Biomedical Scientist Answers Pseudoscience Questions From Twitter

I'm Dr. Andrea Love, biomedical scientist.

I fact check false health claims.

This is Pseudoscience Support.

[upbeat music]

@AwayFromTheKeys wants to know,

how do you define pseudoscience?

So pseudoscience refers to beliefs or practices

that appear scientific on the surface,

but they lack the repeatability, the reliability,

or the credibility of science.

Often they're making claims that are based on anecdotes,

as opposed to evidence.

They often start with a nugget of truth,

and then widely exaggerate that

beyond what reality would indicate.

@Shannyxrae wants to know,

should I buy this flat tummy tea or not?

Anyone tried it?

I hate to break it to you,

that these things are really just glorified laxatives.

So what's happening is that

you're speeding up your digestive process

beyond what it should be normally.

But what you're flushing out is

food that you haven't finished digesting properly

and absorbing their nutrients.

So you're creating a lot of diarrhea,

and you're also dehydrating yourself.

So while you might feel like you have a very flat tummy,

it's not because you're actually losing weight

or removing toxins, it's simply because you've removed food

to quickly from your body, and you're dehydrating yourself.

@itssynecdoche is asking, why am I only just learning

that chiropractors are not real doctors?

Yeah.

So chiropractic is a $15 billion industry,

and it was invented by a guy named Didi Palmer

who thought that ghosts were telling him to create it.

They believe that the joints and the nerves

that go through our body are the cause of every ailment

that we know of.

Unfortunately, chiropractic is a full-on pseudoscience.

There are certain chiropractors

that maybe stay in the lane of more physical therapy,

and there's a little bit of data to suggest that

for certain types of low back pain,

chiropractic adjustment can offer temporary relief,

but it's not fixing a musculoskeletal problem,

and it's definitely not doing

the other things that chiropractors claim to do.

So if you see the abbreviation DC

after someone's name on social media,

that means that they're a chiropractor,

and they're not a medical or scientific expert.

@pathogenflock, is it just me,

or is belief in pseudoscience rising recently?

This is absolutely correct.

We have seen a dramatic rise in anti-science

and pseudoscience beliefs,

and this does trend with the prevalence of social media.

Also coincides with the recent Covid-19 pandemic

and the increasing amount of politicization of vaccines.

So this past year,

only 93.1% of entering school age children

received vaccinations for the MMR,

the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.

This is a 2% drop compared to the previous school year,

particularly for a disease where you need

at least 95% coverage to stop the spread of measles,

this is a very concerning trend.

@gutznotguts wants to know

how the [bleep] did the vaccines cause autism myth

even start?

This myth started in 1998

because of a British gastroenterologist

named Andrew Wakefield,

who has since lost his medical license

and the ability to practice medicine.

But he published a paper in The Lancet,

which is a very prestigious medical journal,

and claimed that he had data to demonstrate

a link between the MMR vaccine,

which is the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine

and autism symptoms in children.

The problem was he falsified all of the data in that paper.

More than that, he used self-reports from parents

who were planning to sue the existing manufacturers

of the MMR vaccine.

On top of that, he was trying to sell

and market his own MMR vaccine,

but because it was published

in such prestigious medical journal,

it took the world by storm, it caused a lot of fear.

Eventually that paper was retracted,

but that retraction did not occur until 2010,

12 years later.

Now, in recent years, we're seeing measles rates

above what we have ever seen in the US,

and it is really a cause for concern

because the very first measles vaccine

was put on the market in 1963.

So we have over 60 years of data

that demonstrate that there is no relationship

between vaccines and autism.

@briney4trump, GMOs change our DNA every day

and give people several diseases.

Why did we approve of this?

This is not true.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the papaya was being wiped out

by a virus called the papaya ring spot virus.

So we created a GMO papaya

that can resist the papaya ring spot virus.

90% of the papayas are GMO.

And when you eat them, it is not changing your DNA.

So when you eat the papaya, you're eating all of its cells

and all of those cells contain DNA.

So those DNA molecules are going to enter your stomach

and it's gonna mix with an enzyme called pepsin.

So when the pepsin interacts with the DNA molecule,

it blasted apart into all of these individual subunits,

and therefore the DNA is no longer intact.

It's not gonna change your DNA,

it's not gonna cause any harmful consequences.

@JohnnyV45385760 wants to know,

how can you tell if a health influencer is legit

or full of shit?

Some of the red flags to look for are, number one,

they are trying to evoke very strong negative emotions.

