Dr Caroline Leaf – Serious questions, few answers (Part 3) – “Flirting with heresy”

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Following on from the last 2 posts discussing the various teaching points of Dr Caroline Leaf at Kings Christian Church, here is my final post on the points that she raised.  Tonight, I conclude by proposing that in equating ‘toxic’ thoughts with sin, she seriously weakens her own argument, or she flirts with heresy.

TOXIC THOUGHTS ARE SIN

Probably the most disturbing of all she discussed was her point blank statement that, “Toxic thoughts are sin.”

This is an astounding claim, and it was said in such an off-handed manner. It was like she threw a grenade and calmly moved on. Her claim not only has psychological ramifications, but deep theological connotations.

Her statement has the effect of ADDING to the stress response of her audience. Indeed, it sets up a feedback loop of self-perpetualising existential distress – the spiritual struggle switch. Crum et al (2013) showed that negatively framing the concept of stress leads to an increase in the subjects stress response. What could be more stressing that telling a christian that they have sinned every time that have had a persistent stress?  More stress is then equated with more ‘sin’ which then gives rise to even more stress. And so the cycle continues.

She then attempted to redeem her statement by declaring that we can transcend the guilt from the sin of stress, because her 21-day brain detox program would fix it. But on the surface, it seems an arbitrary premise. Inducing guilt to then offer to fix it is like a supermarket marking up a price so they can claim to offer a discount when they reduce it again.

More importantly though, in making the link between stress and sin, she brings herself undone. She either unravels her entire argument, or she flirts with heresy. Because if a thought process which results in prolonged or severe fear/stress is a sin, then Jesus himself sinned.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, the gospels record that Jesus, the spotless lamb of God, about to be crucified for the sins of all mankind, was “overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Mark 14:34, Matthew 26:38), and became so distressed by the ordeal he was about to endure that he literally sweat drops of blood (Luke 22:44).

Where do you think Jesus was on the stress spectrum according to those accounts? I’d wager that it wasn’t “healthy stress”.Rev Bob Deffinbaugh wrote that,

“Jesus spent what appears to be at least three agonizing hours in prayer.” He also noted that, “Never before have we seen Jesus so emotionally distraught. He has faced a raging storm on the Sea of Galilee, totally composed and unruffled. He has faced demonic opposition, satanic temptation, and the grilling of Jerusalem’s religious leaders, with total composure. But here in the Garden, the disciples must have been greatly distressed by what (little) they saw. Here, Jesus cast Himself to the ground, agonizing in prayer.” (https://bible.org/seriespage/garden-gethsemane-luke-2239-46)

There is no other way to explain it – Jesus suffered severe and prolonged mental anguish to the point that it had physical effects. By Dr Leaf’s definition (Leaf 2009, p19), Jesus had “toxic” thoughts. So the crux is: either toxic thoughts and emotions are sinful, in which case Jesus was a sinner and our salvation is invalid, or toxic thoughts and emotions are not sinful, which directly contradicts her teaching.

There is at least one further example from the life of Jesus that significantly weakens Dr Leafs definition of ‘toxic’ thoughts. In her book, Dr Leaf states, “hostility and rage are at the top of the list of toxic emotions”, and that “Stress is the direct result of toxic thinking.” (Leaf 2009, p29-30)

In John 2:13-17, it says, “When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

So Jesus saw the sellers and the money exchangers, then in a pre-meditated way, took small cords and fashioned a whip out of them, then proceeded to use that whip to violently and aggressively overturn the tables of the merchants and spill the money of the money changers. John adds a post-script – “Zeal for your house will consume me.”  So Jesus wasn’t mincing words. He drove them out of the temple in a rage.

Again, was Jesus acting in sin?  Of course not.  Instead, perhaps God has designed normal human beings to experience rage, anger and stress – emotions that are not curses passed down in genetic material and are not learned behaviours as a result of our sin nature.

Further, God himself displayed anger.  God also made us in his image, and in his likeness. Dr Leaf stated that we were designed to function in optimism and love, and again, negative emotions like anger and fear are learnt from living in sin. Yet it is interesting that God the Father regularly kindled his wrath, and smote Israelites or their enemies (Numbers 11:33, Deuteronomy 11:16-17, and in 2 Kings 23:25-27, “Notwithstanding the Lord turned not from the fierceness of his great wrath, wherewith his anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations that Manasseh had provoked him withal.”)

