August 11, 2025 • 31 mins
Welcome to the first episode under the brand-new banner, Because Why?! The show where my curiosity gets the better of me, and I drag you along for the ride. (You're welcome?)
We’re still talking about the environment, but now the scope is much wider: science, ethical business, politics (even when it makes my eye twitch), and the weird, wonderful, and occasionally infuriating claims floating around out there.
In this episode, I’m kicking things off with wellness trends, dodgy health claims, and overhyped “miracle” fixes people keep getting sold.
From seed oil scaremongering to the microplastic “hoover,” cold plunges, cortisol face, and the mysterious world of “structured water,” let's dissect the pseudoscience to establish what’s true, what’s nonsense, and why these ideas catch on in the first place.
In this episode, you’ll hear about:
- Seed oils - are they really as bad as people say? (No)
- The actual science behind seed oils
- What the microplastic hoover is - and whether it works (It probably doesn't)
- How therapeutic apheresis really stacks up
- Practical tips to reduce your microplastic exposure
- Why cold plunges might carry more risks than you think
- Can you really tell your stress hormone levels just by looking in the mirror? (No)
- What cortisol actually does in your body
- Why “hormone balancing” is mostly myth and marketing
- The three biggest reasons anecdotal evidence tricks us
- Can water really be “structured” or “vortexed” to be better for you? (No)
- The truth about hydrogen water and the science behind it
If you want to keep doing cold plunges, I’m happy for you! Just... be careful. And if you’ve got $20,000 burning a hole in your pocket, maybe think twice before signing up for a microplastic blood cleanse.
The boring truth is usually what works: sleep, balanced diet, exercise, social connections.
Thanks for joining me on this first episode of Because Why?!
Mā te wā - see you next week.
You can get involved with the podcast online in the meantime, of course.
Find our full podcast via the website here: https://www.nowthatwhatsicall.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/becausewhypod/
You can follow me on socials on the below accounts.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/briannemwest/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@briannemwest
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/briannemwest/
For our latest big project, find out more about Incrediballs here: https://incrediballs.com/
Sources:
Seed oils: (word count prevents proper referencing.)
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jand.2012.03.029
- https://doi.org/10.1186/1743-7075-8-36
- https://doi.org/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000510
- https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD011737.pub3
- https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.114.010236
- https://doi.org/10.1016/S2213-8587(17)30307-8
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Micro basics have been found in our hearts, our lungs,
placentas, testicles, pretty much everywhere we have looked
for them. But in good news, a clinic in
London reckons that they can filter them out of your blood
and all it will cost you is $20,000.
Does it work? Well, No, probably not.
There's absolutely no evidence to suggest that it does.
But that's kind of the way the Wellness industry works, right?
(00:22):
They come up with an idea, they create some social media posts
about it and then doesn't matterif it works or not people get
excited, it hits the media and all of a sudden it becomes a
trend and that is what we were talking about today.
Welcome back to now that's what I call green.
But surprise, we've rebranded and welcome to because why?
(00:43):
Why? Well, I started now that's what
I call green to chat about sustainability and eco friendly
myths and things like how paper bags are probably worse for the
environment than plastic ones. But it's kind of gone a little
bit further than that. I am interested in pretty much
anything except maybe tech or AI.
And the part has expanded into more science, ethical business,
(01:05):
and kind of surprisingly, actually politics, even though
politicians mostly would just make my eye twitch.
Why is my favorite word? And because why is that sentence
that kids get to when you haven't been able to answer
their questions sufficiently? So they still don't understand
the world they're in, and they want to know more.
And I never really grew out of that stage.
(01:26):
So I've made it official. Don't panic.
I'm absolutely still going to talk about the environment.
It's kind of a thing. But it's not like you can
separate that from the real world, from science and policy
and ethical business in general.So it all fits together
beautifully. So for my first episode under
this new banner, I wanted to start with a bang.
I wanted to start with somethingthat I knew would make some
(01:47):
people mad because I am sick to death of seeing people scared
and ripped off by grifters, which is word of the week in the
Wellness industry. Which is, by the way, almost
four times larger than big pharma.
Which seems weird that one of them is vilified and one of them
is canonized. Which means, you know, made into
like a St. and it's the one thatmakes less money that people
(02:10):
keep pointing the finger at. Anyway, food for thought.
I'm currently doing my masters at university because I really,
really want Doctor in front of my name one day.
And I've tacked on a couple of philosophy papers because
thinking about how we think and categorize things is
fascinating, if not kind of supremely frustrating.
And one of those papers is on conspiracy theories and
pseudoscience, which is perfect for today's episode.
(02:31):
Now, there is something called the search method, which is
basically just the way to tell if a claim is total bullshit.
It's an acronym, right? The S stands for state, the
claim. If you can't say what they're
claiming, it's probably not true.
E stands for evidence. What evidence is there for this
claim? Data is there?
What methodology? Are they any good?
(02:52):
Is it really just anecdotes? And my cousin's neighbour's
brother's dog felt better after taking this thing.
Vibes. Also not evidence.
A stands for consider alternative hypotheses.
So what else could explain the facts?
R is for rating both of those hypotheses using some different
criteria. I mean H which hypothesis scores
(03:15):
the best, which is usually not the one that feels the nicest.
And it's a really easy way to evaluate a claim and get bit of
a handle on whether it's total nonsense.
And it is really handy because I've always thought I was
slightly better than the averageperson at spotting propaganda.
And I'm pretty convinced that that may not be true anymore
because I was going down a left wing ideology rabbit hole and I
(03:36):
didn't even notice because I have this other belief that
left-leaning people are less likely to be psychopathic or
narcissistic. And then I read a whole bunch of
studies that said actually, well, extremists on either side
of the political debate are justas likely to have psychopathic
tendencies. So it just goes to show that
some of those beliefs you hold really deeply without even kind
(03:56):
of realizing it are actually nonsense.
Which brings me back to our topic of the day.
Let's start with seed oils because it's the thing I'm
seeing the most of. And it is absolutely madding
because did you know seed oils are actually the reason that
you're tired? That you're overweight, that
you're filled to the gills with inflammation?
Because they are almost single handedly responsible for the
(04:17):
collapse of civilization, or at least according to most Wellness
influencers at the moment. But the problem is that
literally none of that is supported by evidence.
So when I say seed oils, I mean things like sunflower, canola,
soybean, and they are mostly made-up of something called
polyunsaturated fats. Polyunsaturated describes the
chemical structure so that they have more than one double bond
(04:40):
on the carbon backbone. That's not really relevant to
the discussion. But within this category are
some fats that your body cannot make for itself.
And those are the essential fatty acids, Omega 6 and
omega-3. Now both are vital for health
but they do have different jobs.So Omega 6 fats help with things
like cell growth, skin health, immune function by Omega threes
(05:00):
are crucial for brain function, anti-inflammatory pathways and
heart health. You need both in a reasonable
ratio for optimum function. Fear around seed oils seems to
come from very cherry picked animal studies that use extreme
diets overloaded with Omega sixes in particular and
completely stripped of Omega threes.
(05:22):
So in humans that are eating a fairly normal balanced diet,
Omega 6 does not increase inflammation markers like C
reactive protein, which is also known as CRP or interleukin 6,
both which are inflammation markers.
In fact it's the opposite because in study after study
after study, replacing saturatedfats like what's in butter for
(05:45):
example, with polyunsaturated fats consistently lowers your
LDL cholesterol. That's the bad one and is linked
to a lower risk of heart disease.
