The Coke Myth and the Renegade Who Generated it

Share a Coke With: A Quack

 

It appears that the infographic of ‘what happens 30 minutes after a can of coke is consumed’ appears to be circulating the internet again. However, although I heard a lot about it, I had missed the story the first time round last year and then completely forgotten about it. The graphic itself is produced by The Renegade Pharmacist, and spun into action by the Daily Mail and, of course, Natural News. The Renegade pharmacist, apparently, was a ‘licensed drug dealer’-turned good after witnessing how many drugs were prescribed each month. Isn’t it marvellous that we live in such a world that we can reject and go against conventional medicine based on this notion?

Renegade Pharmacist

Let that name sink in. They are an outlaw for pharmacy. Essentially, the website is against getting better through actual medicine. The about section of the website gives a profile of Niraj Naik, he appears to be semi-famous for the coke-gate (that’s what I am calling this), and that is about it. Before we talk about that, I’m going to point out the fallacies and riddles in his very own biography. First of all, “Certified Legal Drug Dealer” is a term they use for pharmacists, which is, technically correct. Its’ connotation however, that is not correct (using language to denote a deeper, sinister tone). They use the word ‘qualified’ and ‘certified’ about his pharmacy background, amping up the fact he has a pharmacological background, whilst at the same time calling them ‘drug dealers’ and demeaning the profession. Which is it?

 

“He also learnt of the debilitating side effects of the prescription medication which drove many of the patients to have to take more and more drugs to ease the side effects”

Errrrm...you really shouldn’t be giving people drugs for the side effects of drugs, unless they’re illicit drugs. So, lets not do that. As a pharmacist, how does he know the exact pathology as to why the patient requires the drugs? In other words, how on earth does he know that they are consuming more drugs to counteract the side effects of other drugs? So, after learning all this as a fully trained, qualified, certificated pharmacist, he decided (hopefully against his better judgment) to attend seminars on the ‘true origin of disease and prevention’ (I wouldn’t even know where to start in disseminating that title). Following this he swapped pharmacy for food, tools and websites to help people. The best line of all of this bio follows:

"After an arduous battle trying to get his novel approach accepted into the mainstream that resulted in a lot of stress and disillusionment, in 2010 he was diagnosed with a stress related illness, ulcerative colitis, that left him housebound for over 10 months."

This ‘arduous battle’ is no where near as rigorous and as regulated as the actual case of getting medicines from ideas to shelves. No where near. I wasn’t all to shocked to discover there is no evidence to say that ulcerative colitis is caused by stress. It is, however, caused by genetic and environmental factors. However, getting stressed can exacerbate the condition, but it is studied to be down to genetic factors and possibly environmental. Another case of Wikipedia being wrong and a story that ricochets with a little less than the truth from the offset.

Diet Cokegate

Yeah, the crux of this post. This guy is mostly famous for not knowing biology. No, errm... his highly scientific, dammit... his post of what happens when you consume diet coke. Let’s start from the beginning:

 

10 minutes

Aspartame does not trick your body into thinking it has processed sugar. When digested, aspartame breaks down very quickly making phenylalanine and aspartic acid, hardly any enters the bloodstream. Which takes down the next part of the post saying aspartame triggers an insulin response. There is zero evidence of this, despite him saying something about there being studies on such things. I cannot find them, and believe me, I’ve tried. There are myriads of studies out there on sweeteners all with similar conclusions. For example published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition titled: Functional magnetic resonance imaging of human hypothalamic responses to sweet taste and calories 1’2’3:

"Glucose ingestion resulted in a prolonged and significant signal decrease in the upper hypothalamus (P < 0.05). Water, aspartame, and maltodextrin had no such effect."

As it doesn’t really enter the bloodstream, it would be quite impressive to illicit an insulin response.

20 minutes

In the original post by Niak, he cites some scientific studies. In this science game, it’s not just enough to cite them, you should probably read them too. The infograph above states that it is reported that there are higher risks of diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. The links he used to ‘back up’ these claims, actually don’t back them up. Each of the studies do not individually, or collectively, prove that the drinks cause any of these problems. At best, they show some association, there is a great difference between an association and a cause (pdf). Remember that whole ‘correlation doesn’t equal causation’? Yeah, apply that here, there and everywhere. There are a hell of a lot of factors involved in disease, singling it down to one cause and saying that there a 67% risk of increased diabetes is quite the stretch (even though only 8.2% of the subjects were identified to have got diabetes out of the 6814 subjects. I mean, that would only be a correlation if they consumed only diet coke and you would require more than two studies to back this up.