If God regularly displayed anger throughout the Old Testament, and Jesus displayed it in the New Testament, then anger and rage can not be the perversion of God’s ultimate design as Dr Leaf proposes.

Therefore, ‘toxic’ thought is NOT sin, because Jesus suffered prolonged mental stress and anguish and he did not sin.  Emotions that are deemed to be toxic by Dr Leaf and her definition are not toxic, since both God and Jesus displayed them and they did not and do not sin. Such a suggestion is incongruent with the Christian faith.

We were made in the image of God, so therefore we mirror all the emotions of God, which includes anger.  This shows that Dr Leaf’s proposals and the assumptions on which they are based, are incongruent with a logical interpretation of scripture.

In conclusion, Dr Leaf has been gathering quite a following.  From the pulpit at least, her claims of evidence of studies from peer-reviewed sources have been lacking. From what I saw on Sunday last, her reputation is excessive, her arguments unsupported and her theology is questionable at best, dangerous at worst.

Personally, I would welcome Dr Leaf’s response to these posts.  I have written these posts over a few days from her teaching at one church, so perhaps I have misunderstood her.  I have not been able to go through all of her books in such a short time, so she may have references to her teaching.  But she needs to clarify each question that I’ve raised and respond with current peer-reviewed science and sound theological resources.

References

Crum, A. J., P. Salovey and S. Achor (2013). “Rethinking stress: the role of mindsets in determining the stress response.” J Pers Soc Psychol 104(4): 716-733.

Karatsoreos, I. N. and B. S. McEwen (2011). “Psychobiological allostasis: resistance, resilience and vulnerability.” Trends Cogn Sci 15(12): 576-584.

Leaf, C. (2009). Who Switched Off My Brain? Controlling toxic thoughts and emotions. Southlake, TX, USA, Inprov, Ltd.

Dr Caroline Leaf – Serious questions, few answers (Part 2)

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Yesterday I published the first part of an essay discussing the presentation of Dr Caroline Leaf, Audiologist, Communication Pathologist, and self-titled cognitive neuroscientist, at Kings Christian Church, Gold Coast.

Tonight I want to continue dissecting some of the more pertinent statements that she made, including her view of the mind-brain connection, a smattering of smaller issues, her over-reliance on case studies, and her opinion on the cause and treatment of ADHD.

Tomorrow I will publish the last, and most important part of my essay – That Dr Leaf believes that ‘toxic’ thoughts are sinful, and why this single statement unravels her most fundamental premise.

THE MIND IS IN CHARGE OF THE BRAIN

A large part of her sermon was based on her next premise, that the mind changes the brain, and not the other way around. That is half true. The mind influences the brain, and how we think will have effects on neural pathways within the brain. But for a cognitive neuroscientist to state that the brain does not influence the mind is somewhat concerning.

There are several reasons why her assertion is deeply flawed. For starters, where else does the mind or thought come from other than our neural networks? Thought is built on our neural connections. To say that the brain does not influence thought is like saying that the foundation of a building doesn’t influence the bricks.

There are clinical reasons as well. These come from a few areas – firstly the research that showed that newborn babies (who do not have thought like we have thoughts) are pre-wired for emotions which are refined as we learn. There is no time for neonates to have enough stimulation to form those emotions and reactions if it was from our mind.

Secondly, people with brain injuries or tumours can have personality or mood changes. The most famous was a man in the 1800’s called Phineas Gage, who on 13 September 1848 was packing explosives into rock with a tamping iron (a long, tapered, smooth crow-bar). History says that the explosives sent the tamping iron through his left face and skull, taking a fair chunk of his frontal lobe with it. Depending on who you believe, Gage’s personality changed after his physical recovery, reportedly from a moral, respectful man into a cursing, angry one (Kihlstrom 2010). Some reports of his story were that Gage made an almost full recovery, but assuming that some of the historical record is true, changes to his brain changed his mental function, ie: his thoughts.

