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Recent IQ Drop

TBerg

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It wasn't problems with my digestion. It was problems with having a sore throat for the first couple months, getting the flu quite often, and having the shingles for half a year. And the care package wasn't food; it was a nutritional supplement and herbal tonics. I still ate whatever I was eating in China.
 

SpaceYeti

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It wasn't problems with my digestion. It was problems with having a sore throat for the first couple months, getting the flu quite often, and having the shingles for half a year. And the care package wasn't food; it was a nutritional supplement and herbal tonics. I still ate whatever I was eating in China.

Okay, so you were sick. Nutritional supplements (as long as they actually contain nutrition), would make up for any malnutrition you were suffering from.
 

TBerg

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That's part of what I was trying to tell you: that a nutritional supplement gave my immune system the boost it needed to get through some of my illness. However, I was eating pretty healthy when I was in China, so I don't know if I would call myself extraordinarily malnourished to the extent to produce a correspondingly extraordinary series of illnesses. My illness came back after a while. The only thing that kept it at bay was a detox regimen, a regimen that allowed me to get well-enough to escape a very toxic environment. Try being in an area the size of the United States with over ten (twenty?) times the amount of Americans during the Industrial Revolution. It is unprecedented.
 

SpaceYeti

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I won't say it didn't help, either, I'm just saying that it didn't help by "detoxing" your body. The detox bullshit is, well, bullshit. A quick google search for "detox studies", "detox evidence", or pretty much anything similar will explain why. However, I'm curious if whatever detox product you used named specific toxins it helped remove. I'd bet money it didn't, because it doesn't remove any toxins a normal diet for someone with healthy kidneys and liver and lymphatic system wouldn't remove anyhow.

Again, I'm not saying whatever it was didn't help, but if it did, it wasn't through "detoxing". Detoxing is a scam in the same lines of organic and non-GMO food BS.
 

TBerg

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Okay, this is one area of misunderstanding on both sides. While I am not against GMOs per se, and I see some of their benefit, I am concerned about one reason for their use: Glyphosphate resistance. Since RoundUp is so ubiquitous in application in industrial farming, I can see how many of not most GMOs are full of the active chemical in RoundUp. This is what animates educated suspicion of GMOs. Organic plants, grown in the way we have grown things for millennia, are bereft of this risk. Organic plants also require longer growth periods and have potentially more micronutrients over time as a consequence.

In regard to detoxification, the skeptics say that the liver and kidneys naturally detoxify the body. That has never been in dispute. What is in dispute, however, is whether you can help potentially unhealthy and overworked organs repair and work faster. Is our body capable of an unlimited amount of growth and chemical reaction? Are there no ways to make our bodies work better even in this reality? Why take medicine if our bodies always work? Why eat better food?

Another thing, which is unfortunate for both sides, is the fact that there are vast amounts of monetary incentive more to confirm the effectiveness of pharmaceutical drugs than to confirm the effectiveness of herbal remedies. Is the industry establishment really saying that companies are willing to put the same amount of research into naturally occurring plants, which they can't patent, as they are wiling to put the amount of research into specific chemical discoveries they CAN patent? This really leaves everyone without the research needed for good comparisons.
 

SpaceYeti

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Okay, this is one area of misunderstanding on both sides. While I am not against GMOs per se, and I see some of their benefit, I am concerned about one reason for their use: Glyphosphate resistance. Since RoundUp is so ubiquitous in application in industrial farming, I can see how many of not most GMOs are full of the active chemical in RoundUp. This is what animates educated suspicion of GMOs. Organic plants, grown in the way we have grown things for millennia, are bereft of this risk. Organic plants also require longer growth periods and have potentially more micronutrients over time as a consequence.

So... what risk, exactly, are we talking about?

In regard to detoxification, the skeptics say that the liver and kidneys naturally detoxify the body. That has never been in dispute. What is in dispute, however, is whether you can help potentially unhealthy and overworked organs repair and work faster.

I just want to single out this next sentence....
Is our body capable of an unlimited amount of growth and chemical reaction?

Our body naturally stops growing once it reaches a certain size, but chemical reactions do continue after that. I guess I'm not sure how you mean this.

Are there no ways to make our bodies work better even in this reality?

You can always alter how your body functions a bit, sure. If you exercise, for example, you grow more toned and heavy musculature.

Why take medicine if our bodies always work?
Generally speaking, because the medicine is doing something our body isn't doing on it's own. With pain suppressants, well, it reduces the amount of pain we feel. With vaccines, it allows our bodies to develop, at least in part, a resistance to certain viruses or bacteria. Antibiotics works to directly kill a harmful bacterial infection. In all of these cases, there are thorough clinical tests to determine exactly what effects they have. "Detox" products have been put through clinical tests and there is no apparent difference between natural bodily detoxification and detoxing with the products. Further, the products don't even specify which toxins they help to remove from your system. Lastly, they aren't sold as actual medicines because then they would be forced to be proven effective before they could be sold, gaining access to the market through a legal loop-hole. Tell me, why aren't they medicine if they do what a medicine does? Because they don't determine how effective they are, or even exactly what they do, before they get marketed. They just ride the wave of anti-science that most holistic crap has spawned.

Why eat better food?
For nutrition. Different foods have different proteins, enzymes, or other chemicals which the body uses for metabolic functions and calories.

Another thing, which is unfortunate for both sides, is the fact that there are vast amounts of monetary incentive more to confirm the effectiveness of pharmaceutical drugs than to confirm the effectiveness of herbal remedies.

I call bullshit. Your claim is that there's a better profit margin when you have wait for your product to be clinically tested, which you probably need to pay for at least in part, and which delays your product from entering the market, and which could prevent it from ever happening at all due to the potential discovery it doesn't work the way you claim or that it has some side-effect, than slapping a label on it that says "nutritional supplement" and skipping right over all that?

Is the industry establishment really saying that companies are willing to put the same amount of research into naturally occurring plants, which they can't patent, as they are wiling to put the amount of research into specific chemical discoveries they CAN patent?

I won't claim patented drugs hold no significant profit, but I will claim it takes significant investment long before any pay-off. The patent is applied for when the drug is first developed, almost always before clinical trials, and it's not in the market for somewhere around ten years, leaving about half of the patent time remaining. This time may yield huge profit, yes, but you have to sink somewhere around a decade of time and trial cost into it in the first place.

However, the medicine being natural doesn't mean you can't figure out which chemical it contains which is effective and try to create a patented version of it. Aspirin comes from a plant, and it was patented. The method of extracting and purifying morphine was patented. Figure out what part of your "nutritional suppliment" actually does what you use it for, patent it's extraction, profit.

Yet... they don't do that. Why not? Because their stuff works and they... don't like profit? They have something against clinical testing? I wonder what that problem might stem from! Certainly not the fear of discovering their product doesn't do what they say! Because it works, according to everyone who has never done clinical tests on it!

This really leaves everyone without the research needed for good comparisons.

The medical community takes it upon themselves to test this sort of thing, when a company doesn't test their own stuff. Granted, it's not as thorough, but no clinical studies have shown any significant difference between a standard diet and a detox diet. The companies who produce the detox products don't do clinical tests on them to determine effectiveness... why?
 

TBerg

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So... what risk, exactly, are we talking about?



I just want to single out this next sentence....


Our body naturally stops growing once it reaches a certain size, but chemical reactions do continue after that. I guess I'm not sure how you mean this.



You can always alter how your body functions a bit, sure. If you exercise, for example, you grow more toned and heavy musculature.


Generally speaking, because the medicine is doing something our body isn't doing on it's own. With pain suppressants, well, it reduces the amount of pain we feel. With vaccines, it allows our bodies to develop, at least in part, a resistance to certain viruses or bacteria. Antibiotics works to directly kill a harmful bacterial infection. In all of these cases, there are thorough clinical tests to determine exactly what effects they have. "Detox" products have been put through clinical tests and there is no apparent difference between natural bodily detoxification and detoxing with the products. Further, the products don't even specify which toxins they help to remove from your system. Lastly, they aren't sold as actual medicines because then they would be forced to be proven effective before they could be sold, gaining access to the market through a legal loop-hole. Tell me, why aren't they medicine if they do what a medicine does? Because they don't determine how effective they are, or even exactly what they do, before they get marketed. They just ride the wave of anti-science that most holistic crap has spawned.


For nutrition. Different foods have different proteins, enzymes, or other chemicals which the body uses for metabolic functions and calories.



I call bullshit. Your claim is that there's a better profit margin when you have wait for your product to be clinically tested, which you probably need to pay for at least in part, and which delays your product from entering the market, and which could prevent it from ever happening at all due to the potential discovery it doesn't work the way you claim or that it has some side-effect, than slapping a label on it that says "nutritional supplement" and skipping right over all that?



I won't claim patented drugs hold no significant profit, but I will claim it takes significant investment long before any pay-off. The patent is applied for when the drug is first developed, almost always before clinical trials, and it's not in the market for somewhere around ten years, leaving about half of the patent time remaining. This time may yield huge profit, yes, but you have to sink somewhere around a decade of time and trial cost into it in the first place.

However, the medicine being natural doesn't mean you can't figure out which chemical it contains which is effective and try to create a patented version of it. Aspirin comes from a plant, and it was patented. The method of extracting and purifying morphine was patented. Figure out what part of your "nutritional suppliment" actually does what you use it for, patent it's extraction, profit.

Yet... they don't do that. Why not? Because their stuff works and they... don't like profit? They have something against clinical testing? I wonder what that problem might stem from! Certainly not the fear of discovering their product doesn't do what they say! Because it works, according to everyone who has never done clinical tests on it!



The medical community takes it upon themselves to test this sort of thing, when a company doesn't test their own stuff. Granted, it's not as thorough, but no clinical studies have shown any significant difference between a standard diet and a detox diet. The companies who produce the detox products don't do clinical tests on them to determine effectiveness... why?

Okay, we can cite research and counter-research on any given specific micronutrient, product, or pharmaceutical. In order for this discussion not to devolve into comparing studies in areas of scientific inquiry in which we are not expert, I suggest that we both trust that there is good reason to trust concerns among both conventional doctors and alternative practitioners, who in my experience are usually not the epitome of New Age bullshit. You can look up some of the concerns regarding Roundup if you are genuinely interested.

Another area of confusion arises in your conflation of nutritional supplements, medicinal herbs, and detoxification programs. We all know that we do not get the recommended amounts of micronutrients in our diets, even by government standards; we take nutritional supplements to make up for what we lack in our diets. Medicinal herbs can be just as effective as pharmaceuticals; we take them for the same purpose. Detoxification programs are sometimes enhanced by herbal accelerators and catalysts, but are not always combined that way. Just as there are good and effective as well as bad and ineffective pharmaceuticals, so there are good and effective as well as bad and ineffective herbs. And there are good diets and bad diets. If you are really interested in specific micronutrients and herbs, you can look for the information yourself, as I said.

Many of the nutritional supplements and and herbal medicines are cheaper than pharmaceuticals, for the expensive reasons you outlined above. After investing the research into a given herb or supplement already on the market, you will face the competition from the non-patented products. It is exactly how the cannabis market works: Pharmaceutical companies need cannabis to stay off the market, or the companies will lose market advantage.

Another reality check: http://www.bbc.com/news/business-28212223

When you look at this information, it can clearly be seen that the pharmaceutical industry is doing way more than investing money in research and development but is actually subject to the same sleazy business dynamics of any other industry. They work by means of securing monopoly on certain treatment modalities and then gouging the consumer. They are the ones able to hire lawyers and scientists and drug reps to do the legwork to get their products passed by regulators and into clinical practice. This sometimes means that patients get life-saving medicine, but it also means that the information within the arenas of decision-makers is heavily tilted in favor of the people with the money and the influence. You know that.

And you know as well as I do that medical professionals will more often rely upon this institutional process rather than try out their own theories on patients. Ethics, regulations, and laws are all beholden to this process.
 
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