The placebo effect is NOT well understood, definitely not to the point that you can make that blanket statement.
> For example, what would you bet that most people describing improvement on a glutenfree diet are merely experiencing the benefits of an overall healthier diet that has little to nothing to do with their gluten intake and has everything to do with them not eating half a pizza twice a week.
Oh, I would take that long bet easily, if we would agree on a way to resolve it, though I guess we wouldn't be able to reach such an agreement.
I have my own n=1 story with respect to wheat (not sure if gluten or another component) - two years ago, I decided to drop it, and lost 30 pounds within a month. My diet changed, of course - but not to the extent that would induce a 1-pound/day weight deficit (that's 2000kcal/day if you believe in the provably wrong caloric theory of weight management).
And it happened to me several times in a restaurant that I asked beforehand if something contained wheat, was told "no", ate it, felt "wheat symptoms", asked again, and it turned out that wheat was a non trivial component (seriously, it's in everything. really avoiding it is freaking hard).
People are surprisingly incompetent when it comes to identifying symptoms, I'll give you that. They are also surprisingly incompetent in the trust they assign to the knowledge they came by. test yourself: [1] is dietary cholesterol harmful? [2] does dietary salt cause hypertension? [3] Does artificially lowering cholesterol (e.g. with statins, rather than a diet change) increase your life expetancy? Medicine got all of these wrong for the last 50-100 years, and is only now (very very slowly) making a U-turn. It doesn't get everything wrong, of course - but it sure as hell doesn't get everything right either.
[1] not really. Dietary cholesterol accounts for 5-15% of serum cholesterol, the rest is made by the body. The recommendation to avoid dietary cholesterol is NOT based on evidence (or logic, for that matter)
[2] for over 80% of the population, the answer is "definitely not". Once you already have hypertension, for 80% of the population, the answer is still "not". For the other 20% (which can be characterized) it is "yes". However, the recommendation for low sodium is made to the entire population. NOT BASED ON EVIDENCE or logic.
[3] No. Statins reduce the probability for a heart attach, but actually increase all-cause mortality.
The placebo effect is NOT well understood, definitely not to the point that you can make that blanket statement.
> For example, what would you bet that most people describing improvement on a glutenfree diet are merely experiencing the benefits of an overall healthier diet that has little to nothing to do with their gluten intake and has everything to do with them not eating half a pizza twice a week.
Oh, I would take that long bet easily, if we would agree on a way to resolve it, though I guess we wouldn't be able to reach such an agreement.
I have my own n=1 story with respect to wheat (not sure if gluten or another component) - two years ago, I decided to drop it, and lost 30 pounds within a month. My diet changed, of course - but not to the extent that would induce a 1-pound/day weight deficit (that's 2000kcal/day if you believe in the provably wrong caloric theory of weight management).
And it happened to me several times in a restaurant that I asked beforehand if something contained wheat, was told "no", ate it, felt "wheat symptoms", asked again, and it turned out that wheat was a non trivial component (seriously, it's in everything. really avoiding it is freaking hard).
People are surprisingly incompetent when it comes to identifying symptoms, I'll give you that. They are also surprisingly incompetent in the trust they assign to the knowledge they came by. test yourself: [1] is dietary cholesterol harmful? [2] does dietary salt cause hypertension? [3] Does artificially lowering cholesterol (e.g. with statins, rather than a diet change) increase your life expetancy? Medicine got all of these wrong for the last 50-100 years, and is only now (very very slowly) making a U-turn. It doesn't get everything wrong, of course - but it sure as hell doesn't get everything right either.
[1] not really. Dietary cholesterol accounts for 5-15% of serum cholesterol, the rest is made by the body. The recommendation to avoid dietary cholesterol is NOT based on evidence (or logic, for that matter)
[2] for over 80% of the population, the answer is "definitely not". Once you already have hypertension, for 80% of the population, the answer is still "not". For the other 20% (which can be characterized) it is "yes". However, the recommendation for low sodium is made to the entire population. NOT BASED ON EVIDENCE or logic.
[3] No. Statins reduce the probability for a heart attach, but actually increase all-cause mortality.