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    Biomedical Scientist Answers New Pseudoscience Questions

    Biomedical scientist Dr. Andrea Love returns to WIRED to answer a new slate of the internet's burning questions about pseudosciences, health fads, and false wellness claims. What common household chemicals are definitely worth avoiding? Is there really arsenic and lead in tampons? Are probiotics helpful or not? What's the concern with consuming raw milk? Are GMOs and synthetic foods harmful? Why do the dangers of vaccines get blown out of proportion? Dr. Love answers these questions and many more on Pseudoscience Support Part Two! Director: Lisandro Perez-Rey Director of Photography: Ben Dewey Editor: Alex Mechanik Expert: Andrea Love Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi Associate Producer: Brandon White Production Manager: Peter Brunette Production Coordinator: Anthony Wooten Talent Booker: Nicholas Sawyer Camera Operator: Chris Eustache Sound Mixer: Sean Paulsen Production Assistant: Ryan Coppola Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen Additional Editor: Jason Malizia Assistant Editor: Fynn Lithgow

    Released on 01/08/2025

    Transcript

    Hyperbaric oxygen, dietary supplements, urine therapy,

    ozone therapy, metal chelation.

    None of these have evidence to support their use

    for any ailment.

    I'm Dr. Andrea Love biomedical scientist.

    I fact check false health claims.

    Let's answer your questions from the internet.

    This is more Pseudoscience Support.

    [bright music]

    Okay, first question.

    @SentientNazgul wants to know, What's wrong with raw milk?

    Godforbid it tastes better than store bought.

    What's wrong with it?

    Well, a lot of disease causing microorganisms,

    pathogens like E. coli,

    Campylobacter, brucella, and salmonella,

    these are all bacteria

    that can be found in milk or living in cows.

    Before the pasteurized milk ordinance went

    into effect in the early 1900s,

    milk borne illnesses accounted

    for about 38% of all foodborne illnesses.

    Now that we pasteurize milk

    and we don't consume raw milk,

    that level has dropped to 1% of all foodborne illnesses.

    70% of milk borne food outbreaks occurred in states

    that had permission to sell raw milk.

    So there's a reason that we pasteurize milk.

    Now, proponents of raw milk claim that it tastes better

    or preserves the nutrients better

    or it improves your immune system

    and there's just no science behind any of that.

    You might think raw milk tastes better

    because you're drinking milk

    with a higher fat content compared to milk

    that you're buying at the store.

    But pasteurization, which is heating milk

    to a temperature of 161 degrees Fahrenheit

    for 15 seconds has no impact

    on the nutrient quality of the milk.

    It does, however, have a huge impact on killing all

    of those disease causing microorganisms

    that might be in your dairy.

    @BobsBlog wants to know,

    do artificial sweeteners actually give you cancer

    is that like Gwyneth Paltrow level 'health' [beeps]?

    Artificial sweeteners do not cause cancer.

    Aspartame is actually made up of two amino acids

    that are joined together, aspartic acid and phenylalanine.

    So when you ingest aspartame, they split apart

    and you use those amino acids

    to make proteins like you would

    with anything else you ingested.

    Aspartame is 200 times sweeter than regular sugar,

    so the amount that's needed

    to sweeten a beverage is minuscule.

    Based on extensive studies of aspartame,

    we know that in order to have even a minimal risk

    of harm, you'd have to drink up to 50 cans

    of diet soda in a single day.

    Now, I love my diet soda,

    but I don't think it's physically possible

    to even consume that much.

    You'd be far more likely

    to experience water toxicity from drinking

    that amount of fluid than you would

    by having toxicity from the aspartame.

    @Stillsickofit says,

    Remember that time Joe Rogan interviewed RFK Jr.

    and said he believes vaccines cause autism?

    I do. Yeah.

    RFK Jr. has spread the myth that vaccines are linked

    to autism for several decades

    and it's a central feature of his organization,

    Children's Health Defense.

    That organization made over $23 million

    in 2022 alone.

