Why Smart Women Podcast
Welcome to the Why Smart Women Podcast, hosted by Annie McCubbin. We explore why women sometimes make the wrong choices and offer insightful guidance for better, informed decisions. Through engaging discussions, interviews, and real-life stories, we empower women to harness their intelligence, question their instincts, and navigate life's complexities with confidence. Join us each week to uncover the secrets of smarter decision-making and celebrate the brilliance of women everywhere.
Why Smart Women Podcast
Honey, I Shrunk the Evidence: Why Natural Remedies Often Fail
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Annie McCubbin's voice might be compromised by illness in this episode, but her critical thinking remains razor-sharp as she demolishes popular myths around natural cold remedies and wellness treatments. With characteristic wit and evidence-based analysis, she unpacks why so many of us fall prey to unproven solutions when we're feeling under the weather.
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Vitamin Recommendations Banter
Speaker 1It will tell you C, D, E, B6. Multiple choice no, it's a list.
Speaker 2Oh, those are the vitamins, oh my God. Okay, no, no, I'm just trying to follow you through your story. How?
Speaker 1complicated, was that? Well, you should take Vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin. E vitamin B6 and zinc. You got it.
Speaker 2Yep.
Speaker 1Right, you are listening to the why Smart Women podcast, the podcast that helps smart women work out why we repeatedly make the wrong decisions and how to make better ones. From relationships, career choices, finances, to faux fur jackets and kale smoothies. Every moment of every day, we're making decisions. Let's make them good ones. I'm your host, annie McCubbin, and, as a woman of a certain age, I've made my own share of really bad decisions. Not my husband, I don't mean him, though I did go through some shockers to find him, and I wish this podcast had been around to save me from myself. This podcast will give you insights into the working of your own brain, which will blow your mind. I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land in which I'm recording and you are listening on this day. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. Well, hello, smart women and welcome back to the why Smart Women podcast. If you are a regular listener to the podcast podcast, you will notice that my voice is still below par um. Normally it resonates beautifully.
Speaker 1I I have a well-rounded and marvelously theatrical voice, and I've lost, like a clarinet, like a, like a beautiful woodwind instrument I've lost half of it due to being sick, and I have been sick now for hang on, let me calculate it seven, eight, like about 10 days, which is really irritating. But I'm trying to keep it in perspective because there are people, as we know, way worse off than me with my annoying cold and attendant laryngitis. But hello, david.
Speaker 2Hello there. I mean I'm very sad that you're still ill and I really think that if you'd really committed to the honey and lemon drinks, to the ginger tea, If only To the saltwater gargles and the bone broth that I was suggesting, then maybe you'd be back to firing on all cylinders. But, that's not the case.
Introduction to Wellness Hype
Speaker 1Yes, and it is just to talk about the process of being sick, and that is. Many people, in a very kind and good-natured and helpful manner, have said to me what are you taking for it? Are you dosing up on, for instance, vitamin C? And what I have to say whenever I'm confronted with that question is no, I am not, for the following reasons. I am not for the following reasons Supplements, vitamins, special teas, etc. Are all part of the wellness hype that tells us that if you want to get better from a cold or an illness like a cold, then what you need to do is boost your immune system and take some natural herbal remedies. And I guess we can talk about why I won't go near them.
Speaker 2Yeah yeah, I mean social media in particular is like a Petri dish for influencers who are promoting wellness claims that get amplified. You know the facts are twisted, you know the specific nuances that get lost, and I know that people want to know what they're dealing with. I think today, what we really want to do is just expose the gap between the reality and the hype for some of the most popular remedies, so that you, like me, like Annie, can make decisions based on facts, not on fads.
Speaker 1Well, also, I think and we're about to go through all the biases that affect our thinking when we do get sick and we start to make decisions on how we're going to get well quicker and the one that comes to my mind immediately, in in a very emphatic manner, is the appeal to nature bias. And this this bias purports that if something is natural, it has to be better for me, and there's a strong distrust of chemicals. If you're involved in the appeal to nature bias, then you have a very strong sensation that you don't want any of those nasty chemicals in your body. Well, let's quickly alert the press, because every single thing is made up of chemicals and the notion that because something is natural or organic, it's better for you is 100% wrong.
