Cabbage Juice is the New Snake Oil
March 18, 2018 1:15 PM   Subscribe

Jillian Epperly’s recipe for a fermented cabbage slurry that makes “waterfalls” of diarrhea made her the head of what she called a “poop cult.” Thousands embraced her dangerous pseudoscience before a grassroots movement began working to shut her down when Facebook wouldn’t. A fascinating and horrifying account of how dangerous misinformation can entrench itself in the minds of some, who then adamantly resist all debunking or warnings from better-informed, concerned outsiders.
posted by orange swan (102 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
Is this viral marketing for that "Consider Phlebas" movie?
posted by Slackermagee at 1:30 PM on March 18, 2018 [23 favorites]


all diseases — including cancer — are caused by a fungus called candida that lives in the gut....candida attracts parasites....
Only a profound ignorance could nurture this crackpot idea - you'd have to know absolutely nothing about cancer to think that this made any sense at all. Parasites cause uncontrolled cell division how?

Add a tablespoon of pink Himalayan salt to two cups of water and two cups of cabbage or kale......
LOL, pink Himalayan, inevitable
posted by thelonius at 1:32 PM on March 18, 2018 [23 favorites]


How is this legal? This woman and her claims have demonstrably lead to at least one persons death.

How is this not illegal?
posted by Faintdreams at 1:36 PM on March 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


"She says her cabbage concoction will reverse all forms of illness, arrest aging, and even turn gay people straight."
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 1:36 PM on March 18, 2018


Facebook is under scrutiny for its outsized role in spreading political misinformation. But it’s also a platform where pseudoscience, snake oil remedies, and medical falsehoods multiply unchecked. Those have received far less attention, despite carrying the potential for immediate physical harm.

Yuppppp. And this has untold effects on our ability to collectively organize to get better health care, for instance, because people start to believe they don't need it.

First they came for our health care and I didn't speak out, because I cured myself with açaí, honey, and essential oils—you should try it! Then they came for our health care again and I still didn't speak out, because I bought a healing salt lamp and now I feel so much better. And so on.

I know way too many acquaintances who have become antivaxxers and multilevel-marketing pushers of various sorts. I'm so not surprised that this cabbage cult took hold the way it did. P.S. That stuff people find in the strainer during this or any other "cleanse"? Yeah, that's their dead or dying intestinal lining. Every time I hear about someone doing a juice cleanse of any sort I worry about them, but I don't get into it because I don't want to fight with everyone.
posted by limeonaire at 1:38 PM on March 18, 2018 [70 favorites]


Why did I click on the pics? Why didn’t I heed the warnings?
posted by gnuhavenpier at 1:40 PM on March 18, 2018 [6 favorites]


Didn't Cato the Elder constantly advocate cabbage as a panacea?

I mean, when he wasn't going on about the whole "destroy Carthage" thing.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:40 PM on March 18, 2018 [7 favorites]


the whole "destroy Carthage" thing

I think it's "destroy cabbage".
posted by Servo5678 at 1:41 PM on March 18, 2018 [12 favorites]


Guys, I'm beginning to think Facebook might not be a good source of medical information.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:42 PM on March 18, 2018 [110 favorites]


See also, also, and also. Commenters on AskMe aren't immune to this yeast myth or any of the other myths either.
posted by limeonaire at 1:43 PM on March 18, 2018 [17 favorites]


Guys, I'm beginning to think Facebook might not be a good source of medical information.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:42 PM on March 18 [2 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]


Well, duh! Everyone knows that Youtube is where you go for medical and nutritional advice. Am I in KETOSIS yet?
posted by helmutdog at 1:45 PM on March 18, 2018 [18 favorites]


Want a super-easy way to thin out your Facebook friends list? CLICK HERE
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:46 PM on March 18, 2018 [24 favorites]


Didn't Cato the Elder constantly advocate cabbage as a panacea?

No, he was the one who advocated putting cheddar cheese on apple pie
posted by thelonius at 1:47 PM on March 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


Quackery writ large.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:52 PM on March 18, 2018


Brassica delenda est.
posted by tobascodagama at 1:56 PM on March 18, 2018 [44 favorites]


Fucking snake oil peddlers preying on the ignorant and the desperate. That adults are getting suckered into this mess makes me sad, but when they feed it to their children and other dependents it makes me livid.
posted by dazed_one at 1:57 PM on March 18, 2018 [10 favorites]


Oh, man, this...

These “waterfalls” supposedly brought out the parasites, which were visible in the toilet bowl.

Having fairly recently suffered through a rampant campylobacter jejeuni infection and in the course of so doing had to, uh, root through my own horrendous leavings for sample purposes, I can assure you - as a non-doctor and non-scientist - that based on my laypersons' knowledge, I was able to come up with a rational evidence-based explanation for everything that was visible to the naked eye therein.

In order to determine the presence of ova and parasites, there's a sample bottle containing a fixative solution they give you into which you scoop some poop. It then needs to go to a lab - run by science-talking people - for analysis. There are other sample bottles as well, one for culturing your poop to see what's growing in it bacteria-wise.

Sorry if that's too much information? But too much information has never killed anyone.

Quackery has.

There is no such thing as a "cleanse." Anyone who tells you there is...is lying to you.

This is what your kidneys and liver are for.

If someone is inducing severe diarrhea voluntarily...well, they're just signing up for something that millions of people around the world would be very glad to be free from:

- Diarrhoeal disease is the second leading cause of death in children under five years old. It is both preventable and treatable.

- Each year diarrhoea kills around 525 000 children under five.

- A significant proportion of diarrhoeal disease can be prevented through safe drinking-water and adequate sanitation and hygiene.