    And in fact, recent investigative journalism has revealed

    that RFK Jr. himself was being paid

    over $20,000 a week as the chairman

    for Children's Health Defense in 2023 alone.

    The purported link to autism and vaccines has been debunked

    and addressed over 20 plus years,

    and there is no relationship.

    The biggest predictor

    for autism is having an immediate family member also

    with autism, which suggests

    that there's a strong genetic link.

    The prevalsence of autism has increased,

    but this is a function of diagnosis.

    We have better, more appropriate diagnostic criteria

    to recognize autism cases, whereas in decades past,

    we were not capturing

    and recognizing how prevalsent autism truly was.

    @liza777777 wants to know,

    Are GMOs / Synthetic foods / vaccines harmful?

    There's a common perception that GMOs,

    especially food crops are some unnatural thing

    that we've altered in a way that's harmful.

    But the reality is,

    is that humans have been genetically modifying

    and messing with nature since the dawn of time.

    Most people don't know that the vegetables we know

    to be cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi,

    and cabbage are actually all genetically modified versions

    of the wild mustard plant.

    They're the same species.

    Modern day GMOs allow us to do this in a faster

    and more controlled way.

    @chefbai_ says, Dove has the best smelling deodorant.

    Bring on the aluminum & cancer causing parabens

    because that shit smell good af.

    So the good news is,

    is that aluminum salt in antiperspirants

    and parabens don't cause cancer,

    so you can breathe a sigh of relief.

    Parabens are a class of antimicrobials

    and they're used to inhibit contamination

    and inhibit the growth of bacteria

    and fungi that would contaminate a product

    that you're using repeatedly.

    And they've been used in these products

    for over a hundred years.

    The levels at which you would be exposed

    to parabens are not posing any sort of harm.

    It's why they've been asserted

    and reasserted as safe for use.

    People have been led to believe

    that parabens are linked to breast cancer

    because there was a really terribly done study

    in the Journal of Applied Toxicology

    where they took breast tumor biopsies

    that were stored in the freezer

    and they detected minuscule levels.

    We're talking parts per billion

    of parabens in these breast tumor tissues.

    And when they looked at their negative controls,

    their blank values, levels of parabens detected

    in those were actually higher than some

    of the tissue samples, which actually suggests

    that their instrumentation was contaminated.

    So over here we have four different types of parabens,

    ethylparaben and methylparaben bind 100,000 times

    more weekly to estrogen receptors.

    So one versus a hundred thousand

    of your actual estrogen hormone estradiol

    and butylparaben and propylparaben bind 10,000 times

    more weekly, so 10 versus 100,000

    versus your estradiol hormone.

    So the likelihood of these paraben chemicals

    actually outcompeting your estrogen hormones is near zero.

    @RoboSox_ wants to know, Are probiotics BS or nah?

    Unfortunately, they're more BS than they are, evidence.

    Probiotics are a type of supplement

    that contain live microorganisms,

    but there's 40 trillion bacteria

    that live in your GI tracts

    and they make up hundreds of different species.

    The problem with probiotic supplements is they usually

    only contain one, two or a small handful

    of species of bacteria.

    The reason that they're in the probiotic supplement is not

    because they've been identified to be beneficial

    for your health, but they're relatively easy

    to grow in large quantities

    and so they end up in your supplement.

    But there've been a lot of studies that have evalsuated

    or assessed the ability of probiotic supplements

    to improve health,

    and unfortunately, there's really no data

    to support their use.

    The stomach is very acidic

    and if a probiotic supplement doesn't have

    what we call an enteric coating,

    those bacteria are very likely going

    to be killed by your stomach acids.

    So there's no data to even show

    that these supplements are even gonna make it

    into your intestines where they need to be.

    Prebiotic is another term that we often confuse

    with probiotics, but prebiotic is really

    just a fancy word for fiber.

    So prebiotics are the food

    that the bacteria in your gut are going to use

    to do what they do.

    While you might see supplements

    that say they're filled with prebiotics,

    it's really just saying they're containing different types

    of fiber, and so you can get a lot of those health benefits

    that we know we need from fiber just

    by eating some fresh fruits and vegetables.