That is why every major health body, yes even the Super duper
bad ones that are hiding the truth from you, still recommends
that you eat them. These anteced oil evangelists
(06:05):
are saying some of the most unhinged stuff.
Like I watched a video the otherday on Instagram where a woman
was saying that the fat from thethings you consume actually
migrates into your brain. Your brain does 70% fat, which
is absolutely true, but she's saying that whatever you consume
that is made-up of fat becomes your brain.
(06:25):
I want you to just have a think as to whether that would make
sense. Do you think there are people
wandering around out there that are mostly butter brained,
whereas some people are maybe olive oil brained?
Does that sound like something that would ring true?
No, of course it doesn't. And that's the thing, when you
actually look at these claims, even with the smallest amount of
(06:47):
logic, they start to fall apart.And I'm belabouring this point
because I want you to be able tospot it yourself.
I've talked before about how youcan see bad science and
propaganda and media bias. All of this comes together and
makes you a much more educated, much less likely to be
manipulated person. And that is better for all of
us. The people who hate seed oils
are really relying on some older, very poorly controlled
(07:08):
trials or observational studies.And those are studies that just
look at associations and they are completely ignoring the far
larger body of evidence from things like meter analysis and
long term studies showing the complete opposite.
Because when you look at all theevidence, by far and away
polyunsaturated fats like what you find in seed oils are vastly
superior for your cardiovascularhealth.
(07:30):
It goes hand in hand with the idea of natural being safer than
synthetic, which is of course absolute rubbish if you think
about that for even just a minute.
Seed oils are a modern industrial product and that is
part of the appeal to nature fallacy.
The process of extracting oil from seeds is not inherently
dangerous. People throw around words like
hexane, but these things are tested to ensure that there is
(07:52):
no residues left in the oil. There's one aspect to this
method might have a grain of truth, which is the idea of
oxidation because yes, oils oxidize when they're heated.
So when you heat seed oils, people are concerned that they
will produce oxidation products.They are just the chemical
compounds that are formed when fats in the oil react with
oxygen. So those are things like lipid
(08:13):
peroxides or aldehydes. Now, some of these oxidation
products can then generate something called free radicals
when the in the body or even during the cooking process.
Now, free radicals are unstable,very reactive molecules that
have an unpaired electron. That's what makes them unstable.
So they try to steal electrons from other molecules like your
cell membranes or your DNA, and that causes damage.
(08:36):
That is what is called oxidativestress.
But your body already produces free radicals all the time
during normal metabolism. One of the biggest risks is, of
course, the sun, and your body already has antioxidant defenses
to keep them in check. So when you're cooking normally
at home, the level of these compounds and foods, even if you
are heating seed oils, are well below what would overwhelm those
(08:57):
defences anyway. So home cooking, totally fine.
The real problem is repeatedly reheating oil at very high
temperatures. So that's your industrial deep
fries and takeaways because that's when your oxidation
products can accumulate to higher concentrations.
But if you're sauteing or bakingor frying at home, it's really
(09:17):
not a meaningful health risk. I promise.
And then finally, there is the ratio argument.
And this is the idea that Omega 6 in particular are
inflammatory, especially when you don't consume enough
omega-3. And true, a lot of people
actually have imbalance in theirdiets.
Most people eat more Omega 6 than omega-3.
But the problem isn't that they're eating too much Omega 6,
(09:39):
it's that they're not eating enough omega-3.
But even that does not 'cause inflammation.
It just means you're not gettingenough omega-3 for optimum
health. This is where the whole thing
about eating oily fish or algae or comes from.
And I wanted to know where this rumour came from because it
seemingly came out of nowhere and all of a sudden became a big
deal with freaking RFK over in the USA in Maha which is which
(10:03):
stands for almost anything except Make America Healthy
Again. And after a bit of searching, it
looks like this particular rumour quite literally comes
from a couple of higher profile podcast appearances that have
just been repeated verbatim since the early 20 tens.
The initial claim was made without citing any peer reviewed
science, no clinical data, and there is no robust published
(10:26):
research that supports the idea that a specific Omega 6 to
omega-3 ratio alone drives inflammation.
None of the claims made by the anti seed oil groups actually
hold any water. TLDR Seed oils are not causing
modern health problems. It's the fact that nobody's
sleeping, we're all stressed constantly on our phones,
(10:48):
everybody's eating ultra processed foods, nobody's moving
enough, and we're all just fucking tired, you know?
But that doesn't mean you shouldgo and drink a bottle of canola
oil. As with everything, moderation.
And just as a quick aside, the average calorie intake in
America is 3500 calories, which is, of course, significantly
more than the 2 to 2 1/2 thousand recommended for adults.
(11:09):
But the average American also only moves 20 minutes a day.
So I suspect that if you look, that is more likely to be
aligned with some of the health issues than seed oils.
And hey, if you've got any robust clinical trials done in
humans that show the opposite, I'd be very happy to read them.
So that's one scam ticked off. Let's go to #2 which is what I
(11:31):
have decided to call the microplastic Hoover.
I'm Manx. Hoover means vacuum cleaner.
I said at the beginning, microplastics are everywhere and
that is genuinely very scary. I spoke to a microplastics
expert on the pod a couple of months ago and some of the
things she told me did not fill me with joy, so if this worked I
would be delighted. So there is a clinic in London
(11:51):
that will draw your blood, spin it to separate the plasma.
They will run it through a filtration column to filter all
the bits out, and then they inject it back into you.
It sounds on the face of it thatthis process would work, right?
And fair enough because it's actually something that we do a
lot of already. It's called therapeutic
apheresis. And the process removes things
like abnormal proteins or unhealthy cells and other
(12:13):
harmful substances and then pumps the clean bud back into
the body a little bit like dialysis, right?
And this clinic pointed a study that's done in Germany where
scientists treated 21 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome
using two rounds of this apheresis.
And then they had a look at whatthey found, and that they did
indeed find some substances thathad the chemical signatures of
microplastics, but they didn't measure before and after.
(12:36):
They didn't look at what they had actually found.
They didn't actually verify anything at all.
And every expert that has talkedabout it has said that at best,
the evidence is inconclusive, which basically means we have no
idea if it works or not. And I've got to be honest, if
something's going to cost me 20 grand, I want to know that it
works. Because the main problem is that
(12:57):
microplastics aren't actually just floating around in your
blood. They're actually embedded in
your tissues. And recent research this year
actually found that they can getinside cells.
And this process can't touch shit when it's in your cells,
which is another conversation and quite frightening in itself.
So it can only get the microplastics in your blood.
Nobody knows what percentage it takes out because they haven't
done the bare minimum of measuring before and after.
(13:19):
And then the biggest problem of all, of course, is why bother?
And that's might be a little bitnihilistic, but why bother
taking it out when the next day you've probably consumed them
all back in anyway? Unfortunately, microplastics
have become so ubiquitous that everything from breathing to
drinking exposes you to billionsof them.
So this is nonsense. It's generated a fair bit of
(13:40):
priest. People have got very excited
about it, and I imagine it's making some people very rich.
Ordinarily I'd say good for themand they're entrepreneurial
Ness, but I really hate it when people take advantage of
people's fear. If you want to reduce your
microplastic exposure, there aresmall things you can do.
