine and you start exploding out of all of your orifices, that's just the nasty magical toxins leaving your body.

It's very similar to the old middle ages idea of the body being controlled by liquid "humors," and illness was caused by said humors being "unbalanced." And of course, people will use the fact that their non-medicine originates from centuries ago as a justification that it actually works, in the same way we should bathe in our own urine because our ancestors did.

 

[wes]

I've heard about alternative medicine types dismissing failure the same way that second guy does. It's like that old military expression, "pain is weakness leaving the body," but taken literally. It's done to handwave their crappy medicine either not working or making their condition worse. If you take an alternative medicine and you start exploding out of all of your orifices, that's just the nasty magical toxins leaving your body.

I always hear "you just need to keep taking it for it to work!" Meanwhile, your cold has progressed to pneumonia.

 

[sperginity]

I have a doozy of a (s)CAM cow but I’m not sure whether she should go in this thread or in personal lolcows, since she’s not widely known outside of the area where I live.

To sum it up, she’s a psychiatrist who practiced perfectly good medicine up until 8 years ago when she got sick with asthma, fibromyalgia, “leaky gut,” (a fave disease of these alt med people) and “adrenal fatigue.” She then joined the cult of woo wholesale, taking an “integrative masterclass” in Colorado, and began an integrative psychiatry practice where she makes patients get expensive lab tests which tell her which herbs and supplements they need (which she also sells) and whether they need to detox or go gluten free and dairy free for their leaky gut. She uses essential oils and healing stones and crystals in her practice and cites flawed research all the time, telling patients that turmeric is more effective than Prozac. She believes that bergamot is better than Xanax and that an “evergreen essential oil” can bring people down from manic episodes.

She herself is bipolar but plans to go off her lithium and replace it with Hardy Nutritionals, which is an expensive multivitamin that “supposedly” helps with ADHD, aggression/ODD in kids, and mood regulation (according to the people who make it). She sees a psychic spiritual healer/medium who she believes can heal trauma, speak with dead and living people, “tap into her patients’ souls”, and give her advice on how to best treat her patients. She also reccomends that patients see this person and in one instance advised the father of a 17 year old with drug and alcohol problems to have his daughter see the spiritual healer instead of going to rehab and therapeutic boarding school like the girl’s therapist recommended.

I have sooo much more dirt on her and pics that I would like to share if people are interested. I wish she could have a thread because she’s so insane and inappropriate but she doesn’t really have much of an online presence so there wouldn’t be much tard cum from her.

. It's considered a serious ethical breach to sell things in your office that you are "prescribing". Her going off bipolar meds may make her unfit to practice. You may genuinely save lives if you contact the medical licensing board in your area about the practitioner.

 

[cow4prez2024]

. It's considered a serious ethical breach to sell things in your office that you are "prescribing". Her going off bipolar meds may make her unfit to practice. You may genuinely save lives if you contact the medical licensing board in your area about the practitioner.

I am definitely going to report her to the state board because she has done many things that are ethical and/or boundary violations which have harmed patients, but I would also like to expose her on the internet because I think she’s cow-ish besides being unethical.

 

[ColtWalker1847]

But I will say the reason why the GMO seeds are blue/green is because they're coated in fertilizer and the coating also makes them easier to plant via a seeder. Without the coating there's no way to tell a GMO seed from a normal one.

The coatings aren't exclusive to GMOs. Conventional seed sold through commercial vendors (or the local co-op) has it as well. It also has stuff beyond fertilizer in it like fungicides to keep it from molding. Seeds have a fair amount of moisture in them and will do all sorts of bad things if not managed properly in storage.

Every time on any website when someone says any critical about chiropractics people will come out of the woods to talk about how great it work for their bad backs. Will no shit at best a chiro does is give a massage and that always makes people feel better. On a rare chance you get a chiro that does actual evidence base physical therapy, but they are few and far in between. You can get the same results from going to a license physical therapist and massage therapist to avoid getting a brain steam stroke. If you really like crystals and lavender essential oils so much I have no doubts a massage therapist will happy oblige.

Have you ever met someone that went to a chiropractor and was permanently cured? Neither have I. It's all about temporary relief and getting them to come back for more treatments.

I tell everybody I know who visits one to go to a physical therapist instead. They actually fix shit.

 

[OG 666]

Something else that seems to be popular among these types: parasite zappers. Here's a description from this website:

A zapper is a battery-operated electronic device invented to cure a variety of diseases by imparting a weak electric current through the body which kills various parasites and bacteria. The electric current reverses the polarity of the static field where parasites thrive. A zapper parasite killer can make roundworms, tapeworm stages and mites disappear without destroying good bacteria. It can also inactivate toxins in your body.

The same website has a wide selection of "magnetotherapy" devices. This state-of-the-art zapper costs $1,000. They also sell a Quantum Harmony device for $8,000. I tried finding out what exactly this does, but their website wasn't clear.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

Something else that seems to be popular among these types: parasite zappers. Here's a description from this website:

The same website has a wide selection of "magnetotherapy" devices. This state-of-the-art zapper costs $1,000. They also sell a Quantum Harmony device for $8,000. I tried finding out what exactly this does, but their website wasn't clear.

For that you can blame Hulda Clark.