Things like fear, anxiety, or worry,

particularly as it relates to your health

or the health of your children or your family.

Number two, they're making all or none statements.

They're saying that this thing is causing cancer,

or this thing is going to fix some disorder.

Number three, if they're selling you something

that is related to the claims that they're making,

whether that is a supplement, or a diet plan,

or a protocol, or a book.

Number four, if they have an obvious conflict of interest.

Are they working for the company

of the product that they're selling you?

And last but not least, if they're speaking way outside

of their area of expertise.

If someone is a neuroscientist

that specializes in optic nerve signaling,

and they're pretending to be an expert

in infectious disease immunology,

that's probably a red flag.

@10000problems wants to know

why does homeopathic medicine work

so much better than real medicine?

Unfortunately that is not the case.

But let me tell you a little bit about what homeopathy is,

'cause it's often confused with

other sorts of alternative remedies.

Homeopathy is a pseudoscience that was created

or invented in the 1700s by a German guy

named Samuel Hahnemann.

He created this based on two beliefs.

The first is that like cures like,

meaning that if something causes a symptom,

that same substance can cure

an ailment that creates that symptom.

Onion causes watery eyes when you cut it.

Therefore, homeopathic onion

is going to cure things like allergies

that also cause watery eyes.

But that goes along with the second belief,

or the law of infinite decimals.

Meaning that the remedy becomes more potent

the more it is diluted.

If you find a label on a homeopathic remedy

that says 12C, C means 100, and 12 means that you've diluted

the substance 12 times a hundred fold over,

which means you have one part in this many parts,

which is also called one septillion.

So what that means is that

there's no actual active ingredient in that.

That is probably a good thing

because there are many homeopathic remedies

that can be very dangerous

if you would ingest them at normal dosage.

For example, teething tablets

that claim to have homeopathic belladonna,

which is deadly nightshade,

were contaminated with measurable levels of belladonna,

and hundreds of babies developed seizures,

and at least 10 babies died.

This happened starting in 2010 and 2012,

and there were several brands that were to blame.

One final danger of homeopathy is that

many people believe that they're taking something

that's beneficial, and beyond the fact that it is

nothing more than a sugar pill,

it often leads people to forego actual medical care,

which is one of the biggest harms of all.

@paul_metta555 asks,

are cell phone towers detrimental to our health?

Why so many?

Why do they emit high pitch noises?

Are they carcinogenic?

Why the spiking cancer rates since they arrived?

Cell phone towers look like this.

You have this primary node that's coming out from all sides,

and you have these radio waves that are being emitted.

You also have these secondary nodes

that are a little bit smaller,

but all of these radio frequency waves

are projected in every direction,

because otherwise we wouldn't have cell reception.

So this myth kind of started because people heard the word

radiofrequency radiation and got scared,

because we know that there are certain types of radiation

that are linked to cancer.

Here we have the electromagnetic spectrum.

Things on this end are very high energy,

and this rainbow right here is our visible light spectrum.

Ultraviolet and above, these types of radiation

can potentially damage our cells in our body,

and can lead to changes in our cells and mutations.

But when you get below the energy level of visible light

and you get into infrared and microwaves, way down here,

those are your radio waves.

So this radio frequency radiation

is one of the lowest energy types of radiation,

and it's considered what we call non-ionizing,

meaning it cannot penetrate your body.

So even if those radio waves are all over our planet,

because we have cell reception everywhere,

the amount of energy that they're exerting

is not actually going to damage your body

or cause you any potential harm.

@JohnPetersonFW wants to know, I'd really like to know,

from someone that actually knows

if buying organic food for double the price

is actually worth it/better for you.

The biggest misconception is that organic is pesticide free.

Here we have organic blueberries.

They are grown using organic pesticides

and organic pesticides are simply chemicals

that have not been synthetically altered

from the original state in which they exist

somewhere in nature.

In contrast, these are conventional blueberries

who were grown using conventional pesticides.

Conventional pesticides are those that can be

synthetically altered in order to improve their specificity.

A 2010 study in PLoS One was looking at

six different pesticides that are used to control aphids

on soybean plants.

It was found to not only control aphids,

but it also killed the natural predators of the aphids,

the insidious flower bug, and the Asian lady beetle,

having a more broad negative ecological impact.

Another misconception about all produce

is that they have all these residues of pesticides on them.

We're talking about parts per trillion, parts per billion.

These are minuscule levels.

If you're very concerned about it, absolutely.

Wash your produce in water.

But aside from that,

you don't need to be stressing about your produce.