Further, I have personally seen two patients with personality changes secondary to brain tumours. The first was a woman in her late 20’s who had six months of worsening anxiety, who did not seek help despite my referrals, until she had a seizure and the diagnosis was made. Then there was the sad case of a girl in her pre-teens who had only two weeks of rapidly escalating sullenness then aggression then violence. Her parents initially thought she was moody, and when they brought her into the Emergency Department they thought she was perhaps in the middle of a psychotic episode. It turned out that she had a very aggressive tumour near her frontal lobe.

It is clear from these cases, and from a basic understanding of the concept of thought, that changes to the brain result in changes to thoughts and the mind, and vice versa.

SOME MISCELLANEOUS ISSUES

If I had the time I would like to look at many others issues that she raised, but this isn’t a book. Suffice it to say that she claimed that stress prunes our “thought trees” although the evidence is only in animal models and only related to severe stress (Karatsoreos and McEwen 2011). She also stated that EVERY thought we EVER have is stored in ALL of our cells (so some random fibroblast in my big toe is somehow affected by my thought about tonights dinner), and that ALL our thoughts are stored in our gametes (our sperm and eggs) and are passed down to our 4th generation (but packed, like in a metaphysical zip-lock bag, and only opened if we choose to have the same thoughts.) And here I was thinking that nurture had something to do with learned behaviour.

ASD/ADHD – MORE OPINION THAN FACT?

She also claimed that 55-70% of ASD/ADHD cases are over-referred and the problem is in educational modeling. This one made me mad.

Not even professorial level researchers know exactly what’s going on in ASD/ADHD, so her statement is a brave one to make, especially without referencing her evidence.

She then espoused the party line of ADHD ignorance – that Ritalin is evil and all you need to do is stop their sugar intake and feed them organic foods and give them supplements. Ritalin isn’t perfect, to be sure, but it is the most effective treatment that’s currently available. If dietary measures and educational measures were effective, then ritalin wouldn’t be prescribed. I have never met a parent that has wanted their child on ritalin. Most of them have tried educational/psychological measures or dietary controls first. The reason why ritalin is prescribed is because dietary and psychological interventions on their own do not adequately control the symptoms, or fail altogether.

To confirm that I’m not just having a rant, there is published scientific literature to back me up. In their recently published meta-analysis, Nigg et al (2012) state, “An estimated 8% of children with ADHD may have symptoms related to synthetic food colors.” Eight percent. That’s all! That’s ninty-two percent of children with ADHD (real ADHD, not just rambunctious children with lots of energy) DID NOT have symptoms due to food colourings. Their conclusions: “A restriction diet benefits some children with ADHD. Effects of food colors were notable but susceptible to publication bias or were derived from small, nongeneralizable samples.” In terms of sugar, Kim and Chang (2011) note that, “children who consumed less sugar from fruit snacks or whose vitamin C intake was less than RI was at increased risks for ADHD (P < 0.05).” (emphasis added) The study was only of about 100 children, but the result was statistically significant. It wasn’t a chance effect.

The misinformation she stated as fact from the pulpit promotes scare-mongering and ignorance throughout the church, which has flow on effects. Church members with children with ADHD or ASD will avoid standard medical treatment on Dr Leaf’s advice. When her treatments fail in the majority of cases, those parents will either live with unnecessarily heightened stress because of their child’s poorly controlled condition, or the guilt of using ritalin, all the while believing that they are ruining their childs brain.

This also places the hosting church in a bind. Do they stand behind their guest speaker, or do they support the advice of the medical community? Is their duty of care to the reputation of the guest speaker or to the congregation under their protection? What would happen if Dr Leaf’s advice lead to the death or disability of a person in their congregation? Would they be libel?

CASE STUDIES – INSPIRATIONAL STORIES, BUT POOR SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE

Dr Leaf also told a lot of stories of how everyone afflicted came to her and how she healed them all. If you took her at face value, she would have you believe that people with ASD, ADHD, anorexia, OCD, depression etc, just needed a glimpse of their self-worth and their inner gift and they would be cured. While her stories were inspirational, the world of scientific research demands more. If Dr Leaf’s insights are worth more than the hot air she produces when espousing them, then they should be put to the wider research community so they can pass through the fire of peer review. If peer review prove her insights to be valid, I would be happy to apply them and promote them.

Tomorrow, I will publish the last, and probably the most important part of my essay – that Dr Leaf believes that ‘toxic’ thoughts are sinful, and why this single statement unravels her most fundamental premise.

