Just had my doctor tell me not to listen to nutrition or health advice from the internet unless it is on a site like pubmed.com

dan525 · 3 months

I think the comments on this page might be all the explanation you'll need on this topic. Some people will agree, and some will disagree. People will claim to be doctors, and others will claim to be nutritionists. In the end you hear 50 opinions but you'll have no way to discern between the good advice and the complete bullshit.

The peer reviewed site is the best way to talk to people that have actually done research. You should trust me, I'm an Internet Bullshitologist at Nebraska State University.

sunamumaya · 3 months

What must be understood is that, at any given time, science operates based on the best available knowledge. That means there will almost always be a shift in scientific opinion over time, as the knowledge changes, and as more knowledge becomes available. Hence the unmatching or even contradictory thesis on various topic (see the egg and salt debates).

Then there's that wonderful thing called common sense, which is one of nature's mechanism to promote individual survival. If you cultivate it, you'll realize that, as an omnivore, it's not OK to eat meat only, or vegetables only, and you should balance your diet so that you get stuff from all food groups -- the recommended ratios are relative to the current best available knowledge. Just make sure no food group takes over 50% of your diet, and you should be OK.

A little fat is good. Cholesterol (found in egg yolk, along with other precious nutrients) is critical for, i.e., certain hormone production -- if you don't eat some, you'll have to biosynthetize some, and that'll cost you some energy. Sodium is the most important extracellular cation, and we get it via salt (sodium chloride). And so forth.

All in moderation, all according to common sense.

It's extremely difficult for science to come up with immutable, very precise formulas for all of these things. The complexity of the system is simply too much for such an ultimately rudimentary tool that science is at the moment -- and I say this as a published scientist.

Nutrition-wise, there's a simple no-nonsense formula that I think everyone can rely upon: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

Eat food = do not eat junk (i.e. hundreds of additives, paints, preservatives, etc.)

Not too much = this should be obvious; it is said: "leave the table before you feel full"

Mostly plants = veggies are very complex nutrients, as much as most of them hold almost no nutritional value in terms of protein. But all the protein in the world means nothing without the critical nutrients you get from plants. Food does not simply equal protein, I'm surprised at how many people think like that -- that's a plain wrong perspective. Vitamins are used as co-factors in proteic enzyme activity, which means your enzyme is useless without said vitamin, and plants are rich in vitamins. Also, vegetal fiber is key to a healthy gut.

TL;DR: Go for the public, official guideliness (they're the best available knowledge: USA, UK), and use your common sense. Use Nutrition Data for dietary calculation awesomeness.

Mokelachild · 3 months

He probably said that because the information on health forums is not always reviewed and proven. Pubmed only gives info on peer-reviewed journals, so information from them should be proven and vetted by scientists.

bossoline · 3 months

There is a lot of bad stuff out there, but there is great, timely information on the internet. Health care professionals are leery of and defensive about anything that challenges the way they do things. Collectively, we're not a very adaptable bunch.

But it's exactly that reason that actual practice lags years or even decades behind the science and that's not good either. We like to think that the medical community is a foolproof source of reliable, up-to-date information on health, but that's just not true. A lot of providers don't stay up to date. A lot of those that do are massively subject to bias because they either 1) take the study at face value without rigorous critique and evaluation, 2) get biased of their information from product reps or 3) run results through a highly subjective set of filters to determine whether or not they "believe" the science without a systematic approach to evaluating the evidence. That "gut feel" and resistance to change can be as dangerous as anything you'll find on the internet.

I think it's a red flag when a provider dismisses any information that doesn't come from the medical community, which has been proven over and over in the last 5-10 years to be corrupt and worryingly incapable of sustaining a reputation for scientific rigor and objectivity. As a professional, I read what's on the internet and evaluate it just as I would with anything on PubMed. The best plan for info you find on the internet is to dig deeper and evaluate it as best you can and enlist the help of medical professionals.

slyf · 3 months

A lot of sites on the top google results are not legitimate studies and mostly either rushed bullshit or trying to sell you something. If you have half a brain you can get information, however, he likely says that because most people do not.

miborovsky · 3 months

You know how opinions are like assholes, everyone's got one (except the unfortunates with anal atresia) but that doesn't mean it doesn't stink?

In general, medical opinions provided by people with at least 10+ years of professional knowledge tends to be less stinky than medical opinions offered by armchair forumnites who may have read a bunch of articles about it online.

mindaika · 3 months

I would agree with him. Public-forum sites, this one included, tend to latch on to developments they like and treat them as scripture, regardless of the actual weight of evidence.

