Sometimes the internet is great. For instance:
Thanks for that post, Mr. Username. You’re too well-spoken to be a simple troll, and disregarding various folks’ acrimony in this thread, I hope you’ll stick around to participate in other discussions.
Another time the internet is great is with Hiredgoons’ post, which I appreciated reading on a couple of different levels.
-Tom
This was my exact thought upon discovering this thread tonight!
I’m irritated and full of acrimony because you still refuse to admit the majority of the industry preys on innocent people. It’s like the state of Idaho lets parents murder their kids through neglect in the name of religious liberty. Technically it’s involuntary manslaughter but if a doctor watched a patient bleed to death instead of helping save them they wouldn’t be afforded the “involuntary” part. This is personal. I won’t let it go that essential oil evangelists kill people by manipulating them. Never once did the jerk who convinced the family to skip a lumpectomy and chemo apologize for misleading them. And I’ve seen no remorse in your texts for an industry that has no more legitimacy nor merit over any other botanical program.
There are hundreds if not thousands of “essential oils” on the market. Showing that 3 out of 500 has some potential merit is an abysmal statistic to say “see I won, I’m right”. You are correct in that this number does not equal zero. This does not mean it equals 1. Not half, not 10%. It’s way less, and very close to zero.
So yes, you won the semantics argument but I’d like to see you actually care about “people” than the principle of “Because 1 thing out of a thousand works you should not rag on us so bad”. The industry does more harm than good. Taking their money, false hope, and neglect of proper medicine. I am frustrated by the feeling you carry no sympathy whatsoever for those that lose their lives over this industry.
I don’t understand how a person can be so indifferent. We only get one shot at life. And when one loses it due to active malice, manipulation, or coercion it’s something to stand up against and say, “This isn’t right”. And that’s what I am doing. I’m sorry I can’t do this in a less emotional way.
You are very welcome on this forum and it would be nice to see you contribute to other threads.
It’s good to hear some positivity–thanks.
Again, why would I admit to some arbitrary accusation like “majority” when there’s no evidence to support that statement? It has been my experience that anyone I know who recommends or has any stake in essential oils genuinely believes in what they do, has a general knowledge of their uses (of course with some questionable ideas and pseudoscientific explanations involving frequencies), and is happy to share something that they themselves have found useful. Just because you have heard some stories that end in death and you have this conception in your head of some conniving industry out to sell useless products doesn’t mean the majority of the industry is preying on people. Most people get into business because they believe they have a worthwhile product (obviously with exceptions). As I’ve shown, a number of these oils have medicinal properties and it’s no wonder people use them. So when a distributor gets into them you can be sure they don’t think they’re duping anyone most of the time because they themselves purchase and use them themselves because they find them useful. Since most of them are sold through distributors who use them personally you can be confident that most of them believe wholeheartedly in what they are doing and that most of what they recommend them for comes from personal accounts of things they’ve had success using them for. Even those who own the businesses know that they have functional uses. Do I think that some of the businesses might not mind some of the rumors spread around about their false or embellished “cures” for the sake of publicity and increased profits? Of course that is probably a thing. Does that mean the industry is full of corrupt people? No. That’s something that would need evidence for me to believe and everything so far tells me that people who sell oils are sharing something they found very useful and they unfortunately sometimes might take liberties in the claims they make. Moral: no of course I won’t admit something that has no evidence.
Remorse for sharing studies that supported my personal uses of essential oils? Why on earth would I feel bad about that? And you can say it has no more merit than any other botanical program, and it may be true, but again, you put forth zero evidence. Academia doesn’t work that way @jpinard. We don’t just say things without support and expect people to believe us. And btw your logic is still flawed. Having no more merit than something else doesn’t mean something doesn’t have merit. In fact, I have provided the merit and a mention of other “botanical programs” has no purpose in this discussion.
I doubt there are thousands, and there might not even be hundreds. Wikipedia had 123 listed and I’ve looked through a reference book that was very comprehensive and it didn’t have hundreds. As I read through the Wikipedia list I took note of what many of them are commonly used for. Many are used for flavoring in food, various are used medicinally as antiseptics, and quite a lot of them are used as a fragrance. In fact the ones I mentioned and that were referenced in the studies are really the only ones you usually hear people claim have any medicinal uses anyway. Also, nice try in your deceiving attempt to belittle the amount that presented medicinal uses. I’m not going to go back and count right now but there were at least 15. I guarantee that if I looked into it more that several more would show medicinal properties. Nevertheless, more than you say have medicinal properties and less than you claim actually exist–and even less than that have anyone claiming they’re useful outside of fragrance or as a food additive.
