"alternative" medicine and health

and band-aids, school supplies, ointments, etc

until the system rewards its component parts for working well together and for treating patients and not treating symptoms/issues, we're going to keep seeing people returning to whoever gives them personal care
otm
i have never felt better about my lesson plan revolving around the concept of snake oil
i recently learned of a weight loss method called "waist training" and when it was described, i was like "you mean like corsets?" and was told "yeah corsets are like an extreme version of Waist Training TM"

;_;

LL I have some of those too! I got them for christmas

Yesss waist training please get it out of my facebook feed jfc

I have never heard of it! It amounts to "wear a belt and constrict your midsection so you don't want to eat"?

yeah well i still buy stuff there. there is a walgreens at the end of our street. and i usually get a flu shot there too. hope there aren't house plants in my flu shot...

i just always get bugged when i go in there...one of those places that takes forever to get out of.

Had never heard of it, that is
Who is touting this revolution in weight loss?

you'll know there are harmful houseplants in your flu shot if you start aggressively pointing at people with your mouth hanging open

Iirc it's mostly "buy one of these wrap-around girdles made of neoprene (see also: fajas) and take pics of yourself on ig wearing it over your gym clothes while working out!"

How does waist training work?

Waist training involves wearing a belt (made from thick latex and cotton lining) around your waist that looks just like an old-fashioned corset — you know, the kinds that used to break women’s ribs, crush their internal organs, and make them faint all the time. The belt works by putting pressure on the waist in order to change its shape over time. You can also wear the belt while working out in order to “speed up” the weight loss process and “strengthen your core.”

What are the benefits?

Waist training advocates claim that with waist training you can lose up to seven inches from your waist line, which sounds more terrifying than anything else. The waist training belt is supposed to put pressure on your waist — which generates heat while you’re physically active to help your body burn fat quicker — and expel toxins. It also doubles as a breast lift, pushing your boobies up to put them in “the right place.”

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

so many red flags there
wow

Can I also, tentatively?, put oil pulling in this category? That needs to get out of all my feeds too.

And it's not that I'm in love with medical science or that it's never been wrong or certainly not that it's never been ethically bankrupt in testing methods, patient care, experimenting on the least powerful all through history, etc. But yeah I can't see anything else past the forest of red flags.

wasn't sure what that was, read about it online on the NIH website, appears to be less than or just equal to brushing your teeth and/or using mouthwash, with brushing and mouthwash being a bit better

seems like a good way to think you're doing something cool while attempting to dodge the drudgery of flossing

Yeah, you can be forceful about oil pulling. That's straight bullshit.

i don't see any specific mention of multivitamins in there but that article is freaking me out.

i guess there's no reason expect the multis to be totally a-ok after reading that. but maybe a general A/B/C/etc pill is cheaper to put together than gingko or fucking saw palmetto or w/e

― goole, Tuesday, February 17, 2015 3:25 PM (1 hour ago)

the first thing i will say is that the vast majority of healthy people do not need a multivitamin, unless you're on a weird diet. that said multivitamins are generally more reliable than "supplements", as you allude to. many of them are made by the same companies that make OTC products that are FDA-regulated

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/05/multivitamins/index.htm

i have an irrational hatred of walgreens for some reason. and CVS and all big drug chains, i guess. their stores suck and all they sell is junk food and also the diabetes and heart medicine you will need after a life of junk. blah. they did get rid of the cigarettes though. which made sense. big gross convenience stores + pain pills. what a racket.

― scott seward, Tuesday, February 17, 2015 3:40 PM (1 hour ago)

yeah i mean, you're not wrong. i am not especially popular with my bosses because i constantly give them a hard time about our selling cigarettes, as well as homeopathic medicine and supplements. obviously at the end of the day it's a business decision. i can't say i'm too upset to be leaving the field

i've never heard of oil pulling! that is weird to me because i LOVE flossing, getting food out of your teeth that's been stuck there for hours is like the best feeling

Whereas swishing oil around in your mouth for what like 20 minutes? is fucking disgusting.

I guess before modern toothbrushes, fillings, decent dentures, etc, whatever various cultures came up with in terms of dental hygiene is great. If it came close to modern results in cleanliness & protection, that's pretty surprisingly great! But it's 2015 now and my teeth break when I even think about chewing.