Hannibal_Lecture · 3 months

Would you take legal advice from Reddit?

bwilkes · 3 months

Your doctor can get sued if he advocates seeking advice from sources that aren't accredited. That doesn't mean there isn't good health advice from unaccredited sources, like reddit.

tubbubbles · 3 months

One problem with pubmed is that it only provides abstracts of the actual journal article, and the publications are generally academic in nature and not something the average patient would want to read. There are a number of vetted resources that attempt to take health and medicine and package it for the average consumer:

http://www.webmd.com/

http://www.medscape.com/

http://www.drugcite.com/

To name a few. Generally these are trustworthy, although I have to confess I don't like all of the ads on webmd. I just happen to know someone that works there and know that they have a large scientific and medical staff. Medscape is owned by WebMd I believe, alghough Medscape is geared more for physicians. Some of the other less-scientific health and medicine sites do seem a little questionable. Yahoo answers has a health section, but I don't think I'd put too much weight on what's being posted there.

littlesparrow7 · 3 months

I think you have to be really careful when getting info on the net, but in my case I never would have found out what was wrong with me without the help of an independent online forum. I have a rare illness, salicylate sensitivity, that most doctors don't know much about. That's slowly changing, but I saw doctor after doctor and specialist after specialist, and none of them could tell me what was wrong. I suffered horribly for two years. I learned about salicylate sensitivity through a forum, brought the info to my immunologist, and he was like, "Oh yeah, that makes sense."

skinnydietitian · 3 months

If you're not one to use common sense and decide what's best for you, then yes misinformation on health forums is very bad for you.

And nutrition information is not one size fits all. What may be great advice for one person may be awful or irrelevant for another. Some people can tolerate salt just fine while others have to be careful with it (genetics). I'm a salt fanatic and my blood pressure is within normal limits. The bloating gets a bit annoying though...

legerete_de_letre · 3 months

NY Times published an article on this topic last year. For the layperson looking for an easier-to-understand distillation of health information than journal articles, I would agree with the article's recommendation to go to a site like the Mayo Clinic over some of the more sensationalistic and advertising-driven sites.

Even if you're dedicated and knowledgeable enough to find and read a journal article via PubMed, just because a study made it into the news doesn't mean it's a good representation of the current knowledge on a topic. You'd have to start doing in-depth research and read reviews of the literature to find good summary information that way.

flappingumbrella · 3 months

If you have a specific health problem, like diabetes or liver / kidney problems, you'd definitely want to go to a nutritionist to help you figure out how to manage.

cuttups · 3 months

Good, pubmed is the shit.

gelpuz0000 · 3 months

http://www.eatright.org/public/

jordanlund · 3 months

I try not to pay any attention to popular nutrition. Back when I was a kid they taught the 4-4-3-2 method of food servings. 4 servings of meat, 4 servings of dairy, 3 servings of grains and 2 servings of fruit or vegetables.

Now the food pyramid flips that upside down.

I remember when butter was bad and they advised everyone to switch to margarine, then it turned out that margrine was actually worse for you.

The notion that red wine is good for your heart turned out to be based on fraudulent data.

So basically I don't worry about it. I eat what I want, in moderation.

ebookit · 3 months

Dr. Oz begs to differ I guess? But buying the stuff he shows on his web site and show is very expensive.

My doctor told me to eat less and exercise more, is she wrong? Is it really about what you eat and how you exercise instead of just eating less and exercising more? As I exercise I gain muscle mass and the more I exercise the bigger my muscles get. F'bog!

Chyndonax · 3 months

There are no bad nutrients, we need them all. There are bad amounts. Too much of anything will cause problems. So when your doctor says moderation he's absolutely right.

bzzzzbzzzfwoomlights · 3 months

i'm currently on a 100% bourbon diet. seems to be working well for me.

highly recommended.

imitationcheese · 3 months

Not just PubMed, but only systematic reviews and meta-analyses. All other science is not yet solidified. One trial does not imply conclusions can really be made.

Chiasmus · 3 months

The problem with PubMed is that the articles are not geared towards consumers, and can be difficult to decipher if you don't have the background to do so.

The National Library Medicine (part of the NIH), who runs PubMed set up a consumer facing site for health, called Medline Plus. The information and links provided are screened and reviewed every 6 months, and has no commercial interests.

kylev · 3 months

I wouldn't even recommend reading PubMed. PubMed contains all published research and is not specifically organized to help a layperson discern what is good, well cited, replicated, or refuted. If you're not a doctor, practiced and trained in reading studies, following citations, and totally up to date on current trends, you're more likely to be mislead by your inexperience than discern anything actually useful.

That said, taking diet information from the internet at large is fraught with danger as well. Start reading crazy shit like Natural News or Dr. Mercola, and you'll end up badly wrong for a whole host of other reasons.

This is the curse of democratized information publishing. There is information available to us that we aren't qualified to consume, and there are idiots producing bad information and putting it out there for no reason other than their ability to successfully fill out a blogger.com signup form.

