Eat like a werewolf

I'm sure that by now all of you have heard of the "Paleo Diet," that claims that 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 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 from Weird Tales (November 1941) 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 6 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 contrary to what Isaac Newton said, the gravitational pull an object experiences depends not on its mass but on what it's made of.  Or that your bloodstream experiences high tide, or something, I dunno.  And also, the gravitational pull the Moon exerts upon you somehow depends on the phase it's in, because, apparently, the amount of light reflecting from the Moon's surface 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, as I'm writing this it's just past the new Moon, so we're all supposed to be subsisting on dandelion tea.  To which I answer: the hell you say.  I'm off to get some bacon and eggs.  Detoxify that, buddy.

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I've loved Neil de Grasse Tyson's brilliant podcast StarTalk for some time.  Tyson's ability to take complex and abstruse theories from astrophysics and make them accessible to the layperson is legendary, as is his animation and sense of humor.

If you've enjoyed it as well, this week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week is a must-read.  In Cosmic Queries: StarTalk's Guide to Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We're Going, Tyson teams up with science writer James Trefil to consider some of the deepest questions there are -- how life on Earth originated, whether it's likely there's life on other planets, whether any life that's out there might be expected to be intelligent, and what the study of physics tells us about the nature of matter, time, and energy.

Just released three months ago, Cosmic Queries will give you the absolute cutting edge of science -- where the questions stand right now.  In a fast-moving scientific world, where books that are five years old are often out-of-date, this fascinating analysis will catch you up to where the scientists stand today, and give you a vision into where we might be headed.  If you're a science aficionado, you need to read this book.

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

Junk science

I get really fed up with people's gullibility sometimes.

I mean, I get it.  No one's an expert at everything, there are gaps in our knowledge, so when we hear a claim about something with which we are less-than-well-informed, we might shrug and go, "Okay, that might be true."

But the thing is, we shouldn't stop there.

There are lots of reasons a plausible-sounding claim might still be false.  It could be that the person making the claim was misinformed him/herself.  It could be (s)he was lying for some reason.  It could be that the person making the claim misinterpreted, or is misrepresenting, the source of the information.  It could be that the source itself is simply wrong.

So you don't just shrug, say, "That makes sense, I suppose," and forthwith stop thinking.  You do a little research -- in these days of the internet, it's hardly time consuming to do so.  You learn something to fill in the gap in your understanding.  You consider the reliability of the source -- either the person you heard it from, or the original source material.

Or all of the above.

It may seem like a lot of work, but it will result in your not being suckered by the latest bizarre claim, fad, or challenge floating around cyberspace.  And there have been some doozies.  Here's a sampler:

• Some people learned that there was a chemical used as an anti-foaming agent in fast-food deep-fryers, then found out that this same chemical was used as a carrier in a study looking at ways to prevent hair loss.  The result was, I kid you not, people smooshing McDonald's fries on their scalp to reverse pattern baldness.
• A fad "challenge" a while back put a number of people in the hospital.  The challenge was to swallow a Tide detergent pod.  It turns out this isn't what they meant by "cleanliness is next to godliness."
• The Good Lord alone knows how this one started, but there's an "alt-med" claim that all illness is caused by your body being too acidic.  The goal, apparently, is to increase your pH, because bigger numbers are better, or something.  Who the fuck knows?  But it resulted in people making drastic adjustments to their diets to try to accomplish what their kidneys were doing anyhow.
• Scientists found out that amongst the compounds used as a chemical signal between (and within) cells is hydrogen sulfide, which is also present in small amounts in intestinal gas.  This prompted a headline at Fox News Online (speaking of unreliable sources), and I quote, "Study Says Smelling Farts is Good For You," which then got passed all over the place (*rimshot*), often with a triumphant comment by people who fart a lot that they're actually doing a public service by gassing out their homes and offices.  This incident also gives support to the studies that show if you append "Study Shows" in front of any damnfool claim you want, you can get people to believe you.

I'd like to say that things like the aforementioned have cured people of believing idiotic claims out of hand, but that optimistic idea got squelched yesterday when I read that -- and I must state up front, I am not making this up -- guys are dipping their genitals in soy sauce because "studies show" that men have taste receptors in their testicles.

The whole thing started with the only source I know of that is less reliable than Fox News, which is The Daily Mail Fail.  Apparently back in 2017 some researchers found that there are nerve endings in the testicles of mice, of unknown function, that are similar to the bitter chemoreceptors of the tongue.  This was reported by The Daily Mail that mice taste with their balls.  And that prompted bunches of guys to dip their junk in soy sauce to see if they could confirm those results.

