Essential Oils And Other Holistic Bullshit

Misread this originally as “She smelled real big.”

Still giggling. It might actually work better that way.

Maybe she just smells bigly

Ah. So I’ve been doing it wrong. No wonder they didn’t help me.

[quote=“theticktockhouse, post:95, topic:77624”]
I don’t think anyone out there is claiming that if a person infected with Ebola virus ingests a large dose of highly concentrated cinnamon ( oil/resin ) (extracted from a cinnamon plant) (not the Domino Cinnamon Sugar cowboy you shake on French toast) that it would kill the bug.[/quote]

See that’s the thing—they’re not actually making solid claims one way or another because then they’re obligated to provide proof of those claims, which they do not have. So instead they merely allude to the efficacy of this shit with worthless anecdotes and vague statements that don’t actually mean anything. Statements such as:

Good timing for this:

SFW - It’s on the CBS News site.

I think they could have just stopped the headline at “Paltrow”

Homeopathy is pretty much debunked trivially, simply by recognition that chemicals exist in the form of molecules, and in a solution there are a finite number of those molecules. After a certain point of dilution, there are literally zero molecules left. It’s literally just water at that point.

Homeopathy is for people without basic knowledge of elementary school chemistry.

Which is exactly why it is worth the time and trouble to debunk it.

But they won’t understand the debunking.

@Timex is right. Homeopathy has been debunked countless times. It’s like climate change or anti-vax folks. It doesn’t matter what science or logic proves. People will believe what they want.

Just summarize homeopathy as “dilute something until it’s no longer there” and let them come to their own conclusions. If someone thinks a substance which isn’t present in their treatment is helping them there’s nothing more you can do.

That said I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it came out they slipped actual cheap drugs in homeopathic treatments, aspirin or something.

Well, we could stop funding it on the NHS.

Or narcotics. “Hey, this stuff reaallly works! I feel great!”

Sometimes the problem with homeopathic products is that they actually contain something.

Facepalm All I see on this thread is unscientific, ego-stroking, self-aggrandizing ignorance. Oh the irony of dozens of people posturing as scientific minded individuals who are simultaneously unwilling to do the minimal amount of research necessary to realize numerous medical uses of essential oils–you know, based on the hundreds, if not thousands of scholarly articles written on scientific studies that show conclusive evidence in favor of essential oils. It’s time to stop this sheer laziness and parroting of your friends on these issues and use the vast wealth of information available at your fingertips.

I came upon a link to this thread and humored it out of curiosity. As I scrolled through comment after comment of cringeworthy misinformation, I began to wonder whether anyone would have anything to say beyond the empty rhetoric. Perhaps someone would put forth a convincing rebuttal to the essential oil bashing. No such luck.

Before I utterly destroy your “arguments” against essential oils, first let me give you a little background as to why I even gave alternative medicine a second glance in the first place. My father indoctrinated me from an early age with unconventional ideas on human health. Around adulthood I realized he wasn’t an infallible source of information and knew the only intellectually honest thing to do was to scientifically scrutinize my beliefs. So I did.

Maybe it was laziness, or perhaps because I didn’t feel the need to be some sort of prophet of this information, but I was never in the habit of compiling the information I found. The knowledge just assimilated into my belief structure and I moved on. I’ve seen how socially destructive championing an alternative idea can be, especially when it questions people’s core beliefs and challenges the quality of what they put into their bodies. For years I’ve kept many of these ideas to myself, except in certain open-minded company.

But now I feel compelled to share what just 30 minutes of research into the actual scientific community would have yielded for you guys on the matter. What made my search somewhat more efficiently guided was to look for studies done on oils to test the validation of claims of cures to ailments I myself have already experienced, or someone I know directly has experienced. First I’ll briefly outline the condition, oils used, and efficacy. Then I’ll provide a link to peer-reviewed research demonstrating the efficacy of said oil(s) for said ailment.

