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Quotes about Skeptics from the world's top natural health / natural living authors

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"There were skeptics. skeptics foment controversy, and controversy is the fuel for progress. Otherwise, we remain stubbornly complacent about our beliefs. Thanks to the skeptics, thousands of men with heart pain were enrolled in trials in the United States and Europe comparing cabg surgery with medical treatment. These studies went on for over a decade, until around 1980. The results were not encouraging: with the exception of a small group, the patients who had cabg did not live any longer than those treated medically." - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.)

"Objectively, I am thoroughly convinced by the results of the studies I'm about to show you, but maybe more research would convince the skeptics and doctors. Perhaps, as enough of us begin to compile research on ourselves, people will eventually view with amazement how utterly naive we were to have ever believed that drugs could heal us better than nature. Maybe then, finally, all of the skeptics and their medical doctors will wake up and smell the fruit! 1. Dr. Otto Louis Moritz Abramowski and His Hospital Patients Dr." - Susan E. Schenck, The Live Food Factor: The Comprehensive Guide to the Ultimate Diet for Body, Mind, Spirit & Planet (Get the book.)

"As profound skeptics of medicalization, we agree. We would add that the cash could be spent, perhaps more wisely—and could perhaps promote better health—for a vacation, mountain or sea, depending upon one's preferences. In our assessment of emergency medicine, one more issue must be addtessed. As we have seen in previous chaptets, mistakes in all branches of medicine—as in all branches of life—are made. Some patients are incorrectly diagnosed." - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.)

"Skeptics may or may not believe it or may scoff that it is just one case and in itself proves nothing. But virtually everyone who tells or hears it in our own time understands what kind of story it is: it is a story about the double-edged power of suggestion. What, though, do we mean by this? What is "suggestion," and what kind of power do we think it possesses? To understand, we need to see the way in which the story of Mr. Wright is grounded in the assumptions and tropes typical of the oldest and most generative narrative of mind-body medicine." - Anne Harrington, The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine (Get the book.)

"Where are all the skeptics of conventional medicine? Some people call me the ultimate skeptic about conventional medicine. It's a lonely job, being skeptical of drugs and surgery, since most so-called "skeptics" never bother to question anything whatsoever from the world of conventional medicine. Their skepticism, strangely enough, is only directed toward vitamins, herbs, and natural treatments like acupuncture. But where's the skepticism about the outlandish claims, exaggerated hype, and fraudulent science behind conventional medicine?" - Mike Adams, Natural Health Solutions (Get the book.)

"A Prelude to Controversy—Why Did the skeptics Scoff? On July 4, 1997, the Tucson Citizen published a feature article titled "Hypothesis: Objects Have Memory," with the subheading, "2 at UA say cells and even jewelry may be able to remember. skeptics scoff." On the positive side, the article cited Roger Edwards from Harvard University, who was then a senior member of the editorial board of the peer-reviewed journal Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine that published one of our articles on the systemic memory hypothesis." - Gary E. Schwartz and Linda G. S. Russek, The Living Energy Universe (Get the book.)

"If careful study documents that patients who get annual examinations feel better, behave healthier, undergo more appropriate screening, and trust their physicians more than patients who do not have annual physical examinations, skeptics would need to reconsider the value of this yearly ritual. Direct and intended worth is of course an important issue, but not the only issue. "If low-tech maneuvers, such as listening to patients' chests, engender patients' confidence, we might consider including them in periodic health examinations despite their lack of proven benefit on more tangible outcomes." - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.) "By training, we are skeptics of all the professions, our own included, whose members are always (as they should be) influenced by training and vested interests, and whose ideologies are always self-serving. Note that we are not saying that the professions have a negative impact on American life. We don't believe that proposition. Rather, professionals, like everyone else, have certain positions, certain interests, that inevitably affect their behaviors and their views of what they believe to be self evident and good." - Gerald E. Markle and Frances B. McCrea, What If Medicine Disappeared? (Get the book.)

"Dozens of skeptics derided the study. As one correspondent wrote, if it were possible to violate the arrow of time in this way, it would allow one to go back in time and prevent the Holocaust from happening by murdering Hitler." - Lynne McTaggart, The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World (Get the book.)

"The extension from Ponzi schemes to naturally occurring speculative bubbles appears so natural that one must conclude, if there is to be debate about speculative bubbles, that the burden of proof is on skeptics to provide evidence as to why Ponzi-like speculative bubbles cannot occur. Many of the major finance textbooks today, which promote a view of financial markets as working rationally and efficiently, do not provide arguments as to why feedback loops supporting speculative bubbles cannot occur. In fact, they do not even mention bubbles or Ponzi schemes." - Brian Fagan, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations (Get the book.)