Speaker 2Now, annie, that sounds very absolute right.
Speaker 1That's me right.
Speaker 2Yeah, let's take something that everybody knows works, and that's the honey and lemon drink. You know, I saw something in my post the other day and it was suggesting that we take the honey and lemon drink really seriously, because it can actually flush the toxins from your system, that it melts fat, that it boosts cognitive performance, Boosts it. Does it? Yeah, it does. Well, that's what it said. That raw honey is a superfood? Oh for sure, and as such, it'll cure colds instantly.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Now you'd only have those claims being made if there was some evidence of efficacy. And definitely, you know, anecdotally, if I take a honey and lemon drink, if I've got a sore throat, then honey will soothe the cough and the sore throat and, yes, you will get vitamin C from the lemon. But what's your problem with that?
Speaker 1Okay, so number one there is no such thing as something that flushes toxins out of your system.
Speaker 2But isn't that the way that the natural body works?
The Appeal to Nature Bias
Speaker 1No, the natural body works because that's what your kidneys and your liver do they flush toxins. It's complete rubbish. And you said something else really interesting then and you used the word anecdotally. So, anecdotally, these things work. Now we know that anecdotes because our brains are configured, because we understand the complexity of the world through stories. We are way more attuned and receptive to anecdotes than we are to data.
Speaker 2My grandmother, you know, treated all the colds and flus that arise in her family with hot lemon and honey.
Speaker 1Your grandmother was quite a difficult person, wasn't she?
Speaker 2Yeah, but she cured everybody, didn't she? Did she? Well, there's the anecdote. There's the anecdote.
Speaker 1There's the anecdote, there's the anecdote. So an anecdote is not data, and if you want to actually find out about the true efficacy of things, then you need to go to large-scale data. So let's, for instance, look at the notion of vitamin C, which is very, very much touted as something that will cure.
Speaker 2Extra vitamin C, it'll fix you 500 milligrams of vitamin C. Smash it with that and Linus Pauling will feel vindicated.
Speaker 1Would you like to extrapolate on Linus Pauling?
Speaker 2Well, Linus Pauling was the American scientist who noticed.
Speaker 1Nobel Prize winner.
Speaker 2Nobel Prize winner.
Speaker 1For something else.
Speaker 2He noticed that there was well in his data that people were improving when they had doses of vitamin C. And that particular anecdote, that story, that finding raced through the scientific literature and then suddenly vitamin C was the cure-all for the common cold.
Speaker 1And everything else.
Speaker 2And everything else. Linus Pauling was an eminent American chemist. He actually won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1954.
Speaker 1And the Peace Prize in 62. He won the Peace Prize in 62. Then he lost the plot badly.
Speaker 2He formed a view, I guess based on Spurious evidence Well, the experiments that he did, and probably a great desire to come up with a cure-all for the common cold. He had great faith in vitamin C and a lot of people had great faith in Linus Pauling. So there's your argument for more authority.
Speaker 1Vitamin C was Explain the argument for more authority. Vitamin C was Explain. The argument for more authority, please the argument for authority.
Speaker 2Well, if this person is an authority, then what they are saying must be true. Like a doctor or a naturopath or A doctor, a naturopath, a Nobel Prize winner, you know, lionel Pauling says that vitamin C is what we need when we have a cold. Therefore, it must be true, and so, yes, vitamin C was very much crowned as the go-to if you had a cold or if you had any kind of illness.
Speaker 1He also, I think, said that vitamin C could intervene in heart disease.
Speaker 2I've heard people claim that you know, mega doses of vitamin C will cure cancer.
Speaker 1Yeah, I've heard that too. Here's the unpacking of the data around vitamin C, because it's important, because about three or four people said to me have vitamin C. Vitamin C will not prevent you getting a cold. It will not prevent it so you can take it for months on end, years on end. It will not prevent you from getting a cold for months on end, years on end. It will not prevent you from getting a cold. The only thing it will do is in, for instance, marathon runners that are running through very, very, very cold temperatures, or perhaps soldiers who are training for, you know, like up in the mountains or something.