REFERENCES

Crum, A. J., P. Salovey and S. Achor (2013). “Rethinking stress: the role of mindsets in determining the stress response.” J Pers Soc Psychol 104(4): 716-733.

Karatsoreos, I. N. and B. S. McEwen (2011). “Psychobiological allostasis: resistance, resilience and vulnerability.” Trends Cogn Sci 15(12): 576-584.

Kihlstrom, J. F. (2010). “Social neuroscience: The footprints of Phineas Gage.” Social Cognition 28: 757-782.

Kim, Y. and H. Chang (2011). “Correlation between attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and sugar consumption, quality of diet, and dietary behavior in school children.” Nutr Res Pract 5(3): 236-245.

Leaf, C. (2009). Who Switched Off My Brain? Controlling toxic thoughts and emotions. Southlake, TX, USA, Inprov, Ltd.

Nigg, J. T., K. Lewis, T. Edinger and M. Falk (2012). “Meta-analysis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms, restriction diet, and synthetic food color additives.” J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 51(1): 86-97 e88.

Dr Caroline Leaf – Serious questions, few answers (Part 1)

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Caroline Leaf. The name is popping up more and more around Christian circles. I was curious to hear her speak, since as a Christian and a (family) physician, I like to know how people integrate science and spirituality. So I took the opportunity to drive down to Kings Christian Church on the Gold Coast to hear what she had to say.

I left with more questions than answers.  And some serious concerns.

The following blog posts are a discussion on some of the points that she raised. I simply don’t have the time to go through all of them, although I’m seriously considering whether to do a formal review and response to her teaching.

I had to divide up the original post into three parts to make it more manageable. Here’s part 1, in which I review her academic qualifications, her link of thoughts and illness, our innate wiring, and the myth of the mini-brain.

Part 2 of this post will look further at the pecking order of the mind and brain, some miscellaneous issues, and her ‘professional’ opinion on ADHD.

Part 3 will examine her claim that “Toxic thoughts are sin” and why such a statement is incongruent with the Christian faith.

IS SHE A COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENTIST?

For a start, she was introduced as a cognitive neuroscientist. Her CV lists her degrees as a Bachelor of Science, Masters in Speech Therapy and Audiology, and a PhD in Communication Pathology. She did not advise where she has tenure or does her research. Her CV lists guest lectures at a few Universities (Wits, University of Pretoria, University of Cape Town, University of Western Cape Annual Education Conference, SASHLA, Rotary Foundation), but no tenure.

Admittedly, the definition of a cognitive neuroscientist is somewhat vague (http://careersinpsychology.org/becoming-a-cognitive-neuroscientist/) but the term ‘cognitive neuroscientist’ confers the idea that one is actively involved in cognitive neuroscientific research, or at least in the recent past.

So the question remains: is she really a cognitive neuroscientist, or is she just a woman with a PhD that reads a lot?

THE CORRELATION OF ILLNESS AND THOUGHT

The next thing to grab my attention was her statement: “75 to 98% of ALL illness is related to our thought life.” Somehow I doubt that. The influence of stress is high.  But I am a GP – I see sick people everyday, on the coal face, before they are collected in subspecialist clinics, or improve spontaneously. It’s a real stretch to ascribe stress to more than 30%. Looking at her book ‘Who Switched Off My Brain’ (Leaf 2009, p15), she says that 80% of all diseases are the result of our thought lives. So her own figures are conflicting. (The other thing is that, for a PhD recipient, she has poorly referenced her book!)

Besides, stress causes illness, but I’m not yet satisfied she’s proven that ‘negative’ thought and stress are the same thing.

THE MINI-BRAIN

She also claimed that the brain and the heart connect to every cell in your body. Again, it’s a bit of a stretch. Every cell needs to be bathed in nutrients from the blood which in turn is connected to the heart, and nerves are every where.  But there are many cells that are not innervated directly.

The only way that the brain or the heart are connected to every cell is simply because, technically, every cell is connected to every other cell. Like if everyone in a church stood up and held hands, the man in the front row would be “connected” to the woman in the back.

