Functional Medicine

[utopian]

So my wife asked me to watch the first episode of a web series called "The Broken Brain," in which a physician/self-help guru begins with a series of questions:

Are you tired all the time? Do you have trouble focusing for long periods? Are you depressed or anxious? etc. Of course, after many such questions, all of us are going to answer yes to some of them, which primes us for the pitch.

According to this "New York Times Bestselling Author, Dr. Mark Hymen," a proponent of "Functional Medicine," all of these problems and many more are diet-related.

Mixing a lot of stuff most agree with (what you eat can affect how you feel; what you eat can affect your mental state; what you eat can affect your overall health), we are told that diseases and conditions, such as autism and Alzheimer's, can be cured through diet, that all disease stems from the same source, and there's nothing the proper diet can't cure.

What follows are a series of "testimonials" by "world renowned experts" who all happen to be self-help authors, and none of whom, from what I can tell, are serious brain researchers. And they all say pretty much the same thing over and over, practically verbatim.

The evidence presented is purely anecdotal, and there is nary a mention of double-blind studies or anything beyond a few vague references to "research has shown."

What I saw had all the hallmarks of classic quackery: outrageous claims with no real evidence to back it up; anecdotes confusing correlation for cause; attack on mainstream medicine as unwilling to see the truth and stuck in old paradigms.

At the end, Hymen even claims to have witnessed many "miracles"--faith based medicine at it's worst, and a naked emotional appeal to the gullible and desperate.

As my wonderful, otherwise sane wife nodded along, I got so worked up I had to leave the room. These frauds sell false hope, and it sickens me. I do not offend easily, but this stuff really gets my goat because it hurts people.

The really sad thing is my wife's friend, a Harvard educated physician, sent her the link to this shit. How is it that people of science can be taken in by such an obvious scam?

Needless to say, I won't be watching the rest of the series.

OK, rant over.

[byronius]

1. Yeah, that stuff.

Bleah. Right up there with 'Trump is a great president'.

Critical Thinking Not.

[trotsky]

2. "The Broken Brain" - reminds me of what explains this stuff.

Michael Shermer's "The Believing Brain."

Simply put, beliefs come first and explanations for beliefs follow. The brain, Shermer argues, is a belief engine. Using sensory data that flow in through the senses, the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning, forming beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, accelerating the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive-feedback loop.