- Globally, there are nearly 1.7 billion cases of childhood diarrhoeal disease every year.

- Diarrhoea is a leading cause of malnutrition in children under five years old.

posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:02 PM on March 18, 2018 [54 favorites]


Between this stuff and this other tech fad stuff, I have a hard time bringing myself to read any health or diet advice on the internet these days, whether in the popular press or on social media, if it's not from credentialed doctors. Even then, there's no guarantee, but I'm exceedingly skeptical of most word-of-mouth diet claims people make. Probably another third of why I don't like productivity and fitness channels in chat is that I really don't want to hear people's dubious claims about their sad juice cleanses or caffeine pills or whatever other diet or exercise regimen they think is magical (but inevitably return in 6 months and say they injured themselves doing).

Millennials are indeed often snake people, just maybe not in the way we thought.
posted by limeonaire at 2:02 PM on March 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


Jen Gunter is one of the good ones. Here's her blog posts on yeast.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:04 PM on March 18, 2018 [15 favorites]


One of the things that I think people who've never wrestled with eating disorders don't understand is that both starvation and purging can very quickly feel downright euphoric. Nutrition and brain chemistry aren't necessarily linked in a "food can fix all mental health conditions" kind of way, but they are definitely linked in such a way that failure to eat can lead to some side effects that people clearly do not expect and often misinterpret as being a sign that they're doing something healthy or that's making them better. That's part of what make them dangerous. It sounds like Epperly is someone who had some mental health stuff going already--she describes having PMDD to the point where she couldn't hold down jobs--and now she's engaged in what is functionally long-term laxative abuse and encouraging others to do similarly. But while most social media sites have cracked down on pro-ED groups, it's interesting that promoting the exact same thing for completely ridiculous health claims is apparently fine.

I'm hesitant to call her evil; I don't think she's peddling snake oil precisely because she doesn't get rich off of this. I think she has a problem, though, and that it's grossly irresponsible for Facebook to allow her to try to encourage others to similarly dangerous behavior.
posted by Sequence at 2:05 PM on March 18, 2018 [32 favorites]


Didn't Cato the Elder constantly advocate cabbage as a panacea?

I mean, when he wasn't going on about the whole "destroy Carthage" thing.


No, no -- what he really said was "cabbage must be deployed".
posted by jamjam at 2:06 PM on March 18, 2018 [10 favorites]


I muted all the Goop/Infowars-type pseudoscientific health ads I was getting on Instagram, but now I'm getting bio-hacker type stuff.

These are ads for supplements aimed at a kind of upscale, silicon valley crowd. They're not as heavily gendered as the Goop/Infowars stuff, the marketing and design tends to be kind of clean and Gattaca-y.

Usually when I do a little digging I find that there's some science behind what's being advertised (like it turns out that polypodium leucotomos may someday be a useful, ingestible form of sun protection, so "sunscreen pills" are not as bonkers as I thought when I first saw that ad).

But it's always stuff that's in fairly early stages of research for scientific significance and I worry that the lack of FDA regulation around supplements means that these companies are effectively using consumers to find out if these products are safe long-term across large populations.
posted by mrmurbles at 2:07 PM on March 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


I've had "waterfalls" from some artificial sweeteners, stress, and good ole' poisoning. Not a chance I'd do that voluntarily, even if gave me movie star looks and the body of an olympian.
posted by lmfsilva at 2:10 PM on March 18, 2018 [9 favorites]


I'm hesitant to call her evil; I don't think she's peddling snake oil precisely because she doesn't get rich off of this.

Did you see this part of the article?

"For $30 annually, or $5 monthly, readers could become part of Epperly’s “growing virtual community.” She spent the next couple of weeks explaining to the Facebook group which modes of payment she could and couldn’t take (from credit card and bank transfers to checks mailed to a P.O. box in Canton, Ohio) and posting daily reminders that she would be shutting down the 58,000-member page soon.

"Not everyone was happy with the move away from Facebook, but Epperly dismissed them. When group members asked if she would keep her website free, she balked.

"'I’m not going to put up with somebody sniveling about how they can’t afford to pay for my site which is only $30 a year which is Pennies on the dollar and believe me if people want to know this information they will find a way to move Heaven and Earth and those who snivel and talk about how poor they are they just need to do the recipe and drink and drink,' she wrote."


I have no hesitation or qualms about calling her evil.
posted by orange swan at 2:14 PM on March 18, 2018 [58 favorites]


Want a super-easy way to thin out your Facebook friends list? CLICK HERE
posted by Johnny Wallflower

Oh my. Times for a few little chats about cults and woo.
posted by tula at 2:17 PM on March 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


I hear tobacco smoke enemas are the new new thing to clear you out. Don't you know the native Americans did it???!? But only use natural tobacco not GMO that stuff will kill you.
posted by benzenedream at 2:18 PM on March 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


I've had "waterfalls" from some artificial sweeteners

There was a medical case column a few years back in the New York Times where a patient had chronic diarrhea that a series of doctors couldn't figure out - this person was otherwise fine and they couldn't pinpoint a cause, until it came up somehow in conversation that this person chewed a pretty extreme amount of sugar-free gum every day - almost constantly, Violet Beauregarde-style. Sugar alcohols, used as sweeteners in sugar free gum, can cause the shits.

IIRC, they ended up telling the patient to rein in the gum chewing, and the diarrhea went away.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:18 PM on March 18, 2018 [5 favorites]


> No, he was the one who advocated putting cheddar cheese on apple pie

The only thing this cures is misery (no small feat!).

I will continue to enjoy my fermented cabbage in sauerkraut and kimchi form only, thank you very much.
posted by rtha at 2:23 PM on March 18, 2018 [5 favorites]


I hear tobacco smoke enemas are the new new thing to clear you out.


