Toxic waste

If there's one word related to health issues that makes me cringe, it's the word "toxin."

This term gets thrown around all the time.  I was given a gift card for a massage for my last birthday (which was wonderful, by the way), and afterwards, the masseuse told me that I needed to drink lots of water that day because the massage had "loosened up toxins" and I needed to drink a lot to "flush them from my system."  A while back, I was buying some fresh turmeric root at a local organic grocery, and a lady smiled at me in a friendly sort of way, and said, "Oooh, turmeric!  It's wonderful at detoxifying the body!"

What gets me about the use of "toxin" and "detoxify" is that the people who use those terms so seldom have any idea about what particular toxins they're talking about.  If I was just a wee bit more obnoxious than I am -- an eventuality no one should wish for -- I would have said to the masseuse and the lady in the grocery, "Can you name one specific chemical that massage and/or turmeric releases in my body that I need to be concerned about?"

Chances are, of course, they would not have been able to; even in supposedly informative articles in health magazines, they're just lumped together as "toxins."  The word has become a stand-in for unspecified "really bad stuff" that we need to fret about even though no one seems all that sure what it is.

And then buy whatever silly detox remedy the writer of the article suggests.

This all comes up because of an article I read in Science-Based Medicine called "Activated Charcoal: The Latest Detox Fad in an Obsessive Food Culture," by Scott Gavura.  In it, we hear about people dosing themselves with activated charcoal as a "detox" or "cleanse," because evidently our liver and kidneys -- evolved over millions of years to deal with all sorts of unpleasant metabolic wastes -- are insufficient to protect us.

No, you need "activated charcoal lemonade."

I wish I was making this up, but no.  People actually are adding gritty, pitch-black charcoal to their lemonade, in order to make it "soak up toxins."

The problem here, as Gavura points out, is that activated charcoal is used in detoxification, so there's that kernel of truth in all of the nonsense.  Actual detoxification, I mean, not this pseudoscientific fad-medicine horseshit; detoxification of the sort done in cases of poisoning.  I know this first hand, because of an incident involving a border collie named Doolin that we once had.  My wife and I had visited northern California, and dropped by the wonderful Mendocino Chocolate Company, makers of what are objectively the best chocolate truffles in the entire world.  We bought a dozen truffles of various sorts and brought them home with us, babying them through our travels during high summer.  We got them home successfully, and on the first day back...

... Doolin pulled the box off the counter and ate all twelve chocolate truffles.

As you undoubtedly know, chocolate is highly poisonous to dogs, so off Doolin went to the vet to get a (real) detoxification.  One of the things they did was feed her activated charcoal.  We found this out because on the way back home from the vet, Doolin puked up charcoal all over the back seat of my wife's brand-new Mini Cooper.

Doolin survived the chocolate incident, although she almost didn't survive our reaction to (1) the thousand-dollar vet bill, (2) black doggie puke all over the new car upholstery, and worst of all, (3) not getting our chocolates.  Despite all that, she went on to live another six healthy years, thanks to modern veterinary science and the fact that she was cute enough that we decided not to strangle her.

But I digress.

So charcoal does have its uses.  But you're not accomplishing anything by adding it to lemonade, except perhaps (as Gavura writes) having the charcoal absorb nutrients from your digestive tract, making whatever food you're eating less nutritious.  Because charcoal, of course, isn't selective about what it absorbs -- it'll absorb damn near anything, including vitamins and other essential nutrients.

Facts don't seem to matter much to the alt-med crowd, however, and now there's charcoal everywhere.  Over at the webzine Into the Gloss, writer Victoria Lewis tells us about taste-testing a bunch of different charcoal drinks, and her analysis includes the following insightful paragraph about "Juice Generation Activated Greens":

I decided to drink this ultra-vegetable-filled (kale, spinach, celery, parsley, romaine, and cucumber) juice for breakfast.  It tasted exactly like a super green juice—a little salty but otherwise, totally normal.  I did end up eating some granola afterwards (juice diets have never been for me), but this one felt good and extremely healthy.

Which, right there, sums up the whole approach.  Screw medical research; if consuming some weird new supplement "feels good and extremely healthy," then it must be getting rid of all those bad old toxins, or something, even if it tastes like vaguely lemon-flavored fireplace scrapings.  It's all about the buzzwords, the hype, and the feelings -- not about anything remotely related to hard evidence.

But of course, since now we have renowned nutritionists like Gwyneth Paltrow getting on board, the whole "charcoal juice cleanse" thing is going to take off amongst people with more money than sense.

Makes me feel like I need to go eat some bacon and eggs, just to restore order to the universe.

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To the layperson, there's something odd about physicists' search for (amongst many other things) a Grand Unified Theory, that unites the four fundamental forces into one elegant model.

Why do they think that there is such a theory?  Strange as it sounds, a lot of them say it's because having one force of the four (gravitation) not accounted for by the model, and requiring its own separate equations to explain, is "messy."  Or "inelegant."  Or -- most tellingly -- "ugly."

So, put simply; why do physicists have the tendency to think that for a theory to be true, it has to be elegant and beautiful?  Couldn't the universe just be chaotic and weird, with different facets of it obeying their own unrelated laws, with no unifying explanation to account for it all?

This is the question that physicist Sabine Hossenfelder addresses in her wonderful book Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physicists Astray.  She makes a bold statement; that this search for beauty and elegance in the mathematical models has diverted theoretical physics into untestable, unverifiable cul-de-sacs, blinding researchers to the reality -- the experimental evidence.

Whatever you think about whether the universe should obey aesthetically pleasing rules, or whether you're okay with weirdness and messiness, Hossenfelder's book will challenge your perception of how science is done.  It's a fascinating, fun, and enlightening read for anyone interested in learning about the arcane reaches of physics.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Pearls of wisdom

I swear, sometimes it seems like the universe is listening.  And laughing at me.

You may recall from Saturday's post, about people thinking that drinking distilled water can cure and/or kill you, that a few days previous I'd wondered what happened to all the alt-med woo-woos, that it seemed like we hadn't heard anything from them in a long while.  Then a loyal reader sent me the distilled water link, and I found out I was wrong.

But apparently pointing out that the quacks hadn't quacked in a long time has now opened the floodgates.  Because a different loyal reader sent me another link yesterday, this one worse than the distilled water one.

This site claims that there's a "herbal remedy" that -- and I promise I'm not making this up -- can be stuck into a woman's vagina to "detox the imprints left behind by her ex-boyfriend."

The product, which is called "Goddess Vaginal Detox Pearls," is a little lump of various herbs wrapped in a piece of cloth that supposedly can reduce menstrual cramps, increase libido, kill parasites, and "detox your ex."  The head of the company that sells these things, Vanessa White, explains that every time a woman has sex, the man leaves an imprint on her "yoni, womb, and uterus area."