Speaker 2Navy SEALs in the cold water, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1In sub-zero temperatures. They say that it can reduce the chances of those people in those environments from developing a cold by about 30% to 40%. Okay, the rest of the population, it doesn't.
Speaker 2Now, if you're an ordinary person and you pick up a cold on the bus.
Popular Cold Remedies Debunked
Speaker 1If you're an ordinary person like me who's got this and then it's developed into all sorts of annoying things. If you take vitamin C once you have the cold, so not prior. Once you have the cold, it will reduce certain symptoms by 10%. So, for instance, your cold, which may have lasted 10 days, will simply go down to nine days, but it won't reduce any sort of mild symptoms. So it won't reduce a sore throat, it won't reduce a runny nose. The only thing it may help with is symptoms like aches and pains. So it just it's the data on it does not support taking a supplement. If you want to reduce your chances, then you know. Eat properly, eat lots of fruit and vegetables. Now, the other thing is this notion that we want to take things that if you read that list there, david, if you don't mind, if David could read this list that starts with honey and lemon drinks. Can you just read that list, do you mind?
Speaker 2Yeah, so I mean honey and lemon drinks are only one of the very popular remedies that gets touted on.
Speaker 1We've done that one, haven't we? The flushes toxin, yep.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, so you know, there's ginger tea.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2You cure your cold, it'll supercharge your immune system, you know the ginger in itself will prevent all infections. Steam therapy, Steam therapy yeah, that's right. So if you get your head over a bowl of steam, then the steam will kill the viruses in the throat. It'll flush out the infection.
Speaker 1I think they even suggested it was going to prevent COVID-19, didn't they?
Speaker 2They did, they did suggest that, and does it do any of that?
Speaker 1kill viruses 19, didn't they?
Speaker 2They did suggest that, and does it do any of that? Kill viruses? Well, I mean, the thing that it will do is it will relieve nasal congestion because what the heat does is it causes the nasal passages to enlarge, and so the pipes aren't so blocked so you can breathe better, but there's actually no evidence that it kills a virus or prevents an illness.
Speaker 1And you can burn yourself as well.
Speaker 2Exactly if the steam's too hot and what you don't then want is burnt tissue.
Speaker 1In your nose, because that's more likely to become infected yeah.
Speaker 2If you want to deal with something that's a little bit lower tech, then you can do the saltwater gargle.
Speaker 1Oh, my mother, she was just an absolute advocate for a saltwater gargle and she lived to nearly 98.
Speaker 2Yeah, and look I actually put great trust in the saltwater gargle because I noticed that it did, you know, reduce the sore throat and like swimming in the ocean.
Speaker 1You've got a thing about that. You're always telling all of us to go and swim in the ocean.
Speaker 2Go swim in the ocean, because the salt water will actually reduce the bacteria that is in your mouth and in your throat and in your nasal passages. So you know, I do believe that that works.
Speaker 1But it has no impact on the duration of the illness or the severity, though. Well, no, that's the limitation. You've got to look at the data. Yeah, no, that's the limitation You've got to look at the data.
Speaker 2Yeah, okay, otherwise it's an anecdote. Okay, all right, and it is an anecdote.
Speaker 1But will it eliminate viruses and prevent colds and flu.
Speaker 2It won't eliminate it. It won't eliminate it.
Speaker 1See, I know I can feel, as you're reading those, that you've got a strong predilection for defending them.
Speaker 2Annie, I'm only human. Okay for defending them. Annie, I'm only human, okay, and being human, I will look at the experiences of my life and I will make decisions based on what I believe worked in the past. And do you?
Speaker 1know what? No, you're quiet.
Speaker 2You know, there's actually a term that describes that. What is it? That's the post hoc, ergo, propter hoc fallacy. Oh, please, please, explain that. Well, it's like when you've done something, yeah, like what? Like had a cup of tea before you go to bed.
Speaker 1Yeah, I like that, I like to do that have a cup of tea.
Speaker 2I drank tea last night. I woke up feeling much better, so clearly the tea healed me.
Speaker 1So it's correlation versus causation.
Speaker 2Well, you know, if you're being clinically sceptical about it, then that's what you'd say Well, you just called it post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy.
Speaker 1So I think my way was easier Okay.
