Below I will teach you three "gold standards" to identify pseudoscience of fitness and nutrition. These three criteria may not be absolutely correct for pseudoscience, but you can guess them anyway.
Rule 1: Speaking too absolutely often leads to problems.
Someone once asked me how to judge a nutrition book or a fitness book. I told him that the easiest way is for you to count the words "possible" in the book. The more "possible", the more likely it is to be a good book (I also use the word "possible").
Why is this? Because we ordinary people have simple ideas, including me. I always feel that science knows everything, scientists can solve all problems, and everything is black and white. Eating too much salt will lead to high blood pressure, and lifting dumbbells every day will change Schwarzenegger. In fact, the world is not that simple at all.
Take eating salt as an example. Some people hardly let salt die and have no high blood pressure. Some people eat vegetables as lightly as drinking water, but they have high blood pressure. In fact, some people are sensitive to salt, while others are not. Moreover, excessive salt intake is only a potential factor to induce hypertension, and there are many other factors. Without considering the influence of other complicated factors, it is likely to be biased to examine the problem of eating salt in isolation.
So there used to be a view that "eating too much salt will lead to high blood pressure", which is wrong. It is wrong to say that eating salt has nothing to do with hypertension now. These statements are incomplete and misleading.
Another example is the problem of losing weight. Some people say that you can't eat oil, others say that you are afraid of eating sugar, and it is very noisy. Later, someone jumped out and said, it doesn't matter if you eat oil or sugar. The key is heat! In fact, these three statements are not wrong, but they are not comprehensive. One-sided emphasis on any one aspect may be reasonable, but it is wrong and may not solve practical problems.
In fact, there are still many things at present, including some basic principles of human physiology. Needless to say, I don't know, nor do scientists. So many things can only cross the river by feeling the stones at present, and can only say "possible", "maybe" and "estimate".
Pseudoscience, in order to cater to the preferences of ordinary people, must be absolutely firm and leave no room for cheating. It's getting dark, and the ghosts are crying and howling. This is unprecedented. In the eyes of ordinary people, speaking is always more convincing, and we will feel that this person speaks with confidence. We must get rid of this bad habit. When Zhang Wuben (I bought his "Eat the Disease I Eat Back", alas ~ I believed it at that time, and now the baby has grown up) lied, I really didn't catch my breath. Both men and women feel that he is sure to dare to be so helpful. In fact, this man is a complete liar.
The more the word "possible" in a book, the more likely it is to be a good book. Just read more academic monographs. The more academic things are, the more rigorous scholars are, the more afraid they are to draw conclusions, because many things are either too complicated or we really don't know, not because we don't want to draw conclusions, not because we don't want to attract attention or dare to talk nonsense.
For example, some books are called "Fatal Sugar", and what "Ginger cures all diseases" is an obviously biased title. In a book, the author often focuses on a main point, tries his best to highlight it, emphasizes it, and tries his best to highlight a certain aspect of a thing. Things that are not conducive to the views in the book are often understated or not mentioned at all. You say that what he said is wrong, and it can't be counted as wrong, but it is easy to mislead people. In fact, everything has two sides, and any food can be like elixir and poisonous weeds, depending on what you say. I saw "Cereal Brain" some time ago, and I also posted it in my circle of friends. This book is also a book that emphasizes gluten as a "bad thing", which I think is not good.
What is the best book to read? It is best to read books with neutral views, such as Concise Food Nutrition and Vernacular Nutrition. Even if the author's views can't be completely neutral, at least there can't be obvious prejudice.
Rule 2: Views that do not distinguish between specific situations are often unreliable.
The human body is very complicated. At the very least, height, height and thinness are different. The movement is also very complicated. The physiological changes of human body are different with different types, intensity and time of exercise. Therefore, when it comes to the human body and sports, it is necessary to analyze specific problems. The viewpoint is too general, arrogant and unreliable.
For example, some people say that "running more than 1 hour begins to consume muscles", which is not true. Why? In fact, a certain proportion of human muscle protein is decomposed to provide energy even if it does not exercise. Let's not talk about this. The main problem is that this view does not distinguish the intensity of exercise.
The speed of running is different, and the way and proportion of using energy substances are completely different. Jogging at low speed, running 1 hour, probably haven't started to consume a large proportion of muscles. High-speed running, sometimes 30 minutes, the muscle energy supply ratio goes up.