The "pearls," she says, have a "vibrational energy" that can somehow sync up with the bad vibes left behind by your former lover and pull those out.  "I remove (insert person’s name) from my womb area during this cleanse," is what you're supposed to say, instead of what seems more reasonable to me, which is, "I wish like hell I had a higher IQ."

Oh, and you're supposed to leave the thing up there.  For days.

So, okay.  I have a few reactions to all of this, as follows:

• If having sex leaves a mark on your uterus, you're doing it wrong.
• The only "imprints" I can think of left behind from consensual sex are the possibilities of pregnancy and STDs, and I don't see the "Goddess Pearls" doing anything about those one way or the other.
• Sticking random, non-sterile objects into your various bodily orifices seems like a good way to end up with toxic shock syndrome.  I know I'm male, so my perspective on this might be a little off, but I think I'd prefer still having the vibrational energy frequencies of previous lovers hanging around than I would dying in horrible agony of TSS.
• If you have parasites in your vagina, you may want to see a doctor.
• "Ewwwww."

Worse still, you should read some of the comments left by reviewers.  Wait, cancel that; many of these reviews came with photographs, and despite being a biologist and relatively inured to gross stuff, I think I'm going to need some therapy to get over looking at them.  As I read along, my expression got closer and closer to this:

Women who have used these things have had burning pain, various sorts of discharge that I would prefer not even thinking about, and -- in at least two cases -- have lost pieces of their vaginal lining.

If that doesn't make you stay in a protective crouch for the rest of the day, you're made of sterner stuff than I am.  And that's even considering that, as aforementioned, I'm male.

But of course, there's the usual "this product is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure any medical condition" disclaimer, which apparently is meant to mean, "We can ask you to do any idiotic thing we want in the name of health and still get off scot-free.  We could ask you to stick cow shit up your nose.  We could ask you to stand on your head outside, stark naked, in the middle of January, and sing the National Anthem.  We could ask you to stare straight into the Sun to absorb its healing rays directly into your retinas.  And the reason we can do this is because: many of you would do it without question.  And afterwards, claim that the quantum vibrations of your auras were much improved or some fucking thing.  And then look around for the next 'cure' we're peddling."

So, yeah: if I haven't made the point clearly enough, (1) do not stick random stuff into your orifices unless you're sure they're sterile and won't burn your insides so bad your tissue starts sloughing off.  (2) Having consensual sex does not leave an imprint on your internal body parts.  And for cryin' in the sink, (3) please exercise a little critical thinking before you buy the latest thing from the alt-med gurus.

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In 1983, a horrific pair of murders of fifteen-year-old girls shook the quiet countryside of Leicestershire, England.  Police investigations came up empty-handed, and in the interim, people who lived in the area were in fear that there was a psychopath in their midst.

A young geneticist from the University of Leicestershire, Alec Jeffreys, stepped up with what he said could catch the murderer -- a new (at the time) technique called DNA fingerprinting.  He was able to extract a clear DNA signature from the bodies of the victims, but without a match -- without any one else's DNA to compare it to -- there was no way to use it to catch the criminal.

The way police and geneticists teamed up to catch an insane child killer is the subject of Joseph Wambaugh's book The Blooding.  It is an Edgar Award nominee, and is impossible to put down.  This case led to the now-commonplace use of DNA fingerprinting in forensics labs -- and its first application in a criminal trial makes for fascinating reading.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Foot bath cure

A few months ago, I wrote a post about a guy who claimed that all you need to do to purge your home of "negative energies" (whatever those are) is to place a glass of vinegar and salt on your windowsill.  Vinegar, which clearly has magical properties, will then de-negativize you and your house.

The whole thing made me wonder why you couldn't achieve the same effect with, say, a jar of pickles.

Anyhow, a couple of days ago, a good friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a link with the note, "Hey!  Here's something else you can do with vinegar!  I thought you'd want to know."

So I clicked the link, and was brought to the site Delishist, specifically to an article called "Soak Your Feet in Vinegar Once a Week, and You Will See How All of Your Diseases Disappear."

I am not, for the record, making the name of this article up.

My first thought, of course, was, "All your diseases?  Like, if you have a brain tumor and Parkinson's disease and narcolepsy simultaneously, you can get rid of all of them by soaking your feet in vinegar?  That can't possibly be what they mean."

But yes, that is in fact what they mean.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Sander van der Wel from Netherlands, (391-365) Relaxing in bath (6427571119), CC BY-SA 2.0]

It will at this point be unsurprising to any of you that the whole thing revolves around "toxins."  What these specific toxins are, we're never told.  Maybe it's elemental mercury.  Maybe it's DDT.  Maybe it's battery acid.  Maybe it's all three at once.  In any case, we're led to believe that whatever they are, they're bad, and not only can't your body get rid of them by itself, there's no way to take them out except through your feet.

Which seems to me a little odd.  Why the feet?  Could I, if I wanted to, soak my ass in vinegar?  (Let me state for the record that I don't want to.  But my question stands.)  I mean, the human ass is much more directly connected to the process of getting rid of stuff we don't want in our body, although to be fair, the gluteus maximus muscle that makes up most of it has very little to do with it.

So I'm baffled as to why the feet are what we should be soaking.  Maybe it's because the feet are generally below the head, and toxins are heavy, or something.

In any case, here's how the authors explains the process:

You can also use ionic foot bath to detoxify your body from toxins.  This bath is based on electrolysis, which is a method that uses electrical current to make a chemical reaction.  You should use warm water to open your pores and salt is used as an anti-inflammatory astringent. Ions are absorbed through the feet and your body is getting a detox.  If the salt water becomes dark, that means you are eliminating toxins from your body.

Okay, so the basic principle is ions = good, and toxins = bad.  Got it.

But what about ions that are toxic?  Like the cyanide ion, for example?  I don't care what Delishist says, I'm not soaking my feet in cyanide.

And they're right about the definition of electrolysis, but the problem is, combining it with a vinegar foot bath would be a seriously bad idea.  Another thing I'm not going to do is stand in a tub of vinegar and then run an electric current through it and/or me.  Yes, it'd generate some serious ionage.  The downside, however, is called "electrocution."

The website also suggests soaking in a bath to which you've added ginger and hydrogen peroxide.  This is yet another thing I'm not going to do.  First of all, wouldn't that bleach your pubic hair?  I mean, it's fine if that's the look you're after, but I thought I'd mention it.  Another, and more serious, problem is that hydrogen peroxide works as an antiseptic because it kills nearly everything it touches, and given long enough, that would include your skin.  I know a guy who used peroxide on a cut, but it stayed open, and he decided it was infected, so he kept applying more and more peroxide.  Within a week he'd turned a minor cut into a gaping wound -- not from infection, but because he was putting something on it that was killing his own tissue.  So applying peroxide to my entire body, including my sensitive bits, sounds to me like a seriously bad idea.

