A Tale of Medical Woo and Woe

Several months ago I wrote a post called "Natural Transitioning is a Crock," explaining why using herbs and supplements instead of hormone replacement is not an effective method for most trans men.  This system (and many of the reasons people try it) falls into the category of medical woo, which is an umbrella term for health and medical decisions that go against conventional medicine with little evidence to support its efficacy.  The shining star of medical woo right now is the anti-vaccine/"antivaxxer" movement which has made parents terrified of vaccinating their kids under the erroneous assumption that influenza isn't nearly as bad as the scientifically inaccurate and downright ableist "threat" of autism.  Medical woo is hugely popular among alternative diet communities, including veganism and paleo.  In fact, many of the high-profile deaths of vegan children people bring up involve much more than just veganism... that French vegan couple whose baby died of malnutrition because the mother's breast milk was lacking in nutrients commonly found in animal products didn't just eat vegan, they ignored doctors' advice and tried treating her with cabbage, mustard, and clay.

I love the paleo lifestyle.  I love it because I've found it works well for my body.  In fact, there are plenty of other aspects of my lifestyle that are largely considered "woo."  I love Vibram FiveFingers shoes.  I use herbal tea when I'm mildly ill.  Hell, I practice Witchcraft.  In many respects, though, I'm recovering from a period of Peak Woo.  This period encompassed almost the entire time I was a vegan and a big chunk of time I wasn't, and involved:

• Refusal to get vaccines.
• Refusal to take over-the-counter painkillers or other medicines.
• Refusal to use fluoride toothpaste.
• Refusal to get my wisdom teeth taken out.
• Attempts to do a lot of self-care including pelvic exams that I wasn't even close to qualified to do.

Before I continue, it should be mentioned that the "refusal" in these cases was to a large extent due to a lack of health and dental insurance.  These were ways I mitigated my lack of formal healthcare, although as time went by I began stubbornly believing the things my woo woo community were insisting to be true.

It was actually pretty hellish from the start.  There were multiple times I could be found standing post at the door of the convenience store waiting for it to open so I could finally buy some Excedrin after a two-day-long pounding headache I'd have been trying to treat with coconut oil and lavender.

The most regrettable decision, though, was to keep my wisdom teeth.  I tell you this as I sit at home with an ice pack on my face, going through a round of penicillin and ibuprofen--prescribed by an E.R. doctor--to keep the infection down until I can get to a dentist.  They're bad.  Really bad.  And they've been bad for my whole adult life... but I still insisted on keeping them when my last dentist insisted I shouldn't.

Recently all these memories came flooding back to me as I looked desperately for ways to keep the pain down.  Getting these teeth removed is on my list of New Year resolutions, and has been since before the current infection.  I even have dental insurance starting in January.  It's just bad timing.  My search was not intended to convince me that my wisdom teeth are harmless, just to find ways to mitigate the pain... but rationalizations and anti-medical conspiracy was the main dish on the menu during that search, as I'm sure you can imagine.  There are scores of blog posts from people talking about using clove oil and garlic to heal abscesses... a dangerous tooth condition that can be life threatening if not treated with antibiotics.  "If God didn't intend me to have wisdom teeth he wouldn't have given them to me!" is a hilarious one from people who don't understand how dentition forms.  There are people implying that oil pulling--squishing sesame, olive, or coconut oil in your mouth for a half hour daily--will heal every dental condition.  "I just have a little puffiness every once in a while, but otherwise I'm fine!" is another common one.  Some actually do want their wisdom teeth removed, but either can't afford to (as you can imagine I can relate to that) or are refusing on principle because it costs more than getting other teeth taken out.

Each of these blog posts is punctuated, by the way, with comments from people who were the exact same way and who are now in my predicament:  Swollen, in massive pain, awaiting extremely expensive dental surgeries for things that could have been fixed as kids or teens if we hadn't drunk the natural blog Kool-Aid.