At the same time, how to consume muscles during running is also related to nutritional status and personal exercise ability. When running with low blood sugar, the proportion of muscle consumption is greater. Recently, if you eat less carbohydrates, the storage of muscle glycogen will be significantly reduced, and muscle consumption will also increase during moderate and high-intensity exercise. People with poor athletic ability may consume more muscles in aerobic endurance exercise. So it is really unreliable to say how long it takes for exercise to start consuming muscles.
Some people say that this view is easy for people to understand and remember, and has been simplified? Some viewpoints have this consideration. Complex things are not acceptable to everyone, so simplification is necessary. However, simplification should be limited. If simplification goes too far, science will become pseudoscience. Excessive simplification does more harm than good, especially misleading. Therefore, some things should be complicated and we can't simplify everything.
There are also opinions, such as "Everything will be fine within 1 hour after fitness." If it exceeds 1 hour, everything will become fat. "This statement is also overwhelming, in fact, it is very funny. This statement is wrong, mainly because there is no difference in dietary intake.
In fact, after fitness, the body should supplement the consumed glycogen, synthesize and repair muscles. It's hard to gain weight by eating at this time. But it also depends on how much you eat. Too much to eat, too much left or not. But this thing has nothing to do with time. The so-called 1 hour is simply nonsense.
The earlier you eat after fitness, the less likely you are to get fat, because the closer you get to the end of fitness, the higher the insulin sensitivity of peripheral tissues and the faster the speed of using nutrients (but 1 hour itself is not a demarcation point, and there is no such demarcation point. The speed of nutrition utilization after fitness is parabolic, which can only be said to be slower and slower, but it does not mean that you can eat as much as you want in 1 hour. What's more, when it exceeds 1 hour, everything becomes fat.
There are still some views that do not distinguish between light and heavy, and there are many such views. For example, "Bodybuilders should eat 100g of protein every day", but there is no difference in weight. For bodybuilders with 50 kg and 100 kg, the demand in protein is twice as different, but they are all the same standard. Another example is "jogging for 30 minutes consumes 300 kilocalories", and the same weight is not distinguished. The running speed is the same, the mileage is the same, and the calories consumed are completely different.
Standard 3: Experiments are also divided into three grades, and experiments with low reliability should be treated with caution.
It is easy for us to make a mistake, that is, immediately praise the words "experimental discovery" and "research discovery". Because some people will think that it has been verified by experiments, can the view be wrong? In fact, experiments are not always credible.
A: One or two experiments may not explain the problem.
B: The reliability of animal experiments and in vitro experiments is low.
As our subtitle says, experiments are also divided into "three, six, nine, etc." Some experiments have higher credibility, while others have lower credibility. Which ones are high and which ones are low, there is an order below.
Here is a new concept called "evidence-based medicine". Evidence-based medicine mainly means that medical evidence has different argumentation strength, that is, medical evidence has different credibility levels. Generally speaking, evidence-based medicine, or evidence-based nutrition, ranks the credibility of research data from strong to weak, in turn:
Systematic review or meta-analysis
Randomized controlled study
Group study
Case control study
Case series study
Case report
Personal thoughts, expert opinions and comments.
animal testing
In vitro experiment
C: It doesn't matter which magazine the experiment is published in.
Is real person verification necessarily credible?
Some things, if someone comes out and says, I used them, they will work! Then we can easily believe that this thing is really useful. There is an appearance. But what is suitable for others may not be suitable for you.
To exaggerate, some people can't even eat poison. Don't believe it, there is literature that some people are particularly tolerant of organic solvents, and they are all fine when exposed to lethal doses, and they can't say why. So the difference between people is very big. In roger williams's words, this is called "biochemical uniqueness".
Therefore, what is suitable for others may not be suitable for you, and it may not be suitable for everyone. This is related to many factors. Such as gender and age. It is very common that supplements have different effects due to gender and age differences. People of different sexes and ages have different biochemical environments in their bodies. What is suitable for men is not necessarily suitable for women, and what is suitable for young people is not necessarily suitable for the elderly.
Training conditions also have an impact. The biochemical environment of trained people and untrained people is also very different. Drugs such as adrenergic receptor agonists are generally effective for athletes who have been trained before. Because long-term training reduces adrenaline receptors. For athletes who have never trained or are in the early stage of training, the effect may be obvious.
In addition, the nutritional baseline level has a great influence on the nutritional effect. Some nutrients, if people lack them, will have a very obvious effect after supplementation. If they are not lacking, additional supplements may have no effect at all. For example, iron supplements can improve the aerobic exercise level of patients with ischemic anemia. But for people who are not iron-deficient, it may be useless to add more.