So thanks anyhow, but I'll pass on soaking my feet in vinegar.  I find that washing them periodically keeps them relatively clean, and as for "getting rid of toxins," my liver and kidneys are perfectly capable of that.  My advice is to go back to using vinegar for making pickles, because a lot of the other stuff it's supposed to be good for is USDA Grade-A horseshit.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a classic, and especially for you pet owners: Konrad Lorenz's Man Meets Dog.  In this short book, the famous Austrian behavioral scientist looks at how domestic dogs interact, both with each other and with their human owners.  Some of his conjectures about dog ancestry have been superseded by recent DNA studies, but his behavioral analyses are spot-on -- and will leaving you thinking more than once, "Wow.  I've seen Rex do that, and always wondered why."

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Eat like a werewolf

I'm sure that by now all of you have heard of the "Paleo Diet," that claims the path to better health comes from eating like a cave man (or woman, as the case may be) -- consuming only foods that would have been eaten by our distant ancestors living on the African savanna.  The "Paleo Diet," therefore, includes grass-fed meat (cow is okay if you can't find gazelle), eggs, fish, root vegetables, fruits, nuts, and mushrooms.  Not included are dairy products (being that domestication of cattle and goats was post-cave-man), potatoes, salt, sugar, and refined oils.

Despite gaining some traction, especially amongst athletes and bodybuilders, the "Paleo Diet" has been looked upon with a wry eye by actual dieticians.  A survey of experts in the field, sponsored by CNN, placed the "Paleo Diet" as dead last in terms of support from peer-reviewed research and efficacy at promoting healthy weight loss.

But the "Paleo Diet" will sound like quantum physics, technical-science-wise, as compared to the latest diet poised to take the world of poorly-educated woo-woos by storm:

The "Werewolf Diet."

I wish I were making this up.  I also wish, for different reasons, that it was what it sounded like -- that people who sign up find themselves, once a month, sprouting fur and fangs and running around naked and eating unsuspecting hikers. That, at least, would be entertaining.

[Image is in the Public Domain]

But no such luck.  The Werewolf Diet, however, does resemble being an actual werewolf in that (1) what you get to eat is tied to the phases of the moon, (2) it more or less ruins your health, and (3) it completely fucks up any chance at a normal social life.

The site "Moon Connection" describes the whole thing in great detail, but they make a big point of their stuff being copyrighted material, so I'll just summarize so that you get the gist:

You have two choices, the "basic plan" or the "extended plan."  On the "basic plan," you fast for 24 hours, either on the full moon or the new moon.  You can, they say, "lose up to six pounds of water weight" by doing this, but why this is a good thing isn't clear.

The "extended plan," though, is more interesting.  With the "extended plan," you fast during the full moon, then eat a fairly normal diet during the waning part of the moon cycle (with the addition of drinking eight glasses of water a day to "flush out toxins").  On the new moon, you should fast again, only consuming dandelion tea or green tea (more toxin flushing).  During the waxing part of the moon cycle, you must be "disciplined" to fight your "food cravings," and avoid overeating.   "Thickeners," such as sugar and fats, should be avoided completely, and you can't eat anything after six PM because that's when the moon's light "becomes more visible."

Then you hit the full moon and it all starts over again.

Well, let me just say that this ranks right up there with "downloadable medicines" as one of the dumbest things I have ever read.  We have the whole "flushing toxins" bullshit -- as if your kidneys and liver aren't capable of dealing with endogenous toxic compounds, having evolved for millions of years to do just that.  We're told, as if it's some sort of revelation, that our "food cravings will increase" after we've been consuming nothing but green tea for 24 hours.  Then we are informed that the moon's gravitational pull has an effect on us, because we're 60% water -- implying that your bloodstream experiences high tide, or something.  But contrary to anything Newton would have had to say about the matter, the gravitational pull the moon exerts upon you somehow depends on the phase it's in, because, apparently, the angle of the light reflecting from the moon's surface, with respect to the position of the Earth, mysteriously alters its mass.

I mean, I'm not a dietician, but really.  And fortunately, there are dieticians who agree.  Keri Gans, a professional dietician and author of "The Small Change Diet," said in an interview, "This diet makes me laugh.  I don’t know if it’s the name or that people will actually believe it.  Either way, it is nothing but another fad diet encouraging restriction.  Restriction of food will of course lead to weight loss, but at what cost to the rest of your body?  If only celebrities, once and for all, would start touting a diet plan that makes sense and is based on science."

Yes.  If only.  But unfortunately, fewer people have heard of Gans, and (evidently) the scientific method, than have heard of Madonna and Demi Moore, who swear by the Werewolf Diet.  Not that Moore, especially, is some kind of pinnacle of rationality; she is a devotee of Philip Berg's "Kabbalah Centre," which preaches that "99% of reality cannot be accessed by the senses."

Nor, apparently, by logic and reason.

Interestingly enough, today is a full moon, meaning that today we're all supposed to be fasting.  To which I answer: the hell you say.  I'm off to get some coffee, bacon, and eggs. Detoxify that, buddy.

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This week's book recommendation is the biography of one of the most inspirational figures in science; the geneticist Barbara McClintock.  A Feeling for the Organism by Evelyn Fox Keller not only explains to the reader McClintock's groundbreaking research into how transposable elements ("jumping genes") work, but is a deft portrait of a researcher who refused to accept no for an answer.  McClintock did her work at a time when few women were scientists, and even fewer were mavericks who stood their ground and went against the conventional paradigm of how things are.  McClintock was one -- and eventually found the recognition she deserved for her pioneering work with a Nobel Prize.

Black coffee

Thanks to a friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia, I now have an even lower opinion of humanity than I did before.

It's not the first time this has happened, of course, and won't be the last.  It's kind of an occupational hazard when your daily task is to comb the interwebz for crazy woo-woo ideas.  But this one is kind of in a league of its own.

Or maybe I'm just fed up.

The claim I'm referring to is that now we're being told that if you want to be healthy, you need to drink a charcoal latté.

I'm not making this up.  A recipe I saw -- and there are apparently dozens -- includes coffee, cashew milk (can't use dairy products), date syrup (can't use sugar), and powdered activated charcoal, to make "the chicest drink on the market."  Myself, I have a hard time imagining how this wouldn't taste like licking a barbecue grill that had been drizzled with honey, but chacun à son goût.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Thus far, all we have is a weird new food craze, not inherently weirder than Fireball-flavored bagels and ice cream sundaes topped with chili-coated grasshoppers.  What makes the charcoal latté claim stand out is that the people pushing it are not only claiming it tastes good, but that it will "detox" you.