Don't blow smoke up my ass.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 2:23 PM on March 18, 2018 [30 favorites]


The cancer that killed my brother probably started in his pancreas. I feel the family's pain. But with or without this foolishness, his days were numbered. Pancreatic cancer is fierce and fast and fuck cancer.
posted by theora55 at 2:28 PM on March 18, 2018 [5 favorites]


Johnny Wallflower: "Want a super-easy way to thin out your Facebook friends list? CLICK HERE"

I didn't need to see that and will now pretend that I didn't and still don't know that friends of mine are into such woo.
posted by octothorpe at 2:28 PM on March 18, 2018 [8 favorites]


I prefer to get my shits artificially, from Haribo SUGAR FREE Classic Gummi Bears, 1 Lb.
posted by clawsoon at 2:43 PM on March 18, 2018 [21 favorites]


I don't want anything leaving my body in what can be measured in "waterfall" units.

I do love homemade sauerkraut though, and it certainly gives you robust and exciting bowel movements if taken in sufficient quantities.

Sauerkraut juice is also excellent for deglazing pans, and marinading chicken wings.

Blended sauerkraut is something beyond my mortal comprehension. That said, it could make an excellent hot sauce with enough LF chillies added.

Hmm!
posted by turbid dahlia at 2:43 PM on March 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


"I'm going on a cleanse."

"Ethnic or bowel?"
posted by clawsoon at 2:45 PM on March 18, 2018 [73 favorites]


She is making bad choices and giving out deadly advice. She doesn't exist in a vacuum though; I found it very interesting that her motivation seems to have stemmed from personally experiencing a health problem (menstral issues) that the medical establishment has devoted very little research to. It sounds like she tried seeking evidence-based help for years; like many women, the doctors metaphorically patted her on the head and sent her away. It is disengenious to not offer appropriate medical care based on the medical teams' biases and then criticise patients for looking for someone that will take their health seriously and listen empathetically while offering solutions that seem science-based.
posted by saucysault at 2:52 PM on March 18, 2018 [18 favorites]


I enjoy kimchi and fresh sauerkraut and was hoping the article was going to be about > homemade sauerkraut though, and it certainly gives you robust and exciting bowel movements. Thank you, turbid dahlia.

She's against vaccination and recommends feeding what is essentially a hybrid between pickle juice and sauerkraut juice to infants with the addition of coconut oil. That's just stupidly dangerous. I'm not a fan of Big Pharma and I have a lot of criticism of western medicine, but if you're sick, see a doctor, get a 2nd opinion, consider science, by which I mean open and thorough investigation, with replicable results.
posted by theora55 at 3:06 PM on March 18, 2018 [11 favorites]


She says her cabbage concoction will reverse all forms of illness, arrest aging, and even turn gay people straight.

As far as I'm concerned, this is pogoing on the FUCK YES SHE'S EVIL button.
posted by Halloween Jack at 3:11 PM on March 18, 2018 [49 favorites]


I'm smoking a corned beef tomorrow and all of this sauerkraut talk is ruining my dreams of Reuben sandwiches.
posted by elsietheeel at 3:12 PM on March 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


elsietheeel, there's not a damn thing wrong with sauerkraut.

Just visited her FB page, top post is a rant against brushing your teeth. Yep.

Also noted on her FB:

Studied at Landmark Education Corporation- The Forum

Studied at Landmark Education Corporation - The Advanced Course


Make of that what you will.
posted by Halloween Jack at 3:17 PM on March 18, 2018 [13 favorites]


It's fascinating to me how scams focus on providing people with tangible things they can see for themselves rather than depending on others. Want to know about your internal health? Check you bowel movements. Want to know if you are dehydrated? Look at your pee color.

The key to a good scam is to give people a feeling of control and the ability to "see for themselves" rather than trust in a lab technician, a doctor or scientists who do things they don't understand.

Even breath mints work this way. You 'feel for yourself' the fresh breath even though the mints will always make your breath worse in the long run because of chemistry. Same for toothpaste. Minty freshness does nothing. You're putting grit in your mouth to increase the friction of the brush. That is all. The taste does nothing. But it is the taste you notice and judge the toothpaste by.
posted by srboisvert at 3:21 PM on March 18, 2018 [9 favorites]


I take it as self-evident that producing daily “waterfalls” of diarrhea is not going to lead to positive health outcomes. But the article didn’t say much about what the problem with the “protocol” is. Is it food safety issues stemming from the home-brewed cabbage concoction? Is it the volume being consumed? The lack of other nutrients?

When I went home this Christmas, my mother had gone from eating lots of store-bought sauerkraut to making her own with a recipe that sounds like the one described here. She’s been fermenting her own stuff for years and seems to take care with sterilization and eating a varied diet, but on the other hand there are signs of disordered eating, and she’s very receptive to alternative health gurus like this one. It’s difficult to have a rational discussion with her about it because she is well-educated and she believes she is being more scientific than the mainstream medical community (which is probably true in some select areas). She gets hyper defensive when any suggestion to the contrary is made.

I think these gurus that pop up overnight are a symptom of a larger problem. The problem being deep distrust of the mainstream medical community. Who at this point hasn’t lost a loved one to something preventable or due to a misdiagnosis? When was the last time we went a week without hearing about an abusive doctor or overturned health theory or fleeced patient? Not to mention all the Obamacare turmoil of the past decade. Coupled with our subpar education system, people are sitting ducks for theories like this.