@ToyaRochelle wants to know,

what do people think they're cleansing

when they do juice and smoothie cleanses or detoxes?

But I hate to break it to you,

if you have functioning organ systems,

you're already detoxing all day every day.

So when people say that they're doing a parasite cleanse

or a cleanse and they're claiming that these stringy things

in their poop is parasite parse,

what they're actually seeing is mucus

and sloughed off intestinal cells,

which is not a good thing,

it's actually harming your GI tract.

@bigpapabriggs wants to know, on a scale from one to 10,

how scared should I be of Lyme disease?

So as someone who's actually studied Lyme disease

for several decades,

Lyme disease is actually not as easy to get as you think.

Not only do you have to have the right species of tick

actually bite you, but it has to feed on you

for at least 24 hours

in order to have a chance to transmit the bacteria for you.

Your likelihood or risk of getting Lyme disease

is very, very low.

Scale of one to 10, I would give it about a two or a three.

There's only two species of ticks in the US

that can transmit Lyme disease.

There are some areas in the country

that you have higher risk,

like the Midwest and the Northeast,

and this is because you have higher proportions of

both the ticks that live there

and the bacteria in those ticks.

In other parts of the country, the risk is almost zero.

There are a lot of common myths about Lyme disease.

The first is that once you're infected,

you're always gonna be infected, and that is just not true.

It's a bacterial infection,

and once you've taken antibiotics for standard course

or very effective treatments,

you're going to eliminate the bacteria.

But unfortunately, since it was discovered in the 1980s,

it has really been the target of a lot of misinformation.

And that can be attributed partially to some of these tests

that are sold direct to consumer,

that claim to be able to diagnose you with Lyme disease.

Unfortunately, these tests are not FDA approved,

and are not accurate, but they tell people

that they have Lyme disease when in reality they do not.

So it creates the perception that Lyme disease

is not only more widespread than it is,

but is much more prevalent and severe.

@RetiredDent, I'm seeing more and more parents

giving their children non fluoridated toothpaste.

What's up with that?

Why are people so afraid of fluoride?

Well, fluoride is a naturally occurring substance

that can be found in minerals and soil,

and in our environment.

And it was determined many, many years ago that communities

that had naturally higher levels of fluoride in their water

we're less likely to develop cavities.

So we started fluoridating water

and adding fluoride to toothpaste over 75 years ago,

and that's really plummeted

the amount of dental caries or cavities.

Unfortunately claims on social media

that are not based on reality,

tell people that fluoride is a neurotoxin.

What they don't mention is that the dosage

at which you'd have to consume fluoride

in order to have any toxic effect

is well outside of the reality

of anything you could possibly consume.

Fluoride in water is added at 0.7 milligrams per kilogram,

which means that in order to hit the minimum threshold

where you might have skeletal effects from fluoride,

if you were a child weighing 22 pounds,

you'd have to drink 57 liters of water a day.

So it really is not a concern.

@karinefrigon says,

everybody should have a gluten-free diet, I'm just saying.

The reality is if you don't have a medical reason

to avoid gluten, you don't need to avoid gluten.

Gluten is a structural protein

that's found in certain grains like wheat,

barley, rosin and others.

And there are certain medical conditions

that you should avoid this particular protein.

This would be something like celiac disease,

which is an autoimmune disorder.

There's been a lot of studies

in whether or not avoiding gluten offers a benefit,

and the big consensus is is that it doesn't.

Sometimes we hear claims that the gluten here is worse

because we use all the processed chemicals

and we use all the pesticides.

And when you went to Europe,

you were able to eat all the bread you wanted

and you didn't have those issues with the gluten.

And unfortunately, the gluten quantity in wheats

across countries is essentially the same.

On top of that, we also use the same pesticides.

Glyphosate is one that's often demonized

because it's used to dry down wheat,

but it's also used in Europe.

Europe imports millions of pounds of American wheat

every year to make the very breads that you're eating.

I would suggest that maybe you're more relaxed

while you're on vacation,

and you're not gulping down your food

in between bringing kids to activities and swallowing air,

leading to the perceived feeling of bloat,

which has nothing to do with the gluten,

but everything to do with the rushing

and the stress that you have with your day-to-day life.

@TealePB wants to know what makes a study,

any study, reliable?

So when we talk about the scientific method,

we have what we call the hierarchy of evidence.

At the bottom, you have things that are generally based

on small sample sizes or opinions.

From there, you're going into animal trials

and in vitro data.

So these are your Petri dish studies, or your animal data

that are not automatically representative

of what's happening in people.