So we're adding a nice dollop of quack alternative medicine to our morning unusually black coffee.  As I've pointed out maybe 397 times before, if you are healthy, there is absolutely no need to "detox" because your kidneys and liver are "detoxing" you just fine as you sit there.  Plus, the whole thing is based on vague and poorly-understood science anyhow; I have never found a single person recommending "detox" who could name a specific toxin that the procedure eliminates, much less one that wasn't being eliminated naturally via your excretory system.

It gets worse, though, because here we're not talking about adding ground-up organic papaya seeds and Mongolian yak milk to your coffee; we're talking about activated charcoal, a substance with a legitimate medical purpose -- it is used in cases of poisoning to absorb toxic substances from a person's digestive tract.  Or an animal's, which I know because of our border collie Doolin, who ate a dozen exquisite and expensive chocolate truffles after swiping them from the kitchen counter, and had to have activated charcoal forced down her throat, following which she puked up charcoal and partially-digested chocolate all over the back seat of my wife's brand-new Mini Cooper.

It's moments like this that I question why anyone in their right mind would own a dog.

But I digress.

The reason the activated charcoal thing is a terrible idea is that it is absorptive -- not only of toxins you may have inadvertently swallowed, but of biologically-active substances of all sorts.  Such as any medications you may take.  So in an ill-advised attempt to flush unspecified and most likely nonexistent toxins from your body, you stand a good chance of binding and inactivating your medicines.

I.e., substances you're taking because they've been prescribed by someone who actually understands organic chemistry and human physiology.

So my recommendation: have at it with the chili-coated grasshoppers, but avoid the charcoal lattés.  I feel ridiculous even having to say this, but apparently it's become a "thing," and once someone is a "thing," you know that all the trend geeks are just going to have to try it.  Which, I suppose, is just another example of natural selection in action.

The best part of waking up...

Ah, the early morning.  All is quiet, so it's time to put on the coffee, look forward to a nice hot cup of joe.  Because there's nothing better at this time of day than a dark French roast...

... which, I must state for the record, I would prefer to take by mouth.

The reason I have to specify is, unsurprisingly, because of noted scientific researcher Gwyneth Paltrow, who is now selling a device for $135 whereby you can get your morning coffee squirted up your ass instead.

For what it's worth, I'm not making this up, although I sure as hell wish I was.  The device, called the "Implant-O-Rama" (didn't make the name up either, I swear), is basically just a glass bottle with some silicone tubing.  So I can think of a great many other better uses for $135, and that includes using it to start a fire in my wood stove.

It will probably not shock you to hear that this is all in the name of "detoxification."  A coffee enema is supposed to "detoxify your blood," which should only be a concern if your liver and kidneys aren't working properly.  (And if this is the case, you need to see a doctor immediately, not put your morning Starbucks where the sun don't shine.)

[image courtesy of photographer Julius Schorzman and the Wikimedia Commons]

Why coffee, you might be asking?  Why not orange juice or iced tea or Snapple or Mountain Dew?  The answer: I have no fucking clue.  My guess is that Gwyneth Paltrow doesn't know, either.  If you asked her, she'd probably tell you it had to do with the quantum resonant frequencies of your chakras or something.  But we haven't worried about explanations from her before, so why start now?

At this point it will also come as no particular surprise that people have injured themselves administering coffee enemas.  Emergency rooms have reported colon inflammation, perforated rectums, sepsis, and blood electrolyte imbalances from people doing this to themselves, including at least two people who died of the aftereffects.  Then there were a couple of cases where people suffered severe internal burns, since folks who are stupid enough to squirt random liquids up their ass are evidently also stupid enough not to wait until said liquids are cool.

What's wryly funny about all this is the list of things they say a coffee enema can cure.  Implant-O-Rama, says the website, “can mean relief from depression, confusion, general nervous tension, many allergy related symptoms and, most importantly, relief from severe pain.  Coffee enemas lower serum toxins.”

If it gets rid of confusion, you have to wonder why people in the middle of a coffee enema don't suddenly frown and say, "Wait.  Why do I have a tube up my ass?  This is idiotic."

And about relief from severe pain -- I guess getting scalding hot coffee up your backside would take your mind off any pain you're experiencing elsewhere, just as smashing your toe with a hammer makes you temporarily forget you've got a headache.

Then, of course, we have the disclaimer:

The information contained in these pages and on this website is not intended to replace your medical doctor.  This information has not been evaluated or approved by the FDA and is not necessarily based on scientific evidence from any source...  These products are intended to support general well-being and are not intended to treat, diagnose, mitigate, prevent, or cure any condition or disease.

"Not intended to mitigate any condition?"  So what the fuck does "relief from depression etc. etc. etc." mean to you?

The whole thing is kind of maddening, but even more maddening than the idea that hucksters are trying to bilk you out of your hard-earned cash (that, after all, is what hucksters do) is the fact that there are bunches of people just kind of nod and go, "Oh.  Okay."  It apparently never occurs to them to ask how the hell a coffee enema could help you, or even to ask the person making the claim to name one specific toxic substance the body produces that your liver and kidneys are incapable of handling.

So anyway.  My general advice is "just don't."  There's a good reason that the slogan doesn't go, "The best part of waking up is Folger's up your butt."  There's nothing wrong with a good cup of coffee in the morning, but please put it into the correct orifice.

Canine crystals

Given the upsurge of woo-woo alternative medicine in the last thirty years or so, I suppose it was only a matter of time before people begin recommending this nonsense for pets.

This comes up because of an article a loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a couple of days ago.  It's from the website Dogs Naturally, and it's called "5 Healing Crystals to Help Your Dog."  Right in the opening paragraph, we hear about how important it is to keep your mind open about such things:

Shifting your thinking from conventional to natural can be freeing but at the same time overwhelming.  You’re opening up a whole new world of possibilities to wellness and healing.  Many healing modalities are pushed aside as being unscientific, unreliable, or ineffective, primarily because they are not embraced by conventional medicine or don’t have a long history of clinical trials.

Of course!  Who needs things like clinical trials?  Silly, silly medical researchers.

The thing is, it's not that I'm averse to suggestions with regards to pet care.  I have two dogs who certainly could use some help.  First, there's Grendel, who looks like a canine genetics experiment gone horribly wrong.  He appears to be the result of an unholy union between a pug and a German shepherd, with possibly a little bit of pit bull thrown in just to make things more interesting.

The guy who came up with the term "hang-dog expression" had Grendel in mind.  Grendel always has this forlorn look on his face, like he's in the depths of depression, or possibly simply wants more doggy kibble than we gave him and therefore has no option other than to ponder how unfair the universe is.

Then, on the other end of the spectrum, there's Lena.