Another bit of false logic. That is the equivalent of saying that if some small percent of cancer treatment works that that somehow minimizes the value of those few that work–totally illogical.
Good lord when will you quit pretending that just because I posted some uses for essential oils that it means I don’t care about people who are mistreated. That doesn’t even make sense so try to correct your false reasoning here.
150 or so posts later and silence. I never thought we’d spend this long disagreeing about oils. Although, I’m not sure many of us actually disagree. Any “opposition” I received, valid or not, wasn’t mutually exclusive. I was laying things out as they are and it just didn’t seem to sit right with a lot of people (no surprise in a thread populated by people who already think essential oils are “bunk”). Most of the opposition seemed like word games and salty retaliation to my tone, but I’m certain if the perimeters of what we all actually believe were properly laid out then there’d be very little disagreement. The two most hilarious parts to me were when I was called a liar: “you’re a distributor” and when I was accused of lying about the subluxation of my patella and the oil blend that relaxed it and led to it going back together on its own. I didn’t see those coming 😂
@jpinard, do you follow competitive Smash Bros. Melee? Maybe we can agree to agree on that.
Truly you are a terrible victim in the fight you picked out of nowhere with the entirety a well-established Internet community.
My heart, it bleeds.
So I’m not sure why everyone is so dismissive here. Are we not scientists who should keep an open mind?
Here are a few links to studies published by the NIH about essential oils:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19356307/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24682420/
That second one says that there is evidence that some essential oils help allergies. This popped up on my radar because my allergies are getting worse and worse and while I’m getting my tolerance shots I need relief that anti-histamines like Claritin and the like don’t seem to provide.
Perhaps we should read a bit before dismissing things arrogantly out of hand while doing no research at all.
Oh, you’re still here. Still thinking you’ve “won” when you haven’t even made it to the starting line.
Here, since you haven’t gone, a single paper in an journal of questionable provenance is meaningless. You should watch this “science for dummies” show, Adam Ruins Everything. It’s really good, for real, and helps you think like a skeptic, rather than just wholesale believing whatever it is you read, providing it looks science-y. In this episode (sorry I haven’t checked the whole YouTube video to see if it’s the full episode or not)
In this episode they get the script for the episode published in a journal.
Arendek, who are responding to? Me? I’ve never commented in this thread. Do you have any scientific training or background at all? Are you familiar with the scientific method? Did you read those peer reviewed papers linked or just have a knee jerk reaction? What did you question about them? Hypothesis? Methods? Conclusion? All are valid criticisms, just wondering where you took issue.
Nope, not to you. Read up thread to see what I have to offer, I’m not going to get all self righteous and start defending or credentialing myself either. I haven’t read your papers yet.
Essential oils do have uses, for sure. Some of them are actually backed up by science too. When this thread was first created, I was going to drop in to say that wouldn’t lump all essential oils in with holistic medicine hookum necessarily, but the burden of proof would have been on me and I just don’t care that much to spend the time debating it. The actual uses for them are minor and the industry is full of charlatans, so it’s hard to navigate.
It wasn’t to be, but the bar set by generic arguer man who dropped in here was much higher. He claimed we all just needed to do the [quote=“My_Username, post:125, topic:77624”]
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
[/quote]
Also he/she said
And then didn’t even come close.
So here we are. He/she’s still in here… I guess bragging?
Anyways, cheers, I’m going back to watching this movie with my kids now.
I have been suffering from acute sinusitis for the last few days. I’m on antibiotics, DayQuil and some nasal sprays. After not feeling that much better I just told my wife to give me all her homeopathic treatments as well, no snake oil though. At this point I will try most things to get me out of zombie mode. I’ll report back with results.
The silence has been nice.
Where you been?!?
[That’s a subtle question to try and find out a bit more about you. I, for one, cannot take someone seriously until I feel like I “know” them, even a little bit. You never really introduced yourself. For instance, see Guap up there, who stopped in. You just watch; since we all know who he is, he will get taken a lot more seriously.] :)
weeeelllllllllll…
;)
Just wait! You’ll see!
@my_username I have first-hand experience with the essential oils market and how they prey on people. You will not, and obviously never will address the fact the industry is by and large snake oil medicine and hurts more than it helps. Arguing with you is like arguing with global warming deniers. It’s just pointless. As I reiterated many times. The fact a few have a decent use is no better than any other botanical or old wives tales research. I’m not trying to be mean, but obviously you’re in gloat mode thinking you won, and I’m just trying to explain as nicely as I can why it’s just not worth sparring with you on this anymore.
As for super smash brothers, sorry I’m not into Nintendo games. My cousin tried to get me into them but i just never enjoyed platformers I just could not relate to the warm fuzzy feeling a lot of people have for never Nintendo legacies.