Drink loose leaf tea, not tea bags, because believe it or not,
tea bags are actually one of theworst and every single time it
releases hundreds of millions ofmicro plastics into your cup of
(14:03):
tea. But there's also things like
don't microwave your food and plastics, store food and drink
in glass or stainless steel. Don't drink bottled water unless
it's absolutely necessary. Interestingly enough, keep your
house clean, vacuum and dust regularly to cut indoor levels.
And of course, most importantly,piece to businesses and
governments to do better and cutplastic pollution.
(14:24):
This is really just an incredibly expensive process
with a sign of risk because of course it is a medical
procedure. Talking about risk, cold
plunges. They have more risk than you
might think. And it turns out the benefits
massively overhyped. They are everywhere.
They have been everywhere for a long time.
Ever since Wim Hof Hofed his wayinto a frozen pond, people have
(14:48):
been climbing into ice baths andclaiming that they feel better
and it's the secrets and better health and faster recovery and
weight loss and bulletproof immunity and so on.
Now, if it makes you feel better, great.
Goes without saying, keep doing it, but the evidence doesn't
live up to the hype yet again. But it is easy to see why it
(15:08):
caught on right? It looks dramatic, it's
uncomfortable, but then you get this like surge of happiness
once you get out of the cold water because your brain is
rewarding you for removing yourself from a dangerous
situation. Now there is some evidence that
cold water immersion can help you feel less sore and less
fatigued after a hard gym session, but that isn't linked
to some kind of medical shortcutto better performance or faster
(15:29):
muscle gain. And in fact, jumping into icy
water straight after training can actually lower the
inflammatory signals that your muscles need to build more
muscle. So it actually does the
opposite. If you are using cold plunges to
build more muscle, you are doingyourselves A disservice.
And in more recent research, which has been done on women,
because of course I could talk about how women are quite often
(15:50):
ignored in these sorts of studies, the results are even
worse. Now, as I mentioned, a lot of
people do get a short term spikein adrenaline and dopamine, and
a lot of people find that uplifting.
But this is not a clinically proven treatment for depression
or anxiety because in any studies that have been done on
it are small, they're short, andthey're inconsistent because it
doesn't last over time. Does it boost your metabolism?
(16:11):
Cold exposure can activate something called brown fat and
then increases calorie burn, butonly to the tuna sort of 10s of
calories. And then studies have shown that
people who do a cold plunge typically eat 2 to 300 more
calories that day, completely offsetting that.
So there goes your weight loss strategy.
So it doesn't boost your mood, your metabolism or your muscles.
But it can cause problems because cold shock can cause
(16:33):
really dangerous heart rhythm changes in people with
cardiovascular disease, of course.
But you don't always know when you have cardiovascular disease,
and you might just find out in ahorrific way.
There's the risk of hypothermia if you overdo it, which is why
you should never do it alone until you're absolutely
convinced you know what you're doing.
And even perfectly healthy people can faint from sudden
changes and blood pressure. This happens to me.
(16:55):
I cannot do cold plunges becausemy blood pressure does not allow
it. I already have baseline low
blood pressure. I get dizzy when I stand up.
It's very annoying. And I have tried to do the cold
plunge thing a few times but every time the same thing
happens. And I have tried to do cold
water showers a few times to tryand get into this.
So you have a shower and then just before you come out, you
(17:16):
turn the shower all the way downto icy cold and stand there for
a minute and then you get out. You don't turn the shower back
to warm. That's how you get the benefits.
Every time I've done this, I have only done it a couple of
times, my vision goes black. There is risk in exposing your
body to big changes like this. You may remember the ice bucket
challenge from years ago. There was a social media
phenomenon raising money. Somebody died and This is why.
(17:39):
So if you enjoy cold plunges because you like the ritual, or
it does give you a mood boost, or you find it does help with
your recovery, then go for it. But if you are looking to build
muscle, it is not your friend. If you are doing it for weight
loss, it's definitely not your friend.
Do you know who else is not yourfriend?
As people on TikTok telling you,you have cortisol face.
The next two are a little bit linked because apparently you
(18:01):
can now diagnose your stress hormone levels by looking at
your face in the mirror. You've probably heard the term
cortisol face, which is supposedly a set of features
like you've got puffiness, you've got rounded cheeks, or
you've got eye bags, and that supposedly means that your
cortisol is high. It's pretty catchy, it's trendy,
it's very visual, and it's completely unsupported by
science. So cortisol is an essential
(18:24):
hormone that's produced by your adrenal glands.
It follows a daily rhythm. It is the highest in the morning
when you wake up and it tapers off throughout the day.
It does spike temporarily with say, exercise or illness or
anything your body perceives as stress, like a phone call from
an unknown number. Please God, would you stop
ringing me now? Some people do have chronically
(18:45):
high cortisol levels. Now I am one of those people who
does have slightly elevated cortisol levels because I
maintain a nice healthy stress throughout my entire life and I
don't do enough to relax. I don't have cortisol face.
The only time when cortisol reliably changes how you look
are rare medical conditions likeCushing's syndrome or long term
(19:06):
high dose steroid use. And in those cases you get fat
deposition around the face and neck.
And that happens over months or years.
It does not happen overnight. You don't wake up 1 morning and
suddenly you've got cortisol face.
And if you just buy the supplement from this person who
looks totally legit, you won't anymore.
This is so popular because this is a quick fix what people
perceive as a fault. They don't like what they look
(19:29):
like in the mirror and they think they can fix it by buying
this thing that a grifter is selling them.
I'm sorry to tell you it's not true.
There is no validating cortisol.Face is not used as a diagnostic
tool. There's no blind trials.
There's no biomarker correlations.
There is absolutely nothing. The videos you see online are
anecdotal and something called confirmation bias.
(19:49):
So this is where people pick imagery that matches their
narrative and they ignore all the other evidence against it.
Now obviously it's not to say that chronic stress is a health
problem, I've just told you about mine.
And persistently elevated cortisol, when it's confirmed by
proper testing is linked with things like impaired sleep and
immune function and metabolic health.
But unfortunately the solutions are the same thing.
(20:12):
They are more sleep balanced diet, consistent exercise,
social connection which is the hardest of all probably.
And evidence based stress management techniques.
So a cream, a powder, a supplement, or a detox.
They are cashing in on a made-upproblem.
And that rolls nicely into the idea of hormone balancing.
This is something oh I'm just seeing so much of and it makes
(20:34):
absolutely no sense because not a single one of those people
talking about hormone balancing can probably name 3 hormones.
Your body runs on hormones. They are incredibly important.
And so the idea of balanced hormones sounds, again, quite
legit, which is why it's one of the Wellness grifter's favorite
phrases, because it sounds medical, but it's also kind of
(20:54):
vague. So the person who's selling you
something can make it mean whatever they want to make it
mean, and then they can sell yousomething to fix it.
In reality, your hormones are super duper regulated by very
complicated feedback loops, which include things like the
brain glands and various tissues, and they fluctuate
naturally over the day across your menstrual cycle with things
(21:15):
like age and stress and illness.What you eat there is random
snapshot testing out there like single time point saliva or
dried blood spot kits which willtell you absolutely nothing
useful because they are a momentin time.
If you are truly looking at whatyour hormones are doing, and
there's absolutely many medical reasons to do that, you need to
do that under the supervision ofa medical practitioner and
(21:37):
evaluate the results over time. Conditions like hypothyroidism,
PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, menopause, low
testosterone, they are absolutely real.
They are diagnosable hormone disorders.
They require proper testing. No one can tell you if you have
them by looking at your symptoms.
There is one disorder that you will hear about and that is not
(21:58):
a recognized diagnosis and that's adrenal fatigue.