But she went further on her theory, by claiming that the heart has a mini-brain that directly influences the real brain – by making moral decisions on its own, and that it is part of our conscience. She justified her statement by saying that the heart has 40,000 interconnected nerve cells, and the heart is directly connected to the brain. But on that same logic, my rectum could be a mini-brain and be part of my conscience.

She alluded to the effect of ANF, atrial natriuretic factor. There are actually three natriuretic peptides. ANF, produced by the top two chambers of the heart, actually regulates blood pressure (http://www.cvphysiology.com/Blood%20Pressure/BP017.htm). If it has an effect on thought, it is secondary, not primary.

WIRED FOR OPTIMISM?

She also states that we are wired for optimism, and that emotions like fear are learned. That doesn’t make sense since I have seen research that shows a newborn baby is wired for pleasure and emotions like disgust. These pathways are developed and refined during childhood, but we are born with built-in templates for basic emotion.

I will have more in the next 24 hours, including her statement on the pecking order of the mind and brain, some miscellaneous issues, and her ‘professional’ opinion on ADHD.

REFERENCES

Leaf, C. (2009). Who Switched Off My Brain? Controlling toxic thoughts and emotions. Southlake, TX, USA, Inprov, Ltd.

Sweet Poison, Another Fad

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According to the esteemed medical journal “The Daily Telegraph”, sugar has been exposed as a poison which is slowly killing us[1].

“FORGET fat, salt and carbohydrates – sugar has been branded more addictive than heroin. It is slowly killing us. // While foods high in fat were once accused of increasing our waistlines, experts said it was foods high in sugar, such as cereals and yoghurts, that are making us fatter and more prone to long-term illness.”

The article is right.  Fat was once touted as foods hidden assassin.  Then it became carbs when the Atkins craze hit.  Now its sugar.

Then pretty soon, people will get bored with this fad, and some other “expert” will publish some book that find a new health demon to exorcise.

The problem is that these fads are narrow minded and overly sensationalist.  Everything is bad for us in some degree.  Change the article slightly and you see how ridiculous this fad reporting becomes.

Oxygen is exposed as a deadly addiction that turns us to rust. // Forget fat, salt and carbohydrates – oxygen has been branded more addictive than sugar. It is slowly killing us.

While foods high in fat were once accused of increasing our waistlines, experts said it was breathing oxygen in the air that is causing free radicals to form in our cells.  Free radicals cause oxidative damage, just like rust on iron.

Oxidative damage leads to increased rates of aging of our cells, experts say.  The faster we age, the sooner we die.  Experts say that reducing oxygen intake can add years to our lives, if we can just break our oxygen addiction.

Ahbig Stoog said breaking the oxygen addiction wasn’t easy, but it was worth it.  “I’ve never felt healthier”, said Mr Stoog.

Sorry, but sugar is just one of a long line of fads to come and go.  The Sweet Poison book was written by a lawyer, David Gillespie.  I like lawyers, but understanding law doesn’t give you a degree in biochemistry.  I was at a conference where Professor Rosemary Stanton (nutritionist and biochemist) and Mr Gillespie both spoke.  Stanton tore him apart.

But it’s not just my opinion.  This has been tested scientifically by a group in Adelaide, their work published in 2009[2].  They compared the weight loss effects of two diets over a year, an extremely low carbohydrate diet (like that espoused in the Sweet Poison Quit Plan) and a standard low-fat diet.  The extreme low carbs diet contained 4% of the energy intake as carbs compared to 46% as carbs for the low fat diet.  Importantly, both diets were equal in the calories consumed.

If the sweet poison hypothesis is correct, and sugar alone is responsible for weight gain/loss then the extreme low carbs diet would show significant weight loss to the low fat diet.  If, on the other hand, weight loss is moderated by total calories consumed, no matter what the make up of the diet, then the weight loss for the two diets would be about the same.

The result of the study is bad for Mr Gillespie’s credibility, because both groups lost approximately the same amount of weight (Low Carbs: 14.5 +/- 1.7 kg; Low Fat: 11.5 +/-1.2 kg; P = 0.14).**  The results mirror those of an earlier study by the same authors, using slightly different diets, but again showing that diets of a similar calorie intake result in the same amount of weight loss[3].

The point is, fad diets come and go.  The diet that works is one that is calorie controlled.  People on zero-sugar diets lose weight because they consume less calories.  Any diet that works is because people consume less calories.