EDIT: I originally had this all as one post, but the accounts and research portion was quite long. I figured it may be less of an arduous read when broken into two portions so I provided a link to a google doc with the scientific research I compiled. There are 12 points, 10 of them contain links to research validating medicinal claims for things such as accelerated wound healing, anti-cancerous properties, antiviral-antimicrobial-antifungal properties, stimulated hair regrowth, anti-inflammatory and antioxidative properties, carpal tunnel relief, etc. Don’t take my word on it, follow the link below:

(https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WsWT4sewGmp5q_GPV7y3ITHjbdgB6DDEWkbjF_kxwow/edit?usp=sharing)

So here you have it: a plethora of of scientific data on various medicinal uses of essential oils. The information clearly debunks the absurd statements made in this forum calling essential oils “bullshit,” “complete bunk,” etc. (I’m looking at you, Penny Dreadful). It’s humorous to me when you say things like, “my first instinct is to research it to make sure it’s true. How can people just immediately buy into whatever they hear without a hint of critical thinking?” Clearly you spent zero time following any scientific research on the subject of oils, yet you “immediately [bought] into whatever” you heard about oils. Now we’ll see how intellectually honest people here are since no one in their right mind would read the results of these scientific studies and continue to call essential oils “complete bunk.” These naysaying buzzwords about oils come from people who blindly believe memes and what they hear because it fits into their narcissistic self-perception as a nerdy skeptic. The more you pat each other’s backs and inflate your egos on these boards the more high you get off the endogenic drugs your bodies crank into your bloodstream. I can relate to this because when I first realized that there almost certainly is no god (IMO) I became very vocal about it. I was addicted to calling people out for their false beliefs. Eventually I realized I was doing it because knocking other people’s beliefs made me feel better about my own intelligence. I was younger then and changed for the better once I realized that pattern. The more you do that the more your beliefs are backed by emotion rather than logic.

Sure, in any market there will be wildly false claims. And many people who get into using essential oils do so without research and might be called gullible. But if we put the naysayers who clearly didn’t do their research into one group and the proponents of essential oils who didn’t do their research into another group, then at the end of the day it was those “gullible” “fools” whose beliefs actually were supported by science. Our society has long depended partly on testimonials and referrals from friends; and when a friend’s advice turns out to be something that actually worked for their particular woe then that’s their science. Science is an amazing tool, but should we criticize every successful feat accomplished before we began to use the scientific method? Of course not. Efficacy can be self-evident.

So drop your loaded conceptions of essential oils as some sort of “voodoo” “magic.” They are oils that contain actual chemical compounds that have measurable medicinal effects. Is this really that surprising? Can’t you contemplate how certain plants that happened to produce a compound that had antifungal properties would have had a better chance at survival in certain environments? And from there each successive generation would be naturally selected by the amount of antifungal chemicals it created until it hit a peak where the amount was no longer relevant or possibly caused some other complication. Wow, critical thinking in action.

Finally I’m going to share an important piece of often overlooked history that demonstrates the dangerousness of the egoic mentality on this board that boldly rejects science based alternative medicine. In the middle of the 19th century there was a Hungarian born physician named Ignaz Semmelweis who made a revolutionary discovery. At the time, the mortality rate was quite high for women giving birth, specifically where he was practicing medicine in what’s now Austria. He and his colleagues were performing autopsies and then working with women giving birth without washing their hands. This was before germ theory was proven. Semmelweis made the connection between microscopic organisms and the diseases killing people and came up with a solution for washing hands consisting of water and a small amount of bleach. This led to the mortality rate dropping by 90%, saving thousands of lives at one clinic alone (let alone the millions of lives saved due to the discovery). Unfortunately the medical community was so arrogant that they were offended at what was to them a preposterous idea that they should have to do something different by washing their hands. The medical community disregarded the results Semmelweis was having and slandered his name. The poor guy had to watch his name be tarnished while thousands of innocent people died due to pure ignorance. He wrote several letters attempting to help change this medical practice to no avail. He was eventually brought to a mental hospital under false pretense where he was beaten to death by the guards, dying of internal bleeding. Stop the madness people, your beliefs are unscientific–stop the charade. .

Another face palm

You joined 8 mins ago, yet managed to construct that entire shitpost that quickly? Right. Reported.

On the one hand, I love that this person has a carefully crafted long post with an actual point, complete sentences, and is only slightly insulting. Let’s face it, we’re not exactly undeserving of some scorn from the folks that believe in this claptrap. We certainly haven’t been shy about throwing around the “hoax” and “bullshit” accusations.

On the other hand, @My_Username? Really? You couldn’t even come up with a good alias? At least @theticktockhouse was mildly clever.