Nearly every time that I talk to proponents of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) I hear a lot about diet. Diet is a central theme to almost all of them, it seems. In such conversations, several issues often emerge and frequently take the form of accusations, e.g.:
- Conventional medicine neglects the importance of diet for our health.
- Medical students learn next to nothing about the subject.
- In conventional medicine, hardly any research is focussed on diet.
- By contrast, practitioners of SCAM know a lot about diet.
- Many are experts in the subject.
- Patients are well-advised to consult SCAM practitioners if they want to learn how to eat healthily.
- SCAM practitioners have developed a wide range of diets that keep their patients fit and healthy.
I usually try to object to some of these points. The truth is that medical students do learn about diet, that doctors are aware of its importance, and that research into diets is highly active.
Particularly about the last point, I can get rather irritated. Sadly, this impresses the SCAM fans very little. They have their opinion and rarely budge.
After one such conversation, I decided to go on Medline and produce some figures. Here they are:
- As of 6 October, there are 1 453 clinical trials listed on Medline as published in 2024.*
- Between 1957 and today, around 57 000 such trials have been published.
- Their number shows an almost exponential growth during this period.
- The diets tested range widely and include, for instance, the Mediteranean diet, the ketogenic diet, intermittent fasting, vegetarian diet, energy restricted diet, gluten-free diet.
- There are as good as no trials on any of the SCAM diets.
- The researchers doing the diet trials are almost exclusively conventional medics or nutritionist.
- I did not find any SCAM practitioners in the list of authors.
So, the next time a SCAM proponent bullshits you about diet, you can tell him or her to get lost!
*Not all are, in fact, clinical trials
21 Responses to The importance of diet in so-called alternative medicine
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With enough reduction, you can prove anything and that is the problem with trials e.g. the huge nurses trial “proved” that a low protein diet made no difference to breast cancer.
The problem was that the Western version of low-protein is still too high, according to The China Study that had less cancer in the poorer, rural populations than the richer, high protein diets of the urban populations. But that also depends on nigh-infinite other things such as the rich-Chinese smoked (in the 1980s) and don’t do hard physical labour etc.
But then again, the rural peasants suffered more than the rich from the diseases of malnutrition and deficiency, so it seems that there might be a perfect balance? But even that might be wrong because evolution might have conditioned us for fasting during winter for an autophagy “clearout” that we no longer do.
There is a reason why all SCAM focuses on diet: It’s a huge subject that entails the opposite of reduction: All of life is involved: Rare elements such as phosphorus slowly collect as a minute-film on the surface of the Earth in the soil from constant death-life cycle and more and more life is sustained with more and more P accumulating along with the correct proportions of everything else, S, N, Mg etc. Evidently the soil is just an extension of life and the more we destroy it, the more we destroy ourselves and all other life.
The China Study has been thoroughly criticised for decades. Try to keep up.
Diet is notoriously difficult to study due to inability or funding to keep people literally locked up for long enough to get meaningful results. Most “studies” are observational or use animal models and therefore are not entirely meaningful for humans.
Many different cultures have healthy diets even though they are very different in many ways. It just isn’t that difficult, nor does it require any one magical food group or product.
Eat good (minimally processed) food, not too much, mostly plants. (Thank you to Michael Pollan)
Add lots of spices would be my two cents.
What’s your view on the high protein “carnivore” diet as advocated by your fellow commentator “John”?
Apparently “the results are very good”
Old Bob wrote: “Rare elements such as phosphorus…”
Really?
Phosphorus: symbol P; atomic number 15; abundance 0.105% — by no means a rare element.
See Graphs of abundance vs atomic number, Wikipedia.
For comparison, rhodium — major use (consuming about 80% of world rhodium production) is as one of the catalysts in the three-way catalytic converters in automobiles — has an abundance of 0.000 000 1%.
At present, there is a large amount of MD’s (among countless others) eating and endorsing a carnivore diet. Yes, they have done the blood work, and the results are very good.
Will you live longer on the lion diet ? That has not been proven yet. However, it is apparent that they will in most cases experience a better quality of life, as evidenced by better health.
please provide links to the evidence.
I’ll leave that up to you, I’m not the one that needs convincing.
thanks for a truly moronic reply
John is confused. He cant tell the difference between Tick Tok influencers and MDs.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/30/fitness-influencers-swear-by-the-carnivore-diet-what-doctors-think.html
@
RG“John”No, you will most likely die on a lion diet.
Unless, that is, you are willing to eat everything that a lion eats, including a prey animal’s stomach and upper intestinal tract, complete with their contents. Uncooked, that is.