A balanced, low calorie diet has been pushed by nutritionists and doctors ad nauseum for decades, but consistently neglecting words like “poison”, “toxin” or “death” has meant that the message is nowhere near as stimulating as the current whim.

If you feel compelled to cut every ounce of sugar from your diet then fantastic.  You will lose lots of weight, and I commend that.  But don’t kid yourself.  Sugar isn’t a poison.  It’s just another fad.

References:

  1. http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/sugar-is-exposed-as-a-deadly-addiction-that-turns-sweet-life-sour/story-fni0cx12-1226686558161
  2. Brinkworth, G.D., et al., Long-term effects of a very-low-carbohydrate weight loss diet compared with an isocaloric low-fat diet after 12 mo. Am J Clin Nutr, 2009. 90(1): 23-32.
  3. Noakes, M., et al., Effect of an energy-restricted, high-protein, low-fat diet relative to a conventional high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet on weight loss, body composition, nutritional status, and markers of cardiovascular health in obese women. Am J Clin Nutr, 2005. 81(6): 1298-306.

** Some people may wonder why I stated that the results of the study showed a similar weight loss, yet the numbers I quoted showed that the low carb diet had a weight loss of 14.5kg compared to 11.5kg for the low fat group.  How can weight loss of 3kg be “the same”?  The answer lies in the P value, a statistical measure of the strength of the evidence.  A p-value of greater than 0.05 shows that the difference in the groups could have been the result of chance.  For more explanation on the P value: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/what-a-pvalue-tells-you-about-statistical-data.html

Needles of Death

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“Acupuncture caused womans heart to implode.

A woman in the prime of her adult life had that life ripped away by acupuncture, a known deadly complementary therapy.  Worse, though, is that acupuncture therapists don’t warn of these potentially fatal outcomes or actively hide them.

Ernst(1) documents two cases of healthy women who have had their lives torn away from them as murderous acupuncture needles were inserted into their vital chest organs causing them to instantly fail.  Each woman would have died in agony as their heart and lungs were unable to get blood to their body’s vital organs.

One woman, a forty-four year old lady, had an acupuncture needle pushed into her heart, causing severe pain and breathlessness.  When she alerted the acupuncturist to her peril, his “cure” was to insert another needle, causing a full-blown cardiac arrest.

Another woman, twenty-six years old, died after an acupuncture needle was inserted into one of her lungs causing the lung to collapse.  She eventually died from a tension pneumothorax, in which the punctured lung leaks air into the chest cavity with every breath, compressing the other chest organs like a Boa Constrictor.  A tension pneumothorax is one of the most terrifying ways to die.

Acupuncture is a multi-billion dollar industry.  Despite its potentially fatal consequences, it goes on, unabated and unregulated.  People need to be warned before more lives are lost to the needles of death.”

Do you feel scared of acupuncture after reading this?  Should you believe it?

These sort of beat up articles occur all the time.  A case report which links a vaccine or drug to an adverse outcome is exaggerated with highly emotional language and posted on conspiracy-driven anti-vaccination blog or site.  Then it gets sent around on Facebook or Twitter like an intellectual virus, taken as evidence of the evils of corporate western medicine by people who take the information on face value.

The latest that came across my Facebook page was of a claim that a 16 year old girls ovaries shrivelled after being exposed to the Gardasil vaccine for the Human Papilloma Virus/cervical cancer.(4)

The problem that these anti-vaccine activists have is that case studies, while interesting, have no evidentiary weight behind them.  Trying to make a case study out to be definitive proof for anything is like putting a grain of salt into a swimming pool and suggesting that you have salt-water.  How many cases of premature ovarian failure have been reported as a direct result of the Gardasil vaccine? I don’t know the exact answer to that, but I’d be surprised if I couldn’t count them on one hand.  Compare that to the hundreds of thousands of women vaccinated with the Gardasil vaccine.

One of the respondents to the anti-Gardasil blog(4) said, “This vaccine has never prevented a single case of oral, cervical, or anal cancer …”  Actually, it has likely prevented thousands.(2)  Case studies can’t see the bigger picture.