40 minutes

Addiction, that’s some powerful drink, eh? Potentially deadly combination of caffeine and aspartame, that’s new. So if I take sweetener in my ultra strong coffee, is that potentially deadly too? Why is only diet coke getting the bad rap here? Let put some scientific terminology in here ‘excitotoxin’ and ‘neuroreceptors’ and it sounds like hes’ done his research, or has he? A systematic review published in Critical Revolutionary Toxicology states:

"The studies provide no evidence to support an association between aspartame and cancer in any tissue. The weight of existing evidence is that aspartame is safe at current levels of consumption as a nonnutritive sweetener."

But his one source says it is deadly? No, it doesn’t even say that. And we are using some powerful and suggestive language here, yet again; cocaine. This guy is seemingly obsessed with drugs, why cocaine? If you drink coke, you may as well do cocaine, no other stimulate in the world could be compared to caffeine. Only cocaine.  

60 minutes

All your minerals are potentially depleted and you are craving more sugar and junk food. I drink diet coke and this never happens to me, maybe I am an anomaly or the science just isn’t there? I’m going to err on the latter, since the last points were highly incorrect. Yeah, there are more nutritious things out there, water for example, but I see no evidence of these causing cravings.

The Blog Post

So, it wasn’t enough for me that the basic fact of the reported biological processes was highly inaccurate. I wanted to know why he thought this acceptable? Well, he states on the post that:

"I found if people drink diet sodas they still get the same problems as people who drink normal soda."

As a pharmacist he is asking patients of the consumption of their drinks? That’s a little odd is it not? And then comes the pin in his ever-present lack of regard for science bubble;

"The research I found from other well respected scientists back up my claims up too and you will discover this in great detail in the new infographic and from this article."

Two words; confirmation bias. Got it, the entire thing is based on a fallacy, like all pseudoscience. "What I feel is shown to be true by these well respected scientists (I have no clue who is is talking about here) so it must be true". So he has gone out of his way to find studies that back up the claims he believes to be true. These studies are either highly preliminary or he has inferred a conclusion from them that just does not exist, in the same way that the media run with stories and in this case, did.

Conclusion 

When you actually type the words ‘the research I found from other scientists back up my claims too’ you have kind of lost any credibility.  The conclusions drawn to make the ‘info’graph are not actually backed up by actual science. The entire renegade pharmacist website reeks of self-entitled, in touch with the earth, holistic anti-science.

I’ll leave you with this:

“He believes that the stress of modern living is the root cause of disease and poor health, and that treatment begins with self belief.”

So my diabetes and magnesium disorder is down to stress and not genetics? You may have become a renegade pharmacist, but you have become a regular quack.

Anecdotal Evidence is Not Evidence

  How 'it worked for me’ irks me

 

 

I hear that phrase constantly from doing what I do. I say cannabis doesn’t cure cancer; ‘it worked for me’. I say that GMO’s cannot cause an allergic reaction by replacing genomes; ‘Well, it did for me’. I say aloe vera doesn’t cure diabetes; ‘well it worked for me’. There is a phrase in the scientific skeptical community; ‘The plural of anecdote is anecdotes, not data’ – a sentence that resounds more truth that you will ever know.

How many anecdotes make for data?

How many pieces of string make a full ball of string? Well, how long are the pieces of string? What is defined as a ball of string? Think about that in context; what makes for evidence? You have a cold and you take an Echinacea tablet, your cold goes away and you put that down to the tablet, right? Is it not highly likely that your cold will go away on its own as your own anti-bodies fight off the virus, as opposed to a natural remedy? An anecdote is a story, nothing really more. As humans, we find anecdotes interesting and strive to see what works to cure the incurable. As scientists, however, we get a whiff of anecdotes and shut off. Or in my case, roll my eyes so hard I almost detach my retina. Anecdotal evidence, however much is complied, shouldn’t make for data.

