1) I still haven't seen anything specific regarding this "toxicity," which on the same site we keep using (and many others) has been dismissed as a catch all term with no evidence behind it. Diseases and ailments have names and specific symptoms. The toxemia in your original link had no such relation to what the doctor was trying to get at. It's just a good buzzword.
2) Science is the study of ideas and hypotheses. It's a way of approaching a claim or idea in order to see if it has efficacy. There is bad science and good science. Bad science includes biases and misrepresentation. Good science works with multiple testing to remove these. If something is in the realm of pseudo-science and gets repeatable scientific studies evidencing its efficacy, the treatment, creature, or activity moves from psuedo-science into 'good' science. This is true in medicine, cryptozoology, etc.
3) You are right that a treatment which works would work whether science had proved it or not. Before good science gets a hold of it, though, you can't be sure if that treatment is actually doing anything, if the body is healing on its own, if the placebo effect is in place, etc. So no, I wouldn't waste my time on a treatment that hadn't had any scientific study, because science has the advantage of tracking side effects... unlicensed 'medical' cures don't.
4) I do believe we've just been discussing that fasting was in the process of being tested, and at best can be said not to do any harm. At worst, it can severely fuck up someone's system. It's not being ignored, and in the light of safer remedies responsible doctors will continue to promote answers that they know work with the least amount of harm, or will cause the most amount of good. Fasting hasn't shown the ability to provide more good than harm yet. Therefore, how about regulating your diet and exercising instead? At least with responsible exercise you're getting more benefit than just the "safe" taxing of your system.
5) Correlation does not imply causation. That doesn't mean I throw correlation out - a point I was about to address per Rayaan's post. Correlation, much like the symptoms exhibited in a human body, gives you a springboard for finer questions to test. Let's continue to use Apo's ice cream truck analogy. It may be that if someone found that kids drowned in pools in high numbers in neighborhoods where ice cream trucks were known to circulate. You don't immediately assume that the ice cream trucks are involved. You ask questions: do the kids hear the truck and run outside heedless of the watery danger they could get in? Do they run outside in general regardless of the truck and drown in such high numbers that it doesn't matter if a truck is there or not? Do neighborhoods with swimming pools simply have a higher incidence of trucks patrolling them because swimming pools indicate more affluent parents who might therefore buy more ice cream? In the case of health, I told Fallen that symptoms can mean many things. He might have two different factors causing different sets of symptoms at the same time. They are SPRINGBOARDS FOR QUESTIONS TO A DOCTOR. Not direct indicators. I think you'll notice that in the case of tobacco, multiple sets of data were said to be triangulating. This is far more than juice fasting has to offer. Or chiropractic. Which, by the by, has been pretty thoroughly studied.
6) We have evidence that fasting does SOMETHING, which may or may not improve the condition of those at high risk for heart disease. The "may or may not" part is why we still have to study it in human beings and see what happens. And this again has only to do with heart disease. It has nothing to do with this "toxicity" you people keep mentioning, which seems to have no definite medical term , and certainly still has nothing to do with removing heavy metals, which I do believe has a medically approved process which sort of sucks and doesn't involve a simple juice fast.
7) "no down side". You might be right that juice fasting for a few days has no real downside except hunger. And very well, it's a small price to pay THIS time. But what if he has a placebo effect from it and doesn't receive proper treatment? In the case of most of these treatments not approved by science, the cost can include and might not be limited to only one of the following: time, energy, sometimes massive quantities of money, ill-health, death, maiming, and continued ignorance. What if Fallen has a bad reaction to fasting? While we're speaking in anecdotes, I never fasted on Yom Kippur - it gave me massive migraines even as a child, and the doctor said not to do it. We have a history of diabetes in the family, and the fasting was for stupid religious purposes, so there was no reason to follow it and every reason not to. Who knows - Fallen could also have unknown reactions to complete fasting. On the other hand, you were suggesting a juice fast...which would be like eating salad or fruit salad for several days. And what is that wiping out? I hope you're suggesting all 'organic' fruits and veggies, because of those nasty toxic pesticides on the regular kind... except whoops! Organic farms use pesticides and fertilizers with the same chemicals too. You're replacing one made-up toxin with another.
This all started because Fallen suggested he had heavy metal poisoning, and you suggested he try a juice fast in order to "chelate" things out of him that weren't even tested to be there in the first place. Then you linked pages all from the same one doctor who gave a biology lesson and did not cite any evidence for his "toxemia." Further google searching of other proponents of juice fasting and its supposed benefits have led to wilder and wilder claims, uncovering people with something to sell, and only one study so far showing that fasting does something - not that it yields net positive results in a treatment mode. Further, there's no evidence that juice-based chelation even works, should he actually have metal poisoning - unless you're holding something back.
The suggestions should have stopped with "go to another practitioner for second and third opinions and get a blood test" before trying different remedies.