Lena is eternally cheerful, never stops wagging her tail, and has the IQ of a prune.  This is the dog who stared at our Christmas tree for hours on end, over a period of about three weeks, because we'd put a stuffed toy at the top as a tree-topper, and her lone functioning brain cell decided it was a squirrel who was going to Do Something Interesting.  The fact that it never moved did not dissuade her in the least.  She was, I believe, absolutely convinced that she had to remain vigilant, because if her attention wavered for one second the stuffed toy was going to scamper down the tree and get away.

So you have to wonder what kind of crystals I could use for these two.  The article is clear that I should give it a try, though:

Crystals, just like herbs, flower essences, and essential oils have incredible effects on healing in the body.  Often not understood by conventional medicine practitioners, crystals are helpful tools to bring about balance and wellness, without concern of causing harm.

So that sounds promising.  But how will I know if I'm choosing the right crystal?  The author, Brenda Utzerath, has some concrete suggestions:

Introduce the crystal to your dog by holding it in your hand or placing it in front of him letting him smell and investigate.  Be careful he doesn’t take it in his mouth and try to eat it.

This would certainly be a possibility with Grendel, who is prone to eating anything that is even vaguely food-like.

Give him plenty of time to check out this new thing.  Watch for indications of interest like softening eyes that look as if he is in a daze or ready to fall asleep, moving a paw or rolling onto the crystal, drooling or dripping from the nose, and an overall sense of delight.  If he shows interest, set this crystal aside as a “yes.”  If he seems to be more interested in playing with the crystal or shows no interest at all set it aside as a “no” – at least for now.

The problem is, Grendel looks sleepy and sad pretty much all the time, and Lena expresses exuberant delight even when she's in the vet's office getting her rabies vaccination.  So I'm not sure that their reaction to a crystal would tell me all that much.

Be that as it may, we're then told that when the dog has selected the correct crystal, the best thing to do is to put it under his bed, or into a little pouch to hang from his collar.

As far as some good ones to try, Utzerath suggests clear quartz, amethyst, amber, black tourmaline, and selenite.  Selenite, for example, has "a very fine vibration" which means that it can be used to "clear confusion."  So that's probably the best one for Lena, for whom confusion is pretty much a state of being.  I'm thinking of amber for Grendel, because it's "calming and energizing," and brings "a sense of calm and positivity," which is certainly preferable to the existential angst he seems to suffer from most of the time.  We're also told that amber is good for "detoxifying your dog," a topic that is dealt with on a whole different webpage, wherein we find out about how Chemicals Are Bad.  We're told, for example, that vaccines contain mercury and aluminum that are "like a nuclear bomb hitting the nervous system."  We also learn that GMOs "damage virtually every organ," that all prescription drugs and agricultural chemicals are fat-soluble, and that everything from hypothyroidism to inflammation is caused by "toxins."

So all in all, I'd honestly prefer the crystals.  At least there's no mistaking the fact that crystal energies are unscientific bullshit.

My general reaction is that all things considered, my dogs are doing well enough.  They're both nine years old, and their last checkups resulted in a clean bill of health for both of them.  (Although Grendel could stand to lose some weight, which would be easier if he'd stop sneaking into the laundry room and snarfing up the cat's food.)  I'm guessing that any changes I'd see in their overall demeanor from waving amethyst crystals around would come from the fact that they'd think I was playing some weird new game with them, which would elicit enthusiastic and joyful tail-wagging from Lena, and Grendel's mood improving from "dejected" to "glum."

So I probably won't even run the experiment.  I'll wait until they come up with a modality for treating cats, because my 18-year-old decrepit cat Geronimo has a personality imported directly from the Ninth Circle of Hell, and it'd be interesting to see if there's anything we could do about that other than an exorcism.

Toxic waste

If there's one word related to health issues that makes me cringe, it's the word "toxin."

This term gets thrown around all the time.  I was given a gift card for a massage for my last birthday (which was wonderful, by the way), and afterwards, the masseuse told me that I needed to drink lots of water that day because the massage had "loosened up toxins" and I needed to drink a lot to "flush them from my system."  Just a couple of weeks ago, I was buying some fresh turmeric root at a local organic grocery, and a lady smiled at me in a friendly sort of way, and said, "Oooh, turmeric!  It's wonderful at detoxifying the body!"

What gets me about the use of "toxin" and "detoxify" is that the people who use those terms so seldom have any idea about what particular toxins they're talking about.  If I was just a wee bit more obnoxious than I am -- an eventuality no one should wish for -- I would have said to the masseuse and the lady in the grocery, "Can you name one specific chemical that massage and/or turmeric releases in my body that I need to be concerned about?"

Chances are, of course, they would not have been able to; even in supposedly informative articles in health magazines, they're just lumped together as "toxins."  The word has become a stand-in for unspecified "really bad stuff" that we need to fret about even though no one seems all that sure what it is.

And then buy whatever silly detox remedy the writer of the article suggests.

This all comes up because of an article I read in Science-Based Medicine called "Activated Charcoal: The Latest Detox Fad in an Obsessive Food Culture," by Scott Gavura.  In it, we hear about people dosing themselves with activated charcoal as a "detox" or "cleanse," because evidently our liver and kidneys -- evolved over millions of years to deal with all sorts of unpleasant metabolic wastes -- are insufficient to protect us.

No, you need "activated charcoal lemonade."

I wish I was making this up, but no.  People actually are adding gritty, pitch-black charcoal to their lemonade, in order to make it "soak up toxins."

The problem here, as Gavura points out, is that activated charcoal is used in detoxification, so there's that kernel of truth in all of the nonsense.  Actual detoxification, I mean, not this pseudoscientific fad-medicine horseshit; detoxification of the sort done in cases of poisoning.  I know this first hand, because of an incident involving a border collie named Doolin that we once had.  My wife and I had visited northern California, and dropped by the wonderful Mendocino Chocolate Company, makers of what are clearly the best chocolate truffles in the entire world.  We bought a dozen truffles of various sorts and brought them home with us, babying them through our travels during high summer.  We got them home successfully, and on the first day back...

... Doolin pulled the box off the counter and ate all twelve chocolate truffles.

As you undoubtedly know, chocolate is highly poisonous to dogs, so off Doolin went to the vet to get a (real) detoxification.  One of the things they did was feed her activated charcoal.  We found this out because on the way back home from the vet, Doolin puked up charcoal all over the back seat of my wife's brand-new Mini Cooper.

Doolin survived the chocolate incident, although she almost didn't survive our reaction to (1) the thousand-dollar vet bill, (2) black doggie puke all over the new car upholstery, and worst of all, (3) not getting our chocolates.  But she went on to live another six healthy years, thanks to modern veterinary science.

But I digress.

So charcoal does have its uses.  But you're not accomplishing anything by adding it to lemonade, except perhaps (as Gavura writes) having the charcoal absorb nutrients from your digestive tract, making whatever food you're eating less nutritious.  Because charcoal, of course, isn't selective about what it absorbs -- it'll absorb damn near anything, including vitamins and other essential nutrients.