Speaker 2Well, look, forgive me for dipping in and out of having some witness on my thought process. Look, I do know that for years I swore by cold showers, cold swimming in the wintertime and I never, ever got sick. Anecdote you know one person in this particular test and it seemed to work for me. So I know that I developed quite a belief, a conviction that you know cold water, ginger tea, hot lemon and honey, that those things would work.
Speaker 1Do you still cold water swim in the winter?
Speaker 2I do, I do and I must confess in the back of my mind. I think you know this is going to be keeping me healthy. It certainly makes me feel good.
Speaker 1I thought that because you know prior to me getting sick. I was cold water swimming Heroically. You know going to the gym eating properly cold water swimming. You know going to the gym eating properly cold water swimming. You know my body is my temple. I work very hard and you were so disappointed.
Speaker 2when you succumbed, I was deeply disappointed. Yeah, I know, we all felt it.
Speaker 1When this happened, when I got sick, because I tried really hard, anyway. So, hydration, so what is that? Just drinking a lot of water?
Speaker 2Oh, this is another one. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I saw an advert for a water bottle or a water container the other day that has got a little sensor in it that'll connect with your smartphone and it'll remind you when you need to have a drink and it'll monitor how much you're drinking.
Speaker 1Jesus God almighty.
Speaker 2So you can start to collect your own data, I guess. But look, there is a fairly well-advocated perspective that if you drink a lot of water, if you drink a lot of honey and lemon, or you drink a lot of ginger tea, then that is going to shorten the illness.
Speaker 1Okay, so evidence of efficacy. Here we go again. Essential for recovery, keeps mucus thin, supports immune function. I'm about to talk about immune function in a minute, because the limitation of it actually is it doesn't cure or shorten illness. I mean, just drink enough water. Do you really need a nap? I've got a bottle next to me. I try and get through it in the course of a day. I mean, how much outsourcing of our brains do we actually need?
Speaker 2You can't deny the healing effect of chicken soup, though surely with the bone broth. Go on, really, I mean chicken soup.
Speaker 1It cures cold.
Speaker 2Listen. Bone broth. Go on, do go on. Restores health instantly.
Speaker 1Oh look, it supercharges immunity. Yeah, chicken soup and the thing is there's no direct antiviral effect. It's comfort food more than a cure, and I come back to the fact that you know having hot chicken soup's a really good idea. You know I come from a Jewish background and obviously you're eating vegetables in it. Vegetables are really really really good for you because you get the vitamins and minerals that you need without having to buy an unregulated vitamin.
Speaker 2So chicken soup is good. You're happy with chicken soup.
Speaker 1Yes, I am happy with chicken soup, but it's not a cure. It's just a nice thing to have when you're eating vegetables.
Speaker 2Okay, what if you upped your zinc? See, my sister, who trained as an opera singer, knew this that when she took zinc and vitamin C together at the beginning of a cold, then the cold wouldn't last for so long.
Speaker 1So, smarty pants, you know what about that? For so long. So, smarty pants, you know what about that? Right, okay? So, yeah, thank you for calling me smarty pants. All right, now, this is. What we know is that excess zinc can cause side effects, and vitamin C is better if it is mostly in those deficients. So I come back to my point that none of this is going to make the slightest bit of difference to you.
Speaker 2Well, hang on. No, I don't think that's right. I think people have found that zinc may shorten the duration of the cold if you take it early.
Speaker 1Where are you finding that from?
Speaker 2Where's that bit of data from? From my sister?
Speaker 1That is an anecdote of one.
Speaker 2My own experience.
Speaker 1Anecdote of two.
Speaker 2Double the anecdote and it doubled.
Speaker 1It doubled the anecdote. Uh and, and you see, this is how these um, these myths get into the zeitgeist. Once we hear something, we remember what it is that we heard. We do not remember the refutation. So once someone comes out, like with the linus pauling um vitamin c business, it has been debunked time and time and time and time again.
Speaker 2It makes absolutely no difference I was in the pharmacy the other day and I saw a you know several lines of echinacea and elderberry. I mean there's got to be, there's got to be something good there. I remember when I first heard about echinacea as a cold preventer.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2You know, some people even thought that echinacea would cure COVID-19.
