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Alternative Health Tip O' the Day: Grounding
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04-26-2021, 05:15 PM
freeradical wrote: Alas! Colonic irrigation, isn't that something that use to be advertised on the back pages of what use to be counter culture tabloids?
04-26-2021, 05:29 PM
Try reading the articles, rather than smearing the name of the journal or ignoring the journal that you can't smear. You think blood viscosity is irrelevant? You think inflammation is irrelevant?
And to be clear, I'm not saying that this "established science." What I am saying is that there is some scientific evidence--not conclusive--that supports it. I welcome opposing points of view. I just prefer that they be informed, rather than reflexive.
04-26-2021, 06:42 PM
I haven't read anywhere above that anyone thought being barefoot outside is a bad idea. But if it's only a good idea because of something other than how it makes you feel, then you will be waiting a long time to enjoy being barefoot again I suppose.
Meanwhile, the rest of us will be outside, barefoot, and blissfully unaware of why it feels good. If everyone is in agreement that it's nice to do, expending energy on looking for various viewpoints about "why" rapidly approaches a disingenuousness regarding the initial positive activity at the center of this.
04-26-2021, 06:52 PM
Fair enough.
deckeda wrote:
04-26-2021, 07:12 PM
(Don't cha stop don't cha stop)
(Don't cha stop don't cha stop) If it makes you feel good!
04-26-2021, 07:48 PM
anonymouse1 wrote: Not when you've been bitten by a snake, no. See also: https://quackwatch.org/related/altwary/ https://quackwatch.org/consumer-educatio...riodicals/ Nonrecommended Periodicals ...Journals (Fundamentally Flawed) Advances: The Journal of Mind-Body Health Alternative & Complementary Therapies* Alternative Medicine Review Alternative Therapies in Clinical Practice American Journal of Natural Medicine*... Integrative Medicine International Journal of Auricular Medicine (IJAM) International Journal of Biosocial Research Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine
04-26-2021, 08:39 PM
And you continue not to mention the Journal of Inflammation Research.
Ciao-I'm going outside to put my feet on the grass. Sarcany wrote: Not when you've been bitten by a snake, no. See also: https://quackwatch.org/related/altwary/ https://quackwatch.org/consumer-educatio...riodicals/ Nonrecommended Periodicals ...Journals (Fundamentally Flawed) Advances: The Journal of Mind-Body Health Alternative & Complementary Therapies* Alternative Medicine Review Alternative Therapies in Clinical Practice American Journal of Natural Medicine*... Integrative Medicine International Journal of Auricular Medicine (IJAM) International Journal of Biosocial Research Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine
04-26-2021, 08:55 PM
anonymouse1 wrote: It's kind of self-defeating in its name. "Inflammation" is this decade's bogeyman. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/magic-d...t-so-much/ Alternative medicine practitioners love to coin magic words, but really, how can you blame them? Real medicine has a Clarkeian quality to it*; it’s so successful, it seems like magic. But real doctors know that there is nothing magic about it. The “magic” is based on hard work, sound scientific principles, and years of study. Magic words are great. Terms like mindfulness, functional medicine, or endocrine disruptors take a complicated problem and create a simple but false answer with no real data to back it up. More often than not, the magic word is the invention of a single person who had a really interesting idea, but lacked the intellectual capacity or honesty to flesh it out. Magic is, ultimately, a lie of sorts. As TAM 7 demonstrates, many magicians are skeptics, and vice versa. In interviews, magicians will often say that they came to skepticism when the learned just how easy it is to deceive people. Magic words in alternative medicine aren’t sleight-of-hand, but sleight-of-mind, playing on people’s hopes and fears. A reader has turned me on to another magic word I hadn’t known about. It’s called the “Inflammation Factor”, and is the invention of a nutritionist named Monica Reinagel. Like most good lies, this one builds on a nidus of truth. Inflammation is a medical term that refers to a host of complex physiologic processes mediated by the immune system. Inflammation gets its ancient name from the obvious physical signs of inflammation: rubor, calor, dolor, tumor, or redness, heat, pain, and swelling. As the vitalistic ancient medical beliefs bowed to modern science, inflammation was recognized to be far more complex than just these four external characteristics. In addition to being a response to injury and disease, the cellular and chemical responses of inflammation can cause disease. For example, in asthma and food allergies, a type of immune reaction called type I hypersensitivity elicits a harmful type of inflammation. Coronary heart disease, the biggest killer of Americans, is believed to have a significant inflammatory component. But nothing in medicine is perfectly simple. For example, corticosteroids, which can be used effectively to treat the inflammation in asthma are not effective against the inflammation in cororary heart disease. It’s just not that simple. But while inflammation may not be that simple, people can be. People want easy answers, and quacks are happy to step in to provide them. So Ms Reinagel has invented a diet, available for sale in a book called The Inflammation Free Diet Plan. Her premise is that inflammation is at the root of all major diseases, and that your diet can affect inflammation, thereby improving your health. While the hypothesis is intriguing, each step of the argument has problems, leading to an invalid conclusion... https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/bog...-to-earth/ There is a website that reveals “The world’s most dangerous invention.” Care to speculate what that invention might be? I might have guessed nuclear weapons. Others have incriminated guns, cigarettes, genetic engineering, religion, The Web, The Large Hadron Collider, and automobiles. But this website was not talking about any of those, but about a far more destructive invention. Would you believe…shoes? Watch out for those malicious moccasins, horrific high heels, fiendish flip-flops, beastly boots, and sinister slippers! They’re all out to get you. Not just shoes. Anything that comes between us and the bare earth: houses, clothes, tent floors, pavements, doormats, cars, skis, and so on. It’s called “grounding” or “earthing”— the idea that maintaining health requires direct contact with the earth. Shoes are the most destructive invention ever, we are told, because they allegedly cause inflammation and autoimmune diseases, circadian rhythm disruptions, hormonal disorders, cortisol disorders, heart rate variability problems, arthritis, herpes, hepatitis, insomnia, chronic pain, exhaustion, stress, anxiety, premature aging…pretty much anything that might ail you. A one-cause-of-all-disease explanation invokes inflammation as the culprit. Grounding is supposedly the best defense against inflammation and aging; it represents a whole new treatment paradigm. Among many other benefits, grounding also “promotes calmness in the body by cooling down the nervous system,” thins the blood, eliminates jet lag, and protects the body against potentially health-disturbing environmental electromagnetic fields. ...What’s wrong with this? Almost everything. Our cells don’t need an infusion of electrons. Live cell microscopy is a bogus test: his pictures can’t show that there are positive charges, and the blood cell clumping is only an artifact. Anyway, clumping blood cells have nothing to do with the alleged health effects. There is no evidence that EMF disrupts communications in our body or that grounding protects us from any hypothetical ill effects of using cell phones and other technology. And the third point about aligning with an intelligence network is wild imagination not supported by anything in science or reality.