    @wordsmatter wants to know,

    Which pseudoscience has done the most harm?

    I would have to say anti-vaccine misinformation.

    It leads to the increased spread of infectious diseases,

    which means that we have increased amounts of morbidity,

    illness, and mortality death among populations

    where those illnesses and deaths are preventable.

    For example, anti-vaccine misinformation

    about the measles mumps and rubella vaccine.

    The MMR vaccine led to a spread and outbreak

    in Samoa in 2019 that caused the death of 82 people.

    Primarily children under five.

    Vaccines are estimated to have saved over 150 million lives

    in the last several decades.

    They truly are one of the miracles of modern medicine.

    @Reimerville wants to know,

    My doctor advised against ozone therapy,

    is it helping people?

    No, it is not helping people.

    Ozone chemically called O3 is a type of oxygen compound

    that makes up parts of our atmosphere.

    Proponents of ozone therapy claim

    that it has a variety of health benefits.

    They inhale it, they use it in enema form

    and in some cases they will actually infuse it

    through a transfusion of your blood.

    Ozone has zero therapeutic benefits

    and can be potentially very harmful,

    especially if inhaled at very low doses.

    Your doctor's absolutely right there is zero reason

    for you to expose yourself to ozone.

    @LoganHentz says, You don't detox from sweating.

    You sweat water and salt not [beeps] toxins.

    Doesn't make sense for said toxins to just dry

    on your skin does it?

    Absolutely. Sweating is for temperature regulation.

    When you sweat, you secrete fluids, water,

    and some salts, and when that dries,

    it leads to a phenomenon called evaporative cooling,

    which means that your body now cools down as a result

    of taking that energy away.

    The way that your body gets rid of toxins is

    through your excretory organs, so your lungs, your liver,

    your GI tract, and your kidneys.

    Those organ systems are working all the time

    to remove any toxins or any substances

    that your body just no longer needs anymore.

    People like to tout saunas as a method to detox,

    but this is basically like accelerating your

    sweating process.

    A lot of people feel better after a sauna because the heat

    and the environment lets them feel more relaxed,

    but it has nothing to do

    with removing toxins from your body.

    @milk16478, What the [beeps] is alkaline water bro

    you've been drinking bleach or something?

    Proponents of alkaline water

    and the alkaline diet believe that increasing the pH

    of your body or reducing the acidity

    of your body can improve health outcomes.

    It can prevent cancer, it can reduce inflammation,

    but the reality is that you can't actually change the pH

    of your body.

    Your blood pH is very tightly regulated

    at around a pH of 7.4,

    and if you could change it, it would be life threatening

    and we can't change it

    because we have buffer systems

    that maintain balance in our bodies,

    and there have been a lot of studies that have tried

    to show a benefit, but there just isn't.

    The same goes for those at home water ionizer equipment

    that you can pay $5,000 for

    that is just adding extra minerals to your water,

    which is basically what alkaline water is.

    So things like potassium hydroxide,

    magnesium sulfate, calcium chloride.

    These are chemicals that increase the pH of water

    to a pH of eight or nine or so on.

    These substances are not offering any health benefits,

    and as soon as you drink this alkaline water,

    that higher pH is gonna be neutralized

    by the acid in your stomach.

    @neesa_ondrea asks, If the moon affects how the tide rolls

    in and affects dementia Alzheimer's patients...

    Then why can't the stars affect human behavior

    and influence certain traits??

    This is a confusion of a phenomenon called sundowning,

    which is a situation in which dementia patients,

    including Alzheimer's patients, have worsening symptoms

    as the day progresses.

    Now, there's a few theories as to why this occurs,

    and some of it has to do with just the progression

    of the disease itself,

    but also the confusion that these patients are living

    with the irritability grows as the day progresses,

    so they may appear to have worse symptoms

    as the day goes on, but it has nothing to do

    with the sun setting or the moon cycle.

    It's simply just that's later in the day.