(I wondered immediately, why soy sauce in particular?  Why not some other condiment?  But then I realized that there are many worse choices, such as habañero pepper sauce, the thought of which is going to have me in a protective crouch for the rest of the day.)

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Creative Tools, Kikkoman soysauce, CC BY 2.0]

Despite dozens of videos making their way around the internet with guys trying the new Testicle Teriyaki recipe and then shouting, "I can taste the soy sauce!", the whole thing is idiotic.  I mean, it pains me even to have to say that in so many words.  Even if the chemoreceptors in the testicles of humans are the same as those of mice, and they could somehow be activated by something in soy sauce, there's a fundamental problem -- stay with me here -- in that guys' balls are inside our scrotums.  So this would only have a prayer of a chance of working if we absorbed chemicals through our scrotums.  The fact that we don't should be obvious to any guy who has washed his junk with soap and water while taking a shower, and -- surprise! -- doesn't end up tasting soap.

For fuck's sake.

So if any guys reading this are tempted to dip their balls in soy sauce, just... don't.  Stop, think, research, consider the source.  And please, don't listen to The Daily Mail.  Like, on anything.  Especially if they're saying you should drop your pants and pour condiments on your naughty bits.

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I don't often recommend historical books here at Skeptophilia, not because of a lack of interest but a lack of expertise in identifying what's good research and what's wild speculation.  My background in history simply isn't enough to be a fair judge.  But last week I read a book so brilliantly and comprehensively researched that I feel confident in recommending it -- and it's not only thorough, detailed, and accurate, it's absolutely gripping.

On May 7, 1915, the passenger ship Lusitania was sunk as it neared its destination of Liverpool by a German U-boat, an action that was instrumental in leading to the United States joining the war effort a year later.  The events leading up to that incident -- some due to planning, other to unfortunate chance -- are chronicled in Erik Larson's book Dead Wake, in which we find out about the cast of characters involved, and how they ended up in the midst of a disaster that took 1,198 lives.

Larson's prose is crystal-clear, giving information in such a straightforward way that it doesn't devolve into the "history textbook" feeling that so many true-history books have.  It's fascinating and horrifying -- and absolutely un-put-downable.

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

Let the sun shine in

Every time I think that the "natural health" movement has plumbed the absolute depths of credulous stupidity, I find out there's plenty of room down below.

It turns out that "down below" is an apt metaphor, because as I found out from about a dozen loyal readers of Skeptophilia, the latest craze is "perineum sunning."  For those of you not well-versed in anatomical terminology, the perineum is the region between the genitals and the anus.

So, yes, it's exactly what it sounds like.  You're supposed to take off all your clothes, and expose your nether orifice to the direct sunlight.

I would like to be able to say, "ha-ha, I made that up," but sadly, I didn't.  Practitioners claim that exposing your butthole to the sun activates the vibrational frequencies of your chakras, or something like that.  "In a mere thirty seconds of sunlight on your butthole, you will receive more energy from this electric node than you would in an entire day being outside with your clothes on," said one guy in an informational YouTube video.

"My experience with perineum sunning has been profound," said another enthusiast.  "I have been practicing this for a few months now.  I start my day with five minutes of perineum sunning and feel energized for hours.  I no longer rely on coffee for energy to start my day because I am getting my energy from the sun."

I have just a few things to say about this:

1. What the actual fuck?
2. Given the choice of a nice cup of coffee and lying on my back with my ass in the air, I think I'll stick with the coffee.
3. As dermatologist Nazanin Saedi pointed out in an interview with Health, the perineum is a thin and very sensitive bit of skin, which you'd think most people would already know.  A sunburned perineum would hurt like a mofo, and it's also not a place you'd want to risk skin cancer.
4. As far as absorbing usable energy through your skin -- what do you think your asshole is, a plant?
5. Not only is your anus not photosynthetic, it is also not an "electric node."  The very idea makes me wince.
6. Despite my being dubious about the practice, I have to say that "Butthole Sunshine" would make a great name for a band.  Maybe they could be like the Butthole Surfers, only more upbeat.
7. At the risk of repeating myself: what the actual fuck?

Look, it's not that I have anything against nudity.  Given the choice, I'd never wear swim trunks while swimming, and when the weather's warm I enjoy a nice outdoor naked romp as much as the next guy.  But deliberately and repeatedly exposing one of the most sensitive parts of the body to the direct, harsh rays of the sun is not "alternative health," it's "absolute nonsense."

And potentially dangerous as well.

