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May 4, 2023Liked by Christy Harrison, MPH, RD

Thank you for this.

Mercola was the beginning of the real descent into insanity, for my dad. This was way back before Qanon or even Trump - it was early Obama years, really - and I was just so blindsided by what felt like this sudden loss of my dad to a cult. Wellness itself was not the cult, but it was the gateway to it, and it was so shocking how it came from this very progressive, positive kind of place. It was all so innocuous that it wasn't until a couple years later that I even remembered how it all kind of felt like it started when he got super obsessed with forwarding me articles from Mercola. At the time, it felt maybe a little wacky but mostly harmless - like, "No, dad, cutting out sugar will not fix the deviated septum that has resulted in me getting pneumonia twice in two years. I'm having surgery," - and then suddenly he was so far gone on all these other levels.

It is hard, because it's almost like a two-front assault. I have struggled for decades with migraines, and two years ago had a debilitating hives situation that took over a year to address. These things received almost no real attention from any medical professionals. It was all extremely dismissive like "have you changed detergents lately?" on endless repeat (fucking no! I haven't!) or "have you tried cutting out/drinking more caffeine?" The only relief I ever got from the hives came from acupuncture, and that provided a lot of relief from the migraines as well. It was my first experience with someone just listening to medical symptoms and taking me at face value, and I could feel how life-changing that was. Going through that process definitely gave me an appreciation for how comforting and how - idk, loyalty-inspiring it can be, to just feel seen and heard and supported, let alone helped.

It would be really, really great if the medical industry didn't set us all up to seek out alternate solutions and sources of support. I mean, some of these things are valid! But the overall broad feeling of being dismissed and ignored and unheard leaves the door open for a lot of abuse and manipulation.

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May 4, 2023Liked by Christy Harrison, MPH, RD

Your final paragraph really resonates with me! I have been in physical therapy for the last few months, and was just reflecting on why I love it, and realized it's because my physical therapist and I have long conversations, and she really listens to me and works hard to understand what I told her, then makes recommendations about my therapy based on that. Sounds so simple and common sense, but I have only rarely encountered it in the medical world.

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So well said Ally! Medical professionals can be so dismissive, and then when their patients seek out alternatives, instead of that causing them to do some introspection, it often gives them more ammo, I.e. “my patients are such dumb dumbs, they trust ‘Dr. Google’ more than me! “ 😡 it’s really tough to navigate

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It reminds me of when my first kid was born and ended up in the NICU with some health issues. As we were finally being cleared to go home there was suddenly a big to-do about getting him whichever hepatitis vaccine it is that they do before you leave the hospital. He had had fevers already and was only barely staying under the temperature threshold for going home and as I was looking over the paperwork I was given to sign I was like "wait. Can I just....do this shot at his two-week checkup instead? Like, what is the actual risk to my baby, of waiting two weeks?" I understand the institutional, systemic risk of children falling out of the system - but what, I wanted to know, was the specific risk to MY baby, whose first follow-up appointment was already scheduled?

The nurse quietly left the room and then came back in with like three other nurses and they all started laying it thick on me about the dangers of skipping vaccines, etc. I was absolutely treated like I was a "dumb dumb." They spoke to me like I was ranting and raving about vaccines as a concept instead of asking what felt like a very legitimate question. I felt like I was being treated like an absolutely idiotic crazy person and I could see how easy it would be to just LEAN INTO that feeling to fuel an oppositional rage, instead of pushing back within myself and being like, "No, I am a very reasonable, moderate person asking a very legitimate question."

I felt chastened and shamed, and gave my kid the shot. We ended up back in the hospital 24 hours later. It was fine, life went on, he got all his other vaccines on schedule, we remain pro-science in general. But when my second baby ended up in the NICU for even larger complications, I came ready to fight. He got the hepatitis shot at his 2-week follow-up appointment and again, life (and vaccines) went on.

I definitely felt ignored, alienated, dismissed, and patronized, though - both times. Further, I felt galvanized to start off any medical encounter with skepticism and defenses up. It took some emotional effort to not just instinctively fight back against "the establishment" or something, or to craft an identity around opposition to this medical establishment that so clearly had absolutely no interest in the specifics of my actual situation. It is just like, "listen, you aren't exactly making any of this easy, here!"

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Ugh, one of our neighbors in our building is a big Mercola believer, and it's so enraging, because of course this is the guy who sends out long screeds about how he has strengthened his immune system by never wearing a coat in winter and by drinking in bars throughout the pandemic, and Of F'ing Course he is not vaccinated because he's not going to give big pharma his money, no siree -- but Mercola? Sure, give that guy more money...

