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Comment by Ice_cream_suit | Hacker News Reader

More quack science.

See https://respectfulinsolence.com/2016/06/17/the-mend-protocol... for a slightly less breathless account.

Agreed, it is getting increasingly harder for me to understand why intelligent people can read stuff like this and not see it for what it is.

I've seen Alzheimer's first hand and if I get it my treatment will be finding a way to die before my family has to deal with me.

> Agreed, it is getting increasingly harder for me to understand why intelligent people can read stuff like this and not see it for what it is.

It's technobabble. Most people don't have intimate familiarity with medical protocols, but well-read people probably have come across articles recently that talk about, say, the impact of telemeres on aging or the importance of the gut microbiome. Name-drop that, and people will nod their heads and assume that the science all checks out.

If you are familiar with quack science, something should leap out, and that is mention of "leaky gut".

In short, "leaky gut" is the theory that your intestines are leaking waste into your the rest of your body and it is causing pretty much all other problems. While there is a true condition that causes it, the pseudoscience says this is common and somehow treatable through quackery. Usually "treated" by buying medicine from the quack or books on how to treat from the quack.

https://www.badgut.org/information-centre/a-z-digestive-topi...

From the respectfulinsolencecom article:

" '... Interventions targeting specific biological mechanisms are then prioritized and prescribed to optimize key biological mechanisms. Medication doses are specified to an individual’s needs. Individuals are re-tested periodically and the protocol is updated as necessary.'

What the hell does this even mean?"

With that type of attitude it will be hard to accept anything novel regardless of it's merits.

The author is an M.D. and oncological researcher. New developments in medicine are his bread and butter. That blurb sounds impressive and "oh, I'm really being taken care of!" to a layman, but to someone with actual domain expertise it sounds like "I'll create a GUI interface in Visual Basic to track an IP address".

Key questions to consider: What, exactly, is being tested? How? How do the results affect medication dosage? Which medications? How does this differ from existing medical practice where doctors routinely adjust dosages to balance efficacy and unwanted side effects?

Quite the contrary.

The interior quote contains no information. The description provides no way to distinguish the results from a protocol of "we're making this shit up as we go along." For a field that is rife with quackery, any serious scientific study should be going to pains to distinguish it from quackery.

That’s a pretty fair assessment I’d say. Things like improved diet and exercise (and going on Aricept) will almost certainly improve things for a while, but they won’t alter the overall trajectory of the disease. So this all might have some benefit, but you’re better off saving your money for long term care, which is expensive.

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