So by all means shuck the clothes if you want to and have an opportunity that will not result in your being arrested for indecent exposure.  But take care not to scorch your naughty bits.

And for cryin' in the sink, learn a little actual science so you can tell the difference between a healthful practice and the latest idiotic fad.  Because I can nearly guarantee that if you think this is as stupid as it gets, all you'll need to do is wait awhile and see what they come up with next.

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Long-time readers of Skeptophilia have probably read enough of my rants about creationism and the other flavors of evolution-denial that they're sick unto death of the subject, but if you're up for one more excursion into this, I have a book that is a must-read.

British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has made a name for himself both as an outspoken atheist and as a champion for the evolutionary model, and it is in this latter capacity that he wrote the brilliant The Greatest Show on Earth.  Here, he presents the evidence for evolution in lucid prose easily accessible to the layperson, and one by one demolishes the "arguments" (if you can dignify them by that name) that you find in places like the infamous Answers in Genesis.

If you're someone who wants more ammunition for your own defense of the topic, or you want to find out why the scientists believe all that stuff about natural selection, or you're a creationist yourself and (to your credit) want to find out what the other side is saying, this book is about the best introduction to the logic of the evolutionary model I've ever read.  My focus in biology was evolution and population genetics, so you'd think all this stuff would be old hat to me, but I found something new to savor on virtually every page.  I cannot recommend this book highly enough!

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

Meet the "Crystal Children"

Last year I wrote a piece on the phenomenon of people labeling themselves or their kids "Indigo Children."  An "Indigo Child," it's said, is empathetic, sensitive, creative, and tends not to fit in well with regards to other people's expectations.  They are highly intelligent, and are especially gifted in areas that require thinking outside the box.

Oh, yeah.  They also have "indigo-colored auras."

So what we have here is yet another example of people trying to find an explanation and a label for something that really is best classified under the heading "People Are All Different."  Even, apparently, with respect to the color of their auras.

But "Indigo" is becoming passé, apparently.  As C. S. Lewis observed, "Fashions come and go... but mostly they go."  "Indigo Children" are now a dime a dozen.  So we have to move on to a new designation, an even more special kind of person.  One that shows up those silly Indigos for the bush-league posers that they are.

Now, we have "Crystal Children."

I'm not making this up.  In an opening passage that should win some kind of award for New Age Doublespeak, we read that the "empathetic and sensitive" Indigos better just step aside:

After discovering more about Indigo Children and the (often misunderstood) gifts that they possess, the question arose: now what?  The answer came in the form of the Crystal Children. 

The Crystal Children are the generation following the Indigo Children. Still thought to be relatively young, they have begun to be born from around 2000, though there is some speculation that they arrived earlier, around 1995.  Similar to their Indigo counterparts, these children are thought to be extremely powerful, with a main purpose to take humanity to the next level in our evolution and reveal to us our inner power and divinity.  Some things that make them unique from Indigo Children are that they function as a group consciousness rather than as individuals, and they live by the law that we are all one.  However, they are still are a powerful force for love and peace on the planet.

Yes, I have to say that when I read about the Indigo Children, my response was to shake my head and say, "Now what?"  But I don't think I meant it the same way.

And my goodness, those "Crystal Children!"  They're going to "take humanity to the next level in our evolution and reveal to us our inner power and divinity!"  Who could resist that?

We're then told the twenty-three ways to recognize a "Crystal Child," beginning with the first, that "Crystal Children" possess "large eyes with an intense stare."  I don't know about you, but that sounds vaguely terrifying to me.  If a large-eyed child was staring at me intensely, I wouldn't suspect that I was dealing with a child who was trying to "bring out my inner power and divinity," I would suspect that I was in an episode of The X Files and was about to have all of my blood removed via my eye sockets.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The rest of the ways that you tell if your kid is a "Crystal Child" are suspiciously like the rules for detecting "Indigo Children;" empathy, sensitivity, intelligence, creativity, and so on.  So once again this seems to me to be a way for gullible parents to find a way to feel better about having a child who might be experiencing trouble fitting in in school.  Not that this isn't an understandable goal; my younger son had a rough time in middle school, as many do, and it was a struggle sometimes as a parent to find ways to get him through the experience with his confidence and spirit intact.

But I'm just not convinced that making up a goofy label, and appending to it all sorts of pseudoscientific bosh, is the way to go about it.  Some good old-fashioned coping strategies are usually what's called for, not sticking a wacky name tag on your kid.  The latter, I'd think, would make it more likely the kid wouldn't fit in, especially if (s)he starts babbling to peers that they'd better be nice because you never know how a "Crystal Child" will react when provoked.