Why am I mentioning this on a paleo blog?  Because I see the seeds of this shit in you.  I see bloggers valiantly refusing to have fillings, opting instead to remineralize teeth with their diets.  I see bloggers keeping impacted and problematic wisdom teeth.  And I know that there are going to be plenty of people desperate to be told that they don't need expensive medical care experiencing loads of undeserved relief because Some Guy On The Internet did it and seems fine.

I'm writing this as a counter to that.  If I can get even one person using Google or Bing to stop trying to talk themselves out of getting necessary medical care--whether that care is dental work, hormone therapy, vaccines, or any other common target of medical conspiracy theories--then I will be happy for that.

It's OK to try to do things a little differently, to try a non-typical diet or use herbal medicine to mitigate non-life-threatening symptoms, or even to use unconventional methods alongside conventional ones.  It's an entirely different animal to just assume that well-documentedly life-saving treatments are a waste of money.

And for fuck's sake, if you're going to drown in woo, don't subject your kids to it.

7 Things I'm Sick Of Hearing People Who Don't Eat Paleo Say

A couple days ago a friend of mine was going on and on about the pseudoscience "inherent" to paleo diets, and it was... well, frustrating to say the least.  I'll tell you as much as anybody that the paleo movement has its share of pseudoscientific bullshit in it.  But the reality is that for many of us it works really well, regardless of why it works.

The following are some things I commonly hear from people who are not in the paleo community that I'm just downright sick of:

1. Equating paleo with Atkins/low-carb or gluten-free.
   There is a lot of overlap between low-carb, gluten-free, and paleo.  A lot of paleo eaters are also low-carbers (although since I'm sure some of them are bringing on the pitchforks as I say that, you can eat paleo and not be low-carb as well).  And paleo done right is inherently gluten-free.
   The mistake people make is turning these two characteristics into the whole point of the diet.  Paleo is about overall bodily optimization, not just weight loss, not just reduction of gastrointestinal symptoms.  If I had to pick out one thing that characterized paleo for me it's not gluten-free or low-carb, but eating an abundance of healthy fats.  And even that is not necessarily what paleo is for other people.
   I personally hate being called "gluten-free" or "low-carb."  Not because I'm necessarily not, but because these terms have a lot of baggage that don't characterize my lifestyle.  Being called "gluten-free," for instance, gives people the undying urge to get me shit manufactured by Udi's.  Speaking of which...
2. "Eating gluten-free is dangerous if you don't have celiac disease!"This one is part of why I started off with the odd comparisons above.
   I'm sorry, but this is one of the absolute most fucking ridiculous things I've ever heard.  The gist of this argument is that by not eating gluten we're shunning some unique number of nutrients found in wheat.  This ignores a couple of things, though.  First, most wheat today is either enriched or fortified.  Fortifying means manufacturers have added more nutrients during processing to make it look healthier.  In the case of enrichment, that means manufacturers are replacing nutrients they took out of it through processing.  If wheat were really something that was "dangerous" for us to cut out, why do they need to fortify it?
   I'm reminded actually of when I was still a vegan and people were constantly back-and-forthing over whether or not cow's milk is better for you than soymilk.  Both vegans and non-vegans would make these absolutely fucking ridiculous comparisons... dairy advocates would compare unfortified soymilk to cow's milk with vitamin D added, soy advocates would whine that they compared unfortified to fortified but still managed to do the same damn thing.  It was ridiculous.  This is the same thing.
   You do run into problems when people think that gluten is the singular health problem they need to worry about and respond by replacing their baked goods with rice- and potato-based substitutes that are also terrible for them (and also very expensive).  But it's not getting rid of wheat that causes this problem, it's getting rid of it and then replacing it with nutritionally sparse calories.
   Which is why paleo specifically as a gluten-free diet is even less relevant to this sort of scaremongering bullshit.  Paleo eaters typically remove wheat (and all other grains) and then replace them with vegetables, fruits, and other whole foods.  This is not dangerous and has a great number of health effects.
3. "Do you really think humanity hasn't evolved at all in the past 10,000 years?"
   I get very sick of this one because my degree is in Anthropology and have a pretty strong background in how evolution works, so it's a little annoying to hear this sort of thing chanted as fact to me when their entire background is "learning how to argue against creationists."
   This is one of those cases where people latch onto one commonly-touted reason to go paleo and then run with it as if it's a baseless assumption that makes up the entire bulk of paleo diet philosophy.  If you spend any time within the paleo community, you'll certainly find people who willingly and unabashedly boil it all down to that.  More likely, though, you'll find a lot of people who recognize that in some respects we've changed.  This is where you get people who maintain that, for instance, people who are descended from ancestors who ate a lot of dairy are likely to handle dairy better.
   Most of us will gladly maintain the very basics of this argument:  Our bodies haven't evolved sufficiently to really, optimally handle modern foods.  This really isn't that difficult a concept to grasp if you have a really good background in how evolution works.  Grains and legumes have been instrumental foods for staving off starvation in a growing human population.  The health effects of these foods don't typically kill people off before they're able to reproduce.  Having health repercussions later in life is less likely to dramatically alter our evolutionary course.
4. "It's not the paleo diet that actually helps you, it's (accidental calorie restriction/cutting out processed foods/some other thing).""Oh, yeah, this lifestyle clearly works very well for a lot of people, but it's not the lifestyle, it's the things the lifestyle forces you to do."  Seriously... what's the difference?  If paleo incidentally leads to people cutting out processed foods or restriction of caloric intakes or some other thing that could be accomplished through another diet, isn't that still a good thing?
5. "You're just going to gain the weight back as soon as you start eating normal again."This is probably the main reason so many paleo eaters (and vegans, and other people who change their eating habits long-term) really hate it when you call their eating habits a "diet."  A "diet" is simply a way of eating, but people more often than not associate it with changing your eating habits short-term to lose some weight and then when that's accomplished going right back to eating the way you did before.  If you do this, then no shit you are going to gain all the weight back (and all the health problems, and everything else).
   If you want real long-term weight loss, real long-term improvements in cholesterol and high blood pressure and diabetes and so forth, you need to make permanent changes.  This is not rocket science, and yet people still bring it up every time somebody brings up a diet they arbitrarily have decided they don't like.
6. "Paleo eaters eat more animals than other omnivores!"This is one of those things exclusive to animal rights discourse.  Vegans have an extremely unfair fixation on paleo eaters because we're so unashamed about our meat-loving ways.  I recall PETA for instance giving a paleo cookbook its award for worst cookbook one year.  Their rationale is pretty much "They eat meat therefore they're bad."
   The reason this is unfair is because a huge chunk of animal deaths caused by diet are actually due to corn, wheat, and soy production.  In a typical omnivore's diet, the number of animals that met their deaths through that diet is significantly ramped up because of the corn, wheat, and soy eaten by the animals they are eating.
   Paleo eaters culturally have a preference for grassfed, pastured meats.  We don't all do it, but it's greatly recommended.  A paleo eater who faithfully sticks to grassfed or pastured animals may even result in the deaths of fewer animals than a vegan, depending on what the vegan is eating.
7. "Paleo eaters are just annoying historical reenactors!"I love my historical reenactments (I'm a regular sight at primitive technology festivals and Rendezvous events, after all), and hey... maybe that did have something to do with my initial entrance into the paleo community.
   As a whole, though, the paleo community tends to love its technology and modern comforts.  There's lots of overlap between the paleo movement and the quantified self movement, for instance.
   I think this is in a way exacerbated by the dipshit theoretical stories people tell in paleo books, giving fictional cavemen ridiculous names like "Ogg" and "Grok" and... well, maybe that's annoying to you.  But it also doesn't say anything about the benefits or lack thereof of the actual diet.

Taco Bell isn't Paleo... and other words on paleo consumerism.

So my Twitter is just blowing the fuck up with news that Taco Bell is "going paleo" by offering a "Cantina Power Menu."  The gist of it, from what I can see, is that these items will all be fewer than 500 calories and have at least 20 grams of protein.  The buzz surrounding this is... well, obnoxious.