Speaker 1And look yet again, it's a super immune booster.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1It's got to be good, right. Inconsistent results, yeah, and I'll tell you half of the problem before we go on. We've probably read enough of those now Is that? Here's the issue. Pharmaceuticals, which, according to the cookers, the sort of anti-vax natural community pharmaceuticals, are the work of the devil. In fact, pharmaceuticals are heavily, heavily regulated. Now big vitamin which is purportedly, you know, going to cure everything if we could just get enough of those vitamins and supplements into us. Now, big, big vitamin is unregulated and we have just had a classic example of this. If you Google what should you take to prevent, or when you've got a cold to heal quicker, it will tell you C, d, e, b6.
Speaker 2Multiple choice.
Speaker 1No, it's a list.
Speaker 2Oh, those are the vitamins.
Speaker 1Oh, my God.
Speaker 2Okay, no, no, I'm just trying to follow you through your story. How?
Speaker 1complicated, was that? Well, you just Vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, vitamin B6 and zinc. You got it.
Supplement Industry Problems
Speaker 2Yep Right now. My sister would be proud. That's what she said that's right.
Speaker 1We're just pausing for a minute to hear a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 2The why Smart Women podcast is brought to you by Koo, a boutique training, coaching and media production company. A Koo spelt C-O-U-P, is a decisive act of leadership, and decisive leadership requires critical thinking. So well done you for investing time to think about your thinking, If your leadership or relationships would benefit from some grounded and creative support. If you want team training or a conference presentation, reach out for a confidential one-on-one conversation using the link in the description or go to cooco.
Speaker 1Now here's the thing there has been a major few roar recently here in Australia because vitamin B6 gives you in a toxic dose, which is pretty easy to get, and I'll tell you why it's easy to take a toxic dose which is pretty easy to get. And I'll tell you why it's easy to take a toxic dose because vitamins and supplements are unregulated, so the amount in each capsule that you take can vary wildly. Okay, so you don't know what you're taking. Now, if you develop B6 toxicity, vitamin B6 toxicity- From having too much vitamin B.
Speaker 1Yeah, which is difficult to manage because you don't know what you're taking. Right. Yeah, it can give you peripheral sensory neuropathy, which is a very, very awful thing. It causes tingling, numbness and pain. So people go oh I know I've got a cold, I'll shovel some you know C and B6 into myself. The danger of taking unregulated amounts of vitamin B6 is this that you can get this peripheral neuropathy. You can get dizziness and nausea with it and also you can get you know if it gets really bad you can get a taxi, which is you sort of lose muscle coordination and balance.
Speaker 1It's not good oh, we're taxiing you can say hey, taxi yeah, yeah and and that, which is strange, because really we should get an uber. No, you can get a taxi. So the thing is that that's vitamin b6, so that's been presented and they've suddenly worked out that probably we shouldn't just be shoveling. Is that Barocca?
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Barocca gives you back your BBB bounce until you lose your BBBB balance.
Speaker 2Well, that's why I mean I know that I take a Barocca.
Speaker 1Well, maybe you, shouldn't?
Speaker 2I mean, what do we do about that anecdotal evidence where you take a Barocca and you actually do feel a bit more bouncy for the rest of the day? I don't know.
Speaker 1You've got to look at large-scale stuff we cannot trust. This is the problem. Yeah, I mean, then you're in the intuitive thinking issue, right? Which is it? Just? You know, it's red, it's fizzy, it's in a glass. I put it in my mouth. It's a bit cold. It just feels right in my body and that's how I know it's working right.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's working, and so it adds to the sort of the internal database of evidence that we build up over time. Um, that this is the thing that I need to take. I mean, there's a bit of a problem when, um when you fall victim to the idea that more is always better. Yeah, you know, it's like one barocca in the afternoon might give you back your bb bounce, but if you want to get a lot of bb bounce and you take three barocca, then you get the bbb balance problem then you get the, the, the, what did you call it?
Speaker 2the, the peripheral neuropathy yeah, peripheral sensory peripheral neuropathy, and so that sounds like something's going wrong with your brain and your senses yeah so you what?