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May 4, 2023Liked by Christy Harrison, MPH, RD

Oh wow thank you so much for this. I have a chronic illness, and there are constant recommendations, *constant* to 1, go completely gluten-free, and 2, do an elimination diet, and 3, get testing to see what other foods I am allergic to. That's not even counting the other diet modifications that get recommended.

There is also no evidence I have celiac, I have a history of disordered eating, and looking at the research for these food allergy blood tests, it seems they are looking at this entirely wrong Ig protein that mostly just says "this is a food you have eaten at some point in your life." But the recommendations and treatment plans keep coming, from my former doctor, from every book about my condition, from patient groups, just everywhere.

So hearing that no, I was not actually wrong to be skeptical and resistant to all of that is just such a relief right now. Thank you Christy and Virginia for that. Whew. Seriously, thank you.

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May 4, 2023Liked by Christy Harrison, MPH, RD, Virginia Sole-Smith

Thank you for this episode—I love Christy’s podcast so much!

I feel like elimination diets are everywhere right now. In my very niche world of classical singers and professional voice users, there is so much advice out there about how to treat or avoid GERD or reflux as a singer, or what “nutrition for singers” should be, and a lot of it is stuff like, cut out gluten and sugar and dairy. A lot of the recommendations for “optimization” strike me as also being recommendations for how to be a thin opera singer…but also like, I eat everything and I’ve never found any particular food to impact my singing beyond like, if I’m very full breathing is difficult. Why would I eliminate whole food groups on the off chance that I might develop acid reflux?

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I encountered a bit of that singer diet culture when I was googling tips for sore throats while recording my audiobook... wild!

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May 4, 2023Liked by Christy Harrison, MPH, RD

It's really everywhere, and especially because there is also this stereotype of "the fat lady," part of trying to update opera and bring it into the 21st century becomes "look, not all opera singers are fat!" There is so much fatphobia in the industry and a lot of it trickles down to what singers should or should not eat.

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This conversation really highlights the issue of trust, at least for me.

I began pushing away from a life of dieting around 2013, worked with an RD who’s also certified in intuitive eating and I was fascinated by the assertion that there was no evidence for gluten sensitivity.

I took this (erroneously) to mean, “You made the pain up in your head. You were gullible to lies.” So of course I don’t want to be driven by false information. I’m on a goddamn daily trust fall with my body. 😂 And this initiated a sort of dissociation from the pain I was experiencing, for, oh, say, three to four years. I had a massively confusing period of time where I was just miserable and mentally just STUCK because dietitians and intuitive eating says “It can’t be gluten. There’s no evidence for that.” But my body feels like sh*t every day -- bloated, foggy, irritable. I went to round after round of MDs (not functional or anybody in between) and sheesh. I just got tired of feeling miserable and found guidelines for an elimination diet that had guidance for anyone with eating disorder history. I was so so so frightened to even try something remotely close to food removal. Or to open to a thing that might cast me into “not being loyal” to intuitive eating and anti-diet circles.

But you know what, dag nabbit, I feel better with some foods set to the side most of the time. And it’s annoying because I know that eliminating food can be risky!

But I think where I’m trying to pull this comment back around to is that having a body feels terribly fraught. It takes so much energy to remember to trust our bodies and emotions, while also having a thinking brain that can take in nutrition and scientific data that often backs us into a corner and tries to also define what’s real and what’s not.

🫶

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May 4, 2023·edited May 4, 2023

It can be so fraught! I have functional GI stuff, and when it was really bad the low-FODMAP diet, which is evidence based, calmed it down a bit so I did that for a long time. But the thing about low-FODMAP is that its not supposed to be strict or all or nothing- you're supposed to do the least strict adherence that still gives relief- and it drove people nuts! Like people knew I followed this diet but then when I still had symptoms they were shocked that I wasn't cured! Sometimes I followed the diet perfectly and still had symptoms, sometimes I had high FODMAP foods and didn't end up with symptoms. The thing for me was that, on the whole, it decreased my symptoms and internally I had this understanding like "balancing mental and physical health, this is the degree to which I can follow this and still get worthwhile benefits, but it's not a cure. And the food itself isn't the problem, my stomach not working well is the problem and this is just how I'm gentle to it" but even when I explained to close people in my life there was such this victim blamey thing like I must be doing something wrong if I didn't eliminate all foods until I was cured. (I actually tried that early on and still had a stomach that didn't work.) I totally hear you on the other side, too, like the idea that eliminating any foods is evidence that you're buying into diet culture. (I'm saying that as someone who believes, on the whole, that the whole "elimination diets cure everything" is super duper part of diet culture.) I wish I had more anti-diet people in my life, but most of the pressure in that area was coming from myself and not having grace for the complexities of the situation. I'm SO much better now, but it's still just like "with my particular body I can eat some onions but not all the onions and I'm just going to manage that for myself and that's part of being well for me". Ug this is so rambly, but I guess I'm saying I feel you.

