Aside from our “friend” Kevin Trudeau, I’ve noticed there have been a lot of products out there claiming to “cure” things. “Natural Cures” or “A New Cure For…” or “People need to realize that herbal cures…”

To be honest, it’s starting to get to me. Because while some of these books do contain some valid (if blatantly obvious) medical information they sure as hell don’t contain cures. Example: If a book tells you that “Getting regular exercise will help you sleep better” or that “high fat foods may increase heartburn” that sure as hell ain’t telling you about a CURE for anything.

What one says they have “cured” something it means that it’s been eliminated; reversed; made to go away; completely fixed. Is that so hard to understand? And whan one says that something is a “cure” that means that it is an effective means of “curing” a condition.

Examples: Antibiotics are a cure for many bacterial infections, because when you take them they eliminate the infection by killing the bacteria. vitamin C supplements are a cure for scurvy, because they replace the deficient nutrient and thus resolve the condition. Many fungal infections can be cured with anti-fungal drugs. An antacid is a cure for heartburn (at least in the short term) because when you take it at least that instance of the condition goes away. You could even make a valid case for aspirin being a “cure” for headaches, since it is at least sometimes effective in completely eliminating them.

What isn’t one: An effective treatment for relieving symptoms; a vaccine; a means of relieving some of the pain of a condition; a way of preventing it; a treatment which prevents it from getting worse or slows it’s progression; a way of accelerating overcoming it; a means of reducing a conditions ability to spread; or for that matter, even forcing something into “remission” or making a condition “managable” or “dormant” or “suppressed.”

NO NO NO! A cure is pretty damn simple. You have a condition. You’re cured and boom, it’s gone! Gone! NO MORE!

Why is this so hard for some of these herbal practitioners or these idiotic quackery books to understand? There is not a single “Cure” in any of Kevin Trudeau’s books. Nor in almost any other of the books or devices claimed to cure anything. And anyone who claims that they have a method for curing something like AIDS or cancer is lying.

(actually that’s not entirely true. Sometimes, cancer can be very easy to cure. In the case of small, localized, early-stage tumors that do not effect any life-critical structures there’s a rather simple cure. It’s called a scalpel)

And finally, I’d like to take some time to address these claims that you can “prevent cancer” or “prevent yourself from getting ill” or somehow else that there is some “miracle” method of preventing things from occurring. Many of these claims aren’t really false, just grossly inflated.

Can you prevent cancer? Yeah. There are no shortage of studies which show that diet and lifestyle can reduce chances of various cancers or other conditions. For example, high fiber diets appear to reduce the risk of colon cancer (although some studies question this) and there’s no shortage of data that diets rich in antioxidant vitamins are helpful in preventing at least some forms of cancer in some groups.

But lets get real. When a study says “Vitimin X shown to prevent condition Y” they do not mean that if you take it you won’t get condition Y. It simply says that it apparently has some effect in reducing the chances, usually by a relatively modest amount. So if you hear a report that claims that a four year study of groups found that those who ate lots of tomatoes and drank lots of wine didn’t have quite as many incidents of stroke, that doesn’t mean you should think “Oh goody! I’ll just live eating nothing but tomatoes and wine and I’ll be immune to strokes.” (and BTW: I just made that up as a hypothetical, so don’t even worry about it)

So in conclusion, let me give you the following information which “they” don’t want you to know about: Exercise, getting plenty of sleep, reducing stress, cutting back on high fat foods and that sort of stuff… the data indicates that sort of thing will by and large reduce your chances of a whole range of conditions from cancer to heart disease to heartburn. That’s not “cure” and it sure as hell ain’t “amazing” or a “miracle.” It’s just extremely basic common sense. And if you need a book to tell you that…

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This entry was posted on Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Quackery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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