HealthMusings.com

Being healthy is our birthright, and good health is something which so many people seek but find elusive. Here are various health tips, information and discussions to help guide you.

Dear reader,

Welcome. I am the webmaster of HealthMusings.com, and I am passionate about the subject of health.

"Musings" are reflections. And this website will contain my thoughts and reflections on various aspects of health. However, on top of that, I will also discuss useful facts and information about health.

So, why call this site "Health Musings", rather than "Health Information" or "Health Facts" or something like that? Wouldn't that make things more "factual" and "credible", rather than just being seen as presenting a bunch of random personal reflections and opinions?

You see, over the years, as I learn more about health, and broader, science, and broader still, life, I've come to realize that, often, there are no clear cut black and white "facts". Instead, what is perceived as "fact" is very often simply the accepted theory or opinion of the day. Flavor of the month, should we say.

History reveals many such stories. Here are a few examples.

Man once believed the Earth was flat. We once thought the Earth was the center of the universe and that the sun revolved around it. Science once believed heat is an actual substance, and not simply the rate of vibration of molecules. It took a long time for these notions to be banished.

Talking about molecules - all substances are made up of molecules, right? Well, that's just one theory. Apparently, there are others, I think, such as quartz and waves; it's been a long time since I read about them, and in truth I did not check up more on these theories. Anyway, it happens that the school system teaches about molecules to us at a young age, so the theory sticks.

I will always remember being taught about electrical currents in school, that it runs from the plus (+) terminal of the battery to the minus (-) terminal. We carry out all sorts of mathematical calculations using these assumptions. Then, later, we were told that current doesn't really exist, and in fact, it's electrons which run from the minus (-) terminal to the plus (+) terminal. Duh. So, are electrical currents considered scientific facts? Or merely musings? Wait, do electrons even exist? Hmmm.

How about in the health arena? It took a long time - I'm not sure if it was decades or centuries - for pellagra and scurvy to be accepted as vitamin deficiency diseases; the medical industry insisted they were caused by pathogens. The idea that germs cause diseases was also ridiculed when it was first mooted - it also took time for washing of hands before surgery to become an accepted practice.

Today, every other day, or perhaps even every day, we hear of new pieces of research which continually contradict each other. Is soy a health food or a toxic food? Does it protect against cancer or cause it? Is meat good for us or not? Do we need to eat meat to be healthy? What kind of water is best for us to drink - spring, distilled, bottled, reverse osmosis, alkaline, etc? Why are so called medical experts telling us to stay out of the sun, when much research points to vitamin D deficiency as a major link to many, many serious health ailments? Don't toxic chemicals and radiation cause cancer? Why are doctors using them in high doses to try and, uh, treat cancer?

And let's not forget that there are many political agendas and corporate vested interests which influence what is presented as "facts".

Sometimes, it matters which scientist is working for the government, or who is in big daddy's good books.

Pharmaceutical companies are always out to prove their drugs are safe and effective, even when they are not (they need to recoup the billions of dollars spent on research, marketing and patenting, plus make billions more of profits on top of that to answer to their shareholders). Cow milk sellers will want to prove their products are better than goat's milk, and vice versa.

If you have been selling soy milk as a major player for, say, 40 years, will you take it lying down when there is newly published research which suggests your milk is bad for health? Of course not. You are probably going to commission your own research to "prove" the safety and efficacy of your milk.

And you know what? I believe that when a person sets out to find a particular something, there is a good chance he WILL find it.

It's easy, isn't it, to scope research to say what you want it to say. Just downplay the negative aspects and magnify the positive ones. Or, better still, omit the negative findings altogether.

Or, tweak the definitions and benchmarks of certain variables in order to influence what is considered a "success" or a "failure". You could conduct many, many studies, and then only publish and publicize the positive ones. The pharmaceutical industry uses these tactics all the time.

The bottom line of all my rambling above, and I do ramble quite a bit, is that the concept of "proven fact" is not as clear cut as many would think. "Facts" are just many pieces of information, presenting different facets of the same thing. It's like the 3 blind men who gave vastly differing descriptions of the same elephant when they each touched a different body part of the animal.

The only way to really learn much about anything is to keep an open mind. Being fixated on any one point of view simply limits one's possibilities. This applies to any area in life.

So, let's start with our Health Musings.