
Detox: It's All a Con - JumpCrisscross
http://www.statsguy.co.uk/detox-its-all-a-con/
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Nomentatus
It's all about biota; if the author has decided that fasting or restricted
diets (of whatever kind), etc, can't possibly alter one's gut bugs; then it
would be nice of them to maybe drop some bibliography showing that, since
there's a lot of evidence on the other side. Sure there's a lot of nonsense
spouted, too: but Low-FODMAP diets, just for one, do in fact have solid clinic
evidence behind them. The author doesn't buy the SIBO explanation for that for
a minute? Great, but even if SIBO (small intestine bacterial overgrowth) is
bunkem, and the scientists who proposed it wrong, that doesn't alter the
mostly positive outcomes. Of course, the article is air and jazz hands, it
doesn't discuss any of this much less list counter-studies, but this is what's
relevant; science agrees that toxins ARE produced in the gut when our biota
goes wrong.

The cleansing movement started before we knew nearly as much about our biota
as we do now, so understandably much of the folk-terminology and initial high-
level concepts look rather dated by now; but that's exactly what the history
and philosophy of science tells us to expect from any successful theory,
namely that it's higher-level concepts usually don't turn out to be entirely
accurate (or even very accurate), even in the case of highly useful theories.
The history and philosophy of science tells us that no theory ever has all its
P's and Q's lined up, particularly at the top of the theory, and the
terminology it initially chooses is almost never ideal - so to leap from
finding given terminology and the broadest expression of concepts (and your
very idiosyncratic almost pun-like interpretation of them) disagreeable to
assuming that you don't have to look into the considerable existing evidence
we now have that is consistent with them, is extremely bad (but common, and
classist) logic. The guys with the biggest budgets and best University
connections usually lose the medical knowledge and innovation wars, for the
simple reason that they're the incumbents - it's the innovator's dilemma all
over again.

Low-FODMAP diets came out of Monash University in recent years. This isn't the
best citation, I admit, but it is what's handy right now:
[http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/when-gluten-
sensiti...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/when-gluten-sensitivity-
isnt-celiac-disease/)

~~~
tcj_phx
I developed some SIBO-ish problems in the year following a shock to my
metabolism. In recent years I have been making a bit of an effort to avoid
certain fiber.

I think your post is quite interesting, thanks for sharing!