Hulda Regehr Clark was actually a doctor. Of zoology, not of medicine, but you would have expected her to at least have some cross-understanding of disease and disease mechanisms in all the circumstances. Anyhow. She came to the conclusion that all cancers were caused by liver flukes and wrote a book called "The Cure for All Cancers" in which she said as much. According to her, a treatment regimen of passing a DC voltage through the afflicted body part would kill off these parasites and result in you becoming magically cancer free. She opened a private clinic to dispense zapping and other woo.

When the FDA closed in, she moved to Mexico and practiced there until her death in 2009. Of cancer.

Whoops.

Hulda Clark also invented something called homeography. That's as to homeopathy as homeopathy is to actual medicine. Basically it's homeopathy squared. You get the substance, and take the electronic signature of it (with the probes of the zapper maybe?) and store that waveform in a capacitor (?) and then zap the person with the electronic signature of the disease. Yeah.

She also had an attack dog / boy toy named Tim Bolen, who now has an autistic blog at http://bolenreport.com/blog/ where he gets salty about people badmouthing Hulda-senpai.

 

[Donovan the Man]

Have you ever met someone that went to a chiropractor and was permanently cured? Neither have I. It's all about temporary relief and getting them to come back for more treatments.

I tell everybody I know who visits one to go to a physical therapist instead. They actually fix shit.

Chiros also talk people into going to them for preventative care. People without prior history of back pain end up getting back pain because chiros and chiros end up making back pain suffers conditions worse.

Worst yet is that these quacks want you to bring your children to them- even babies, babies as young as a week old.

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

Had I have known about this thread 48 hours sooner, I probably would have had a screen cap to contribute. I recently came across a webpage that promised the cure for hives... provided you sent the author almost US $50 to download his publication.

Why do I suspect his $50 miracle cure is either something already available that costs less or nothing but pure woo.

She also had an attack dog / boy toy named Tim Bolen, who now has an autistic blog at http://bolenreport.com/blog/ where he gets salty about people badmouthing Hulda-senpai.

Wow, there's a blast from the past. At one point, I lurked an anti-spam newsgroup and his spam and related antics were front and center during that time.

 

[snuffleupagus]

Every time on any website when someone says any critical about chiropractics people will come out of the woods to talk about how great it work for their bad backs. Will no shit at best a chiro does is give a massage and that always makes people feel better. On a rare chance you get a chiro that does actual evidence base physical therapy, but they are few and far in between. You can get the same results from going to a license physical therapist and massage therapist to avoid getting a brain steam stroke. If you really like crystals and lavender essential oils so much I have no doubts a massage therapist will happy oblige.

Chiros aren't covered by insurance because they are real doctors, they are covered because it's cheaper than $100,000 orthopedic surgery.

Chiro care is the one woo I believe in BUT I’ve only found a two chiropractors that aren’t scammers/woomeisters.

My current chiro has two physical therapists on staff, a couple of sports medicine massage therapists, and is also licensed to practice sports medicine (he’s an MD and a CD).

The coatings aren't exclusive to GMOs. Conventional seed sold through commercial vendors (or the local co-op) has it as well. It also has stuff beyond fertilizer in it like fungicides to keep it from molding. Seeds have a fair amount of moisture in them and will do all sorts of bad things if not managed properly in storage.


Have you ever met someone that went to a chiropractor and was permanently cured? Neither have I. It's all about temporary relief and getting them to come back for more treatments.

I tell everybody I know who visits one to go to a physical therapist instead. They actually fix shit.

Chiro is my one woo I won’t give up. BUT my chiro staffs physical therapists and is also licensed to practice sports medicine (so he’s an MD and CM). He only does adjustments in the beginning then works with you to implement a stretching program and assigns you to a physical therapist. You get adjustments until your muscles are stretched out and stop pulling you back out of alignment. If you don’t do your stretches (and he can tell immediately) you get a huge lecture about how the stretching and exercises are the true treatment, not the adjustments. Even he says the adjustments are just a temp fix.

In my experience though, he is an exception to the rule; most chiros are just back crackers.

 

[multiverse]

Chiro care is the one woo I believe in BUT I’ve only found a two chiropractors that aren’t scammers/woomeisters.

My current chiro has two physical therapists on staff, a couple of sports medicine massage therapists, and is also licensed to practice sports medicine (he’s an MD and a CD).


Chiro is my one woo I won’t give up. BUT my chiro staffs physical therapists and is also licensed to practice sports medicine (so he’s an MD and CM). He only does adjustments in the beginning then works with you to implement a stretching program and assigns you to a physical therapist. You get adjustments until your muscles are stretched out and stop pulling you back out of alignment. If you don’t do your stretches (and he can tell immediately) you get a huge lecture about how the stretching and exercises are the true treatment, not the adjustments. Even he says the adjustments are just a temp fix.

In my experience though, he is an exception to the rule; most chiros are just back crackers.

I hear you, I have chronic nerve pain and after a million stupid useless treatments and a heroin addiction, weekly Rolfing is the only thing that ever mitigated the pain to a daily level of livability (not gone, just kind of livable). So some woo stuff, if it helps and doesn't hurt people, I'm just fine with.

The problem is the overwhelming amount of costly and outright dangerous woo, with a radiating circle of harm.