The most captivating anecdotes are, of course, our own. We have a belief in something that was experienced personally, so it must be true, because we have seen it with our own eyes or felt it. It is a bias we all posses, but the skill to compartmentalise that bias is not. The reason we do not classify this as actual data is because there are so many variables. Take, for example, type 2 diabetes that is brought on by diet, which can be controlled by diet (which many people incorrectly call ‘reversing diabetes' or 'curing diabetes' – you are not, you are just controlling it. If you stopped doing what you are doing, the symptoms will return. Hence; not reversed or cured). If you are eating low carb diet and exercising after meals, your HbA1c level will decrease, meaning the complications of diabetes are unlikely to happen. Let say that you believe that this website is correct and the evidence for aloe vera was real in lowering blood sugar (it isn’t) – you then consume aloe vera alongside the diet and exercise. You could presume that the aloe is curing your diabetes, not the exercise and dieting. This makes for anecdotal evidence that shouldn’t really be entertained, but sadly is. This isn’t controlled by any means, there are so many variables its hard to begin to disseminate this particular scenario, and it is the same with most anecdotes.

Can it ever be data?

In a nutshell; no. I will hammer this point into your brain; there are way too many variables to define a treatment for something based on anecdotal evidence in things like medicine. Let’s take a less extreme example than diabetes; the common cold. You have good days and you have bad days with any illness or disease, and we have surely all experienced a cold. Where you feel okay when you get up for work and like you want to die when you get there and feel better a little later on but want to die again in the evening. The cold is what is known as a self-limiting illness, by which it will get better on its own without medicines, such as Echinacea, so feeling better is not necessarily down to anything other than the cold receding. When the cold is at it’s worst, you consume something and then when the cold levels off, you put it down to the product you consumed. As the symptoms are variable, is it the fluctuation in symptoms or the cure you have consumed?

Another factor with the cold is the availability of multiple treatments, so which treatment is had a positive effect? Was it the Lemsip or the wheatgrass? The aloe or the exercise? The cannabis or the chemo? You may have scoffed at the last one, but there are people who genuinely believe that the cannabis cured the cancer, not the chemotherapy used to destroy the cells. In fact, that last story is a prime example of anecdotal evidence that flies directly in the fact of any scientific medical evidence. A classic logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc – after this, therefore because of this. There is an excellent example of confirmation bias within anecdotal evidence, people see the information they want to see in order to confirm their pre-conceived notions. For example, people purchasing magnetic bracelets to cure ailments don’t see the absurdity because they believe it works.

Correlation implies causation is a major backing from people who rely on anecdotal evidence. As you should already know, correlation and causation have to be very carefully studied before any conclusions are drawn. Which is a major problem with media reporting on how certain things cause cancer, there’s a good chance that there isn’t actually a correlation. For an image representation of this, I found a website describing a reddit user who correlated the incline in organic food sales correspond to the diagnosis of autism. Do what that what you will, but I whole heartedly don’t think for a fraction of a second there is a link, but many people would if that word ‘organic’ was replaced with ‘GMO’.

So anecdotal evidence doesn’t hurt right?

Two words: product testimonial. You know these right? Arthur from Stockport has had problems with weight for years, he found this new natural remedy to be pushed down his throat by ridiculous claims of miracle weight loss. He’s (poorly) telling you his story of how after 4 weeks he lost 12 stone, but neglects telling you about the drastic surgery and dieting. You will have seen these ridiculous infomercials at some point. Does this hurt anyone? Well, yes, people will:

a)    Purchase the remedies, which tend to have no statistical and/or clinical significance and have an adverse reaction

b)    Rapidly loose weight by starving themselves, which can lead to further complications

c)     They don’t actually work. Which can lead to issues psychologically and cause drastic decisions, e.g. unnecessary surgery.

I could write a whole post on weight loss supplements, but I’ll leave it at that.

It would be benighted of me to not state out the obvious cases of anecdotal evidence pushed by a groups of pseudoscientific morons; the anti-vaccination movement. They use anecdotal evidence to fearmong about the development of autism in vaccinated children. They use a non-existent correlation to fight their cause and ignore the evidence; there is no link. I mean, there are countless issues with using the anecdote ‘my child got autism from a vaccine’, and I cannot even fathom to go through them. And yes, people actually die because they don’t get their children vaccinated based on anecdotal evidence. What a privileged first world we live in, eh?

Conclusion

Essentially anecdotal evidence is a story told by someone. It tends to go against the proper scientific medicine by replacing large samples for small biased samples; rely on observation rather than statistical data; discount variables as opposed to controlling them and finds trends that link to their preconceived notions as opposed to well, not. If you find yourself in a situation where someone says ‘a friend of a friend tried’ or ‘well this worked for me’ followed by something absurd, tell them to shut up or switch yourself off. Anecdotal evidence is not evidence, its mostly pushed on by people trying to sell you pseudoscience. Trust me, you don't want to buy it - see what I did there?