Nutrition is technical, hard stuff. Find yourself a professional guide; do your best to avoid quacks.

redsox15 · 3 months

Doctors don't really study nutrition. I've never received good nutritional advice from a doctor. They typically think people are overweight because they sit on their asses and eat too much. Just because they are a doctor, doesn't mean they have all of the answers.

alerolli1 · 3 months

PubMed.gov is the best source of information for medical professionals. There are free articles linked from pubmed, primarily those available from PubMed Central and publishers who make their stuff available to the public. You can identify these articles by using the limit on the right side of the results page. You will also find rust colored links to the free items among your search results.

For the type of health information you're interested in, I advise going to medlineplus.gov. It's also a product of NLM (the same body within NIH that produces PubMed) but it is filled with information designed for everyday people without bio-medical specialties. MedlinePlus contains dictionaries, instructional videos, images as well as links to reliable, trustworthy organizations who are going to give you good, trustworthy information. Many links are government websites, but there's also a lot of organizations, non-profits, and even for-profit sites listed. The information is kept incredibly current (I teach this kind of stuff frequently and in all my demos I've never stumbled across a page that had gone even a year without being reviewed).

Because MedlinePlus is put out by the federal government, they're not going to be trying to sell you on drugs, promote their product, or encourage you to check out their advertisers.

If you want to learn more about deciding whether or not to trust health information you find online, familiarize yourself with the principles put out by Health on the Net: http://www.hon.ch/HONcode/Conduct.html. Most of the reputable health information providers follow HON guidelines.

seanhive · 3 months

I've absolutely noticed a major difference in how I feel--and how "saturated" I feel--when I DON'T avoid foods with high sodium added.

If your doctor said that, he's just saying "Take it easy, don't worry so much." That sounds like stress management advice, not nutrition advice.

If you don't avoid the packaged and processed food with shitloads of extra sodium in it, have fun carrying around 10 extra pounds of heavy confusion (the salt ghost) for the rest of your life.

code2mind · 3 months

Every body is different. One type of food can react differently to one person than to another. Everything has to do with their current state health wise or genes or age or ..... Just keep track of your diet and see what nutrition work for you.

TheYellowRose · 3 months

Does anyone else use this search engine? I feel like many people don't know about it. http://www.hon.ch/

GreatBigPig · 3 months

My doctor told me to avoid most online health info, and instead trust only reputable sources such as The Mayo Clinic

Spreo_superbus · 3 months

Best advice I have heard: eat food. Real food. Mostly plants.

-Michael Pollan

hyperstupid · 3 months

What's wrong with bacon and low starch? It's all about /r/keto baby!

mckeitherson · 3 months

Your doctor is right about the salt though. Salt isn't inherently bad per se. But considering the fact that most processed foods today (and some natural ones) have enough salt in them to meet our daily dietary needs (1500-2000mg), your sodium intake should be met without any necessary excess. If you work out heavily or sweat a lot then you should be ok with adding more. Just make sure you up your potassium intake through vegetables to raise your potassium if you decided to keep using salt to help balance it out.

assbackwards11 · 3 months

i try to stick with biomechanics when it comes to nutrition. You need a whole bunch of different shit to do a whole bunch of different things in your body, and if one is too neglected or too minded, shit fucks up. Change the oil every 3000 miles not the oil pump, but don't forget to change the oil for 50000 thousand miles, ya dig? incase ya don't dig, eat a bunch of different foods, make sure you have all of the good ones(this means vegetables and fruits) at least once a month, and don't eat too much of the same thing. and you need salt to regulate water in your body, but too much causes problems. The reason your doctor told you this is most likely the whole I'm a doctor what does the internet know that i don't pretense, or he's tired of arguing with idiots who read one thing and think they're a doctor. Which is a lot of people.

KazOondo · 3 months

I honestly feel like, sad and scary thought it may be, these days you kind of have to experiment and see what works for you. There's too much contradicting information from too many credible sources. Too much disagreement. You just gotta' be a little prudent, patient, observant, and try out different diets until you find one that makes sense and works for you.

kortneypayge · 3 months

Most doctors are not trained in nutrition. In fact, very few ever take a nutrition class. Generally, I would not recommend going to a doctor for nutritional information. That being said, the internet is full of information, both good and bad. Fads come and go, and new information is gained constantly. Make sure you do your research regarding your nutritional concerns. Not everything on the internet is bad.

gelpuz0000 · 3 months

http://www.eatright.org

zaqu12 · 3 months

eat normal , cut the proccessed shit, no multivitamins neccessary , you can eat a meal without salt humans did for the longest time, treat salt like ice cream(fine to have once a day but not good with everything)

wewewawa · 3 months

Tell your MD to go watch this.

It is on streaming Netflix.

Spoon fed nutrition for the rest of us.

Galtus_Maximus · 3 months

Practically everyone online will have a strong opinion. Without being one of those people... It sounds like your doctor is right. Yeah there will be lots of fads and 'updates' to nutrition, but in the end, it's all about doing what makes your body feel healthy, I guess.

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