Now I know a lot of people are absolutely adamant that they
have had or have adrenal fatigue, but it is not a
recognized diagnosis. Don't shoot the messenger.
True adrenal insufficiency is incredibly rare and life
threatening and it is very specifically diagnosed with
(22:19):
something called stimulation test, not a male in kit.
So if you truly think you have ahormone disorder, go and see a
doctor. They are very important.
And if you are suffering with things like fatigue and brain
fog and low mood or stubborn weight or excess hair growth or
a multitude of different things,go and see a doctor.
By treating this without medicalsupervision you can do yourself
(22:39):
quite a lot of damage. Because people self prescribe
themselves hormones. I'm seeing people inject things
like any mean on TikTok, which is really concerning.
Which isn't a hormone. It's a separate topic entirely,
but the fact that people are just injecting themselves
without any training is quite concerning.
But there are bioidentical hormone creams that you can rub
on yourself, and these sorts of things disrupt your own hormone
(23:00):
production. There have been documented
medical cases where children have come into contact with,
say, their father's testosteronecream, for example, and it has
really caused them harm. There is no such thing as a
hormone balancing product because what hormone would you
be balancing? That's another thing to have a
think about. If your hormones are out of
whack, how could a generic supplement or a cream help?
(23:21):
Because there would be a reason that your hormones would be out
of whack. There are lots of supplements
out there. There is lots of anecdotal
evidence from people who've saidit has helped, and maybe it has,
but there is a variety of reasons that people will feel
like something has helped them when there is no evidence that
it actually did. The three biggest factors that
lead to anecdotal evidence is the placebo effect, something
called regression to the mean, which is where people usually go
(23:44):
and seek help when they're feeling the absolute worst.
They get treated and they go back to how they were feeling
before, but because they went tosea at an extreme which probably
would have regressed to the meanor gone back to your usual state
anyway, they attribute that to the treatment.
And the third one, of course is natural healing that would have
occurred anyway because if you support your body in the right
(24:07):
ways, it is excellent at defending you from most things.
So if you're still watching a video about cortisol face or
someone is saying that you need your hormones balanced, run
away. And if you really want to go and
see a doctor. And now I've ended on my
favorite one because this one's kind of funny, but it's also
kind of not structured water. Have you heard of structured
water or hexagonal water? Vortex water?
(24:31):
Yeah. It's all the same stuff, right?
The theory is that someone has rearranged the H2O molecules in
a special way that makes them more hydrating or healing or
energetic. It's not totally dissimilar to
homeopathy. I'm sorry.
Homeopathy has absolutely no evidence for its efficacy and it
sort of flies in the face of a lot of universal laws.
(24:52):
So I could add homeopathy on here but this episode is already
too long as it is now. The marketing for this idea of
structured water Burrows from real chemistry terms.
So things that hydrogen bonds and molecular structure, but it
completely misuses them so it makes them sound legit.
Unless you are a chemist. So water molecules in liquid
(25:12):
water are constantly moving. They're forming and breaking
bonds trillions of times per second.
Water may look calm under the surface and a molecular level
she is not. You know, think about when you
look at a fluffy white cloud, itlooks calm and chilled.
But then when you fly through itin a plane and it's turbulent as
fuck, it's kind of like that. So any structure that is somehow
(25:33):
created in a jug or a vortexer will vanish immediately before
it gets to your mouth or your stomach, and it will certainly
vanish once it got there. There's absolutely no evidence
nor even any thought or logic behind this one.
Not to mention that even if you could maintain a structure in
water, why would structured water be better for your health
(25:55):
or better hydrating anyway? What then?
There's also a slightly different one with hydrogen
water, and this is where they are dissolving molecular
hydrogen gas, which is H2SO2 hydrogen atoms bonded and
they're dissolving it into the water using things like tablets
or special machines. Now I am going to be very cagey
(26:17):
here because there is some very minor preliminary early stage
research and very specific medical conditions like
oxidative distress and metabolicsyndrome for example that shows
that maybe there is some kind ofinconsistent benefit.
The studies are small, they are short term, they are often
(26:38):
company funded which is a red flag, although not always but
it's something to be aware of. But they are inconsistent.
Science should have consensus. There are no benefits shown
whatsoever for healthy people. Something to also note that
hydrogen is an absolute bitch totry and contain, so the moment
you open your can or bottle, it will disappear very very
(26:58):
quickly. So unless you're chugging it,
you're just drinking really expensive tap water devices or
sachets for hydrogenizing your water, which is now my new
favorite phrase. They can cost 10s of thousands
of dollars. It's the ultimate grift.
Right? And they often cite in vitro or
animal studies. And of course animal studies
don't always translate as humans.
Just go and Google thalidomide, or if they are in human trials,
(27:22):
they're far too small to draw any kind of conclusions, and
they've not been repeated. None of that justifies the price
or the health claims. Now, while I I find this one a
little bit funny, this is a bit that isn't.
Now, I've talked about a measlesoutbreak in a previous episode
about misinformation and media literacy.
That outbreak was in 2019, and it killed 83 people, mostly
children. And that was because there was
such a fear of vaccinations at that point that only about 30%
(27:45):
of the population were vaccinated.
A lot of that's linked to RFK Junior, too.
Yeah, the guy who's in charge ofhealth in the USA, But here is
where it links to this story because another reason it got so
bad there was because, understandably so, parents took
their sick children to their traditional healers and those
healers had been sold machines on the basis that they made
(28:07):
water extra immune giving by an Australian company.
That is why I constantly talk about this sort of thing,
because yes, if you have the money to drop $10,000 on a
vortex water machine because youthink it'll better hydrate you,
then you know what the saying. A fool and his money are soon
parted. Kind of holds true there.
(28:28):
But if you're being lied to and mislead and that is directly
harming health outcomes, then I think this is a very separate
conversation. Structured water is utter
rubbish. It's just very expensive.
Hydrogen water is super early stage, very very over hyped, and
neither of them are going to help you have better hydration.
Drink more water, eat foods withhigh water content which is
(28:50):
usually fruits and vegetables, and if you're sweating heavily,
take an electrolyte. You do not need magical
molecular rearrangement. That does sound like a critical
band name though. So there you have it.
I had to stop it at six, but I could have keep going.
I could have talked about oat milk, or how EV batteries
supposedly make you infertile that they don't, or how gluten
(29:11):
is Public Enemy #1 when it isn't.
There is so much absolute nonsense.
There is so much bullshit in theWellness world it drives me mad.
To the point now when people askme in business settings how I
maintain my Wellness, I activelyphysically cringe because that
word has become so bastardized now.
(29:32):
If you want to keep doing these things, you do you.
There is no judgement. I just want to make sure that
you have the most up to date information and that you're not
being lied to or manipulated. If you like doing cold plunges,
I am delighted for you. Please be careful that you don't
pass out if you've got $10,000 burning a hole in your pocket,
maybe you want a water vortex machine.
Or if you've got 20 grand, maybeyou want to be stabbed with a
(29:54):
needle. I do not.
So even if I did feel like wasting 20 grand on something
that didn't work, that would notbe the thing.
The boring truth about health isthat the unsexy stuff is what
works. That hasn't changed.
It's sleep, It's exercise, It's a good balanced diet which
includes a lot of fibre. Guys, we're going to have to do
an episode on fibre because the fact that 95% of people don't
eat enough fibre and bowel cancer rates are going through
(30:15):
the roof is quite alarming. Other things that people don't
consider so much about health ispeople and social structure
around you. I joke a lot that I'm a hermit
and that I stay at home a lot and I don't answer my phone, but
I have a wonderful group of people around me and knowing
that they're around you really does help with things like
stress, having social connections.