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I feel our mutually shared chaos! The way society treats bodies as liabilities is what breeds a lot of that, I think.

I reflect often on the propensity for even scientific folk (or well-meaning holistic folk) to become evangelistic. Instead of holding Bibles and cassette tapes of last week's sermon in their purses, they clutch research studies against their chests in order to point out how what everyone else is doing is false and wrong or anti-science (or, now, anti-intuition).

When we cling, we lose.

I was clinging to modern medicine being absolutely authoritative when I was tossed with secondary infertility. And it was cognitively crippling to realize that even all the medicine and data and science out there reach a point of finitude when it comes to uteruses. There's limits on science. There's limits on data. What you describe is something I navigate every day, too: the need to care for my body and my mind and to remain connected with some inner sense of autonomy, regardless of what science or woo-woo drink is being pushed in my face. 🤷🏻‍♀️

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"Having a body feels terribly fraught." Yes, it does.

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May 4, 2023Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith, Christy Harrison, MPH, RD

This episode is excellent! I found Christy back in 2016 when I began my own recovery and have found her work invaluable over the years. I just ordered her new book and noticed that on Amazon it’s listed as “#1 in Vaccination” which says so so much about society right now! Also, I was SO happy with my daughter’s pediatric GI specialist who did ALL the tests, but cautioned against any elimination diets when my daughter was having lots of issues last year. We need more doctors like this!

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Oh that’s a great GI specialist. And yes we desperately need more doctors who aren’t so quick to mess around with diet!

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I LOVE seeing the SIFT method cited. It is one of the most important things for people to learn as they engage with the internet. Thank you!

And wanted to chime in as a biopsy-diagnosed celiac to say how irritating the gluten discourse can be. It would be so great if I could eat gluten on many levels, including from a kind of traditional "healthy eating" perspective because seriously, try to get the recommended amount of whole grains on a GF diet, just try it. GF bread is generally filled with all kinds of weird things to make it function without gluten and the pieces are about half the size of regular bread and so on. And, fine, that's what I have to live with because I have an autoimmune condition that makes me really sick if I eat gluten, but only do it if you really have to.

And I see so much of the kind of shady thinking in a GF Facebook group I'm a part of. People who are convinced that using shampoo with gluten in it will cause celiac symptoms, and, no, it won't unless you're drinking the shampoo. You could separately have an allergy to something in the shampoo, but gluten is only a problem for celiacs if ingested. And now if you google that basic question, you get all these "some people report reactions" takes despite the science being very clear. People who are convinced that every time they get sick, it must be gluten, like "I only ate food at home that I cooked for the last 48 hours and I've gone back and looked at all the labels and I can't see what could be making me sick, but there must be something so I'm going to call all the manufacturers." Or it could be a virus, or regular old food poisoning! In those moments I am always repeating the story of the night I spent throwing up and plotting the phone call I was going to make to the restaurant that had obviously glutened me, only to have my dad start throwing up the next morning before the restaurant opened. And the blatant intersections with overt diet culture, like someone saying they can "sometimes make room" for a slice or two of a specific kind of bread. Lady, that bread is keto bread. It has very few calories and half your fiber RDA in a single slice. Don't talk to me about "making room" for it in your diet.

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I have so many thoughts and I need to listen again. Except that Christy’s experience as a new mother resonates very very deeply for me. In looking back a decade since my time in those trenches, all I can think now is “wow, I have more guidance in caring for my houseplants than I ever had with a baby.”

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Just now catching up on this episode and absolutely loved it. A large part of my work when I was in tech was leading policies in the industry (my team wrote the first health misinformation policy on a social platform) to change the irresponsible way that platforms address health misinfo. A lot of it comes right down to financial incentives and there being SO much money in these wellness grifters (a point I regularly tried to make was that Goop is in the same bucket as Mercola). I was eventually pushed out of my job at Pinterest very publicly and unceremoniously, in part because of this work so lol. But the part of the episode on section 230 made me think of another, nuanced perspective on moderation that’s worth sharing. It’s an old article so some formatting is off, but a good read for anyone interested in the intersection between the legislation and what we see online. https://www.techdirt.com/2019/09/04/pinterests-way-dealing-with-anti-vax-nonsense-scams-is-only-possible-because-section-230/

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