Facts don't seem to matter much to the alt-med crowd, however, and now there's charcoal everywhere.  Over at the webzine Into the Gloss, writer Victoria Lewis tells us about taste-testing a bunch of different charcoal drinks, and her analysis includes the following insightful paragraph about "Juice Generation Activated Greens":

I decided to drink this ultra-vegetable-filled (kale, spinach, celery, parsley, romaine, and cucumber) juice for breakfast. It tasted exactly like a super green juice—a little salty but otherwise, totally normal. I did end up eating some granola afterwards (juice diets have never been for me), but this one felt good and extremely healthy.

Which, right there, sums up the whole approach.  Screw medical research; if consuming some weird new supplement "feels good and extremely healthy," then it must be getting rid of all those bad old toxins, or something, even if it tastes like vaguely lemon-flavored fireplace scrapings.  It's all about the buzzwords, the hype, and the feelings -- not about anything remotely related to hard evidence.

But of course, since now we have renowned nutritionalists like Gwyneth Paltrow getting on board, the whole "charcoal juice cleanse" thing is going to take off amongst people with more money than sense.

Makes me feel like I need to go eat some bacon and eggs, just to restore order to the universe.

Cures for vaccination

It's with a strange twinge of conscience that I'm writing today about an alt-med woo-woo claim that I don't think we should challenge.

It popped up on the website BabyCenter Community a couple of weeks ago, but apparently has been gaining ground since then, showing up on Facebook, Twitter, and websites devoted to anti-vaxx and holistic medicine.

The claim: putting a clay plaster on a vaccination after you get back from the doctor's office will "draw out the vaccine."

The first place I saw this -- the website linked above -- posed it as a question, where it received the following answers:

It helps to pull some of the toxins back out.  Not all though.

 

apparently it is possible to remove all vaccines, infiremiere [sic] should be a day in their vaccines in order to work in a hospital, she made all her vaccination and immediately after the injection, she had everything prepare in advance, she it [sic] absorb the vaccine in his car

with a homeopath here in France It can remove inject vaccine long ago, as soon as I have more information I will send you

One person did say that it wouldn't work, that vaccines are irreversible; but another, much more authoritative respondent came back with the following:

Hello,

For mandatory vaccines that nobody escapes, there is indeed the clay poultice can reabsorb the "poison" from his injection. The method is as follows:

You buy a clay tube (health food stores) and you present to vaccination equipped with this tube, gauze and tape. Once the vaccine was injected, you go to the toilet and you put a thick layer of clay on the vaccine + gauze + tape. Keep this poultice for 2 hours and the vaccine will be almost completely absorbed by the clay.

Upon returning home, you take the natural vitamin C (Acerola C, for example) or magnesium chloride (pharmacy: A bag of 20 grams dissolved in one liter of water and take 1 glass morning, afternoon and evening up. 'to exhaustion of a liter).

So I was reading this, and I was thinking... maybe it's better we let them think this is true.

After all, then the kids will be vaccinated and protected from disease, decreasing the likelihood of outbreaks of preventable diseases; and the adults will conclude that they've won, that they fooled us silly ol' skeptics and scientists, and in consequence, they'll shut up about it and stop trying to fight mandatory vaccination laws.

So, maybe there is a time that it's better to let the woo-woos continue in their beliefs, especially when one particular woo-woo belief cancels out the ill effects of another one.

But I do say this with some degree of guilty feelings.  Because, after all, the whole approach of a skeptic should be to follow wherever the evidence leads, to try to promote clear thinking and the scientific approach for one and all, and in any situation where the scientific approach applies.

Here, though... maybe we should let them have their clay poultices and acerola detox cleanses and homeopathic anti-vaccine remedies.  Let 'em think they've beaten the system.

And hope like hell that their children grow up to understand science better than the parents did.

Homeopathic chemtrail remedies

Following on the heels of my post yesterday regarding how much smarter and saner the conspiracy theorists are than us skeptics, today we will take a look at: homeopathic anti-chemtrail spray.

Yes, folks, guaranteed to "alleviate symptoms of chemtrail exposure," this homeopathic preparation (i.e. a bottle of water) is to be sprayed up the nose "until symptoms disappear."

At first, I thought this had to be a joke.  Or, at least, unique.  Surely no one else would come up with the idea of using worthless remedies for nonexistent chemtrail exposure.

I was wrong.

Check out, for example, ChemBuster.  The website starts out by asking a very important question, namely: "Have you experienced symptoms of unknown origin?"  Because if you had "chronic fatigue," "chronic pain," "chronic headaches," or "mental and emotional problems," there could only be one answer:

The government is putting chemicals into jet fuel, so that when the jet fuel is burned, the chemicals are dispersed over the unsuspecting citizenry, where they are inhaled and cause you to feel crummy.

So who you gonna call?  ChemBuster!

ChemBuster contains 4 herbals and 9 homeopathics blended in a proprietary process designed to defeat, to annihilate, the pools of mycoplasma, heavy metals, respiratory problems and even mental problems associated with Chemtrail poisoning.

But ChemBuster has to be "activated" before use.  How do you activate it?  By purchasing an "orgone energy generator," setting the bottle next to it, and turning it on, which will "potentiate" it, increasing its strength by a factor of ten (following the mathematical principle that 10 x 0 = 0).

At this point, I should mention that the "orgone energy generator" uses the power of gemstones to "collect, concentrate, transmute and radiate all ambient subtle energy into life force," and that the person who came up with the idea of "orgone," Wilhelm Reich, believed that it was the "life energy" that was released suddenly during an orgasm.  I'm not making this up, by the way.  So here we have a claim that combines four ridiculous ideas -- homeopathy + chemtrails + gemstone energies + orgone.

Which may be a new record.

Now, if you don't want to buy homeopathic remedies and orgone energy generators to combat chemtrails, there could be a cheaper solution, namely: a spray bottle filled with vinegar.  Once again, I feel obliged to state outright that I'm not making this up.  Last year, we had a claim going around that was given some momentum by such pinnacles of rationality as Alex Jones and Jeff Rense, stating that if you were worried about the government dousing you with chemicals, all you had to do to "cleanse the air" was to spray some vinegar up toward the sky.  So people did it, because of course there never is an idea so completely idiotic that there won't be large quantities of people who will believe it.  Here is one explanation, if I can dignify it with that word (spelling and grammar as written, because you can only write "sic" so many times):

Vinegar does a lot as a support to our orgone devices. Why ? Reason is pretty simple:

It is all about the electrical charge of the atmosphere. Fellow gifters all around the world were trying to figure out how it is possible, that such cheap and funky substance, as vinegar, is delivering such spectacular effects on the chemtrail-rich atmosphere. Here is the simple explanation:

During the chemtrail attack, atmosphere is charged with a lots of positive ionts. Well, and dispersed vinegar is charging the atmosphere with negative ionts.