    Unfortunately, there's no evidence to suggest that the stars

    and astrology has any impact on human traits and behaviors,

    and it's a long held arm of pseudoscience.

    @jay_snowdon wants to know,

    Why are supplements pretty much unregulated?

    Yet we strictly test the safety

    and efficacy of real medicine.

    Ah, yeah. You can thank the politicians

    and the legislators of our US Congress.

    In 1994 they passed in a bipartisan effort,

    the 1994 Dietarily Supplement Health and Education Act.

    Many senators have financial motives

    to pass this law,

    particularly Democratic Senator Tom Harkin

    and Republican Senator Orrin Hatch.

    Both of them received extensive amounts

    of lobbying money from dietary supplement companies

    in order to push this legislation through.

    What this did was it removed the oversight

    that the FDA had on dietary supplements.

    As a result, that industry has grown exponentially

    and nearly all supplements on the shelves today lack

    evidence to support their use.

    Some examples would include a lot of your greens powders,

    things like AG1 and other dietary supplements,

    laming to give you your servings of fruits and vegetables,

    but when actually analyzing the composition of them,

    often they don't contain measurable amounts

    of those products and worse, many contain substances

    that are not disclosed.

    @mojopono wants to know,

    Is it true that #sugar in foods 'feeds' #cancer?

    There's no clinical evidence that eating sugar,

    avoiding sugar or anything related

    to sugar has an impact in preventing or curing cancer.

    This misconception stems from the fact that we use a type

    of imaging called PET scan.

    So on a CT scan you might detect a structure,

    but on a PET scan we use a radioactive labeled sugar

    that's taken up by your body

    and it lights up in regions

    where cells in your body are metabolizing

    that sugar more quickly

    because cancer cells do have faster metabolic activity

    because they're growing very quickly.

    Unfortunately, this has been misinterpreted to lead people

    to believe that sugar itself is causing cancer

    when it's just a feature of certain cancer types.

    Cancer cells will consume glucose at a faster rate

    because they need to take that glucose

    and make new cell components

    because those tumors are growing very quickly.

    So it's not the sugar that's feeding

    or causing cancer, it's a function of

    how cancer cells are using sugar that's available.

    @bubblegumonarch says,

    I knew receipt paper was thermal activated

    but I didn't know that that coating is like toxic bpa

    what ??? I handle that [beeps] all day every day.

    BPA or bisphenol A is a chemical that's used primarily

    to help manufacture plastics.

    In thermal receipt paper it's used as a coating

    to facilitate that printing.

    There's a concern

    that this chemical may be implicated in endocrine disruption

    or interfering with your hormones.

    There've been some studies that suggest cashiers

    or other customer service people who handle lots

    of receipts over a working shift may be exposed

    to high levels of BPA.

    But that particular study used an estimate value

    in a modeling equation that was orders

    of magnitude higher than

    what any other data set would suggest.

    So they're skewing their data to overestimate

    how much BPA someone would be in contact with.

    BPA is the same chemical when people express concern

    about microwaving certain types of plastic

    and just as is true with the receipt handling,

    the amount of BPA that might be in the food products

    that you microwave is going to be orders

    of magnitude lower than what you would actually need

    to be exposed to in order to see some sort

    of impact on your hormones.

    And on top of that, BPA is rapidly metabolized by your liver

    and excreted so you don't have

    to worry about it accumulating in your body.

    @BrettNA70273495 asks, Question for you Andrea

    if you don't mind?

    What common household chemical would you say you are

    definitely worth avoiding?

    I know I probably eat too much Teflon

    but still buy non-stick cookware.

    For me personally, there isn't one thing

    that I have in my house

    that I would say I need to get rid of,

    but there are certain considerations.

    Say if you live in an older home

    and you might have some antiquated plumbing,

    you might wanna get that looked at

    to see if there's high levels of things like lead

    or if you have an old building

    that maybe has asbestos in the walls or the countertops.

    Since you mentioned Teflon, that's an interesting topic

    because it's gotten a lot of attention in recent months.

    Teflon chemically is part of the class

    of chemicals called PFAS.