And for every case study against western medicine, there are just as many against complementary medicines and practices.  (There would be more, except that the dearth of regulation of the alternative and complementary therapy industry means that most of the adverse outcomes of alternative treatments go unreported).

Braun et al(3) report the case of a twenty-nine year old woman discovered to have an entirely treatable early form of cervical cancer on a pap smear, who died in agony from widespread metastatic cancer of the cervix, despite thirteen years of various complementary medicines (a homeopathic therapy consisting of a vitamin C-containing regimen and subcutaneous administration of mistletoe lectins, “regional hyperthermia”, Horvi-Reintoxin enzyme therapy, and pyrogenic lysates of bacteria combined application of Carnivora-Mistletoe-Ukrain).  This woman’s cancer was caused by HPV-18, which would have been prevented by Gardasil (if it was available to her.)

The point of the story is this: All treatments have side effects or complications.  If you look hard enough, you will find case reports of direct or associated illness from just about any traditional or complementary therapy.  But case studies are not good evidence.  They do not see the bigger picture.  They can not be generalised.

In trained hands, and for the right uses, acupuncture can be a very powerful therapeutic tool.  Acupuncture still does more good than harm.

In trained hands, and for the right uses, Gardasil and vaccines in general are very powerful preventative tools.  Vaccines still do more good than harm.

Neither are “needles of death”.

References

1. Ernst E. Acupuncture – a treatment to die for? Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 2010 Oct;103(10):384-5. PubMed PMID: 20929887.

2. Jin XW, Lipold L, Sikon A, Rome E. Human papillomavirus vaccine: safe, effective, underused. Cleveland Clinic journal of medicine. 2013 Jan;80(1):49-60. PubMed PMID: 23288945.

3. Braun S, Reimer D, Strobl I, Wieland U, Wiesbauer P, Muller-Holzner E, et al. Fatal invasive cervical cancer secondary to untreated cervical dysplasia: a case report. Journal of medical case reports. 2011;5:316. PubMed PMID: 21767367. Pubmed Central PMCID: 3156764.

4. http://www.thelibertybeacon.com/2013/07/22/gardasil-destroys-girls-ovaries-research-on-ovaries-never-considered-10497/

Fear: Friend or Foe?

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Fear.  Should we run, fight, or think?

I was lazily wasting time at Zarraffas this afternoon, and while I was savouring the richness and depth of my triple masai mocha, I was filling the time by flicking through Facebook.

I came upon a blog post by one of the best thinkers and writers I’m personally acquainted with, one Ruth Limkin, who shared the story of how she was given an opportunity to snorkel in a pristine area of ocean in the South Pacific that is limited to only a handful of people, such is the fragile beauty of the ecosystem there.  As she started swimming into the warm, calm, azure waters, she felt this sudden dread.

Five years ago in a similar situation, she misjudged the current, was swept into some coral, and sustained a laceration to her knee.  This left a lot of blood in the water which, quite reasonably, made her think that she had suddenly become shark bait.  She made it back to shore otherwise unscathed. But it left her with the implicit memory of that event.

This year, despite the obviously calm surroundings, she recalled that fear. Her brain told her to get out of there.  She did manage to overcome her fear though, and enjoyed the snorkelling!

Her lesson was that the pain of yesterday can become todays fear, which robs tomorrow of its promise.

I don’t disagree with Ruth.  I’m not intelligent enough to do that.  But I guess I come from a more medical and analytical perspective of this phenomenon, and I wanted to flesh out her point a bit further.

We all feel it at sometime or another – your heart pounds faster and heavier in your chest. Your breathing gets faster. Your muscles tighten. And your brain either says, “Run” or “Fight”, or sometimes it says nothing at all and we simply freeze up.

The human fear response is both rational and irrational.  We usually don’t understand why we are faced with conflicting realities of internal anxiety and external tranquility, feeling scared while looking at calm clear waters.  Sometimes when we take a step back, we can gain some understanding of why we have reacted the way we did, and cognitively overcome our fear.

B-grade pop-psychologists make us believe that courage is the absence of fear, and that the way to move forward is to eliminate or repress your fears.  But that approach is wrong for a couple of reasons.