We need to start doing a better job of holding the medical community accountable, both mainstream and alternative. Glad to read about the grassroots activism. Interesting to read about the actual authorities passing the buck back and forth.
posted by mantecol at 3:21 PM on March 18, 2018 [10 favorites]


I cured myself with açaí, honey, and essential oils

Essential oils may be useful for the development of breast tissue in men. I must, I must, I must increase my bust...
posted by clawsoon at 3:23 PM on March 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


I love sauerkraut. I just don't want to think about waterfalls of diarrhea at the same time as I'm planning tomorrow's sandwiches.
posted by elsietheeel at 3:25 PM on March 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


elsietheeel: I love sauerkraut. I just don't want to think about waterfalls of diarrhea at the same time as I'm planning tomorrow's sandwiches.

Welp... good luck!
posted by clawsoon at 3:28 PM on March 18, 2018 [5 favorites]


But the article didn’t say much about what the problem with the “protocol” is.

I was curious about a related thing—why does this so reliably produce such voluminous diarrhea? Does puréeing the cabbage enable the fermentation to produce much larger quantities of some by-product than would otherwise take place in making standard sauerkraut or kimchi, or just make the fiber much more able to do its thing? Is it the volume of fermented stuff? Is it unsafe fermentation conditions?
posted by kenko at 3:29 PM on March 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


saucysault: She is making bad choices and giving out deadly advice. She doesn't exist in a vacuum though; I found it very interesting that her motivation seems to have stemmed from personally experiencing a health problem (menstral issues) that the medical establishment has devoted very little research to. It sounds like she tried seeking evidence-based help for years; like many women, the doctors metaphorically patted her on the head and sent her away. It is disengenious to not offer appropriate medical care based on the medical teams' biases and then criticise patients for looking for someone that will take their health seriously and listen empathetically while offering solutions that seem science-based.

THIS. Now I'm not condoning the "shit your guts out" method of cure, and the Landmark Forum connection is sketchy af, but, the medical establishment needs to take a good long look in the mirror. Women are patted on the head and sent away with "it's all in your head" for everything below the neck, fat people are told "lose weight and your problems will go away," some medical students and professionals seriously believe that black people innately feel pain less, etc. etc. ad nauseam. Then there's the issue of many Americans still not able to access quality health care, even post-ACA. I think a lot of the pseudo-scientific stuff has rushed in to fill many vacuums.

I wonder if this sort of thing has any following in countries with better health care systems?

And, p.s.: what do you do to cabbage to make it cause "voluminous diarrhea?" I've eaten many a delicious cabbage dish and while it might induce some farting, it hasn't given me diarrhea - yet. Maybe I'm Doing Cabbage Wrong?
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 3:32 PM on March 18, 2018 [31 favorites]


a related thing

Or possibly the same thing, on reflection.
posted by kenko at 3:34 PM on March 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


And, p.s.: what do you do to cabbage to make it cause "voluminous diarrhea?" I've eaten many a delicious cabbage dish and while it might induce some farting, it hasn't given me diarrhea - yet. Maybe I'm Doing Cabbage Wrong?

You puree it, ferment it, and drink up to a gallon of the result every day. Per the article.

I'm always amazed at people who don't reach a stopping point. Like, when she claims (seen in screenshots in the article) that her cure will reverse vasectomies and tubal ligations, and re-grow amputated limbs. I get that the gut is kind of mysterious, and I've been around a lot of people who believe that candida is the root of all disease, but you'd think people would understand that no, limbs don't re-grow.
posted by Orlop at 3:36 PM on March 18, 2018 [22 favorites]


MetaFilter: The taste does nothing.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:38 PM on March 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


Rosie M. Banks: I wonder if this sort of thing has any following in countries with better health care systems?

Canadian here. My parents were into some similar stuff, even though my Mom had training as a nurse and they got us vaccinated and mostly trusted doctors. But when doctors didn't have answers, they went looking for someone who did.

I seem to recall a Candida phase. Also ear candles, and an electrical frequency thing to cure cancer.

I suspect that my Dad was into reflexology because he got foot rubs out of it.
posted by clawsoon at 3:40 PM on March 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


MetaFilter: you'd think people would understand that no, limbs don't re-grow
posted by limeonaire at 3:46 PM on March 18, 2018 [13 favorites]


“you'd think people would understand that no, limbs don't re-grow”

I wonder if that’s part of the shtick. Make a few egregious claims for people to edit out of their own adopted versions of the theory, and what they’re left with seems a lot more sane in comparison. Kind of like pricing strategies where an expensive tier is added to make people feel like they’re getting a good deal when they go with the next tier down.
posted by mantecol at 3:53 PM on March 18, 2018 [8 favorites]


Who at this point hasn’t lost a loved one to something preventable or due to a misdiagnosis?

wat
posted by lalochezia at 3:56 PM on March 18, 2018 [7 favorites]


*One* of the main reasons people fall for this crap is because the FDA has lost a lot of its credibility. As a consequence whole of the medical establishment is seen with suspicion filled eyes. FDA first needs to cleanly decouple itself from the pharmaceutical giants when it comes to testing and approval.
posted by asra at 4:00 PM on March 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


And she's going on Dr. Phil to promote her shit (no pun intended). Of course she's going on Dr. Phil.
posted by Saxon Kane at 4:16 PM on March 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


"For $30 annually, or $5 monthly, readers could become part of Epperly’s “growing virtual community.” She spent the next couple of weeks explaining to the Facebook group which modes of payment she could and couldn’t take (from credit card and bank transfers to checks mailed to a P.O. box in Canton, Ohio) and posting daily reminders that she would be shutting down the 58,000-member page soon.