Very important and kind of underestimated.
(30:38):
Of course, the number one predictor of life and health
span. Health span being the number of
years that you spend healthy or you know, fit and active as
opposed to too old and decrepit to move.
The number one indicator is wealth.
If you are living in poverty, you are much more likely to have
adverse health outcomes. And that is the grim, depressing
and frustrating truth. So I hope you enjoyed the first
(31:00):
episode of Because Why? I need to think of a wee catch
phrase. If anyone can think of a catch
phrase to either start or end the podcast on so it ties it all
together. But because why, then throw it
my way. I will find you a prize.
And I want to do another Wellness roundup.
So any of these silly trends that you see, please forward
them to me. I really enjoy.
Well, I don't enjoy it actually.That frustrates me immensely.
(31:20):
But I do enjoy debunking them and finding the evidence as to
whether it's true or not. Because hey, one day one of them
might be. Thank you for joining me,
Martiwa. See you next week.
Micro basics have been found in our hearts, our lungs,
placentas, testicles, pretty much everywhere we have looked
for them. But in good news, a clinic in
London reckons that they can filter them out of your blood
and all it will cost you is $20,000.
Does it work? Well, No, probably not.
There's absolutely no evidence to suggest that it does.
But that's kind of the way the Wellness industry works, right?
(00:22):
They come up with an idea, they create some social media posts
about it and then doesn't matterif it works or not people get
excited, it hits the media and all of a sudden it becomes a
trend and that is what we were talking about today.
Welcome back to now that's what I call green.
But surprise, we've rebranded and welcome to because why?
(00:43):
Why? Well, I started now that's what
I call green to chat about sustainability and eco friendly
myths and things like how paper bags are probably worse for the
environment than plastic ones. But it's kind of gone a little
bit further than that. I am interested in pretty much
anything except maybe tech or AI.
And the part has expanded into more science, ethical business,
(01:05):
and kind of surprisingly, actually politics, even though
politicians mostly would just make my eye twitch.
Why is my favorite word? And because why is that sentence
that kids get to when you haven't been able to answer
their questions sufficiently? So they still don't understand
the world they're in, and they want to know more.
And I never really grew out of that stage.
(01:26):
So I've made it official. Don't panic.
I'm absolutely still going to talk about the environment.
It's kind of a thing. But it's not like you can
separate that from the real world, from science and policy
and ethical business in general.So it all fits together
beautifully. So for my first episode under
this new banner, I wanted to start with a bang.
I wanted to start with somethingthat I knew would make some
(01:47):
people mad because I am sick to death of seeing people scared
and ripped off by grifters, which is word of the week in the
Wellness industry. Which is, by the way, almost
four times larger than big pharma.
Which seems weird that one of them is vilified and one of them
is canonized. Which means, you know, made into
like a St. and it's the one thatmakes less money that people
(02:10):
keep pointing the finger at. Anyway, food for thought.
I'm currently doing my masters at university because I really,
really want Doctor in front of my name one day.
And I've tacked on a couple of philosophy papers because
thinking about how we think and categorize things is
fascinating, if not kind of supremely frustrating.
And one of those papers is on conspiracy theories and
pseudoscience, which is perfect for today's episode.
(02:31):
Now, there is something called the search method, which is
basically just the way to tell if a claim is total bullshit.
It's an acronym, right? The S stands for state, the
claim. If you can't say what they're
claiming, it's probably not true.
E stands for evidence. What evidence is there for this
claim? Data is there?
What methodology? Are they any good?
(02:52):
Is it really just anecdotes? And my cousin's neighbour's
brother's dog felt better after taking this thing.
Vibes. Also not evidence.
A stands for consider alternative hypotheses.
So what else could explain the facts?
R is for rating both of those hypotheses using some different
criteria. I mean H which hypothesis scores
(03:15):
the best, which is usually not the one that feels the nicest.
And it's a really easy way to evaluate a claim and get bit of
a handle on whether it's total nonsense.
And it is really handy because I've always thought I was
slightly better than the averageperson at spotting propaganda.
And I'm pretty convinced that that may not be true anymore
because I was going down a left wing ideology rabbit hole and I
(03:36):
didn't even notice because I have this other belief that
left-leaning people are less likely to be psychopathic or
narcissistic. And then I read a whole bunch of
studies that said actually, well, extremists on either side
of the political debate are justas likely to have psychopathic
tendencies. So it just goes to show that
some of those beliefs you hold really deeply without even kind
(03:56):
of realizing it are actually nonsense.
Which brings me back to our topic of the day.
Let's start with seed oils because it's the thing I'm
seeing the most of. And it is absolutely madding
because did you know seed oils are actually the reason that
you're tired? That you're overweight, that
you're filled to the gills with inflammation?
Because they are almost single handedly responsible for the
(04:17):
collapse of civilization, or at least according to most Wellness
influencers at the moment. But the problem is that
literally none of that is supported by evidence.
So when I say seed oils, I mean things like sunflower, canola,
soybean, and they are mostly made-up of something called
polyunsaturated fats. Polyunsaturated describes the
chemical structure so that they have more than one double bond
(04:40):
on the carbon backbone. That's not really relevant to
the discussion. But within this category are
some fats that your body cannot make for itself.
And those are the essential fatty acids, Omega 6 and
omega-3. Now both are vital for health
but they do have different jobs.So Omega 6 fats help with things
like cell growth, skin health, immune function by Omega threes
(05:00):
are crucial for brain function, anti-inflammatory pathways and
heart health. You need both in a reasonable
ratio for optimum function. Fear around seed oils seems to
come from very cherry picked animal studies that use extreme
diets overloaded with Omega sixes in particular and
completely stripped of Omega threes.
(05:22):
So in humans that are eating a fairly normal balanced diet,
Omega 6 does not increase inflammation markers like C
reactive protein, which is also known as CRP or interleukin 6,
both which are inflammation markers.
In fact it's the opposite because in study after study
after study, replacing saturatedfats like what's in butter for
(05:45):
example, with polyunsaturated fats consistently lowers your
LDL cholesterol. That's the bad one and is linked
to a lower risk of heart disease.
That is why every major health body, yes even the Super duper
bad ones that are hiding the truth from you, still recommends
that you eat them. These anteced oil evangelists
(06:05):
are saying some of the most unhinged stuff.
Like I watched a video the otherday on Instagram where a woman
was saying that the fat from thethings you consume actually
migrates into your brain. Your brain does 70% fat, which
is absolutely true, but she's saying that whatever you consume
that is made-up of fat becomes your brain.
(06:25):
I want you to just have a think as to whether that would make
sense. Do you think there are people
wandering around out there that are mostly butter brained,
whereas some people are maybe olive oil brained?
Does that sound like something that would ring true?
No, of course it doesn't. And that's the thing, when you
actually look at these claims, even with the smallest amount of
(06:47):
logic, they start to fall apart.And I'm belabouring this point
because I want you to be able tospot it yourself.
I've talked before about how youcan see bad science and
propaganda and media bias. All of this comes together and
makes you a much more educated, much less likely to be
manipulated person. And that is better for all of
us. The people who hate seed oils
are really relying on some older, very poorly controlled
(07:08):
trials or observational studies.And those are studies that just
look at associations and they are completely ignoring the far
larger body of evidence from things like meter analysis and
long term studies showing the complete opposite.