Nah.

Well and modern oil pulling enthusiasts aren't talking it up for dental health. It's about TOXINS.

lol

Sometimes I see both oil pulling and waist training paired with the rhetoric of reclaiming non-Western practices of one's ancestors, having faith in women's wisdom that worked for centuries before it was erased by colonialism, and so on.

My ancestors probably had Scottish teeth and appallingly bad vision just like I do. I'll take all the medical advances I can get.

modern dentistry is awesome, dental insurance that pays for it doubly so

well fuck, i've been taking a complex b vitamin since i don't eat meat much and i'm mental, plus vitamin d supplement bc my levels were low. so these are probably bullshit and not doing anything??

doctors have recommended B12 supplements to me & I'm pretty certain they weren't getting any kickbacks for it

if you look at the washington post article amateurist linked upthread, there are strong indicators via study that both B and D vitamins have some level of therapeutic efficacy. if they're manufactured by a reputable company, I'd imagine they're useful.

plus, having your levels tested as being low by an actual doctor and taking a supplement is a lot different from people who have no particular reason to take vitamins

i start taking astragalus every day in the fall and thru the winter and i've been doing that for the last three years and i don't know if the astragalus pills i've been taking have actually been ground up old apple cores and chinese newspapers but i haven't been sick in three years. so...something's working. i recommend it! that and a flu shot.

I would like to point out that multiple of the things shown to have therapeutic effect are all readily available in a can of Red Bull and I will continue on my niacin/caffeine regimen as indicated

I take strong B supplements cos I drink. I can tell you they help - when I dont take them I become an exhausted miserable mess. But theyre addressing a genuine lack - most people who eat well likely dont need vitamins (except maybe D now tha we all avoid the sun)

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/mar/09/teen-battled-cancer-chemo-treament-remission

you've probably read about this: teen girl wanted to refuse chemo for her non-hodgkin's lymphoma, her parents wanted to respect her wishes, but the state intervened and held her in custody and forced her to received the treatments. she said she thought the chemo was unhealthy, but with this form of cancer -- which friends of mine have had -- it has a very high success rate. without chemo, the mortality rate is very high. anyway she is in remission now, thanks to the forced treatment.

commenters on multiple platforms think the state overstepped its bounds and that they should have respected the kid's and the parents' (???????) wishes. i understand the idea of respecting the girl's wishes -- it's her body -- but i do think it's possible she was under the influence of her parents, which made this case problematic. in these cases, i feel that the parents should definitely NOT have the final say, especially if their perspective is "don't get chemo." if the parents aren't medical professionals, what the fuck do they know about anything?

https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniemlee/inside-the-internets-war-on-science

Welcome to the vast universe of self-built social media empires devoted to spreading false, misleading, and polarizing science and health news — sometimes further and wider than the real information. Here, climate change is a government-sponsored hoax, fluoridated water is poisonous, cannabis can cure cancer, and airplanes are constantly spraying pesticides and biological waste into the air. Genetically modified food is destroying humanity and the planet. Vaccines are experimental, autism-causing injections forced on innocent babies. We can’t trust anything that we eat, drink, breathe, or medicate with, nor rely on physicians and public health agencies to act in our best interests. Between the organic recipes and menacing stock images of syringes and pills, a clear theme emerges: Everything is rigged — by doctors, Big Pharma, Monsanto, the FDA — and the mainstream media isn’t telling us. (Also, there’s usually a link to buy vitamins.) This messaging reflects a new, uniquely conspiratorial strain of libertarianism that hijacks deeply intimate issues — your body, your health, your children’s health. It shares magnificently.

whine pairings

just here to lol at Dr Oz

lol dr oz more like dr lOZt, because he lost, like a fkin loser

part of an old nyer profile of him stuck with me tho, where the writer pointed out that since lots of americans have basically no health care, they're left vulnerable to grifters like him. 💛i hope he fucking dies 💛

dr oz, that is, of course. not the nyer writer.

there was an early seinfeld episode where george has some kind of health scare, but he doesn't want to see a real doctor because $$$, so kramer convinces him to go to a $40 naturopath who messes george up so bad he has to go to the hospital anyway. #thisisamerica