I'm 100% sure that the number of paying members she got off of this is not anywhere near 58,000, I guess is the thing. She'd need to have over 3000 people take her up on that annual offer to be clearing more than six figures and that just seems... unlikely to have happened. Maybe we have different definitions of the word "rich" here, but. I do believe she's desperate for money and that she's still doing some pretty gross stuff, mind. I just don't think she's managing this financially in a way that suggests that she's a scammer who knows she's doing wrong and trying to profit off of it so much as that she's unwell and broke, compared to what I've seen of other health scammers who seem more effectively manipulative. She could just be really bad at it, I'll give you that.
posted by Sequence at 4:17 PM on March 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


Candidiasis is a real disease. I've had problems with it actually diagnosed by a doctor. It can really be awful. It hits people with depressed immune systems, like people with cancer or anorexia. Behind alternative medicines are people in serious pain. Pain that modern medicine often ignores or doesn't have any help for.
posted by lumnar at 4:21 PM on March 18, 2018 [6 favorites]


How do we get all the Soylent bros into this?
posted by Artw at 4:33 PM on March 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


Fermented Soylent sounds like a gas, man!
posted by valkane at 4:37 PM on March 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


I remember a decade or so ago there was a cabbage soup diet that made you lose a lot of weight quickly--some women I worked with were on it. I wonder if this is just a more intense version?
posted by emjaybee at 4:41 PM on March 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


I take it as self-evident that producing daily “waterfalls” of diarrhea is not going to lead to positive health outcomes. But the article didn’t say much about what the problem with the “protocol” is. Is it food safety issues stemming from the home-brewed cabbage concoction? Is it the volume being consumed? The lack of other nutrients?

It has a crazy amount of salt in it, for one thing.
posted by atoxyl at 4:41 PM on March 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


Who at this point hasn’t lost a loved one to something preventable or due to a misdiagnosis?

I haven't. I did lose an uncle to cancer, however, when he decided to eschew chemo in favour of acupuncture and herbal teas.

I think these gurus that pop up overnight are a symptom of a larger problem. The problem being deep distrust of the mainstream medical community.

Bullshit con-artists have been a problem since the first time in history someone was presented with a medical problem that couldn't be solved simply. The desperate and the ignorant make for easy pickings. The fact that snake oil salesmen still exist isn't because there isn't enough accountability in the field of medicine (although there we can always improve). If anything, it's because there _is_ accountability in modern medicine and not enough accountability in the 'alternatives'. People see that modern medicine can't always fix everything and when woo-woo crap like this isn't stopped by legislation, susceptible marks will view it as a reasonable option. I work for a doctor who has to deal with "I read this on the internet" bullshit all too often - the problem won't go away with increased regulatory monitoring of actual medical professionals (not that I'm against that - accountability is good), but it will go away if governments do more to crack down on baseless 'alternative' options.

There are ways to prevent Epperly-like craziness; increased public funding and awareness for evidence-based medicine and giving government regulatory departments the muscle to stop fraudsters are two solutions that I'd rate as most effective.
posted by dazed_one at 4:48 PM on March 18, 2018 [33 favorites]


The desperate and the ignorant make for easy pickings. The fact that snake oil salesmen still exist isn't because there isn't enough accountability in the field of medicine (although there we can always improve). If anything, it's because there _is_ accountability in modern medicine and not enough accountability in the 'alternatives'. People see that modern medicine can't always fix everything and when woo-woo crap like this isn't stopped by legislation, susceptible marks will view it as a reasonable option.

My mum has definitely jumped in on woo to help with her Meniere's disease. It's incurable, but she doesn't take no for an answer (in anything) and there are plenty of people who will say 'yes' because they want to be able to say 'yes' to desperate people.

Of course, medical science has demonstrated how important attitude is to good health outcomes - it's one of the things believed to drive the placebo effect - and so the woo probably didn't do anything other than waste her money (she's got plenty) and keep her facing forward and believing that she could do something about her condition, which in and of itself has done plenty.

(As a counterpoint: she was also told that she had some kind of ovarian cyst that turned out to be me as a zygote, so there's also something in her story the people who were quick to blame the medical establishment for not taking women's health seriously. Like, we discovered a new female organ in the last ten years. I'm not sure how that happens without there being widespread bias.)
posted by Merus at 5:01 PM on March 18, 2018 [9 favorites]


She is making bad choices and giving out deadly advice. She doesn't exist in a vacuum though; I found it very interesting that her motivation seems to have stemmed from personally experiencing a health problem (menstral issues) that the medical establishment has devoted very little research to. It sounds like she tried seeking evidence-based help for years; like many women, the doctors metaphorically patted her on the head and sent her away. It is disengenious to not offer appropriate medical care based on the medical teams' biases and then criticise patients for looking for someone that will take their health seriously and listen empathetically while offering solutions that seem science-based.

That's certainly an underlying factor in the popularity of "alternative medicine" but this case goes a ways beyond that I think. While Epperly does have a "doctors didn't help me so I helped myself" backstory, if you look through the screenshots people have collected she's escalated to totally outlandish claims (regrowing organs and "curing" homosexuality) while pushing followers toward increasingly extreme regimens in the face of alarming side effects, telling them that "pain is healing" and acting very prickly when questioned. The only way she comes out as a sympathetic figure at this point is if she's simply delusional (rather than a con artist) - in which case the whole thing looks like a sort of mass eating/self-abnegation disorder.
posted by atoxyl at 5:06 PM on March 18, 2018 [10 favorites]


Who at this point hasn’t lost a loved one to something preventable or due to a misdiagnosis?

I . . . I don't know anyone who's lost someone to a misdiagnosis. There's preventable stuff that affected someone's health condition, but it wasn't due to any doctor's error, just someone who didn't take good care of themselves.
posted by Anonymous at 5:59 PM on March 18, 2018


“I . . . I don't know anyone who's lost someone to a misdiagnosis. There's preventable stuff that affected someone's health condition, but it wasn't due to any doctor's error, just someone who didn't take good care of themselves.”