Speaker 1you lose your balance and lose your balance, get dizziness and and get all this sort of pain and tingling. And the problem is with any of these supplement vitamin sort of toxicity, overdose, problems is that because we are very enmeshed in the appeal to nature bias and we think it's just a vitamin like, come on, as if that's going to hurt me. When people present at the doctor and go there's something wrong with me, they often, um, they often don't disclose to the doctor that they're taking vitamins, because why would you bother? Why would you bother? It's fine, it's taking a bit of c and zinc and b6 how's that?
Speaker 1going to be causing this. So then the doctors have to do all this digging around until some smarty pants goes, hang on and and then you're taking B6 and then they start getting, I guess, across the population. This is what happened. They started seeing this repeated issue with B6 and these sort of functionality issues. But it's very, very difficult and it's hard for people. You know it's got the sunk cost fallacy right.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1You know how much have you spent on Barocca and turmeric?
Speaker 2Yes, I mean we could probably go through a list of cognitive errors and logical fallacies that come into play when people are thinking about whether they should take probiotics or invest in some more essential oils and those sorts of things. So what? What's? What's our list? We've got confirmation bias, you know. Um, I knew this would work. You know, I found lots of articles on the internet that that said it was going to work me up.
Speaker 1Oh, the overconfidence effect, which is really interesting yeah um, and this is comes from look people doing their sort of online searching yes and then you, you get lots and lots of people coming back going. Oh my God, I took that. I took zinc and echinacea and now I feel amazing. And so then you know more from the doctors.
Speaker 2Yes indeed. Right, yes indeed. Okay. So you've talked about the naturalness bias. I don't like chemicals. If it's natural, then it must be good for me.
Speaker 1And what about placebo? Well, the thing about that could be the thing with the BBB bounce it could be, but I don't think so.
Speaker 2Okay, but I could be wrong, okay. I mean, we know that the placebo effect is a thing, yeah, for sure. You know that people will respond in very positive ways when they just think that they are having something that is going to cure them. But the kicker with the placebo effect is that it'll only happen if the body has the capacity to produce those chemicals.
Speaker 1And hormones and.
Speaker 2T-cells that are required itself. So placebo doesn't. It's like you know. The placebo effect won't cure somebody of a disease that requires amino acids and chemicals and compounds that are not naturally produced by the body. Indeed, sorry, indeed, indeed, yeah. So sometimes it'll work and sometimes it won't. Trouble is that the placebo effect. If a whole bunch of people have the placebo effect, then that balloons into the bandwagon effect.
Speaker 1Explain what you mean by that.
Cognitive Biases in Health Decisions
Speaker 2Well, the bandwagon people jump on the bandwagon. You know everybody in my WhatsApp group, you know we're taking it and it worked for them, so it must actually work. Yeah, you know. You see all of this evidence on social media that this is the cure for that, you know. And again, it's just convincing because other people seem to be doing it.
Speaker 1You know, you've got social proof. You know, if Janelle from the gym tells me that she, you know, she's been taking probiotics and her gut because gut, you know, gut's the new black right Everyone can't stop talking about their gut. She took probiotics. We are very, very prone to listening to anecdotes and also we've got a tribal brain. So, you know, if my tribe thinks it's a good idea, I'm going to think it's a good idea. And did we discuss sunk cost? You spent all that money on it.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's right. You know, if you spent a whole lot of money on a medicine cabinet full of supplements, then you're going to want to sort of justify that you didn't waste all of that money. Yeah, there are two other sort of mistakes that people make that are worth mentioning.
Speaker 1What are they, David? One of them is the visceral bias. What's?
Speaker 2that Okay. So if you have a consult with the doctor and the doctor says these are the bad things that could happen and it terrifies you Like?
Speaker 1what.
Speaker 2Oh well, you know, if they suggest that. You know the reason that you are feeling this way is because you may have some Terrible disease. Hereditary condition.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, you've got to go.
Speaker 2Anditary condition or a chronic condition, if somebody comes along and says actually look, this echinacea will cure you. The experience of having hope is so much more attractive than the experience of being worried by a disease that you don't feel you've got any agency over whatsoever.
Speaker 1And that's all really good until you die. The thing they could have fixed.