Because when you look at all theevidence, by far and away
polyunsaturated fats like what you find in seed oils are vastly
superior for your cardiovascularhealth.
(07:30):
It goes hand in hand with the idea of natural being safer than
synthetic, which is of course absolute rubbish if you think
about that for even just a minute.
Seed oils are a modern industrial product and that is
part of the appeal to nature fallacy.
The process of extracting oil from seeds is not inherently
dangerous. People throw around words like
hexane, but these things are tested to ensure that there is
(07:52):
no residues left in the oil. There's one aspect to this
method might have a grain of truth, which is the idea of
oxidation because yes, oils oxidize when they're heated.
So when you heat seed oils, people are concerned that they
will produce oxidation products.They are just the chemical
compounds that are formed when fats in the oil react with
oxygen. So those are things like lipid
(08:13):
peroxides or aldehydes. Now, some of these oxidation
products can then generate something called free radicals
when the in the body or even during the cooking process.
Now, free radicals are unstable,very reactive molecules that
have an unpaired electron. That's what makes them unstable.
So they try to steal electrons from other molecules like your
cell membranes or your DNA, and that causes damage.
(08:36):
That is what is called oxidativestress.
But your body already produces free radicals all the time
during normal metabolism. One of the biggest risks is, of
course, the sun, and your body already has antioxidant defenses
to keep them in check. So when you're cooking normally
at home, the level of these compounds and foods, even if you
are heating seed oils, are well below what would overwhelm those
(08:57):
defences anyway. So home cooking, totally fine.
The real problem is repeatedly reheating oil at very high
temperatures. So that's your industrial deep
fries and takeaways because that's when your oxidation
products can accumulate to higher concentrations.
But if you're sauteing or bakingor frying at home, it's really
(09:17):
not a meaningful health risk. I promise.
And then finally, there is the ratio argument.
And this is the idea that Omega 6 in particular are
inflammatory, especially when you don't consume enough
omega-3. And true, a lot of people
actually have imbalance in theirdiets.
Most people eat more Omega 6 than omega-3.
But the problem isn't that they're eating too much Omega 6,
(09:39):
it's that they're not eating enough omega-3.
But even that does not 'cause inflammation.
It just means you're not gettingenough omega-3 for optimum
health. This is where the whole thing
about eating oily fish or algae or comes from.
And I wanted to know where this rumour came from because it
seemingly came out of nowhere and all of a sudden became a big
deal with freaking RFK over in the USA in Maha which is which
(10:03):
stands for almost anything except Make America Healthy
Again. And after a bit of searching, it
looks like this particular rumour quite literally comes
from a couple of higher profile podcast appearances that have
just been repeated verbatim since the early 20 tens.
The initial claim was made without citing any peer reviewed
science, no clinical data, and there is no robust published
(10:26):
research that supports the idea that a specific Omega 6 to
omega-3 ratio alone drives inflammation.
None of the claims made by the anti seed oil groups actually
hold any water. TLDR Seed oils are not causing
modern health problems. It's the fact that nobody's
sleeping, we're all stressed constantly on our phones,
(10:48):
everybody's eating ultra processed foods, nobody's moving
enough, and we're all just fucking tired, you know?
But that doesn't mean you shouldgo and drink a bottle of canola
oil. As with everything, moderation.
And just as a quick aside, the average calorie intake in
America is 3500 calories, which is, of course, significantly
more than the 2 to 2 1/2 thousand recommended for adults.
(11:09):
But the average American also only moves 20 minutes a day.
So I suspect that if you look, that is more likely to be
aligned with some of the health issues than seed oils.
And hey, if you've got any robust clinical trials done in
humans that show the opposite, I'd be very happy to read them.
So that's one scam ticked off. Let's go to #2 which is what I
(11:31):
have decided to call the microplastic Hoover.
I'm Manx. Hoover means vacuum cleaner.
I said at the beginning, microplastics are everywhere and
that is genuinely very scary. I spoke to a microplastics
expert on the pod a couple of months ago and some of the
things she told me did not fill me with joy, so if this worked I
would be delighted. So there is a clinic in London
(11:51):
that will draw your blood, spin it to separate the plasma.
They will run it through a filtration column to filter all
the bits out, and then they inject it back into you.
It sounds on the face of it thatthis process would work, right?
And fair enough because it's actually something that we do a
lot of already. It's called therapeutic
apheresis. And the process removes things
like abnormal proteins or unhealthy cells and other
(12:13):
harmful substances and then pumps the clean bud back into
the body a little bit like dialysis, right?
And this clinic pointed a study that's done in Germany where
scientists treated 21 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome
using two rounds of this apheresis.
And then they had a look at whatthey found, and that they did
indeed find some substances thathad the chemical signatures of
microplastics, but they didn't measure before and after.
(12:36):
They didn't look at what they had actually found.
They didn't actually verify anything at all.
And every expert that has talkedabout it has said that at best,
the evidence is inconclusive, which basically means we have no
idea if it works or not. And I've got to be honest, if
something's going to cost me 20 grand, I want to know that it
works. Because the main problem is that
(12:57):
microplastics aren't actually just floating around in your
blood. They're actually embedded in
your tissues. And recent research this year
actually found that they can getinside cells.
And this process can't touch shit when it's in your cells,
which is another conversation and quite frightening in itself.
So it can only get the microplastics in your blood.
Nobody knows what percentage it takes out because they haven't
done the bare minimum of measuring before and after.
(13:19):
And then the biggest problem of all, of course, is why bother?
And that's might be a little bitnihilistic, but why bother
taking it out when the next day you've probably consumed them
all back in anyway? Unfortunately, microplastics
have become so ubiquitous that everything from breathing to
drinking exposes you to billionsof them.
So this is nonsense. It's generated a fair bit of
(13:40):
priest. People have got very excited
about it, and I imagine it's making some people very rich.
Ordinarily I'd say good for themand they're entrepreneurial
Ness, but I really hate it when people take advantage of
people's fear. If you want to reduce your
microplastic exposure, there aresmall things you can do.
Drink loose leaf tea, not tea bags, because believe it or not,
tea bags are actually one of theworst and every single time it
releases hundreds of millions ofmicro plastics into your cup of
(14:03):
tea. But there's also things like
don't microwave your food and plastics, store food and drink
in glass or stainless steel. Don't drink bottled water unless
it's absolutely necessary. Interestingly enough, keep your
house clean, vacuum and dust regularly to cut indoor levels.
And of course, most importantly,piece to businesses and
governments to do better and cutplastic pollution.
(14:24):
This is really just an incredibly expensive process
with a sign of risk because of course it is a medical
procedure. Talking about risk, cold
plunges. They have more risk than you
might think. And it turns out the benefits
massively overhyped. They are everywhere.
They have been everywhere for a long time.
Ever since Wim Hof Hofed his wayinto a frozen pond, people have
(14:48):
been climbing into ice baths andclaiming that they feel better
and it's the secrets and better health and faster recovery and
weight loss and bulletproof immunity and so on.
Now, if it makes you feel better, great.