OK, I don’t know if it’s differences in medical systems or luck or what, but I’ve lost three grandparents so far and all three had serious conditions that went unrecognized for years. In at least two of the cases, they knew something was wrong and sought out medical attention, but doctors downplayed the severity of their conditions until they were past the point of no return. I can totally understand why my mother, feeling that something is wrong with her that doctors aren’t grasping, is trying to take matters into her own hands. I just hope she’s not doing more harm than good.
posted by mantecol at 6:12 PM on March 18, 2018 [15 favorites]


> I've been around a lot of people who believe that candida is the root of all disease, but you'd think people would understand that no, limbs don't re-grow.

To me this reads a bit like those 419 scams (the Nigerian prince/ex-PM ones) with the terrible spelling/grammar and implausible scenarios - you're filtering for people who are suggestible/trusting/credulous/desperate. If you are willing to swallow a whopper like "regrow your limbs like a seastar" what else will you swallow?
posted by threementholsandafuneral at 6:54 PM on March 18, 2018 [9 favorites]


People: the moral of this story is don't go chasing waterfalls...
posted by floweredfish at 7:16 PM on March 18, 2018 [29 favorites]


I lost my dad due to lack of insurance leading to care coming too little/too late, but he had a diagnosis. He just couldn't afford to treat it. And then after he died, my mom had to declare bankruptcy because she couldn't pay the bills for his last heart attack.

I think there is definitely a problem with doctors failing to diagnose/spend enough time with patients, but that's a subset of our larger problem that most people worry they can't afford the treatment they might need. So they don't go to the specialist with the 50.00 copay, which might lead to expensive tests and surgeries that may not even help them and will empty their bank account. But they might start taking an herbal supplement that's only 5 bucks a bottle in hopes that it will take care of that nagging problem, if a friend tells them to.

It's not just willful ignorance, it's hoping against hope that there's some alternative to bankrupting their families in order to stay alive. Quackery thrives when people are desperate.
posted by emjaybee at 7:18 PM on March 18, 2018 [32 favorites]


I was musing to myself as read the Meta blurb and thinking, gee I wonder how highily likey this person is also an anti-vaxxer.. And well bingo, she really fits into that nut bar group very well.
It is scary in an age where infomation is so easily and massively available, how much dangerous and mis-informed information is mixed in with it. At 44 I still remember where researching for information on a school project meant going to the library and taking notes from different books and collecting your info and present findings. Now can just type in any search word and a subsecond later, you have pages of results. Now it appears need to spend time to filter which is crap and which is correct.
posted by Merlin The Happy Pig at 7:37 PM on March 18, 2018 [3 favorites]


asra: "*One* of the main reasons people fall for this crap is because the FDA has lost a lot of its credibility. As a consequence whole of the medical establishment is seen with suspicion filled eyes. FDA first needs to cleanly decouple itself from the pharmaceutical giants when it comes to testing and approval."

Given the recent revelations elsewhere that the vast majority of the work that the federal government does is good and honest and something that we should try to value and protect, forgive me for asking if you have any particular complaints?

In my experience, being close to someone who works with the FDA process intimately (although admittedly, not in pharma), I've never really seen any reasons to doubt their efficacy and honesty. You might find Big Pharma disgusting, but by-and-large the drugs on the market are safe and effective, which is thanks to the FDA.
posted by TypographicalError at 7:45 PM on March 18, 2018 [14 favorites]


It sounds like Epperly is someone who had some mental health stuff going already--she describes having PMDD to the point where she couldn't hold down jobs--a

She's manic af. Watch the videos. That or she's on some interesting drugs but my bet is on mania.
posted by fshgrl at 7:52 PM on March 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


It's not just willful ignorance, it's hoping against hope that there's some alternative to bankrupting their families in order to stay alive.

If only there were something that a civilized nation could do to help everyone get healthcare.... Oh well, probably nothing that anyone could do without offending baby Jesus and the Founding Fathers.

Now be sure to thank the GOP during your bankruptcy proceedings everyone!
posted by aramaic at 7:53 PM on March 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


I wonder if this sort of thing has any following in countries with better health care systems?

Western Europe and Canada have better healthcare, but they and their doctors are not free of unconscious bias against women, fat people and minorities.
posted by mrmurbles at 8:19 PM on March 18, 2018 [9 favorites]


Theora55: Pancreatic cancer is fierce and fast and fuck cancer.

I’ve had experience with that in my extended family and had seen the same outcome. This poster was on MTA public transit in NY before someone had the good sense to yank it from circulation. It was paid for by one of the largest hospital systems in the region and depicted a skeletal man who doesn’t look like he would have lived to see the ad hit the streets, proclaiming how he beat pancreatic cancer. Nothing pegged my rage-o-meter more than seeing that, from a reputable hospital no less. Some days, it took all my strength not to call them collect to shout in my best Sam Kinnison voice “he’s dead, you lying assholes!!! Helmut’s dead!!! You can’t say you beat a disease that just hasn’t killed you yet! Ohhhhhh! Ohhhhhh!”

If anything, I’d get a seat to myself.
posted by dr_dank at 8:58 PM on March 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


If you are willing to swallow a whopper like "regrow your limbs like a seastar" what else will you swallow?

Fermented cabbage slurry by the bucketful, it would seem.
posted by axiom at 9:16 PM on March 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


Of course she's going on Dr. Phil.