Speaker 2Well, the thing is that some people will actually value the experience of being hopeful more than they will value the experience of being scientifically informed.
Speaker 1Interestingly enough, I relate to that because I suffer from health anxiety. Yes, and so my brain goes to the worst possible scenario if there's something wrong with me. Not something like this, because I know this will pass. Yes, but generally speaking, I really emotionally understand that idea that I just want to be told a good story.
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 1I'd much rather be told that it's going to be okay because someone can give me something, rather than have to go and have a test.
Speaker 2Actually what you which provokes anxiety. What you like is, it's going to be okay, because I'm doing something about this. Yeah, that's right and I think that that's a major element in your magnificent discipline of getting to the gym every day, because I think it's protective. It sort of is protective yeah yeah, I mean people say to you oh gee, you know, you've got such discipline and determination.
Speaker 1You don't, I don't, I'm just in a habit. Discipline and determination is useless.
Speaker 2You're in a habit and it gives you a sense of agency.
Speaker 1It does, it gives me a sense of absolutely gives me a sense of control and I'll tell you how I overcame that predilection that I had to be highly avoidant around having testing for anything.
Speaker 1You know, I left that huge goiter in my throat for 20 years because I was too scared to go and have something done about it. It was the most ridiculous decision, repeated decision that I made. Anyway, the thing that made a difference for me was doing that ACT, training, acceptance, commitment, therapy because then what I did is I got an understanding of how avoidant my brain is.
Speaker 2Right.
Speaker 1And then what I do now is when I have a highly avoidant thought like I don't want to go and have that test, I just allow that thought to just be there and then I make the phone call. So I've sort of got a different relationship, but I was highly avoidant.
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 1Highly highly. I sort of get that visceral bias. I understand it. What I don't get is ontological mistakes.
Speaker 2Would I understand it. What I don't get is ontological mistakes. Would you like me to explain that? Oh no, it's just.
Speaker 1This crystal rebalances my energy field and heals me at the spiritual level. That stuff.
Speaker 2Yeah, an ontological mistake. I mean ontology. That refers to the explanation of why life is what it is. You know the mind-body connection and that's why people put great stead in you know shiny little crystals.
Speaker 1And Mindvalley, and Mindvalley, because it's like we're all energy. Yeah, that's right, we are energy and I am an energy healer. We are all energy healers. I hate that guy so much.
Speaker 2Yes, yes. So that's a really nice kind of explanation about the nature of reality and the way that you can have agency in this particular reality is surround yourself with the objects that resonate at the right frequency.
Speaker 1I just feel better, I get that.
Speaker 2And that everything is therefore going to work.
Speaker 1It's just that. The problem is that the narrative that you can heal yourself by adhering to what nature you know nature's pantry can provide that you can heal yourself by surrounding yourself with things that balance your energy. Unfortunately, if you do that, at some point reality is going to come and bite you and then you end up in the hospital and it's just, it's all very difficult yeah, I was just gonna sorry, I was just or, or you may just, spend a whole lot of money on products that actually aren't working for you the other thing is just how often I see the words immune boosting.
Speaker 1It's just everywhere, right Immune boosting, immune supporting. Now the problem is we don't want to boost our immune system. I think people have this idea that this immune system is just this little thing that sits inside you and you can just give it a bit of a step up, you can give it a bit of a hand up.
Speaker 2Give it some vitamin B Give it some vitamin B. Give it a bit of C and it'll do its job even better.
Speaker 1Yeah, and it's actually. It's seriously not true. We do not want to boost the immune system.
The Immune System Misconception
Speaker 2Yeah, because an overactive immune system ends up with things like inflammatory disorders, lupus, arthritis.
Speaker 1Rheumatoid arthritis.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1The immune system is very, very finely calibrated, and if it's boosted, for whatever reason, then what happens? It just reacts and attacks itself.
Speaker 2I mean. The good thing is it's actually more difficult than you'd think to boost an immune system.
Speaker 1Interestingly, if you do want to protect yourself against diseases, guess what you can do.
Speaker 2Move.
Speaker 1Get vaccinated. That's the big protector.
Speaker 2Oh, hang on a minute.
Speaker 1Yeah, really, oh yeah.
Speaker 2But that's not natural.