TRY IT YOURSELF. If you see the chemtrail attack in your sector is going on -  buy a liter or two of the vinegar, and disperse it on the asphalt surface of the road (it is the best platform for the vinegar to go up to the sky). Or throw black T-Shirt into the vinegar and leave it on the sunlight.  

Vinegar begins AT ONCE to vapor to the sky, and sky is getting charged with the negative ionts by very aggresive chain reaction. Within maximally ONE HOUR you will get the results.

Yup.  Using a "funky substance" to fight "positive ionts" from "chemtrail attack in your sector."  Gotcha.

And lest you think that this explanation was immediately laughed into oblivion, I read the comments, without even putting on my anti-stupidity protective eyewear, and immediately came across one that read, "The idea of countering thousand dollars of chemtrail with cheap vinegar is very apealing [sic].  I'll try it. Must be very humiliating to them."

Ah, yes, them.  Those evil guys who are chemtrailing the hell out of us.  You know, I think that's the thing I understand the least about all of this; if the Illuminati in the government are dousing the skies with chemicals via jet contrails, and those contrails can be seen every day from damn near any spot in the United States, why don't we see all of the government employees walking around wearing big ol' respirators?  No, they're breathing the same air that we unsuspecting sheeple are.  So are the families of the government employees.  Everyone, pretty much, is breathing the same air, Illuminati and sheeple alike, and it seems that only the sheeple are affected?

Oh, wait, I forgot.  The government employees are Reptilian aliens, and they're immune.  Duh.

So, there you have it.  Using homeopathy, crystals, orgasmic energy, and vinegar to fight the chemtrails created by the llluminati.  I really think they should find a way to work in astrology, chakras, and the planet Nibiru, which would create a perfect storm of woo-woo quantum psychic vibrations, raising us to the next level of enlightenment.

On the other hand, I'm probably not ready for that.  Just let me stay unenlightened for the time being, at least until I recover from the forehead bruises I got from all of the headdesks I did while researching this post.

Saunas, health, and half-truths

One of the difficulties in identifying woo-woo claims is that they are seldom pure, unadulterated pseudoscience.

The reason for this is that most people have at least a rudimentary background in science.  A purely woo-woo claim -- for example, that a mystic can look in her crystal ball and see the future -- inevitably generates the question, "how on earth can you do that?"  Falling back on the old answer of "because I am a psychic who is in touch with the unseen world" will only convince people who already think psychic claims are valid.  You will convince more people, and therefore sell more of what you're peddling, if you can mix in some science-y words and half-truths, leaving people to have to tease apart the claim and figure out what is real and what is bogus.

All too often, it takes more scientific training than the average person has in order to do that.  Which, of course, is what the purveyor of said woo-woo claim is hoping.

I ran into an especially good example of that just yesterday, with this website advertising the "Photon Genius Energy Infrared Sauna."  Here's the pitch:

The Photon-Genius is a dynamic energy sauna that provides more direct and targeted harmonic energy infrared (including full spectrum) than any infrared sauna in the world.

This combination importantly helps the body produce more nitric oxide (NO), the "miracle molecule" which helps preserve the elasticity of all the vessels in the body, because it is a "signaling molecule" that tells the blood vessels to increase in width or dilate. This has significant implications, because optimal blood circulation is a key factor in virtually all health issues, including Heart Disease, Alzheimers, Diabetes, Cancer, Obesity, Arthritis, Anti-Aging, ect. [sic]

For many, the biggest news about the Photon-Genius is its application in the evolving science of detoxification. At home and in clinics, the Photon-Genius infrared sauna is said to yield many benefits--including relief from different kinds of pain; stimulation of immune response; improvement in skin tone and conditions such as burns, eczema and acne; and the accelerated burning calories. But the detox application is health news that can benefit everyone. 

The Photon-Genius promotes energetic balance and coherence. Fully functional coherence of the biofield is the new and most comprehensive definition of anti-aging therapy, born out of quantum physics. When quantum coherence is restored to the biofield, the healing power of the body is now known to be literally limitless, dwarfing the benefits of any mere biochemical manipulation.

Which seems like a good place to start.

First of all, all saunas are "infrared saunas."  Infrared radiation is given off by any hot object, and when absorbed, is converted into heat.  So adding the word "infrared" is kind of like calling a light bulb an "electromagnetic-radiation-producing incandescent light bulb."  It's true, but redundant.

In the trade, though, there is a distinction.  What differs between an "infrared sauna" and an ordinary one is that infrared saunas use some sort of infrared emitter, and an ordinary one uses heated stones to warm the air -- but the result is the same.  You get hot, and sweat a lot.

So, what about the claims that saunas are beneficial to health?

According to an article by Dr. Brent Bauer of the Mayo Clinic, the answer is yes, maybe:

Several studies have looked at using infrared saunas in the treatment of chronic health problems, such as high blood pressure, congestive heart failure and rheumatoid arthritis, and found some evidence of benefit. However, larger and more-rigorous studies are needed to confirm these results.

On the other hand, no adverse effects have been reported with infrared saunas.

So that sounds good.

How about the whole nitric oxide thing?  The answer here appears to be that it's a half-truth:

In mammals including humans, NO is an important cellular signaling molecule involved in many physiological and pathological processes. It is a powerful vasodilator with a short half-life of a few seconds in the blood. Long-known pharmaceuticals such as nitroglycerine and amyl nitrite were discovered, more than a century after their first use in medicine, to be active through the mechanism of being precursors to nitric oxide.

Low levels of nitric oxide production are important in protecting organs such as the liver from ischemic damage.

So nitric oxide is a critical intercellular signal, and is an intermediary in a great many biological reaction mechanisms.  One interesting one is that being a vasodilator, if you get a boost of nitric oxide in the right place at the right time, it can trigger an erection -- this, in fact, is how Viagra works.

Whether that qualifies it as a "miracle molecule" is, I suppose, a matter of perspective.

As far as the connection between saunas, nitric oxide, and health, the answer (once again) is... maybe.  A study at Kagoshima University in Japan looked at the vasodilation effects of saunas in hamsters with cardiomyopathy, and found some positive effects.  Here's their conclusion:

Repeated sauna therapy increases eNOS [endothelial nitric oxide synthase] expression and NO production in cardiomyopathic hamsters with heart failure.

So if you have heart failure, a sauna might be helpful, especially if you're a hamster.  Virtually all of the other sources I found linking saunas, health, and nitric oxide were websites that were trying to sell saunas.