So that's our swim in the deep end for today.  I've got to wrap this up so I can go try and teach all of the various types of actual children out there.  I'll make sure to check out their auras.  That's bound to give me some valuable information about how to get them to understand science.

Staking a claim

Last week, it was zombies all over the news, what with guys biting each other's faces off, and cutting up  former lovers, and committing various other antisocial, body-part-related atrocities.  And I observed that once one person mentions a woo-woo explanation for something (we're having a zombie apocalypse), every possibly-related story gets cast in that light, and the whole thing sort of develops a life of its own.

Given that these conjectures have no basis in reality, it's no surprise that most of them are short-lived.  Once enough people look around them, and acknowledge that no, the people on the bus and at work are not, in fact, turning into zombies, then they're forced to conclude that the whole thing was rather a non-starter from the beginning.  (Although I will add, in the interest of fairness, that a few nutty ideas seem to be in the Undead Immortal category themselves, such as the Rebecca Black/JFK assassination thing, and the Baltic Sea UFO thing.)

But most woo-woo crazes are just that -- fads -- and as such, they have a limited life-span.  So last week, it was zombies; and this week, we have moved on to another terrifying, immortal, soulless being that doesn't exist...

... vampires.

Things got rolling this weekend, when some archaeologists working in Bulgaria found two medieval skeletons at a dig site in Sozopol, and were shocked to find that the skeletons had metal rods driven through them.  (Source)

Of course, the only reason to do this to a dead body is to make it dead again, because it had risen up from the grave, sharpened its canine teeth, and was prowling around the village looking for beautiful young women dressed in gauzy white garments to terrorize.  And the fact that people in Eastern Europe used to believe this was possible is never cast in the light of, "Wow, people sure were superstitious, back then."  The article states, "The discovery illustrates a pagan practice common in some villages up until a century ago, say historians.   People deemed bad had their hearts stabbed after death, for fear they would return to feast on humans' blood."  Unfortunately, the writers of the article didn't add, "... although this never actually happens."

I say "unfortunately," because there are people with rather tenuous grips on reality who periodically forget the definition of "fiction."  Some of these people then act on those ideas, and it seldom ends well.

Witness the unnamed man "with vampire teeth" who attacked a homeless guy in San Diego a couple of days ago.  (Source)  Police in La Jolla were called when passersby saw someone assaulting a man near a shopping center, and once they arrived, they found a 55-year-old transient bleeding from bites inflicted by a man whose canine teeth were filed to points.  The Dracula wannabee was arrested and charged with assault.  (You should go to the site and look at the attacker's photograph, which gives lie to the claim that vampires were supposed to look sultry and devastatingly sexy, and also that they seldom ever wear baseball caps.)

Now, lest you think that this is just one deluded, possibly high, individual, consider another story that just popped up -- about a Texas inmate who sued the state prison system for preventing his carrying out ritual religious beliefs related to his being a vampire.

Courtney Royal, who is serving a life sentence for aggravated assault and robbery, filed the suit (in which he refers to himself as "Vampsh Black Sheep League of Doom Gardamun Family Circle Master Vampire High Priest") claiming that he had beliefs that stem from West African and "18th century Catholicism" practices.  These beliefs are "marked by prayer to Africans reincarnated by blood."

The most entertaining part of the whole story is that Vampsh Black Sheep etc. stated that his beliefs were no different from Christianity, given that both are "unproven."  In which, I have to admit, he has a point.

In the end, Courtney/Vampsh's lawsuit was denied on the basis of its being "frivolous," which would seem to indicate that the judge thought that he wasn't serious.  Myself, I'm not so sure.  It certainly wouldn't be the weirdest thing I've ever heard people claim to believe (that award would have to go to the members of Werewolf Cathedral).  But just like with the zombies last week, I suspect that we haven't heard the last of the vampire stories.  Now that some archaeologists found a few skeletons with stakes driven through them, proving the existence of vampires to the scientific world, and we've had not just one, but two, instances of real-life vampires show up in the news, we are clearly facing an outbreak.  It's time to get all of your supplies ready, including garlic, crucifixes, and guns with silver bullets (wait, is that werewolves?  I think I'm getting my nonsense mixed up.  Crap.  I hate it when that happens).  Spot checks of your coworkers are recommended ("Excuse me, can I see your teeth?")  Keep it up until the furor dies down next Tuesday, at which point we can all start freaking out about the next craze involving a mythological creature.  I hope this one is about centaurs.  We haven't had a good centaur outbreak in a long time.