Speaker 1Yes, it's not natural. It's come out of, you know, science labs, where people with white coats and things are looking into microscopes instead of wandering through the forest picking mushrooms and then putting it in a Beef Wellington. I had to mention that.
Speaker 2The Beef Wellington. Actually, I mean, you know, that idea that vaccinations are not natural is actually fundamentally incorrect. Go on explain why. Well, the thing is that we only learned about vaccinations because people were becoming vaccinated in, you know, non-clinical situations. So, pox.
Speaker 1Yeah, was that the thing where he brought the pox into the?
Speaker 2Smallpox, that's right. So you know this was Fleming. You know the guy who was credited with the invention of the first, you know, chemical treatments to keep people healthy antibiotics. And what he noticed was that the milkmaids weren't getting smallpox. They weren't getting smallpox because they were getting cowpox. They were actually picking up a disease from the cows that they were milking that made them sick but that gave them the immunity against the smallpox. Now the thing about smallpox is that when you had it it would disfigure you. You'd get eruptions and breakouts all over your face. So it was obvious they you had it. It would disfigure you.
Speaker 1You'd get eruptions and breakouts all over your face. So it was obvious they'd had it, so it's obvious.
Speaker 2No, no, no.
Speaker 1No sorry.
Speaker 2It's obvious when you get smallpox Right, you get these eruptions all over your face. The milkmaids who had the cowpox didn't get the smallpox, so they were saved the disfiguration, and so this is where the trope of the pretty milkmaid came from.
Speaker 1Fair dinkum. I did not know that.
Speaker 2Yeah, the milkmaids didn't get the smallpox, so they remained pretty, whereas everybody else in the village got the smallpox and they became pockmarked.
Speaker 1Yeah, ah, interesting.
Speaker 2So vaccinations just happen. Yeah, and now we have them and we can target them, we can make them stronger, we can make them very, very, very specific, and we can create the environment in which it is administered. And so you know, this is the great thing that human beings have done for other human beings, you know unlocking those codes and having treatments that are just much more reliable and less dangerous than the ones that we leave to just nature.
Speaker 1But here we are in the situation where the electric internet has allowed myths to be disseminated across the world, and now we're in a situation where wonderful science is doubted and spurious, untested, flawed cures are touted as the answer. So this is why I podcast to try and debunk, and thank you, david, for joining me. My voice is going now I have to rest it.
Speaker 2So yes, you know, dare I say podcasting physician, heal thyself.
Speaker 1Yeah, thank you for that. I'm now going to go and have a rest. Thank you so much for tuning in. Wherever you are in the world, stay strong. If you become ill, please go to the doctor. I got better because I ate properly. Um, I, I had enough rest. Just enough rest according to david. I'm not wanting much one for resting and I ate properly. I had a bit of rest your mania around not resting.
Speaker 2I know I'm a man. That's probably another, another episode.
Final Thoughts on Medicine vs Myths
Speaker 1Yeah, I am a maniac and I ended up I took antibiotics because I had such a severe sinus infection. So we know that we do not want to take too many antibiotics, but if you need to, you need to. So go science, go medicine, and good afternoon listeners, see you. Thanks for tuning in to why Smart Women with me, annie McCubbin. I hope today's episode has ignited your curiosity and left you feeling inspired by my anti-motivational style. Join me next time as we continue to unravel the fascinating layers of our brains and develop ways to sort out the fact from the fiction and the over 6,000 thoughts we have in the course of every day.
Speaker 1Remember, intelligence isn't enough. You can be as smart as paint, but it's not just about what you know, it's about how you think. And in all this talk of whether or not you can trust your gut, if you ever feel unsafe, whether it's in the street, at work, car park, in a bar or in your own home, please, please, respect that gut feeling. Staying safe needs to be our primary objective. We can build better lives, but we have to stay safe to do that. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast and share it with your fellow smart women and allies Together, we're hopefully reshaping the narrative around women and making better decisions. So until next time, stay sharp, stay savvy and keep your critical thinking hat shiny. This is Annie McCubbin signing off from why Smart Women. See you later. This episode was produced by Harrison Hess. It was executive produced and written by me, annie McCubbin.