Best case, he cures her.
posted by flabdablet at 9:49 PM on March 18, 2018


I lost all my grandparents because something's going to get you eventually. There's really no "if only", we're all going to die, lots of us from things that science cannot stop at this time and maybe never will beat whether it's diagnosed early or late, such as some forms of cancer or extremely rapid deceleration or the eventual inability of cells and DNA and stuff to continue to hold all our shit together (we all get diagnosed with that one the moment we're conceived, and it's still going to get you if none of the others do). There's no One Weird Trick that all the immortal humans know about while the rest of us fall apart.

I think one of the most dangerous diseases in modern society, really, is anxiety combined with a lack of critical thinking skills, but strong enough anxiety will overrule even good sense. When offered a choice between the Unknown - doctors and serious interventions and bills or maybe just the discomfort of having to accept someone else has information you aren't trained to understand - and any sort of self-controlled solution, our brains will happily grasp at it and say "this is obviously fine." We're tremendous babies, really, and it feels better to think that mixing up some kind of concoction at home (even if it's troublesome, unpleasant, or expensive) is better than chemo or surgery or some kind of concoction made in clean laboratory conditions and given to you by some degreed qualified rando who isn't giving you the hard sell or the compelling come-on, just ordering you to do a thing. It definitely makes the situation worse in cultures where there are real difficulties in accessing healthcare on multiple axes, but people still do this in situations where care is high-quality and low-cost. We want to believe, and in the US and other places belief is a shitload more obtainable.

Most of us have done this, even if only on a small scale. Most of us have had the inclination to ignore or "walk off" a health problem, and then have that choice validated by a temporary problem going away or a subsidence of symptoms for a while - a doctor might have gotten you better slightly faster, but the treatment in the end was "stop doing that thing that hurts" or other low-tech solutions, or else it's going to come back - and our faith in our imaginary medical degrees goes up every time it happens. A lot of people recover from stuff and only after the fact realize that it hadn't just been "a mild flu" or "a bad headache" and should have been treated professionally, a lot of people drag themselves to get medical treatment only to be told they should have stayed home in bed. We all suffer from the delusion that it's our intellect and our virtue rather than statistics or immune systems that keeps us alive.

It's a hard problem to solve and it's complicated immensely by capitalized medicine, especially in a pro-predator market, and our culture's rampaging case of both-sides-ism is going to keep this stuff in business until we improve all the axes - the anxiety, the attainability of healthcare, the faith in providers, the critical thinking, the existence of serious consequences for bullshit distributors, and the belief in the Just World Fallacy and that health is correlated to virtue. It's going to be a tough one to fix, and it's not going to happen fast.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:06 PM on March 18, 2018 [22 favorites]


Didn't Cato the Elder constantly advocate cabbage as a panacea?

You may be thinking of Pliny the Elder, the world's leading purveyor of quack medicine since 79AD. (Sawbones Podcast Episode)
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:25 PM on March 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


No way man his beer is the solution to all life's problems!
posted by rtha at 10:28 PM on March 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


Strictly speaking, everybody who dies, dies because of something that was "preventable", depending on how far back in their lives you want to go, and how far into the future you want it to be prevented.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:22 AM on March 19, 2018


> Servo5678:
"the whole "destroy Carthage" thing

I think it's "destroy cabbage"."


Destroy roughage!
posted by chavenet at 4:06 AM on March 19, 2018


Americans have an eating disorder. They have a problem with food. They have turned good food and enjoyable dining into a horror show.
posted by DJZouke at 5:36 AM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


People: the moral of this story is don't go chasing waterfalls...

Please stick to the Claussen's and the Bubbie's you're used to
I know you want the full protocol or no treatment at all
But I think your bowels are moving too fast
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:31 AM on March 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


> "She says her cabbage concoction will reverse all forms of illness, arrest aging, and even turn gay people straight."

Even with the quotes I still assumed this was a parodic exaggeration of her claims, so I guess the good news is that I'm still capable of being shocked by people's greed and ignorance.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:34 AM on March 19, 2018 [8 favorites]


If there is one lesson to be drawn from 'Cure', it is this: For the ailing, there is no substitute for face time with someone who cares about your fate.

Thinking of the mind and the body as being separate entities causes all kinds of problems for humans. The huge gap between this approach and the reality of the situation leaves a lot of room for quackery to take hold. I can't recommend Cure by Jo Marchant enough.

“Taking account of the mind in health is actually a more scientific and evidence-based approach than relying ever more heavily on physical interventions and drugs.” And its neglect by doctors and researchers acts to the detriment of us all.
posted by asok at 6:49 AM on March 19, 2018 [6 favorites]


illness, arrest aging, and even turn gay people straight

The point of this isn't to sell stinky cabbage potion to self-hating queer people, it's to filter out everyone who isn't a sick, aging homophobe credulous enough to believe in this literal rot.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:50 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


"She says her cabbage concoction will reverse all forms of illness, arrest aging, and even turn gay people straight."

You might not believe this little fella, but it'll cure your asthma too.
posted by flabdablet at 7:48 AM on March 19, 2018 [4 favorites]


I lost my dad due to lack of insurance leading to care coming too little/too late, but he had a diagnosis. He just couldn't afford to treat it. And then after he died, my mom had to declare bankruptcy because she couldn't pay the bills for his last heart attack.

I'm reading this sitting in London, and that's... just horrific. I can't comprehend bankruptcy coming on top of bereavement, and am not sure I'd be strong enough to take it.

A friend of ours fell downstairs just before Christmas and broke her back. Paralyzed from the neck down, she is just learning to breathe without a ventilator for a couple of hours at a time. She's been in the ICU for three months, round-the-clock care with a nurse in the room all the time. Her husband just has to be concerned about her and the rest of the family, and not about how the bills are adding up.