04-26-2021, 09:12 PM
That was worth reading-thanks!
Not going to go into my disagreements, but I appreciate your providing it. Sarcany wrote: It's kind of self-defeating in its name. "Inflammation" is this decade's bogeyman. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/magic-d...t-so-much/ Alternative medicine practitioners love to coin magic words, but really, how can you blame them? Real medicine has a Clarkeian quality to it*; it’s so successful, it seems like magic. But real doctors know that there is nothing magic about it. The “magic” is based on hard work, sound scientific principles, and years of study. Magic words are great. Terms like mindfulness, functional medicine, or endocrine disruptors take a complicated problem and create a simple but false answer with no real data to back it up. More often than not, the magic word is the invention of a single person who had a really interesting idea, but lacked the intellectual capacity or honesty to flesh it out. Magic is, ultimately, a lie of sorts. As TAM 7 demonstrates, many magicians are skeptics, and vice versa. In interviews, magicians will often say that they came to skepticism when the learned just how easy it is to deceive people. Magic words in alternative medicine aren’t sleight-of-hand, but sleight-of-mind, playing on people’s hopes and fears. A reader has turned me on to another magic word I hadn’t known about. It’s called the “Inflammation Factor”, and is the invention of a nutritionist named Monica Reinagel. Like most good lies, this one builds on a nidus of truth. Inflammation is a medical term that refers to a host of complex physiologic processes mediated by the immune system. Inflammation gets its ancient name from the obvious physical signs of inflammation: rubor, calor, dolor, tumor, or redness, heat, pain, and swelling. As the vitalistic ancient medical beliefs bowed to modern science, inflammation was recognized to be far more complex than just these four external characteristics. In addition to being a response to injury and disease, the cellular and chemical responses of inflammation can cause disease. For example, in asthma and food allergies, a type of immune reaction called type I hypersensitivity elicits a harmful type of inflammation. Coronary heart disease, the biggest killer of Americans, is believed to have a significant inflammatory component. But nothing in medicine is perfectly simple. For example, corticosteroids, which can be used effectively to treat the inflammation in asthma are not effective against the inflammation in cororary heart disease. It’s just not that simple. But while inflammation may not be that simple, people can be. People want easy answers, and quacks are happy to step in to provide them. So Ms Reinagel has invented a diet, available for sale in a book called The Inflammation Free Diet Plan. Her premise is that inflammation is at the root of all major diseases, and that your diet can affect inflammation, thereby improving your health. While the hypothesis is intriguing, each step of the argument has problems, leading to an invalid conclusion... https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/bog...-to-earth/ There is a website that reveals “The world’s most dangerous invention.” Care to speculate what that invention might be? I might have guessed nuclear weapons. Others have incriminated guns, cigarettes, genetic engineering, religion, The Web, The Large Hadron Collider, and automobiles. But this website was not talking about any of those, but about a far more destructive invention. Would you believe…shoes? Watch out for those malicious moccasins, horrific high heels, fiendish flip-flops, beastly boots, and sinister slippers! They’re all out to get you. Not just shoes. Anything that comes between us and the bare earth: houses, clothes, tent floors, pavements, doormats, cars, skis, and so on. It’s called “grounding” or “earthing”— the idea that maintaining health requires direct contact with the earth. Shoes are the most destructive invention ever, we are told, because they allegedly cause inflammation and autoimmune diseases, circadian rhythm disruptions, hormonal disorders, cortisol disorders, heart rate variability problems, arthritis, herpes, hepatitis, insomnia, chronic pain, exhaustion, stress, anxiety, premature aging…pretty much anything that might ail you. A one-cause-of-all-disease explanation invokes inflammation as the culprit. Grounding is supposedly the best defense against inflammation and aging; it represents a whole new treatment paradigm. Among many other benefits, grounding also “promotes calmness in the body by cooling down the nervous system,” thins the blood, eliminates jet lag, and protects the body against potentially health-disturbing environmental electromagnetic fields. ...What’s wrong with this? Almost everything. Our cells don’t need an infusion of electrons. Live cell microscopy is a bogus test: his pictures can’t show that there are positive charges, and the blood cell clumping is only an artifact. Anyway, clumping blood cells have nothing to do with the alleged health effects. There is no evidence that EMF disrupts communications in our body or that grounding protects us from any hypothetical ill effects of using cell phones and other technology. And the third point about aligning with an intelligence network is wild imagination not supported by anything in science or reality. |
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