A Nobel Prize winning doctor discovered a cancer cure?  The mainstream covered it up?  20/20 gains and cancer cure cover ups all in one post here!?  Is it time to declare your favorite eye guru having gone off the conspiracy deep end?  Read on and find out!  

You darling eye guru recently did go in a deep dive Internet health nut conspiracy theory.

A deep dive about the alleged magical properties of vitamin c.  

In particular as explored by the late Dr. Pauling, two time Nobel Prize winner, who apparently went fully off the deep end with the vitamin c and with it curing everything from cancer to the common cold.  

Yea, you probably know these kinds of stories already.  The Internet is full of them.

Internet Rabbit Holes

These work for a reason, though.  Compelling ideas, with just enough substance to make you wonder.

And you end up chasing another rabbit down the hole for any given non-mainstream idea or topic, and you find entire massive forums dedicated to the subject and a million people proclaiming to be cured and all their hair grew back and they’re now riding magical unicorn ponies.  With all of it too, usually lots of claims of huge cover-ups by the mainstream.  And you’re thinking, holy crap.  How’d I never hear of that.  So then because you’re smart and not entirely gullible you go start looking at Google Scholar and looking for research and studies and …. they call it a rabbit hole for a reason.

What’s your actual point Jake, you’re thinking.

My point is I’m not here selling on on the Pauling vitamin thing.  Not at all.  If anything your most favorite disagreeable Jake sees quite a few holes in that whole theory.  Now I won’t pick any sides for the record here (but I’m certainly not jumping on that band wagon).  And ultimately this isn’t the platform to judge these things or to take sides.

Myopia though.  Here’s something I’d suggest exploring through all skepticism:

Measured gains.

Yes.  Myopia as an illness or some mysterious genetic condition, as advertised by the lens sellers.  I’m not buying that one anymore.  (full thread on FB)

And with that the point of the whole vitamin digression – be skeptical.  Of everything.  Both sides.

Above vision improvement gains included.  The reason your favorite eye guru likes to quote peer reviewed clinical studies and science and ophthalmology journals, along with hundreds of student progress updates and optometrist confirmed improvements, is exactly to give you many tools to start making your own assessments.

Always Look For The Counter Argument

Yes of course as with all Internet coo-coo, lots of people like endmyopia.  And see results.  That alone shouldn’t be enough for anyone aware of all the things living on the Interwebs.

You also want to see at least a decent amount of clinical science validating at least the possibility that it’s not (just) crazy talk.  You want the biological underpinnings to make sense.  You want causality addressed.  And finally you want a way to test the whole thing yourself, without losing an eye over it.

It’s a process.  I’d very strongly caution you about trusting anything online.  Even if dead Nobel Prize winners said it was great.  Always find the counterpoint.  Always explore what goes against the theory.  

That’s the very foundation of science.  Find a theory, try to disprove it.  

And if it’s not to be disproved?  If all that remains once you peel back all the layers of the onion … is a glorious beard flowing in the clear mountain breeze?

Understanding myopia, kittehs.  Literally (and perhaps figuratively, too).   

Cheers,

-Jake