There is a good reason why we have fear conditioning.  There is a part of the brain called the limbic system, which is integral to emotional processing.  Central to this is the amygdala, which is responsible for adding emotions to our experiences, especially fear and anger.  When something happens that has real or perceived negative consequences (we experience pain, or we think that there is a high chance that we will experience pain) the amygdala pairs that aversive sensation with the memory of the total experience.  This helps us learn from our mistakes [1].

For example, if a pre-historic man was walking through a forest and came across a sabre-toothed tiger, the fight-or-flight response would help him escape.  But the amygdala would attach the memory of the emotion to the memory of the event itself.  Next time the man walked through a similar forest, or even recalled that event in his mind, the emotion of the memory would also be recalled.  This is why Ruth felt uneasy despite the lack of danger.  Her surroundings triggered the emotional memory of the previous snorkelling experience.

But while unpleasant, fear does confer a survival advantage.  Without the same emotion being recalled, we wouldn’t remember what situations were dangerous and which were safe.  Recalling the emotion and realising there may be sabre-toothed tigers around, or strong currents and sharks, means that there is a much smaller chance of us becoming lunch.

There are two pathways in the brain that are involved in the fear response.  The direct pathway goes from the senses to the amygdala, bypassing the thinking parts of our brain entirely.  Again, this confers a survival advantage as the quicker you can prepare yourself for danger, the more likely you are to survive it.  The signal is not properly analysed, but it doesn’t need to be.  It is better to be wrong and live than to be right and eaten by something.

The second pathway from the senses to the cerebral cortex then back to the amygdala is more precise, but it is slower than the direct path.  It can downgrade the fear response if it is not appropriate.  Well, it can in most people.  Anxiety and panic disorders arise when the balance between the direct and indirect pathways is skewed in the direction of the amygdala.

If you think you may have an anxiety disorder or panic disorder, you should see a good GP.  There are specific forms of psychological therapy that you may need to engage with.  Some people also need medications to assist with the process.

For most people though, we can simply allow the recalled feeling of fear stop us from engaging in life.  When we sense fear, the natural reaction is to run or fight.  That is the direct pathway talking in our brain. The lesson from our neurobiology is that we have another choice.  We can let our cerebral cortex do its job, we can think about the situation, and allow our higher functions to downgrade our primitive reactions.

We also need to understand that fear is ok.  It is necessary, in fact.  Without it, we wouldn’t adapt to our surroundings or learn from our mistakes.  We should not avoid fear.  We should not fight fear.  But we should not let fear control us.

Nelson Mandela, a man who experienced great fear but greater hope, sums it up beautifully, and so gets the final word, “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”

References
[1] Dalgleish, T., The emotional brain. Nat Rev Neurosci, 2004. 5(7): p. 583-9.

Dieting. Is it really worth it?

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In an opinion column on the Brisbane Times news site, Kasey Edwards wrote about the recent struggles that weight loss company Jenny Craig have had finding celebrities to endorse their product.

Edwards cited Australian actor Magda Szubanski, and Kirstie Alley before her, as typifying the difficulties that dieters have. She also stated that over the last 50 years of research, dieting has a typical success rate of only 5%.

Her source was unstated, but if it’s correct, then it’s somewhat disheartening. She said, “With such damning rates it is extraordinary that we still blame individuals for ”failing” at weight loss programs rather than accusing the diet companies of selling snake oil. Can you imagine buying any other product with a 95 per cent failure rate and then blaming yourself when it didn’t deliver on its promise?”

The question is then, “Do all diets suffer from the same failure rate, or are there one or two really successful diets who’s success is diluted by the failure of others?” The answer, not really. It depends on how long you measure for.

From the eMedicine article on obesity, “The results of most weight-loss programs are dismal. On average, participants in the best programs lose approximately 10% of their body weight, but people generally regain two thirds of the weight lost within a year. When defined as sustained weight loss over a 5-year follow-up period, the success of even the best medical weight-loss programs is next to nil. Most available data indicate that, irrespective of the method of medical intervention, 90-95% of the weight lost is regained in 5 years.” (Reference)

So, you can invest thousands of hours, and hundreds of dollars into a program, and the end result is most likely the same, nothing.

That sounds depressing. So what’s the point? Perhaps we should just quit while we’re ahead.

You could, but I think there is a solution. Dieting is not the answer, but I think making healthy lifestyle choices is.

That’s for another post.