2) Science is the study of ideas and hypotheses. It's a way of approaching a claim or idea in order to see if it has efficacy. There is bad science and good science. Bad science includes biases and misrepresentation. Good science works with multiple testing to remove these. If something is in the realm of pseudo-science and gets repeatable scientific studies evidencing its efficacy, the treatment, creature, or activity moves from psuedo-science into 'good' science. This is true in medicine, cryptozoology, etc.
3) You are right that a treatment which works would work whether science had proved it or not. Before good science gets a hold of it, though, you can't be sure if that treatment is actually doing anything, if the body is healing on its own, if the placebo effect is in place, etc. So no, I wouldn't waste my time on a treatment that hadn't had any scientific study, because science has the advantage of tracking side effects... unlicensed 'medical' cures don't.
4) I do believe we've just been discussing that fasting was in the process of being tested, and at best can be said not to do any harm. At worst, it can severely fuck up someone's system. It's not being ignored, and in the light of safer remedies responsible doctors will continue to promote answers that they know work with the least amount of harm, or will cause the most amount of good. Fasting hasn't shown the ability to provide more good than harm yet. Therefore, how about regulating your diet and exercising instead? At least with responsible exercise you're getting more benefit than just the "safe" taxing of your system.
5) Correlation does not imply causation. That doesn't mean I throw correlation out - a point I was about to address per Rayaan's post. Correlation, much like the symptoms exhibited in a human body, gives you a springboard for finer questions to test. Let's continue to use Apo's ice cream truck analogy. It may be that if someone found that kids drowned in pools in high numbers in neighborhoods where ice cream trucks were known to circulate. You don't immediately assume that the ice cream trucks are involved. You ask questions: do the kids hear the truck and run outside heedless of the watery danger they could get in? Do they run outside in general regardless of the truck and drown in such high numbers that it doesn't matter if a truck is there or not? Do neighborhoods with swimming pools simply have a higher incidence of trucks patrolling them because swimming pools indicate more affluent parents who might therefore buy more ice cream? In the case of health, I told Fallen that symptoms can mean many things. He might have two different factors causing different sets of symptoms at the same time. They are SPRINGBOARDS FOR QUESTIONS TO A DOCTOR. Not direct indicators. I think you'll notice that in the case of tobacco, multiple sets of data were said to be triangulating. This is far more than juice fasting has to offer. Or chiropractic. Which, by the by, has been pretty thoroughly studied.
6) We have evidence that fasting does SOMETHING, which may or may not improve the condition of those at high risk for heart disease. The "may or may not" part is why we still have to study it in human beings and see what happens. And this again has only to do with heart disease. It has nothing to do with this "toxicity" you people keep mentioning, which seems to have no definite medical term , and certainly still has nothing to do with removing heavy metals, which I do believe has a medically approved process which sort of sucks and doesn't involve a simple juice fast.
7) "no down side". You might be right that juice fasting for a few days has no real downside except hunger. And very well, it's a small price to pay THIS time. But what if he has a placebo effect from it and doesn't receive proper treatment? In the case of most of these treatments not approved by science, the cost can include and might not be limited to only one of the following: time, energy, sometimes massive quantities of money, ill-health, death, maiming, and continued ignorance. What if Fallen has a bad reaction to fasting? While we're speaking in anecdotes, I never fasted on Yom Kippur - it gave me massive migraines even as a child, and the doctor said not to do it. We have a history of diabetes in the family, and the fasting was for stupid religious purposes, so there was no reason to follow it and every reason not to. Who knows - Fallen could also have unknown reactions to complete fasting. On the other hand, you were suggesting a juice fast...which would be like eating salad or fruit salad for several days. And what is that wiping out? I hope you're suggesting all 'organic' fruits and veggies, because of those nasty toxic pesticides on the regular kind... except whoops! Organic farms use pesticides and fertilizers with the same chemicals too. You're replacing one made-up toxin with another.
This all started because Fallen suggested he had heavy metal poisoning, and you suggested he try a juice fast in order to "chelate" things out of him that weren't even tested to be there in the first place. Then you linked pages all from the same one doctor who gave a biology lesson and did not cite any evidence for his "toxemia." Further google searching of other proponents of juice fasting and its supposed benefits have led to wilder and wilder claims, uncovering people with something to sell, and only one study so far showing that fasting does something - not that it yields net positive results in a treatment mode. Further, there's no evidence that juice-based chelation even works, should he actually have metal poisoning - unless you're holding something back.
The suggestions should have stopped with "go to another practitioner for second and third opinions and get a blood test" before trying different remedies.
![[Image: Untitled2_zpswaosccbr.png]](https://images.weserv.nl/?url=i1140.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fn569%2Fthesummerqueen%2FUntitled2_zpswaosccbr.png)