Correction:
“… and small intestine, …”
(upper intestinal tract = mouth down to stomach)
Richard
Many of the proponents of the “lion diet” were terribly ill until they cut out everything else. I tried it myself for a couple of weeks, but I enjoy eating other foods. However, if I was suffering from ill health and was looking for a remedy, I would certainly try eating carnivore. I do restrict grains and other starches, as I do sugars. I manage my diet by only eating two times per day (calorie intake), also known as IF. I’m doing much better than when I spiked my insulin all day. There are patients that have lived on carnivore diet for 15 20 and 25 years successfully and wouldn’t think of going back to eating plants. At this time in my life the strict carnivore diet does not interest me, but for those that found physical therapy in food, I congratulate them.
Richard, the diet does not seem to be killing anybody… yet. Many MD’s have become advocates of the carnivore diet is that their patients were a living testimony to them.
John, Good to know you are well versed in internet diet fads.
Surely you must have heard of the tapeworm diet: https://www.healthline.com/health/diet-and-weight-loss/tapeworm-diet
Have you tried it? It says you can eat anything and everything and not gain weight. I am on the edge of my seat to hear your valuable opinion which almost all the time is firmly grounded in scientific evidence.
You might find this interesting: First Do No Harm (treating epilepsy with a ketogenic diet):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAjplP7NtxE
Especially the final credits around 1:29:00.
NOBODY finds youtube pseudo-evidence interesting!
Listen to the MD if you choose.
I rather invite you to read the comments from those that choose to follow such advice.
Throw away those useless medications !
“Throw away those useless medications”
you must mean the homeopathic variety!
@
RG“John”While keeping the useful or even necessary ones, of course. And yes, there are lots of people whose (quality of) life depends on medicines.
My advice to those chronically on medication: don’t listen to people like “John”, but do plan a ‘pharma-check’ once a year with your doctor to see which medicines might be cut back or left out altogether, and which ones are still necessary or advisable.
“First Do No Harm” is a “drama television film” not a well researched documentation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…First_Do_No_Harm
The ketogenic diet, however, is is a recognized form of therapy for pharmacoresistant epilepsy in children and various rare metabolic disorders, especially carbohydrate metabolism disorders.
Hopefully you understand the order? A ketogenic diet is only prescribed if the drug treatment does not work due to specific characteristics. This is because a ketogenic diet can have serious side effects and must therefore be closely monitored.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketogenic_diet#Adverse_effects
RPG
I’m not necessarily a proponent of a Keto diet for children. That said, what age children are we referring to? The Wikipedia link was not so specific about age, it had a couple references. Keto diet can require a learning curve for adults, I wouldn’t expect “children” to be up to the task. I still consume carbohydrates every day. However, I try to keep portions smaller and eat plants that have higher fiber content to keeps insulin spikes contained.
Here is the rub, the SAD (standard American Diet) is the issue. Though obesity is on the rise worldwide, I can’t speak to what is being consumed in all other countries. In my opinion, a large part of the obesity cause stems from growth in the use of seed oils, which also lead to other health issues beyond obesity. The biggest issues with the SAD diet.
Seed oils
Sugars
Processed foods
Toxic ingredients (preservatives, chemicals, food dyes, stabilizers)
If I need to choose the SAD diet or the Keto diet… I’m going with Keto.
The health of children (under 18) in the USA if plunging rapidly. “Over the past fifty years chronic health conditions and disabilities among children and youth have steadily risen, primarily from four classes of common conditions: asthma, obesity, mental health conditions, and neurodevelopmental disorders. There are other chronic conditions on the rise also.”
https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2014.0832#:~:text=However%2C%20over%20the%20past%20fifty%20years%20chronic%20health,asthma%2C%20obesity%2C%20mental%20health%20conditions%2C%20and%20neurodevelopmental%20disorders.
This is in spite of SBM.
https://diabetesjournals.org/care/article/46/3/490/148482/Youth-Onset-Type-2-Diabetes-The-Epidemiology-of-an
https://www.niddk.nih.gov/news/archive/2023/study-shows-that-diabetes-young-people-under-age-20-continues-rise
Let’s let Abrahams speak for himself, from here:
https://eu.oklahoman.com/story/news/1997/02/16/director-producers-experiences-with-epileptic-son-inspire-film/62323699007/
[quote]
…
In 1993, Charlie began to have epileptic seizures. He had thousands of them and endured – futilely – all the accepted treatments, including brain surgery, before his father, through his own research, learned of the diet.
“I can tell you from my family’s experience that absolutely the darkest hour is when you think you’ve tried everything,” Abrahams recalled.
For Charlie, as for the boy in the movie, there was one more thing to try.
Today Charlie is on the ketogenic diet and is seizure-free.
But, Abrahams said, the movie is about something more than a specific treatment for epilepsy in children.
“It’s about the right that we all have, as patients, to know, to get information that’s relevant to our medical treatment,”
…
[end of quote]