"Krucoff s study appeared to vindicate the skeptics of prayer as a subject for scientific inquiry. The simple message appeared to be that getting someone to pray for you just does not work. Meanwhile, in 1997, the Mayo Clinic had begun a two-year study of patients with cardiovascular disease who had been recendy discharged from its coronary care unit." - Lynne McTaggart, The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World (Get the book.)

"All these stories, occurring as they did in rapid succession at the very time that Internet stocks were collapsing, might have added to the effect of the other market skeptics who were suddenly proliferating. But none of these publications seems to have been so influential by itself as to do something like break the upward stock market trajectory." - Brian Fagan, Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations (Get the book.)

"As we saw with IBS, when treatments exist that really work, skeptics can no longer argue that the problem is "all in your head." Another advantage to this class of drugs is that the same dose that relieves pain also relieves depression. Treating depression, when it is present, often has the additional effect of reducing pain. In fact, several carefully done placebo-controlled studies have shown that antidepressant treatment can improve some FM symptoms as well as improving quality of life. With SNRIs, the opposite is also true: treating the pain of FM can also help relieve depression." - Benjamin H. Natelson, M.D., Your Symptoms Are Real: What to Do When Your Doctor Says Nothing Is Wrong (Get the book.)

"I'm one of the biggest skeptics on the planet, and when possible, I like to see things validated by scientific investigations. That said, I'm also not one of these people who needs a double-blind, randomized controlled study published in a peer-review journal before I can believe it. As my friend, nutritionist Robert Crayhon is fond of saying, "there's no double-blind study to prove that water puts out fire, but the entire New York City fire department operates on the presumption that it's a good working hypothesis!" So What Is Natural Medicine, Anyway?" - Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S., The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What Treatments Work and Why (Get the book.)

"If it is as easy as that, the skeptics say, if we were not meant to mix starch and protein together, then why do these two occur naturally in all foods? Yes, they do occur naturally in all foods, but they are not found in an equally concentrated form in all foods. The second argument favored by the skeptics is that early man could not have combined his food correctly. My answer is that early man ate simply and would not have mixed his foods. We know from research that without refrigeration, early man ate whatever food was most readily available." - Mary-Ann Shearer, Perfect Health the Natural Way (Get the book.)

"As the spiritual leader explained to a group of Tibetan monks soon after, "For skeptics, you must show something spectacular because, without that, they won't believe."74 Benson's investigations of g Tum-mo meditation did indeed resonate with long-standing Western interest in what we might call the "spectacular" face of Asian spiritual practices. Could yogis really stop their hearts, as one French researcher from the 1930s had claimed?" - Anne Harrington, The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine (Get the book.) "At one point in his article, Cousins noted that some skeptics of his story had suggested that everything that had happened to him had been a "mere" placebo effect. Well, Cousins said, if that were true, then did it not imply that it was time to take a fresh look at placebo effects? Given the magnitude of the changes in health that he had personally experienced, on what possible basis could medicine assume that effects of placebos were either ephemeral or insubstantial? A bit like Charcot eighty years earlier, Cousins invoked the object lesson of Lourdes." - Anne Harrington, The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine (Get the book.) "Mesmer was asked to assist because he seemed to have a perspective on Gassner's performance that would be very useful for the skeptics and others who wanted to rein in Gassner. Today, Mesmer is remembered— if he's remembered at all—as a charlatan, or a showman, or maybe as someone who discovered the existence of psychological processes that he did not himself properly understand. He considered himself, however, to be a child of the dawning enlightened, scientific age." - Anne Harrington, The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine (Get the book.)

"Some skeptics maintain that more than 200 mg per day is worthless. It just creates "expensive urine," they say. But a recent analysis of nine major studies shows that people who take more than 700 mg per day have about 30 percent less CVD mortality compared to nonvitamin users. Consumers can hardly find a pill today providing less than 500 mg of vitamin C. While true that much of the vitamin passes out in the urine soon after you take it orally, much of it enters your cells. Probably what does go out has performed an antioxidant or detoxifying function traveling through your body." - Stephen Sinatra, M.D. and James C., M.D. Roberts, Reverse Heart Disease Now: Stop Deadly Cardiovascular Plaque Before It's Too Late (Get the book.)

"Critics, skeptics, and Counterclaims Even with well-established diagnoses such as ADHD in children, there may be skeptics and critics who dismiss the validity of the diagnoses, criticize overdiagnosis, or enumerate the dangers of pharmacological treatment. Although such attempts to reign in medicalization have had little impact on adult ADHD, they remain a reservoir of counterclaims that could affect diagnostic expansion." - Peter Conrad, The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders (Get the book.)