Goes without saying, keep doing it, but the evidence doesn't
live up to the hype yet again. But it is easy to see why it
(15:08):
caught on right? It looks dramatic, it's
uncomfortable, but then you get this like surge of happiness
once you get out of the cold water because your brain is
rewarding you for removing yourself from a dangerous
situation. Now there is some evidence that
cold water immersion can help you feel less sore and less
fatigued after a hard gym session, but that isn't linked
to some kind of medical shortcutto better performance or faster
(15:29):
muscle gain. And in fact, jumping into icy
water straight after training can actually lower the
inflammatory signals that your muscles need to build more
muscle. So it actually does the
opposite. If you are using cold plunges to
build more muscle, you are doingyourselves A disservice.
And in more recent research, which has been done on women,
because of course I could talk about how women are quite often
(15:50):
ignored in these sorts of studies, the results are even
worse. Now, as I mentioned, a lot of
people do get a short term spikein adrenaline and dopamine, and
a lot of people find that uplifting.
But this is not a clinically proven treatment for depression
or anxiety because in any studies that have been done on
it are small, they're short, andthey're inconsistent because it
doesn't last over time. Does it boost your metabolism?
(16:11):
Cold exposure can activate something called brown fat and
then increases calorie burn, butonly to the tuna sort of 10s of
calories. And then studies have shown that
people who do a cold plunge typically eat 2 to 300 more
calories that day, completely offsetting that.
So there goes your weight loss strategy.
So it doesn't boost your mood, your metabolism or your muscles.
But it can cause problems because cold shock can cause
(16:33):
really dangerous heart rhythm changes in people with
cardiovascular disease, of course.
But you don't always know when you have cardiovascular disease,
and you might just find out in ahorrific way.
There's the risk of hypothermia if you overdo it, which is why
you should never do it alone until you're absolutely
convinced you know what you're doing.
And even perfectly healthy people can faint from sudden
changes and blood pressure. This happens to me.
(16:55):
I cannot do cold plunges becausemy blood pressure does not allow
it. I already have baseline low
blood pressure. I get dizzy when I stand up.
It's very annoying. And I have tried to do the cold
plunge thing a few times but every time the same thing
happens. And I have tried to do cold
water showers a few times to tryand get into this.
So you have a shower and then just before you come out, you
(17:16):
turn the shower all the way downto icy cold and stand there for
a minute and then you get out. You don't turn the shower back
to warm. That's how you get the benefits.
Every time I've done this, I have only done it a couple of
times, my vision goes black. There is risk in exposing your
body to big changes like this. You may remember the ice bucket
challenge from years ago. There was a social media
phenomenon raising money. Somebody died and This is why.
(17:39):
So if you enjoy cold plunges because you like the ritual, or
it does give you a mood boost, or you find it does help with
your recovery, then go for it. But if you are looking to build
muscle, it is not your friend. If you are doing it for weight
loss, it's definitely not your friend.
Do you know who else is not yourfriend?
As people on TikTok telling you,you have cortisol face.
The next two are a little bit linked because apparently you
(18:01):
can now diagnose your stress hormone levels by looking at
your face in the mirror. You've probably heard the term
cortisol face, which is supposedly a set of features
like you've got puffiness, you've got rounded cheeks, or
you've got eye bags, and that supposedly means that your
cortisol is high. It's pretty catchy, it's trendy,
it's very visual, and it's completely unsupported by
science. So cortisol is an essential
(18:24):
hormone that's produced by your adrenal glands.
It follows a daily rhythm. It is the highest in the morning
when you wake up and it tapers off throughout the day.
It does spike temporarily with say, exercise or illness or
anything your body perceives as stress, like a phone call from
an unknown number. Please God, would you stop
ringing me now? Some people do have chronically
(18:45):
high cortisol levels. Now I am one of those people who
does have slightly elevated cortisol levels because I
maintain a nice healthy stress throughout my entire life and I
don't do enough to relax. I don't have cortisol face.
The only time when cortisol reliably changes how you look
are rare medical conditions likeCushing's syndrome or long term
(19:06):
high dose steroid use. And in those cases you get fat
deposition around the face and neck.
And that happens over months or years.
It does not happen overnight. You don't wake up 1 morning and
suddenly you've got cortisol face.
And if you just buy the supplement from this person who
looks totally legit, you won't anymore.
This is so popular because this is a quick fix what people
perceive as a fault. They don't like what they look
(19:29):
like in the mirror and they think they can fix it by buying
this thing that a grifter is selling them.
I'm sorry to tell you it's not true.
There is no validating cortisol.Face is not used as a diagnostic
tool. There's no blind trials.
There's no biomarker correlations.
There is absolutely nothing. The videos you see online are
anecdotal and something called confirmation bias.
(19:49):
So this is where people pick imagery that matches their
narrative and they ignore all the other evidence against it.
Now obviously it's not to say that chronic stress is a health
problem, I've just told you about mine.
And persistently elevated cortisol, when it's confirmed by
proper testing is linked with things like impaired sleep and
immune function and metabolic health.
But unfortunately the solutions are the same thing.
(20:12):
They are more sleep balanced diet, consistent exercise,
social connection which is the hardest of all probably.
And evidence based stress management techniques.
So a cream, a powder, a supplement, or a detox.
They are cashing in on a made-upproblem.
And that rolls nicely into the idea of hormone balancing.
This is something oh I'm just seeing so much of and it makes
(20:34):
absolutely no sense because not a single one of those people
talking about hormone balancing can probably name 3 hormones.
Your body runs on hormones. They are incredibly important.
And so the idea of balanced hormones sounds, again, quite
legit, which is why it's one of the Wellness grifter's favorite
phrases, because it sounds medical, but it's also kind of
(20:54):
vague. So the person who's selling you
something can make it mean whatever they want to make it
mean, and then they can sell yousomething to fix it.
In reality, your hormones are super duper regulated by very
complicated feedback loops, which include things like the
brain glands and various tissues, and they fluctuate
naturally over the day across your menstrual cycle with things
(21:15):
like age and stress and illness.What you eat there is random
snapshot testing out there like single time point saliva or
dried blood spot kits which willtell you absolutely nothing
useful because they are a momentin time.
If you are truly looking at whatyour hormones are doing, and
there's absolutely many medical reasons to do that, you need to
do that under the supervision ofa medical practitioner and
(21:37):
evaluate the results over time. Conditions like hypothyroidism,
PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome, menopause, low
testosterone, they are absolutely real.
They are diagnosable hormone disorders.
They require proper testing. No one can tell you if you have
them by looking at your symptoms.
There is one disorder that you will hear about and that is not
(21:58):
a recognized diagnosis and that's adrenal fatigue.
Now I know a lot of people are absolutely adamant that they
have had or have adrenal fatigue, but it is not a
recognized diagnosis. Don't shoot the messenger.
True adrenal insufficiency is incredibly rare and life
threatening and it is very specifically diagnosed with
(22:19):
something called stimulation test, not a male in kit.
So if you truly think you have ahormone disorder, go and see a
doctor. They are very important.
And if you are suffering with things like fatigue and brain
fog and low mood or stubborn weight or excess hair growth or
a multitude of different things,go and see a doctor.
By treating this without medicalsupervision you can do yourself
(22:39):
quite a lot of damage. Because people self prescribe
themselves hormones. I'm seeing people inject things
like any mean on TikTok, which is really concerning.
Which isn't a hormone. It's a separate topic entirely,
but the fact that people are just injecting themselves
without any training is quite concerning.
But there are bioidentical hormone creams that you can rub
on yourself, and these sorts of things disrupt your own hormone
(23:00):
production. There have been documented
medical cases where children have come into contact with,
say, their father's testosteronecream, for example, and it has
really caused them harm. There is no such thing as a
hormone balancing product because what hormone would you
be balancing? That's another thing to have a
think about. If your hormones are out of
whack, how could a generic supplement or a cream help?
