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“Metabolic optimization” probably won’t save you from COVID-19

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Posted 9/8/2020 8:42 AM (GMT -5)
Dr. David Gorski on the fetishization of nutrition, and diet:

A favorite claim by those favoring “holistic” therapies is that using diet to “optimize metabolism” can prevent or treat COVID-19. These claims are of a piece with similar claims for many other diseases and are just as exaggerated.

It’s not just infectious diseases, either. This fetishization of nutrition and food above all permeates not just the antivaccine movement but all of alternative medicine. Indeed, when alternative practitioner Toni Bark developed a deadly cancer, the cognitive dissonance was such that her son had to admit that she developed her cancer even though she had lived what he considered to be an incredibly healthy lifestyle and consumed a vegan diet. (Yes, there is considerable victim blaming among the “nutrition cures everything” crowd.) A corollary of the “food as medicine” mindset is a persecution complex, in which advocates like to claim that any suggestion that food can cure or prevent disease is dismissed by nasty scientists and skeptics as “quackery”. (It’s not; only overblown claims for the medical benefits of foods, nutrients, diet, and lifestyle are so dismissed.)

...it should be no surprise that similar claims are being made regarding COVID-19 and have been since very early in the pandemic, including claims that vitamin C (of course!) or an “alkaline diet” (double of course!) can treat or cure COVID-19.

https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/09/08/metabolic-optimization-probably-wont-save-you-from-covid-19/
Posted 9/8/2020 1:18 PM (GMT -5)
Buddy, you're right, it won't. Neither will homeopathy, or the paleo diet, or any number of other things.

However, most of us understand that eating a healthy diet, with exercise, helps keep us generally healthy. More veggies, less meat, etc. are good things. Megadosing on vitamins is generally not a good thing--and can be a bad thing, depending on the vitamin used.
Posted 9/8/2020 2:04 PM (GMT -5)

halbert said...
Buddy, you're right.

This post has nothing to do with eating a healthy diet, or exercise - we all learned, as children, the importance of a healthy diet, and of exercise - it has to do with what Dr. Gorksi wrote about.

Thank you for commenting.
Posted 9/8/2020 5:16 PM (GMT -5)
Doc ****** weighs in on kooky diets re: cancer.

https://twitter.com/doc******/status/1301858347621191686
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