From the L.A. Times (emphasis mine):

Cantina Power dishes will have almost 30 grams of protein per serving and drop high-calorie fillings such as creamy cilantro dressing, rice and beans, and replace them with reduced-fat sour cream and cheddar cheese.

...

Americans are also dabbling in protein-centric diets such as the Paleolithic, or Paleo, which encourages people to eat only whole, unprocessed foods similar to what humans ate in the Stone Age. 

In response, the chain began selling high-protein breakfast items this year and is planning to test Greek yogurt with granola, as well as steak burritos and bowls in Omaha, Neb. The Greek yogurt will come from Three Happy Cows, a boutique yogurt supplier, and will cost $2.49.

This--and other examples being featured, like Panera Bread (from Bloomberg)--is a perfect example of a corporation taking a dietary trend it doesn't understand at all and then trying to capitalize on it.  I have my doubts that Taco Bell is specifically trying to emulate any sort of paleo diet.  Instead it's adopting some of the concepts of diets like paleo diets, combine them with what they assume is universal wisdom about dieting, and then using it to slap a bunch of half-assed crappy labels on their crappy food so that people--usually people who aren't actually paleo dieters but associate it with healthy eating anyway--buy it thinking it's a better option.  It might be, but I'll talk about that a big later.

It's really the media attention that's trying to slap the "paleo" label on this, and that's why I've put a lot of words in bold in my quote.  "Reduced fat" is the last thing most paleo eaters want.  Most of us would much rather get our calories from fat than protein, and those of us who eat dairy especially will usually favor whole-fat versions.  You do not see lacto-paleo dieters drinking skim.  It's an interesting thing that I read this today, too, because I was looking desperately for full-fat Greek yoghurt.  But modern fat-phobia has made it that you just can't find full-fat dairy products in a lot of places.

Speaking of which, although many paleo eaters do eat dairy (I call this "lacto-paleo"), that doesn't mean it's appropriate to advertise dairy-heavy foods as paleo... any dairy, but especially reduced-fat dairy.

Again, paleo diets tend to emphasize fat, and good fat.  That mostly means saturated animal and tropical oils.  Lard.  Tallow.  Ghee and butter.  Coconut oil.  Palm oil.  And, of course, fat that's in the meat we eat.  A paleo eater who gets most of their calories from fat is not uncommon.  And although it's vague from the description, just the fact that this is a fast food chain already convinces me that this is not going to be using quality lard or coconut oil, it'll probably be using "vegetable" oil from soybeans.

Also... granola?  Mother of fuck.  How do you even add "They're selling Greek yoghurt and granola for breakfast!" in an article maintaining Taco Bell is trying to pander to paleo eaters?  It's outrageous and ridiculous.

This is not paleo.  At best it is a slightly-less-shitty option than the rest of their menu.

That's maybe the one good part about this.  Most paleo eaters are going to wind up in a circumstance where we wind up deciding between either fasting or getting something at a fast food place that isn't fully paleo.  I've been known to get salads at Subway, for instance.  I know damn well there is probably vegetable oil in there, fillers, and so forth.  But it's better than getting a sandwich.  I've been known to get lettuce-wrapped BLT "sandwiches" from Jimmy John's.  My order also has vegetable oil.  This is a trade-off.  It's saying "Yeah, I understand this probably isn't perfectly paleo, but if I eat this I won't be tempted to go maul a loaf of bread later."  So it's not a bad thing that restaurants are expanding their menus to include less bread and other egregiously un-paleo foods.

It's also important that as a dietary community we start really looking at what we get excited about as a community.  I remember when Graze boxes first came to the United States and paleo forums I go to were loaded with invites and people looking for invites to get free boxes.  But practically none of the options didn't have stuff like vegetable oil, added sugar, peanuts, or grain.

But more importantly, we need to be the community that doesn't buy something just because it says "paleo" on it, or some other buzzword, or just because it was described as "paleo."  There are already products out there that are specifically advertised to the paleo community that aren't even close to what a paleo eater should be eating.  Most "paleo" and "primal" meal replacements have either whey or sugar in them... not to mention they fucking exist to begin with.

So when you read things like this, take them with a heap of salt.