    Now PFAS incorporate thousands of different chemicals

    and Teflon chemically called PTFE is a very long

    chemical and it's very stable.

    And so the likelihood

    of you actually experiencing harm from being exposed

    to Teflon by using non-stick cookware is actually very low.

    When people are stressing about these exposures to chemicals

    that generally don't have a big impact on their health,

    we should be redirecting our focus

    to things like healthy lifestyle habits,

    getting good quality sleep, eating a diverse diet,

    and staying up to date

    with your preventative health screenings,

    which really are the things

    that can impact your health.

    @UncouthPrimate wants to know,

    There's an emerging trend

    of people claiming that sunscreen is more harmful than good.

    Any thoughts?

    Let's clear up a few things.

    So the reason that sun exposure is a risk factor

    for cancer is because there are two main types

    of ultraviolet radiation, UVA and UVB

    and these ultraviolet radiation energy

    essentially penetrates your skin.

    That energy is then transferred to molecules in your cells,

    which can cause DNA damage and mutations,

    and those mutations can ultimately lead

    to cancer the more you're exposed to it.

    By taking a sunscreen

    and putting some of it on your skin,

    the molecules of chemicals in the sunscreen now absorb

    that energy and convert that to heat.

    As a result, those ultraviolet rays don't get

    into those deeper layers of your skin.

    They're absorbed right by the sunscreen,

    and so your cells don't experience the damage.

    So people are saying that chemicals

    that you might find in sunscreens,

    particularly your organic filters

    like avobenzone are causing cancer

    and so it's causing more harm than doing good

    and preventing sun exposure.

    But these chemicals have been extensively studied

    for safety.

    There's no clinical evidence that they're linked

    to cancer in any way.

    @daddypinx asks, wait, what do you mean there's arsenic

    and lead in tampons in the us?? i hate it here.

    The good news is that this is blown wildly

    out of proportion.

    So there was a recent study that went viral

    and really, really scared a lot of people,

    but for no good reason.

    So this study took 20 individual tampons

    and they took the fabric

    and they digested it with high temperatures, 350 Fahrenheit

    and an acid extremely concentrated to digest the fabric.

    And from there they used analytical chemistry equipment

    to look at the levels of different trace impurities,

    arsenic, cadmium, lead, and so on,

    and they found very, very small quantities,

    we're talking parts per billion.

    And for context, one part per billion is equivalent

    to one second of time in 31.7 years.

    But I think we can all agree that 350 degrees Fahrenheit

    and a pH of one is not the environment of a vagina.

    For context, a vagina is about 99 degrees Fahrenheit

    and a pH of 4.5.

    So not only did this study actually show

    that you're going to be exposed to any of this,

    but the levels that they were detecting

    in the tampons are orders

    of magnitude lower than other things like tea leaves

    and water and cannabis.

    Tampons are made outta cotton and cotton is a plant.

    And when plants grow in the environment,

    they pick up elements and substances that are in the soil

    and in the air and in the water,

    and that's where lead, arson, cadmium,

    these are all elements, right?

    They're part of our earth's crust.

    So you don't need to freak out about your tampons

    or throw them away,

    but you also have to realize that this is something

    that is universal to all plants,

    including ones that you eat on a daily basis.

    @AlBowers1 asks, Which vaccines contain mercury?

    None of the vaccines contain mercury.

    There's a preservative that's used to prevent contamination

    of vaccines with things like bacteria and fungi.

    That is called thimerosal.

    And thimerosal is a salt

    of a different compound called ethylmercury.

    Now, ethylmercury is not mercury,

    it's a compound that contains a mercury ion.

    This was conflated to suggest

    that vaccines contained mercury.

    It's also further confusing because there's a different type

    of a mercury compound called methylmercury.

    That's the one that we're warned about eating too much fish

    like tuna because the methylmercury is found everywhere

    and that can accumulate in our bodies.

    But to illustrate this,

    I wanna talk about two different types of alcohol.

    So we have rubbing alcohol here, which is isopropyl alcohol,

    and we have champagne, which is ethanol.