Say you wanna study a disease process in humans

and you use an animal model

that that disease doesn't occur in,

that's not going to be an accurate

or representative research model,

because it's not going to give you data

that you can then generalize to people.

Once you get above that, you're moving into human studies.

Randomized controlled trials, they're usually also blinded.

Those are considered our gold standard,

so with vaccine studies, this is very common.

There is a group of people that receive the placebo,

which is usually salt water,

and there are people that received the vaccine.

None of them know what they received,

you might report different symptoms than if you knew

you were getting the placebo.

At the very top, you have what we call meta-analyses

and systematic reviews.

These are analyses where we take multiple studies

and we pool them and analyze them together.

There are really high quality journals like JAMA,

which is the Journal of the American Medical Association

or PNAS, which is the Proceedings

of the National Academy of Sciences.

But as a rule of thumb, if you're trying to find information

on a given topic, you wanna look for at the minimum,

that it is indeed peer reviewed,

and that it is aligning with other topics

or other papers that are in that field.

It is very, very unlikely that one study

is going to displace the thousands of other studies

within a given field or topic.

We call that cherry picking.

@WishWellTherapy wants know,

study after study has revealed that aspartame,

sucralose, and saccharin lead to cancer

and other disorders of the cells and organ.

Saccharin was actually banned temporarily in the US,

because there was thought to be a relationship

between saccharin and bladder cancer.

It turns out that the studies they were using

were using a type of rat.

These rats had a genetic predisposition

that they developed these bladder crystals,

and made them more likely to develop tumors.

Not only were we using rats that were not an appropriate

or realistic research model, these rats were being fed

close to 10% of their body weight per day in saccharin.

And it was at that point that a proportion of the male rats

developed bladder cancers.

Follow-up studies using rhesus macaques, mice,

and looking at human data have demonstrated

that saccharin is not related to cancer in humans at all,

and so the ban was lifted.

But ultimately that stigma related to saccharin

has actually transferred to other artificial sweeteners.

@flyrodu asks, how do we know that supplements work?

Is there any real research on all these supplements

that exist?

E.G, athletic greens, et cetera?

So in the United States alone,

the dietary supplement industry

is worth nearly $160 billion.

Unlike FDA approved medications,

supplements do not have to prove that they are helping

or offering a benefit.

A lot of people may take powdered vitamin C

and mix it into their water

when they feel like they have a cold or a flu coming on.

Vitamin C supplementation doesn't reduce the duration

of respiratory illnesses,

it doesn't lessen the severity of them,

it doesn't prevent them.

There's been a lot of studies, especially in recent years

that have been looking at

the benefits of vitamin D supplement.

So this one assessed the efficacy of vitamin D and zinc

in combination to improve outcomes of Covid-19.

And ultimately what these show is that

vitamin D supplementation did not lessen disease severity,

did not reduce hospital stay,

did not reduce severity of symptoms,

and did not improve mortality outcomes.

And there was a study that actually found over 50%

of immune boosting supplements

were lying about what was in the product.

And worse, some were not

mentioning things that were in them.

@pennebykameron wants to know,

is there scientific evidence of crystals

before and after charging?

Many people believe that crystals have energetic powers,

that the crystal, or the energy in the crystal

is vibrating with your own personal energy.

And unfortunately there have been no studies

that have suggested that this is a true relationship.

It is likely nothing more than the placebo effect.

The placebo effect can be very strong.

There is a body of data that suggests that in some instances

people can feel like they're recovering

from things more quickly or that their symptoms

or side effects are lower

because they have that power of the placebo.

So we don't wanna discount the placebo effect,

but we certainly don't want it to replace

actual science-based medicine.

@Janani802 wants to know, can fasting help cancer patients?

So this claim is really pervasive,

and as someone who works in cancer research

is really harmful for a lot of reasons,

and it kind of breaks my heart.

This claim originated from in vitro studies,

or Petri dish studies where we are growing cancer cells.

And what they found was depriving them of nutrients,

or simulating fasting cause the cancer cells to die.

But what that fails to account for is that

any cell deprived of nutrient is going to fail to grow.

And what happening in a piece of plastic

or a plastic dish like this,

is not what is happening inside the complex being of a human

who has cancer.

Fasting can actually be harmful if you're battling cancer,

'cause you're depriving yourself and your body

of very essential nutrients and calories that you need

for your immune system to do its best work.

So those are all the questions for today.

Always be skeptical when you encounter things

that may not be as they seem.

Thanks for watching Pseudoscience Support.