What about the claims that saunas aid in "detoxification?"  You hear that word a lot, especially on alt-med websites.  Particular herbs, foods, exercises, colon cleansing, or other practices help to "rid your body of toxins," as if your liver and kidneys aren't perfectly capable of dealing with whatever toxic metabolic byproducts your body creates.  Here's what the Skeptic's Dictionary has to say about detoxification:

Outside of being treated for poisoning or certain kinds of addiction, the word 'detox' has no meaning, according to a pamphlet published by a group of thirty-six people calling itself Sense About Science (SAS). (A summary of the group's findings may be found on their website.) There are thousands of products that use the claim of detoxification as their main selling point. SAS investigated 15 representative products and found that none of the products identified a single toxic substance as one their product removed, none of the manufacturers of the products could provide compelling scientific evidence that the product removes toxic substances, none of the sellers had a clue what the products actually do, and nobody involved in making or selling these detox products could provide a comprehensive definition of 'detox.'

So that one, predictably, is a bust.

Then, at the end, the claim rushes headlong into pure woo-woo nonsense.  "Restoring quantum coherence to the biofield," my ass.  I would like to sit down with whoever wrote this and ask if (s)he can define the term "quantum coherence" in a rigorous way, and to have him/her provide me with some evidence of the existence of a "biofield."

I'm guessing it would be a really short conversation.

Anyway, you get the idea.  In order to pull apart the strands of the sales pitch here would take hours of research -- it took me over an hour just to do the digging for the admittedly shallow analysis I've done here.   Some truth; some half-truth; some misleading facts; some complete, unadulterated bullshit.  Most people, frankly, don't have the time, energy, or training to evaluate critically a claim such as this one -- and when you couple that with a promise that the product is going to alleviate all manner of chronic health problems (this site claims that the "Photon Genius Energy Infrared Sauna" can help with everything from Alzheimer's to HIV), you have a recipe for people spending a lot of money for something with benefits that are, at best, unproven.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I like saunas, and find them relaxing.  A nice sit in a sauna after a hard workout is one of the most pleasant things I can think of, especially if it's the middle of winter.  And the positive health effects of relaxation are pretty clear.  (Although I draw the line at the behavior of a friend of mine, who likes to alternate baking in the sauna with rolling around naked in the snow.  "Let's make anatomically correct snow angels!", I remember him suggesting one time.  To which I responded: there are parts of my body I would rather not freeze off, thank you very much.)

But using bogus claims and half-truths to sell a product is unethical at best -- especially when it's framed in such a way as to make the layperson unable to tell if what they're reading is scientifically sound or not.

I feel pretty

A friend of mine recently sent me a link about beauty treatments.  She wasn't, I think, trying to give me any sort of unsubtle suggestion about my need to use such products.  The reason she thought of me was that the world of cosmetics is no longer a simple matter of cleansers, scents, and body paints of various sorts.  It's now its own little mini-universe of pseudoscience, filled with jargon, half-truths, and outright lies.

The link my friend sent me, which you can view here, is only a small sampling of the types of beauty products that the gullible can spend lots of money on.  If you'd rather not peruse the whole list, I present below a few of the most egregious examples, along with the prices, which I am not making up.

1)  Ina White Gold Detoxifying Crystal Salt ($85).  The advertisement says, "This bathing treat uses Himalayan crystals to draw out toxins lurking in the body.  In fact, a 30-minute soak is equivalent to a three-day detox!"

First of all, you don't have any toxins "lurking in your body" that your kidneys and liver aren't perfectly well equipped to deal with.  Anything toxic your body produces isn't excreted through the skin in any case, so I don't care what you put in your bath water, you're not going to draw much out through your skin except for water.

Which brings me to the next claim:  that this stuff "leaves your skin feeling firmer."  I'll just bet it does.  It's... salt.  Plain old sodium chloride, which is the same regardless of whether it comes from the Himalayas or from the shaker on your dinner table.  ("Ina White Gold" does have some herbal extracts in it to make it smell nice, though.)  And the reason it leaves your skin feeling firmer is because you've dehydrated your upper skin layer -- same as when you've gone swimming in the ocean and not showered off afterwards.  Your lower epidermis has lost water and shrunk a little, and your skin will feel a little too tight for a while afterwards.  It has nothing to do with toxins, toning, or the Himalayas.

2)  The Energy Muse "Miracle Bead" Wearable Scents bracelet ($25).  This one combines energy field nonsense with magic bracelet nonsense and aromatherapy nonsense to create a woo-woo trifecta.  It is a little bracelet with a "natural seed" that emits "positive vibrations," treated with a perfume that will give you "movement, vitality, and confidence."  All I can say is that if spending $25 of your hard-earned cash for a seed on a string gives you confidence, you must come by your confidence a different way than I do.

3)  Origins "For Men" Skin Diver Active Charcoal Body Wash ($19).  Charcoal, as we all know because it's barbecuing season, has purifying properties.  So we're supposed to slather charcoal glop all over our bodies to "draw out pore-clogging toxins."  I'll stick with soap, thanks.

4)  The Organic Pharmacy Detox Cellulite Body Oil ($58).  More detox stuff, this one scented with grapefruit and rose oil.  This one, in addition to "drawing out toxins" again, is supposed to get rid of "cellulite."  What is cellulite, you may ask?  Sit down, children, for a brief biology lesson.

Cellulite is fat.  No different than any other fat.  Why, then, does it look dimply?  Because the distribution of connective tissue on the upper legs and butt is different from that on the stomach.  The skin layers on the lower torso are "pegged down" by heavy collagen fibers, similar to the stitching on a mattress, so when you gain weight there, it creates a puckery appearance.  No diet, no vitamins or herbal extracts, and certainly no "detox body oil" is going to "get rid of cellulite."  The only way to get rid of cellulite is to do what gets rid of every other kind of fat in the body, to wit:  eat less and exercise more.


And if you haven't already blown enough money on stuff like the above, you can go to the Shizuka Day Spa in New York City ($180) and have them paint nightingale poop extract on your face, the Las Vegas Hard Rock Hotel Reliquary Spa ($225) and have them drum on you with bamboo reeds to "balance your energy flow," or The Peninsula Spa of Beverly Hills ($275 and up) to have a massage with "gem oils," which is massage oil colored to look like emeralds, rubies, or sapphires.

I wish I was making this stuff up.  Even the cheap beauty products, the kind you can find on grocery store shelves, are advertised using pseudoscience; look at the shampoos which are "enriched with protein and vitamins," as if humans are some kind of alien life form that can somehow absorb nutrients through our hair.  I suppose the drive to look youthful and vibrant is strong enough to induce people to drop serious quantities of money on whatever they think will work -- but besides the lamentable gullibility factor here, there's the sheer greed of the manufacturers for misleading these people about what these products do.  The gullibility is unfortunate; the lying should be outright illegal.