Apple Cider Vinegar

Oh yeah, I have no misconception about that aspect of it. I have just been lucky enough to a little benefit from it with my post nasal drip and my appetite. I can't say for sure if it's due to the vinegar but if I stop for a couple of days I get the drips again. Thank you for you advice. Much appreciated! :)

Love balsamic and roasted veggies so will have to try combining the 2!

I recommend eggplant, zucchini, and squash. Mix the balsamic with olive oil, garlic, and a little bit of brown mustard-- so tasty!!

My husband makes a fabulous roasted brussels sprouts dish. There is chopped pancetta that gets roasted in the oven with the sprouts (cut in half). Then drizzle with balsamic or balsamic reduction. Even the children love it.

Exactly!

Maybe so. I decided to try it out. So far my results with it have been ok. I wasn't looking for a miracle so that I think helps. I went into it just wanting to see what happened. (Kind of like the time I took the extreme poverty challenge and agreed to eat on $1.25/day for five days...as a 5 year post-op lol...I'm adventurous like that).

At any rate, my doctor and I don't always agree. At the end of the day he advises me, and it's up to me if I want to follow his advice!

I have a neighbor who swore up and down that drinking apple cider vinegar helped to him chase away the brain fog he was facing in middle age. No science for that, either, right?

This really all shows the power of anecdotal evidence--for good or ill. There is currently the whole n=1 approach to nutrition on the web. Like on sites like Mark's Daily Apple.

I wonder what you think of all that. I ask honestly--I know tone can be hard to read online--no challenge here--just really interested in learning, thinking better about all this. I used to read some of Peter Attia's nutrition posts. They are so dense that it is hard for a lay person like me to digest (ha!) them all--even though I used to read a lot of scientific studies in my work on a hospital IRB. I did take away from his stuff that any scientific study looks at what can be generalized, and there are always anomalies. That seems obvious to say. You are so concise in what you write--would love to hear your thoughts on all this.

Your neighbor's situation is probably explained by the placebo effect. That's when someone takes an ineffective treatment, but the person claims to see results. It's caused by their expectations-- they expect to feel better, so they might interpret their symptoms differently, ignore symptoms, that sort of thing, and legitimately claim to feel better.

A lot of what I see going on with online advice are situations where there are unsupported claims, but there's a teeny nugget of scientific truth in there. A good example of this is how people are recommended to drink orange juice when they have a cold, because vitamin C is good for the immune system. In truth, scientists have found no proof that vitamin C helps the common cold. However, people often get dehydrated when they're sick, and drinking lots of fluids, including juice, helps prevent that and makes them feel better.

This is totally true for nutrition as well. There's no such thing as a superfood (this website is an AMAZING resource on all sorts of nutritional health claims!), and eating tons of kale isn't going to magically transform your health. But overall, science does say it's good to get more veggies in your diet, and if you go on a health kick you're also more likely to make better food choices in general. So you're really getting "associated benefits" from what you think you're doing.

From a science POV, I'll take any anecdotal data with a grain of salt unless there are more than 30 participants (enough to make generalizations from), they've done research on actual humans and not lab rats, and other people can do the same research with the same methods and get the same results.

Thank you. I also thought that one thing that could explain the neighbor's experience was that he was doing other stuff at the same time. Like going for a daily walk! He attributed all of his improvements to doing all the things he was doing--but there was no evidence which item might actually be the reason for his improvement.

Regarding anecdotal evidence, I do see it as a good place to suggest a possible direction for research. When I was on the regional hospital IRB, we approved a study on a supplement and how it might help with cystic fibrosis. This study was proposed by a local professor, working with several families with children suffering from CF. Unlike medication studies that are well-funded by the drug manufacturers, supplements/foods are widely available, and there is not much money for studying them, especially for a small isolated part of the population. So, all that existed was anecdotal evidence for this supplement--but apparently there was a lot of anecdotal evidence over many years in the CF community that this supplement might help. This group had had quite a challenge getting enough funding and a big enough sample size of willing participants to make the study scientifically viable. They also needed a professionally recognized sponsor who could direct and publish the research--enter the professor. This was one of my favorite studies that we ever discussed. Many of the doctors and hospital administrators on the IRB knew the backstory on this study, from previous years of working with some of these families and this professor. This happened many years ago, and I do not remember the details of the study, but I strongly remember the experience of discussing the proposal--it was actually a sweet experience, as a board, to see the study get off the ground. There was such a feeling of community support and effort, as it had taken so many people working together. I left the IRB before the study was finished, so I don't know the results. But it was a real learning experience for me, as it was such a contrast to most of the other studies we were reviewing.

Also, since this was about 16-18 years ago, it was before the huge proliferation we see now of anecdotal evidence widely circulated online, where people cite other anecdotal evidence as scientific evidence.