over the last couple years I've noticed this growing trend of glorifying
self-experimentation. if you don't know what I'm talking about, it's this idea
that you can know what's healthy for you just by trying it. if I try eating a
certain way and I feel good then it works for me and if I feel bad then it's
just not a fit. now, at first glance that seems to make sense and of course
subjective experience has an important place. if I eat peanuts and my face
swells up like a balloon, I should definitely learn from that experience
but as it usually happens on the internet, somebody picks up an idea and
pushes it way too far. so now we have a whole current based on this notion that
trying something and seeing how we feel gives us all the information we need. why
do I need science and these boring studies and these experts? I could just
try it myself. and this idea is precipitated by popular figures
reporting that they tried XYZ and they felt this and that
whether it's Joe Rogan recently or Oprah or whoever people are looking to to
decide what's for dinner. and of course nutrition is a life and death decision
quite literally and we should make it based on the best available evidence, not
the whims of an entertainer. I see this mindset in the comments all the time. if
I talk about the published health risks of something, somebody will pop up and
say "why are you bashing it? have you tried it? just try it for yourself and
see how you feel." as if that cancels out everything we know. how many examples do
we have of things that feel good and even give us some good results in the short
term but are not healthy in the long run? the obvious example: if I tell you that
every time I try to quit smoking I feel antsy, I can't focus and I put on
weight. how many people report that? common. if I took that subjective
experience and I built a whole theory that tobacco must be good because every
time I try to quit it I feel terrible and it's not a one size
fits all, it works for me, we could all immediately see the flaw in that logic
the point is our subjective experience can only be trusted so far and
glorifying it to the point of ignoring everything else is just as short-sighted
as ignoring our feelings in the first place. and I see that trend as well
people on social media wanting to ram their diet down other people's throats
and if somebody's having problems or symptoms it must be because they're
doing something wrong or they're lying which just alienates people
both extremes are missing a part of the picture, we can't disregard somebody's
subjective feelings and say "well you should be doing great because the data
says this works". that's not helpful. but the other extreme is just as
short-sighted, that if I feel good doing something and if the short-term results
are good, then that automatically means it's healthy long-term no matter what
the statistics show, no matter what the data says. both extremes are problematic
because they both ignore important information. but it's not just lay people
who do this, let's be fair. doctors do it all the time, this
superficial approach. how many times do doctors treat the symptom not the
patient? you walk in, this hurts or I feel this, before you finish the sentence
they're already writing a prescription by reflex. I'm not saying
it's every doctor, let's not be simplistic, and I've been guilty of that
mindset before. it's not that doctors don't want to do better, it's just how
the system is set up. we're taught to write prescriptions and there's a drug
for every symptom. high blood pressure? here's a drug for that. high cholesterol?
here's the drug that shuts down your own body's production of cholesterol, never
mind if I'm shoveling it in this way. drugs for pain, drugs for every symptom
but the root cause gets way less attention. it's a superficial approach
just put up some nice curtains, never mind the house is crumbling down
the nutrition space is full of examples of this superficial approach. does your
blood sugar go up when you eat carbohydrates? just stop eating them. this
is a solution? I mean, in a pinch, if you have nothing else, sure. but this doesn't
address the problem, this goes around it. if my hand hurts, I could stop using it, I
guess, but who's gonna be happy with that solution? what we want is to fix the
problem so that I can go back to using it normally like everybody else. If my
carbohydrate processing machinery is broken, I want to fix it, if that's
possible. I want to be able to eat a piece of fruit or a bowl of lentils or
even some pasta once in a while without having a medical emergency. that's fixing
the issue. not telling me: "okay, just don't eat it for the rest of your life, problem
solved". we see it with gastrointestinal issues
rampant nowadays. people with IBS, people with SIBO, with dysbiosis, issues where
people often have bad reactions with some types of fiber. so now entire
philosophies are popping up online that fiber must be bad for you because some
people have this intolerance. I just went through this with my own mother, very
dramatic symptoms for a long time, for years and years, couldn't tolerate any
beans, no lentils, most fruits, onion, garlic, a
piece of broccoli would take her out for days. we didn't conclude broccoli is poison
and just go eat the limited stuff you can tolerate for the rest of your life.
no, she wanted to eat better than she was able to at the time. the conclusion is,
there was something wrong with her physiology and let's see if we can fix
it. and we worked on it for months and months and I'm really happy to say that
she eventually overcame it and I'll make a whole video about it soon because it's
an amazing story and it's honestly one of the biggest joys of my life to see my
mother come from a situation that was very difficult, very debilitating and
completely flip it around to where she's now happy and healthy and eating a
spectacularly healthy diet. beans, cauliflower, broccoli, fruit. whatever she
wants. no symptoms. which was impossible six months ago. she didn't do it
overnight and it wasn't easy but once we understood the basic process we were
able to start making good progress. and the bottom line is, of course her
symptoms were real, of course we took them seriously. but we didn't accept her
state as irreversible until we had exhausted every possibility. so the key
is to try to understand the system so we can go straight to the root of the issue
not put band-aids on it or just go with simplistic answers. anyway, more on that
very soon, I want to tell the whole story because it was a light bulb moment for
me and I think it could be helpful for a lot of people. so, do we listen to the
studies, the data, the science or do we listen to our own body? of course we use
all the available information at our disposal.
scientific studies can't tell me about my individual idiosyncrasies. If I'm
allergic to strawberries, what do I care the studies say it's the healthiest food
out there? I can't have them. but my immediate feelings and my short-term
results also tell me very little about the long-term effects of something, of
eating this or that. the main causes of disease and death in our society are
things like heart disease, strokes, cancer, Alzheimer's. you don't feel that stuff
building up, you don't feel the plaque growing in your coronaries. by the time
you have a symptom the underlying process has been growing for twenty
years. so the two sources of information, the personal and the scientific, are
complementary. so the smart move is to use all the information available. we
listen to our body but we also look at statistics of what happens to thousands
of people when they do this or that. because at the end of the day we're all
human and we're a lot more similar than we'd like to believe. so let me know your
thoughts, what troubles you're going through, gastrointestinal or otherwise
and how you're navigating those issues. I'll keep making videos and trying to
help people figure out the intricacies of nutrition science to the best of my
ability so stay in touch and I'll see you very soon, on the next video, bye bye
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