{"id":8686,"date":"2013-02-19T05:43:28","date_gmt":"2013-02-19T05:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acneeinstein.com\/?p=891"},"modified":"2018-07-27T19:17:54","modified_gmt":"2018-07-27T19:17:54","slug":"cautionary-example-of-the-dangers-of-doing-your-own-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acneeinstein.com\/cautionary-example-of-the-dangers-of-doing-your-own-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Cautionary Example Of The Dangers Of Doing Your Own Research"},"content":{"rendered":"

The balance in my love-hate relationship with alternative and natural medicine starts to tip towards hate. Mostly because of the endless stream of nonsense and noise the proponents generate and the harm it causes to innocent people.<\/p>\n

This email I recently got is a good example of the dangers of doing your own research and lacking skeptical skills while doing it.<\/p>\n

I have acne along my forehead i have managed to get rid of acne along my cheeks and chin just have scars remaining. What do you recommend for the forehead from my own research i have come across that area to be linked with gut and intestinal issues. I am taking a ton of supplements doing stress relieve with EFT technique have switched over to raw food diets consisting of vegetables and not much fruit green apples and grape fruit and i am using aloe\/green tea extract 100% natural on my face. Is there anything else you can recommend?????<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think this is a fairly typical tale of a confused person lost in the alternative and natural health jungle. And not too different from where I was a few years back.<\/p>\n

While there\u2019s nothing inherently dangerous about the situation this guy is in (at least in most cases), I can also predict he would waste years of his time and god knows how much money with hit and miss efforts to get rid of acne. If he\u2019s really unlucky, he might even develop an eating disorder in the process.<\/p>\n

All because he listened to the all-pervasive natural health nonsense and lacked the critical thinking and skepticism skills to separate facts from fiction. And I can\u2019t fault him for that, it happens to most people \u2013 me included.<\/p>\n

Brain reset<\/h2>\n

In a case like this it\u2019s really hard for me to know even where to begin. I wish I had one of those flashy things from Men in Black movies that would reset the brain to the \u2018pre-natural health\u2019 state.<\/p>\n

Short of that, here are some problems I spotted. Other than this brief email, I have no other contact with him. So I\u2019m taking the liberty of making some assumptions. They may not all apply to him, but they are fairly common among people sucked into the natural health world.<\/p>\n

Raw food diet <\/strong><\/p>\n

This is based on the mistaken assumption<\/a> that cooking somehow destroys the vitality of foods; making it \u2018dead\u2019, whereas raw foods are brimming with vitality, energy and enzymes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s certainly a good idea to eat raw fruits and vegetables, but it\u2019s hard to see the rationale for limiting yourself exclusively to raw foods. Cooking does destroy some nutrients, but it also improves bioavailability of other nutrients. Cooking also makes many vegetables much easier to digest, and eating those same things raw might cause gut problems<\/a>. Not to mention potential issues with FODMAPs<\/a> when you eat so many raw fruits and vegetables.<\/p>\n

Limiting yourself to raw foods restricts your diet so much you are very likely to develop nutritional deficiencies. It also\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0make social life any easier. All this for\u2026 what\u2026 dietary dogma based on faulty logic and not supported by any credible evidence<\/a>. See also this raw food article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chinese face mapping<\/strong><\/p>\n

When he said his forehead acne problems are linked to gut and digestive issues, I assumed he was talking about Chinese face mapping. It\u2019s the idea that different parts of your face are somehow connected to different organs, and that problems in specific areas of the face reflect problems in specific organs. This forehead-gut connection often comes up.<\/p>\n

The problem is that traditional Chinese medicine is based on pre-scientific ideas, and scientific testing has shown those ideas not to be true. Acupuncture has been thoroughly researched and good quality, unbiased research shows it\u2019s no better than placebo<\/a>. There\u2019s no credible evidence that meridians exists, neither is there any evidence for links between areas of the face and different organs. More acupuncture posts here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very much possible his forehead acne is linked to gut problem<\/a>s, but this \u2018hit\u2019 is pure coincidence. I\u2019m also not aware that forehead acne would be any different from acne around the mouth. Where you get acne depends largely on the distribution of oil glands on your face, and possibly also on whether you treat different parts of your face differently.<\/p>\n

Emotional freedom technique<\/strong><\/p>\n

Emotional freedom technique<\/a> or EFT is meridian theory twisted to support nonsensical psychotherapy. The idea is that emotional problems are a result of \u2018energy\u2019 (whatever that means) getting \u2018blocked\u2019 in the meridians. Tapping to the meridian end points in specific sequences while mentally repeating the problem somehow clears these blockages and resolves the emotional problems.<\/p>\n

I used to believe into this thing. And if you look carefully, you can still detect bumps in my forehead as a result of furious tapping.<\/p>\n

The problem of course is that if there are no meridians then there\u2019s no way this thing can work. The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry wrote a good article about EFT<\/a> and similar energy psychology techniques.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that doing EFT\u00a0wouldn’t\u00a0help. I often found that tapping did offer temporary help with the issue I was working on. I felt less anxiety and stress after a tapping session. The results never lasted though. There\u2019s some research to indicate that simply paying attention to a negative emotion resolves it to some degree. I wrote about this in an earlier post<\/a>. This view is consistent with the little scientific research we have on EFT<\/a>, also see here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Taking tons of supplements<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a general rule dietary supplements are useless<\/a>, and there\u2019s some evidence they might even cause harm. That said, there\u2019s some evidence that vitamin B3, zinc and antioxidants might be helpful in acne.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m assuming that the reason you take many supplements is due to concerns over soil depletion<\/a> or the idea that you can somehow boost your immune system (or other parts of the body) with them. Even if it were possible to \u2018boost\u2019 the immune system (thankfully it\u2019s not), as a person suffering from acne you\u00a0wouldn’t\u00a0even want to do it. There\u2019s evidence to suggest that the immune system is already overactive in acne patients<\/a>. Boosting it would make things worse. All the talk about boosting, enhancing and supporting is just weasel-talk to sell you stuff that\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0work.<\/p>\n

100% natural skin care fallacy<\/strong><\/p>\n

The cosmetics and skin care industry has their own \u2018alternative branch\u2019, one that promotes the idea that chemicals are harmful and that 100% natural products are better for you.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m the first person to agree that some chemicals can be bad for your skin<\/a> and that you should be conscious of what you put on your skin. But this kind of black and white thinking is rarely helpful. Lot of 100% natural skin care ingredients can irritate the skin, especially fragrances (that are often 100% natural essential oils).<\/p>\n

The problem with this chemical-free nonsense is that everything in nature is a chemical. Without chemicals there would be no matter and no life. Of course what they mean is free from synthetic chemicals. The problem is that your skin\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0care whether a chemical is synthetic or \u2018natural\u2019. A lot of synthetic chemicals are safe and non-irritating, and a lot of natural chemicals are very irritating. It\u2019s also likely that synthetic chemicals have gone through far more safety testing than \u2018natural\u2019 chemicals, especially since many of these \u2018evil\u2019 chemicals have been crafted to be non-irritating and non-comedogenic.<\/p>\n

Anyway, this\u00a0isn’t\u00a0really my area of expertise, so I recommend you check out some other sources for this:<\/p>\n