[quote=“My_Username, post:285, topic:77624, full:true”]
150 or so posts later and silence. [/quote]
I asked you up thread about your claim that the “5 year success rate for chemotherapy is 2.1%”
I won’t re-quote my entire post you can find it above.
I’m a practicing medical oncologist and I know that statement is complete bullshit. Chemotherapy isn’t a perfect solution but the success rate (whether defined as cure, improvement in overall survival or progression free survival or reducing risk of metastatic recurrence) is a lot higher than 2.1% I provided examples above of specific diseases if you really want to get down into details. I have a lot more.
So I’m going to presume that your refusal to backup your statement is a tacit admission that you know it’s bullshit.
I don’t understand this post because I never considered myself a victim or implied I wanted your sympathy, so off with you.
@Guap, your post appears to have answered you question of why they’re so dismissive. Even though if we broke down what you said and I said and showed that it was basically the same thing, the only reason left would be that my intentionally snarky bait hurt their egos and they felt the need to endlessly debate this, poorly (<–that’s not me being rude, it’s true). I suppose when people don’t like a person they avoid agreeing with them to no end. Maybe that’s why people get so weird when someone mentions a good quality in Hitler, for example.
@arrendek, "wholesale believing whatever [I] read. Except that doesn’t describe me whatsoever and as I’ve stated before believing things without doing proper research is the irony of this entire thread: people here mostly know nothing about essential oils or the scientific literature about them, hear some things about them that if believed would confirm their self perception as a skeptic, and proceed to believe that they are “complete bunk” and “useless.” The irony is beautiful. And perhaps the most important point here is that I didn’t believe they worked when I heard they worked. I knew they worked when I saw they worked repeatedly.
One place I think many here are misguided here is their perception of proof. The reason a testimonial doesn’t cut it as a reason the FDA would approve a drug is of course because that can’t logically provide and comfort to the consumer that the drug is safe or effective. But in most areas of life the things we rely on to be true have never been rigorously subjected to the scrutiny of the scientific method in double blind trials, and of course they don’t need to. If I said this awful mattress has been making my back hurt then anyone who tells me it’s just placebo is sort of an idiot. If a person finds themself gravitating toward protein rich food after a workout and they don’t know it’s because it helps their body repair tissue then that’s no reason for him or her to stop eating that way. We do what works, usually. I use the oils sometimes, because they work, without exception, for numerous things–and even though I find it interesting that there is scientific support for the things I use them for, that’s not why I use them.
I’ll check out Adam Ruins Everything later.
^ A first step for one of you.
I guess that depends on what you consider minor. If my dad hasn’t put that blend on my knee I would have had to endure an excruciating pain when the doctor reset my subluxation. If my uncle didn’t have a bottle of oil that killed his UTI then he would have been in a lot of pain waiting for his doctor to be back in town or getting a new one (and he would have spent substantially more money). My aunt would have suffered the embarrassment and pain of shingles above her eye if it wasn’t for oils. My arm would look like a heroin junky’s after 40+ blood draws if lavender hadn’t healed the tissue and prevented scarring. My family member with herpes simplex would suffer longer outbreaks if not for the antiviral properties of peppermint. Those are just a few examples and they are far from “minor” in my opinion and surely most people’s opinions.
-“generic arguer” eh? There’s very little generic about next, but nice attempt at insulting me 👍
Btw I’m not still here “bragging.” I’m still here because I’m still waiting for a response that can be considered relevant and the overwhelming majority of what keeps coming in is illogical, unscientific, insulting, and weak attempts to sound correct.
@Giles_Habibula, do you know the scientists whose scientific research you rely on? And you implied you didn’t take me seriously at least partly due to the fact that I didn’t introduce myself. I think that’s probably just a nice example of confabulation. Your brain is tricking you.
@jpinard, you clearly just skip right past my points that refute you, apparently because you have no sufficient response. Once again, obviously I won’t assume the opposite of my experience is true just because you said so with zero support for your statement. I will say there are some charlatans in the market, of course.
You never were “sparring” with me. You are repeating the same tired and false points. Once again, there are more than a few useful oils, but you apparently want to try to deceive people with your words.
Oh, and @Hiredgoons, I apologize, I must have missed your post and it was worth replying to. Admittedly I did hear that from a trusted source, heard it repeated a few times, and mostly believed it without sufficiently looking into it. I intuitively knew I didn’t fully believe it because I remember thinking I should go back and rephrase it as a question but never did. I am interested in knowing the average success rate, cases where the cancer doesn’t return, and survival rate for chemotherapy in general. If you know those statistics or could point me in the right direction that would be appreciated.
