I have zero cites to back this up, but the document I read on inflammation was talking specifically about blood vessel linings becoming inflamed and ragged, which would create catch-pockets for cholesterol to build up and form plaque on the lining. It also said that some of the common cholesterol-lowering drugs caused this kind of inflammation, which sounds like burning down the village in order to save it…
I ran a small restaurant at one point and the breakfast talk was about these maladies such as lactose intolerant and gluten poisoning etc. A little 100 lb blonde gal from Australia who was probably 19 years old said. “Just harden the fuck up Bob,
Lactose intolerant, peanut butter out to get you. How did your ancestors survive up to this point, Soy milk in your coffee, Just Harden the fuck up.” And that is my general feeling on the subject. Just harden the fuck up!
Okay… It’s like resistance training for the heart. That’s gotta be good, right?
Opposite. Statins may owe some or maybe even most of their benefit to their anti-inflammatory effects. The concept dates back to at least 2001 and is still being sussed out.
[…]
I followed that link. Judging by its conveniently - chosen synonym it has the same value as the vocabulary of my belligerent, drunken ex-stepfather when he was bellowing at my mother, my sister and me, and rates about as well in terms of contempt.
Everyone is different. We all have tolerances to things that might harm someone else. What works for one will not work for everyone. People have reached their 100’s smoking every day or eating things that would harm another person. Some obese people live longer than their thinner peers. None of these things can be correct for everyone because there is an exception around every corner. About the only universal health truth is that you need to fasten your seat belt to avoid more injury in a car wreck and that one is due to physics.
Without question it is a term of derision not a term of respect. Contempt? Not so much. Contempt is usually reserved for the subset that is not just pseudoscience but also harmful. Vaccine refusal for example uses lots of pseudoscience but as it’s promotors deserve contempt they are not labelled woo. Woo is stupid trying to act smart but not evil or only minimally harmful. IMHO.
But doesn’t it seem silly to use a word first made widely known by Curly of the Three Stooges?
After a long journey with a lot of diggestion problems, I have now reduced my meals to mainly well soaked/cooked rolled oats, brown rice, seldom potatos, chocolate, coffee, fruits, yogurt, milk, springwater, in between I eat some cooked fish, beef or chicken and vegetables with it. I am only avoiding pork in any form and eat only eggs from own chickens, it seems to help, but what helps is unclear…
A. Where do you get that the word has anything to do with Curly’s “woowoowoo”? Certainly not in the link I gave or any other site I can find speculating on the origin of its current use? The usage is clearly the implication of bad magic show and B movie style stuff. The concept is something presented as “scientific” or “occult forces” with things that sound meaningful but are actually goobleygook or made up bits. Oftentimes taking one bit of real science and distorting and misrepresenting it. Like the lists of so-called benefits to raw milk and lots of advice found in books written by nutritionists sold in health food stores 
B. But it would not seem silly to me if it did. Curly was a funny dude and would likely have been happy to have his catchphrase used to mock those who deserve derision.
Those who deserve derision… I just wonder sometimes who sets the criteria. A witch doctor would be duck soup. Some are much harder to judge.
Those who resent use of the useful term “woo” are generally the same as those who hate the term “quackery”. Those words sting because they accurately summarize fanciful, bogus beliefs and claims.
And speaking of woo, here’s a classic from the woo lexicon:
This “we’re all different” claim is used to deride proven evidence-based medical interventions, and to justify woo therapies that are demonstrated failures based on good studies. According to this “everybody’s different” claim, we’re supposed to ignore what science tells us and keep trying a succession of failed alt med remedies until something eventually works (or the patient runs out of money, or dies).
The reality is that humans have a great deal in common, which is why many medications and medical procedures work quite well. There is an increasing tendency to individualize some treatments (i.e. cancer therapies) based on common genetic mutations, but that’s very far from suggesting that every single human is unique and can’t be expected to respond to a given treatment.
You should not let the fight against woo blind you to the fact that different people do indeed, quite often respond, very differently to various quite legitimate drugs and other treatments, and this is true in pretty much all areas of medicine, not just cancer. What works for many people will be largely ineffective for some, and almost all effective drugs cause serious, even life-threatening, side effects in a small minority of patients. These differences may be due to genetic variation, or something else. Their causes are generally not at all well understood, and doctors often have to resort to a trial and error process to find which (if any) of the available and relevant drugs are both effective and safe for a given patient. This is standard medicine, and not woo at all, but it does mean that large scale statistical trials of drug (or other treatment) effectiveness and safety are not always reliable guides (and may even be actively misleading) for the treatment of particular individual patients. Even the most “science based” medicine is still ultimately a practical art rather than a true science.
…which is why I mentioned cancer treatment strategies based on particular mutations (which involve sizable groups of people).
What you may not realize is that blanket statements that suggest we’re all unique snowflakes grossly distort reality. The vast majority of evidence-based therapies work quite well in the vast majority of patients; in situations where they don’t, changes can be made to get an adequate response…again, on a logical basis.
Trial and error (especially error) and dismissing failures on the basis that “we’re all different, so try this instead” is a hallmark of woo, and should never be the underlying basis of good medical practice.
All other things being equal, I would prefer “quackery” over “woo.” I have a book titled * The Art of Plain Talk*–dealing with rhetoric and composition–which offers general rules, including “Prefer the short word to the long”–but also "Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. " For this criterion, “woo” doesn’t pass muster.
God, get a grip. “We’re all different” is simply a statement of fact.
Depends on community and context.
Among SDMB long-timers, “woo” is both entirely familiar and perfectly appropriate.
You can argue that’s it’s evolving into an SDMB shibboleth. Probably true. Possibly why it’s favored. (Beyond brevity, and a properly sardonic tone. Let’s face it, “quack” was probably sarcastic back in the day, but now it’s pretty dry and strait-laced. “Woo” recaptures the insouciance, the essential disdain.)
The sin is not in the statement of fact, but the motives behind the statement and the conclusion drawn from the statement.
Jackmannii’s observations of the intents and ends of saying “We’re all different” are pretty dead-on, in my own experience.
At the very least, one’s bullshit meter should be calibrated so that the mention of “individualized therapy” (or another fave, “we treat the whole person”) should at least get the needle to quiver.
As examples, we have the highly questionable “individualized” cancer regimens of Stan Burzynski and Nicholas Gonzalez.
And if further proof is needed that “woo” and “individualized therapy” go together, look no further.
“Woo” is shorter, more precise, and around skeptical circles extremely familiar.
“Quackery” on the otherhand implies specifically medical fraud. “Woo” can be used in the service of “quackery” but “woo” is not specific to medical issues and is not the fraud; it is the use of the pseudoscience equivalent of smoke and mirrors.
Exactly. The intent is to imply that since everyone is different we should not be informed by what is true for most and can instead rely on anecdote and placebo responses.