Our NHS may have its problems, but Jeez...
posted by 43rdAnd9th at 9:10 AM on March 19, 2018 [7 favorites]


I think these gurus that pop up overnight are a symptom of a larger problem. The problem being deep distrust of the mainstream medical community. Who at this point hasn’t lost a loved one to something preventable or due to a misdiagnosis? When was the last time we went a week without hearing about an abusive doctor or overturned health theory or fleeced patient?

First - overturned health theories are a good thing. Nearly every health professional I know (and I know a lot of them being married to one) will be open and honest that the things we think today are truer than the things we used to think and are not as true as the things we're going to think later. We can only treat based on the research and evidence we have and the future will always have more to go on.

Second - people need to better understand how diagnostics actually works before concluding that someone was "misdiagnosed" or an outcome was preventable because we know after the fact what killed them. I think a lot of people look at diagnosis as though it's a flow chart - you take symptoms that the person tells you or displays, you run some tests, and from that a doctor either diagnoses you correctly to a single point or they make a mistake. The reality, as basically every doctor will tell you, is that every single patient who comes in is a complex, multifactorial puzzle and what you're doing is best guessing how to start. People feel pain differently, exhibit symptoms differently, and there are no simple ways to test for everything.

An example - my dad smoked forever and gave it up. They diagnosed him initially with COPD because that made the most sense - however, it turned out he had heart failure and an underlining colitis that flared up a couple of months later into an exploding colon. This resulted in a months-long hospital stay and a 25% chance of survival surgery. He had zero pain during any of this and the theory after the fact was - his smoking actually inhibited his gut issues and when he gave it up, his body went haywire. They don't have a lot of research on that because, it turns out, nobody's funding smoking tobacco as a potential medicine. So when one thing changed, nobody knew what was happening and they still don't know how his colon could blow up with zero pain to him.

He had a lousy few months where doctors guessed, tested, and guessed again. He nearly died, and after the fact it would be easy to say "they should've taken the colon out earlier." Nobody was fucking up - nobody was misdiagnosing. It was a complex, multifactorial case which pushed the edges of what research knows at this point. All the people I know who work in hospitals say this is the bulk of cases they're dealing with .

There are a lot of problems in the medical field and some systemic racist/sexist issues to be deal with that exist everywhere in society, but positioning the medical community as what's wrong with medicine is to me flawed. If governments supported good medical supports for everyone and you were to drive corporate profiteering out of medicine, you'll solve a lot of stuff and put practitioners in a better position to help you.
posted by notorious medium at 9:38 AM on March 19, 2018 [29 favorites]


What the f is with this idea that the natural, healthiest state of mankind equals pooping liquid?
posted by en forme de poire at 10:59 AM on March 19, 2018 [2 favorites]


Forgive the derail but what female organ was only just discovered in the past 10 years? I don’t think I got the memo and I am dying to know.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:09 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


There are a lot of problems in the medical field and some systemic racist/sexist issues to be deal with
Including misdiagnosis stemming from a failure to actually consider the differing prevalence of certain diseases between different ethnic groups, thus completely dismissing the possibility, refusing to perform any tests, and brushing it off as "allergies".
posted by inconstant at 1:22 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


I also would like the answer to Bella Donna's question, because I'm at a Starbucks right now and don't want to google "new female organs"
posted by Saxon Kane at 1:34 PM on March 19, 2018 [1 favorite]


I'm guessing it's the internal clitoris - BBC link.
posted by aussie_powerlifter at 2:11 PM on March 19, 2018 [3 favorites]


More info on the socio-biological "discovery"* of the clitoral structure in the late 90s-early 2000s.

*By which I mean proof of something a whole bunch of people could have told you existed, but many of them were women so you can't just go trusting information from unreliable sources.
posted by Lyn Never at 2:18 PM on March 19, 2018 [11 favorites]


Wikipedia maintains a strong policy against publishing original research.
posted by flabdablet at 7:42 PM on March 19, 2018


Lyn Never FTW
posted by vignettist at 10:40 AM on March 20, 2018


For those of you wondering why the juice causes diarrhea: it's a saline laxative, like what you get prescribed before surgery, only 4x as concentrated and being recommended at 16x the dosage.

(To be fair, the difference in laxative effect is less than what those numbers imply, because we're much better at absorbing salt than magnesium citrate, but from your kidneys' perspective that's not a feature.)

Here are the numbers so people can double-check my arithmetic:

The recipe includes 1 tablespoon of salt per two cups water. Google says 1 tablespoon of salt is 17g, which would work out to 64g/L. Molecular mass of NaCL is 58g/mol, and it breaks up into two particles on dissolution, so we have 2.2 Osm/L.

For comparison, magnesium citrate laxative has 1.745g magnesium citrate per fluid ounce, which works out to 59g/L. But molecular mass is 214g/mol, and it's two particles, so the osmolarity is only 0.55 Osm/L.
posted by d. z. wang at 5:11 PM on March 21, 2018 [5 favorites]


For another comparison: the salt content of seawater, which is widely understood not to be something you should drink when adrift because doing so will fairly quickly kill you, is around 35g/L.
posted by flabdablet at 8:05 PM on March 21, 2018


That's a suitable denouement for this story.

"SO-CALLED MEDICAL SCIENCE CAN'T EXPLAIN WH..."

"It's a saline laxative. Standard procedure. You're doing it wrong."
posted by clawsoon at 3:45 AM on March 22, 2018 [3 favorites]


To be fair, sometimes it's a saline laxative with a side order of salmonella.
posted by flabdablet at 7:22 AM on March 22, 2018 [2 favorites]


« Older Mt. Elysium   |   These same visions Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments