Thursday 17 March 2011

My Closed Mind

"Kel you already have your mind made up my friend there is no conversation going on it is what you believe or nothing. Perhaps one day you will wake up...Good luck to you my friend....BTW I live this shit and I am as healthy as a fucking horse...Don't visit doctors nor will I take a drug...Ciao."

This was from an exchange on facebook, where my crime was questioning the generic toxins as a medical threat, as well as self-diagnosis of gut fungus as a source of said toxins. Looking back at the thread, I'm not quite sure what I have my mind made up about, here are the comments I made in the thread.
What toxins are you trying to remove?
What toxins are involved in that, and how would a sauna or steam remove them?
Jxx, what toxins are those?
But if you can't identify what those toxins are, how do you know you're not chasing an invisible bogey man? Which impurities from your food come out through your skin? How is dirt and bacteria on your skin a "toxin"?

Don't get me wrong, I love saunas. I feel great afterwards. I just don't see how it has value as a medical treatment - especially not when it's used for such an ambiguous condition.
Unless you have oral or vaginal thrush, candida really doesn't cause any health problems. What toxins does candida release?
‎"Alcohol is the main one but others are included."
So how much alcohol does this fungus produce? And what are the other ones?
"It does cause health problems in the gut which then makes its way into the organs and into the brain."
What health problems? How does [candida] cause this?
This is my problem - there's no specificity here.
"It is not widely recognised as a physically proven condition by the mainsteam medical community but I have read more than enough stories of people realising they have it to be convinced it is real."
But if it's not established through peer review, then how do you know it's causing problems? If you're not checking for causal relationships, then you run the risk of not actually identifying the problem. *post hoc, ergo propter hoc*

"I will try my best to work out what it is by eliminating possabilities."
This is why we have trained medical professionals who can run diagnostics and use the best possible evidence to identify the problem. Self-diagnosis is a terrible idea!

In the end, it's your health. If it were me, I'd be worried since I'm not a medical professional and I don't have the resources to perform tests that I'm not doing what's best for me. But that's me, and you have to make that decision for yourself.
I don't know what would be best for Pxxxxxx, my contention here is that people are creating non-existent conditions based on superficial plausibility, and instead of getting tested indulge in self-treatment.

Again the idea of detoxing through diet is an ambiguous one. What toxins are removed? How does that make for better health? Again it sounds superficially plausible, but it becomes meaningless if it's not identifying what processes are involved.

So I'm not sure what I really have to wake up to, or how it's about what I believe or nothing. I kept deferring to medical professionals and argued against self-diagnosis, especially when it came to non-specific factors.

Who would have thought that arguing for getting tested and treated with the best available treatment would be a position that would draw the ire of anyone? It seems idiotic to suggest anything but!

1 comment:

themaverickjester said...

Why would anyone argue against medical treatment?