(23:21):
Because there would be a reason that your hormones would be out
of whack. There are lots of supplements
out there. There is lots of anecdotal
evidence from people who've saidit has helped, and maybe it has,
but there is a variety of reasons that people will feel
like something has helped them when there is no evidence that
it actually did. The three biggest factors that
lead to anecdotal evidence is the placebo effect, something
called regression to the mean, which is where people usually go
(23:44):
and seek help when they're feeling the absolute worst.
They get treated and they go back to how they were feeling
before, but because they went tosea at an extreme which probably
would have regressed to the meanor gone back to your usual state
anyway, they attribute that to the treatment.
And the third one, of course is natural healing that would have
occurred anyway because if you support your body in the right
(24:07):
ways, it is excellent at defending you from most things.
So if you're still watching a video about cortisol face or
someone is saying that you need your hormones balanced, run
away. And if you really want to go and
see a doctor. And now I've ended on my
favorite one because this one's kind of funny, but it's also
kind of not structured water. Have you heard of structured
water or hexagonal water? Vortex water?
(24:31):
Yeah. It's all the same stuff, right?
The theory is that someone has rearranged the H2O molecules in
a special way that makes them more hydrating or healing or
energetic. It's not totally dissimilar to
homeopathy. I'm sorry.
Homeopathy has absolutely no evidence for its efficacy and it
sort of flies in the face of a lot of universal laws.
(24:52):
So I could add homeopathy on here but this episode is already
too long as it is now. The marketing for this idea of
structured water Burrows from real chemistry terms.
So things that hydrogen bonds and molecular structure, but it
completely misuses them so it makes them sound legit.
Unless you are a chemist. So water molecules in liquid
(25:12):
water are constantly moving. They're forming and breaking
bonds trillions of times per second.
Water may look calm under the surface and a molecular level
she is not. You know, think about when you
look at a fluffy white cloud, itlooks calm and chilled.
But then when you fly through itin a plane and it's turbulent as
fuck, it's kind of like that. So any structure that is somehow
(25:33):
created in a jug or a vortexer will vanish immediately before
it gets to your mouth or your stomach, and it will certainly
vanish once it got there. There's absolutely no evidence
nor even any thought or logic behind this one.
Not to mention that even if you could maintain a structure in
water, why would structured water be better for your health
(25:55):
or better hydrating anyway? What then?
There's also a slightly different one with hydrogen
water, and this is where they are dissolving molecular
hydrogen gas, which is H2SO2 hydrogen atoms bonded and
they're dissolving it into the water using things like tablets
or special machines. Now I am going to be very cagey
(26:17):
here because there is some very minor preliminary early stage
research and very specific medical conditions like
oxidative distress and metabolicsyndrome for example that shows
that maybe there is some kind ofinconsistent benefit.
The studies are small, they are short term, they are often
(26:38):
company funded which is a red flag, although not always but
it's something to be aware of. But they are inconsistent.
Science should have consensus. There are no benefits shown
whatsoever for healthy people. Something to also note that
hydrogen is an absolute bitch totry and contain, so the moment
you open your can or bottle, it will disappear very very
(26:58):
quickly. So unless you're chugging it,
you're just drinking really expensive tap water devices or
sachets for hydrogenizing your water, which is now my new
favorite phrase. They can cost 10s of thousands
of dollars. It's the ultimate grift.
Right? And they often cite in vitro or
animal studies. And of course animal studies
don't always translate as humans.
Just go and Google thalidomide, or if they are in human trials,
(27:22):
they're far too small to draw any kind of conclusions, and
they've not been repeated. None of that justifies the price
or the health claims. Now, while I I find this one a
little bit funny, this is a bit that isn't.
Now, I've talked about a measlesoutbreak in a previous episode
about misinformation and media literacy.
That outbreak was in 2019, and it killed 83 people, mostly
children. And that was because there was
such a fear of vaccinations at that point that only about 30%
(27:45):
of the population were vaccinated.
A lot of that's linked to RFK Junior, too.
Yeah, the guy who's in charge ofhealth in the USA, But here is
where it links to this story because another reason it got so
bad there was because, understandably so, parents took
their sick children to their traditional healers and those
healers had been sold machines on the basis that they made
(28:07):
water extra immune giving by an Australian company.
That is why I constantly talk about this sort of thing,
because yes, if you have the money to drop $10,000 on a
vortex water machine because youthink it'll better hydrate you,
then you know what the saying. A fool and his money are soon
parted. Kind of holds true there.
(28:28):
But if you're being lied to and mislead and that is directly
harming health outcomes, then I think this is a very separate
conversation. Structured water is utter
rubbish. It's just very expensive.
Hydrogen water is super early stage, very very over hyped, and
neither of them are going to help you have better hydration.
Drink more water, eat foods withhigh water content which is
(28:50):
usually fruits and vegetables, and if you're sweating heavily,
take an electrolyte. You do not need magical
molecular rearrangement. That does sound like a critical
band name though. So there you have it.
I had to stop it at six, but I could have keep going.
I could have talked about oat milk, or how EV batteries
supposedly make you infertile that they don't, or how gluten
(29:11):
is Public Enemy #1 when it isn't.
There is so much absolute nonsense.
There is so much bullshit in theWellness world it drives me mad.
To the point now when people askme in business settings how I
maintain my Wellness, I activelyphysically cringe because that
word has become so bastardized now.
(29:32):
If you want to keep doing these things, you do you.
There is no judgement. I just want to make sure that
you have the most up to date information and that you're not
being lied to or manipulated. If you like doing cold plunges,
I am delighted for you. Please be careful that you don't
pass out if you've got $10,000 burning a hole in your pocket,
maybe you want a water vortex machine.
Or if you've got 20 grand, maybeyou want to be stabbed with a
(29:54):
needle. I do not.
So even if I did feel like wasting 20 grand on something
that didn't work, that would notbe the thing.
The boring truth about health isthat the unsexy stuff is what
works. That hasn't changed.
It's sleep, It's exercise, It's a good balanced diet which
includes a lot of fibre. Guys, we're going to have to do
an episode on fibre because the fact that 95% of people don't
eat enough fibre and bowel cancer rates are going through
(30:15):
the roof is quite alarming. Other things that people don't
consider so much about health ispeople and social structure
around you. I joke a lot that I'm a hermit
and that I stay at home a lot and I don't answer my phone, but
I have a wonderful group of people around me and knowing
that they're around you really does help with things like
stress, having social connections.
Very important and kind of underestimated.
(30:38):
Of course, the number one predictor of life and health
span. Health span being the number of
years that you spend healthy or you know, fit and active as
opposed to too old and decrepit to move.
The number one indicator is wealth.
If you are living in poverty, you are much more likely to have
adverse health outcomes. And that is the grim, depressing
and frustrating truth. So I hope you enjoyed the first
(31:00):
episode of Because Why? I need to think of a wee catch
phrase. If anyone can think of a catch
phrase to either start or end the podcast on so it ties it all
together. But because why, then throw it
my way. I will find you a prize.
And I want to do another Wellness roundup.
So any of these silly trends that you see, please forward
them to me. I really enjoy.
Well, I don't enjoy it actually.That frustrates me immensely.
(31:20):
But I do enjoy debunking them and finding the evidence as to
whether it's true or not. Because hey, one day one of them
might be. Thank you for joining me,
Martiwa. See you next week.
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