    We know that ethanol is safe at relatively low doses

    and many people enjoy a drink or two,

    but nobody's gonna drink a bottle of rubbing alcohol

    because we know that that would be toxic.

    The same is true for methylmercury versus ethylmercury.

    One of them can be harmful at a relatively low dose

    and the other one can be safe at a relatively low dose.

    So thimerosal was used in several vaccines

    to prevent contamination, but thimerosal is not mercury.

    However, because of misunderstanding

    about this chemical difference,

    most vaccines ended up removing the thimerosal outright.

    The only vaccines in the US

    that even have thimerosal now are multi-dose flu vaccines,

    and those account for less than 7%

    of all flu vaccines being administered.

    @hellohcourtney asks,

    Anyone here of any alternative cancer treatments

    that work?

    There's a belief that scientists

    and healthcare providers are hiding natural treatments

    for a variety of diseases including cancer.

    But you might be surprised to know

    that we actually often harness nature

    and improve upon it using science.

    Today we have many different pharmaceuticals

    that target cancer

    that are actually derived from natural chemicals,

    and we tweak them to improve their safety,

    their efficacy, or reduce side effects.

    For example, a chemical called Podophyllotoxin,

    natural chemical derived from the mayapple plant is used

    in pharmaceuticals or in medical treatments,

    but we've also altered it chemically

    to create a chemical called etoposide.

    It's better able to treat more cancer types

    and it has reduced side effects compared

    to the natural version.

    Another example would be something like Paclitaxel,

    a natural chemical from the yew tree,

    and we've altered it chemically

    to create a compound called docetaxel.

    Docetaxel is often used

    to treat certain cancers like breast cancer,

    prostate cancer, non-small cell lung carcinoma,

    and certain types of head and neck cancer.

    And this is not something that's unique

    to cancer treatments either.

    Aspirin, which chemically is called acetylsalicylic acid,

    is actually derived from a chemical found in willow bark.

    Unfortunately, people who opt for unproven treatments

    for cancer have increased risk of poor outcomes.

    When you look at breast cancer survival,

    breast cancer patients

    that forego proven treatments have a 5.7 times increased

    risk of death compared to patients

    that use proven treatments.

    @JasonQ295178 wants to know,

    Why are cancer rates in young people skyrocketing?

    The good news is cancer rates

    in young people are not skyrocketing.

    Unfortunately, there've been a lot of headlines

    that have said things to that effect,

    but this really requires context.

    Most of the risk factors for cancers are things

    that you actually can't control

    and they relate to your genetics,

    but there are some that are impacted

    by modifiable risk factors.

    And so for many of these cancer rates are

    actually declining.

    We're also seeing declines in cancer rates

    for lung cancer because of public health measures

    and smoking cessation education campaigns.

    We've seen a lot of headlines that have said

    that colorectal cancer is increasing 1% year over year

    in people under 50,

    but that is actually not the correct way to look at it.

    So to illustrate this,

    these are the colorectal cancer rates

    in the US by age group.

    And so colorectal cancer is the most common

    in older individuals compared to younger individuals,

    which is the case for nearly all cancers.

    Cancers are by and large a disease of aging.

    So the rate of cancer,

    these are number of cases per 100,000 people.

    In individuals for age 40 to 49,

    there's a rate of 37 cases per a hundred thousand people.

    So an increase in 1% means we've gone from 37 cases

    to 37.37 cases per a hundred thousand people.

    And when you look at the fact that there are

    about 150,000 colorectal cancer cases diagnosed every year,

    that means that we're seeing a few hundred total more cases

    in people under 50.

    Previously, colonoscopy was recommended for individuals 50

    and above, but it's actually been reduced

    to individuals 45 and above.

    So rates are a function of the ability to detect cancers.

    So if we're screening more people

    within those younger age groups,

    we're also going to find more cancers.

    @HarrisonHSmith says,

    When you see 'Citric Acid' on an ingredients list,

    did you know that you're eating an extract

    of Black Mold patented by Pfizer?