"The patient is placed in the position of proving to the physician that the pain is real, and proving the same to skeptics in their family, social network, and workplace. Such a patient often recalls and records symptoms in the course of the treatment act, just as they are likely to do in the course of a more public litigious contest. Their illness escalates. For these patients caught in this vortex, the label "fibromyalgia" is much more than a diagnosis; it is a symbol of self-actualization." - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.)

"Admittedly, clinical research will be needed to convince skeptics in the US that magnets are useful in fighting flu. In the meantime, you might give healing magnets a try. They are available at specialty back care stores and well-stocked health food stores, through catalogs such as The Sharper Image, 800-344-5555, www.sharperimage.com, or online at www.magneticideas.com. erbal tea is especially soothing to flu symptoms and helps keep you hydrated during times of fever. (For best results, alternate the varieties of tea according to your symptoms." - Bottom Line Books, Uncommon Cures For Everyday Ailments (Get the book.) "It was introduced to doctors and patients at the prestigious Columbia-Presbyterian medical school in New York City in the mid-1990s (in conjunction with standard surgeries), and yet to this day has faced serious scientific challenges from medical skeptics. Prior to a procedure, the healer goes into a meditative state. Then, before any touching, the healer focuses intently on healing the person being treated. Finally, the practitioner "reads" the patient's energy field and transfers healing energy back into the person, as needed." - Bottom Line Books, Uncommon Cures For Everyday Ailments (Get the book.) "They may turn out to be a particularly powerful way of helping acupuncture spread its message—and its powers—to millions of former skeptics in years to come. BIOFEEDBACK In this new age of interactive technology, biofeedback should be more popular than it is. Consider this: Biofeedback is a minimally high-tech way for people to peer inside their bodies noninvasively—and then take simple actions to control their vital functions, including heart rate, pulse, blood pressure, muscle action and brain waves." - Bottom Line Books, Uncommon Cures For Everyday Ailments (Get the book.)

"Thanks to the skeptics, thousands of men with heart pain were enrolled in trials in the United States and Europe comparing cabg surgery with medical treatment. These studies went on for over a decade, until around 1980. The results were not encouraging: with the exception of a small group, the patients who had cabg did not live any longer than those treated medically." - Nortin M. Hadler MD, Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (Get the book.)

"Some of these findings and resolutions are subjective; therefore, for those skeptics, one irrefutable objective finding underscores the effectiveness of this approach and "proves" the powerful effect the body has on the mind and brain. Clayton's dysgraphia, or abnormal handwriting, completely resolved within two months of treatment (see Figures 1 and 2 below and on page 31). Here is his homework before the UltraMind Solution and two months later. Before Treatment Figure 1: Clayton's handwriting before treatment • ) 7 1/ i wrote Ms sentence r, UK> Severtl.faAipS." - Mark Hyman MD, The UltraMind Solution: Fix Your Broken Brain by Healing Your Body First (Get the book.)

"Critics, skeptics, and Counterclaims Even with well-established diagnoses such as ADHD in children, there may be skeptics and critics who dismiss the validity of the diagnoses, criticize overdiagnosis, or enumerate the dangers of pharmacological treatment. Although such attempts to reign in medicalization have had little impact on adult ADHD, they remain a reservoir of counterclaims that could affect diagnostic expansion." - Peter Conrad, The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders (Get the book.)

"Maybe then, finally, all of the skeptics and their medical doctors will wake up and smell the fruit! 1. Dr. Otto Louis Moritz Abramowski and His Hospital Patients Dr. Abramowski was an Australian medical doctor who completely recovered from hardening of the arteries, loss of vigor and inability to work by means of a raw, vegetarian diet in his middle years. After turning to raw foods, he felt better than he had felt even as a young man. So enthusiastic was he that he decided to conduct an experiment at his hospital." - Susan E. Schenck, The Live Food Factor: The Comprehensive Guide to the Ultimate Diet for Body, Mind, Spirit & Planet (Get the book.)

"Although the process was considered by some to be a "fringe" science and even discounted altogether by military skeptics, a number of remote-viewing sessions were validated through successes that couldn't be attributed to coincidence. Some may have even saved lives. During the first Gulf War in 1991, remote viewers were asked to search for enemy missile locations hidden in the deserts of western Iraq.5 The project successfully pinpointed specific missile sites and eliminated other areas from consideration. The advantages of such a psychic search are obvious." - Gregg Braden, The Divine Matrix: Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, and Belief (Get the book.)

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