    So this is not true,

    but it underscores misinformation about

    how we manufacture citric acid.

    Citric acid is used in foods to give it a sour taste,

    so it's used in candies, but it's also used in seasonings

    and spices, pickles, ketchups, vinegars, mustard.

    It gives everything that nice little sour flavor.

    Every organism creates citric acid as part

    of their basic metabolic process.

    That's why in the cell respiration pathway

    we have the citric acid cycle.

    So we harnessed this fundamental principle of all organisms

    and we use a specific species

    of fungi called aspergillus niger.

    We grow up mold in really large containers

    and we give them molasses,

    and as they're metabolizing the molasses,

    they're producing citric acid during the citric acid cycle,

    and so we harvest that citric acid from the liquid

    that the mold is growing in and there's no mold in it.

    Aspergillus niger is technically a black mold

    because it produces a pigment

    that gives it a black coloring,

    but the color of a mold has no bearing

    on whether it's a harmful organism or not.

    And there's lots of black molds that exist,

    including many that we eat in foods every single day.

    Tofu or soy sauce or koji.

    These are all produced using black molds.

    @AGHuff wants to know, Does chronic Lyme disease exist?

    This is a very controversial topic,

    and unfortunately, Lyme disease has actually been plagued

    with controversy since it was first identified in the 1980s.

    Lyme disease is an acute infection

    by bacteria called Borrelia burgdorfer

    that are deposited into your skin through the bite

    of certain species of ticks that are infected with it.

    So when you get Lyme disease, you take antibiotics such

    as doxycycline, which will eliminate the bacteria

    and clear the infection.

    The phrase chronic Lyme disease is used in two contexts.

    The first refers to symptoms

    that may persist in a small proportion of people

    after you finish that antibiotic treatment.

    This is correctly termed post-treatment

    Lyme disease syndrome,

    and it occurs in about three to 5% of people

    with legitimate Lyme disease.

    And this has to do with the fact

    that the bacteria may have caused some direct tissue damage

    and your immune system takes some time to return

    to baseline, so you may have some symptoms

    for a period of time.

    This is not unique to Lyme disease either.

    Nearly every infection that we know of,

    there's a small proportion of people

    that may have lingering symptoms

    after the infection is gone.

    Context two refers to a persistent infection

    that is ongoing and is long term.

    There are many organizations

    that promote this unfounded theory,

    and what they do is they recommend

    and prescribe treatments that have no evidence

    and are potentially harmful,

    including long-term courses of antibiotics.

    Now, clinical trials have demonstrated

    that there's no therapeutic benefit

    of extending antibiotic treatment

    for this bacterial infection,

    yet people still prescribe these

    and this can lead to serious consequences like sepsis

    and opportunistic infections

    because you're taking antibiotics for too long.

    They also promote a variety

    of unproven wellness interventions,

    things like colloidal silver, bee venom therapy,

    urine therapy, enemas, herbal supplements,

    hormone treatments, metal chelation,

    and a variety of other interventions.

    Not only do these things have no evidence to support them

    for any ailment, they certainly don't have evidence

    to support them for the treatment of a persistent infection

    that does not exist.

    This is why scientific expert agencies

    like the CDC have revised their phrasing

    to discourage the use of the term chronic Lyme disease.

    @lods63 wants to know,

    What are your thoughts on Leaky Gut?

    Is it real? If so, what is the best way to address it?

    So leaky gut sometimes called increased intestinal

    permeability is a diagnosis that is promoted by a lot

    of wellness influencers.

    Like all pseudoscience diagnoses has a little bit

    of truth behind it.

    So there are certain legitimate gastrointestinal diseases

    like celiac disease

    or ulcerative colitis where the pathology

    of the disease causes disruptions in

    how your intestines function.

    But wellness influencers have extrapolated that

    to tell people that your intestines

    just broadly become permeable

    and allow undigested food particles, toxins,

    and bacteria to get into your bloodstream

    and cause a really laundry list of symptoms.

    Everything from GI upset to brain fog and hair loss

    and weird food cravings.

    There's no evidence to support this diagnosis

    and there's no evidence to support any of the tests

    and the treatments that these wellness influencers promote.

    This is a hallmark of pseudoscience.

    They create a medical condition that they can sell a test

    for and then they can sell you the treatment for.

    Don't fall for it.

    @travelingenes says, Hey James Quincy,

    As the CEO of @cocacola, did you allow your own children

    to grow up drinking Coca-Cola?

    Or is your preference

    that only other people's kids be exposed

    to high fructose corn syrup, which is harmful effects

    on the liver mirroring alcohol consumption?

    So high fructose corn syrup is very poorly understood.

    So what we do is we take the glucose

    that's normally 100% of corn syrup

    and we take an enzyme called glucose isomerase

    and we convert about 50% of it

    to the other simple sugar fructose.

    So now you have in high fructose corn syrup,

    a mixture of about 50% fructose and 50% glucose.

    I bet you didn't know,

    but that ratio of glucose to fructose is almost identical

    to the ratio of glucose to fructose in honey

    and the ratio of glucose to fructose

    in table sugar or cane sugar.

    High fructose corns syrup is not any worse than honey

    or any worse than sucrose or table sugar.

    These are all just sugars.

    Your body views them and digests them

    and processes them essentially the same way.

    Your body needs sugars for optimal function,

    but anything in excess, including sugar,

    can be harmful at a high enough dose.

    @je_suis_belle1 asks, Why r people refusing to go

    through body scanners at the airport cause of radiation?!?

    Dammit don't u have a cell phones?!!

    Cell phoness use radio frequency radiation

    and body scanners

    at the airport use millimeter wave radiation.

    Now when we're talking about radiation,

    radiation it all refers to different types of energy.

    The type of radiation that body scanners

    and cell phoness use are down in the radio frequency range.

    These types of radiation waves are very long

    and have very low energy,

    which means that they're non-ionizing.

    So when they interact with your body,

    they're not able to actually cause any damage

    to your cells or your tissues.

    Cell phoness and body scanners don't contain types

    of radiation that are going to cause you harm.

    A lot of people confuse

    or are scared of the phrase radiation

    because we know that there are certain types of radiation,

    high energy radiation like gamma radiation

    that can be ionizing.

    These are high energy, they can cause damage,

    but your radio frequency

    and your body scan radiation is very low energy.

    @suratybal wants to know,

    are underwire bra is still suspect as a cause

    for breast cancer?

    Definitely not.

    Scientific experts have actually never suspected

    that underwires are a cause for breast cancer.

    The logic is that something tight around the lymph nodes

    and the breast tissue was leading to toxin accumulation,

    which was then causing breast cancer.

    There's no scientific plausibility to this

    and it ignores basic concepts of physiology

    and how compounds and toxins and our lymphatic

    and cardiovascular or blood system actually works.

    Now, if you don't wanna wear a bra,

    do you but don't omit wearing a bra

    because you've been told that it causes cancer.

    @LoriSmith1962 says, Carnivore diet is healthier

    for humans and better

    for the environment than being a vegan.

    So this is just objectively false.

    The carnivore diet is based on the premise

    that you should only be consuming animal products.

    That includes meat, animal fats and eggs,

    and this diet omits food groups

    and nutrients that we know are critical

    for health, including fiber.

    Carnivore diet is nearly devoid of fiber,

    and fiber is essential for proper GI function.

    It's also critical to help regulate levels of blood lipids,

    and it's also really important

    for your overall immune system health.

    If you are adhering to a diet that doesn't have fiber

    and doesn't have things like fruits

    and vegetables, you're running the risk

    of severe nutrient deficiency

    and adverse health effects,

    including increased risk of GI issues,

    certain types of cancers and cardiovascular issues.

    So those are all the questions for today.

    Remember, false health information travels six times faster

    than credible facts usually because it's scaring you

    and exacerbating your health fears.

    We all can play a role in helping to combat

    and fact check health disinformation.

    Thanks for watching Pseudoscience Support.

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