Melanie Flower, from Natural Healthcare, who came on our Professional Training Course last year has written a brilliant article which provides a definite answer to how much water to drink question - in a nutshell: be your own Guru!
Inspired by Melanie's article, we have decided to launch a 'Be your own Guru' water containing, amongst other things, pure extract of self awareness, over 12 different insights and a touch of common sense. Coming soon from your nereast tap.
Hopefully Melanie will approve... Hop on over to her blog to read more about how to decide on the amount of water you need each day....
I find Melanie's article very interesting and helpful and she seems to be a caring individual who I am sure is doing her best to help her customers.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I am a bit surprised that Beyond Chocolate provides a link to her company, "Natural Healthcare", which uses "kinesiology" and "nutritional therapy".
I would just like to point out I couldn't find any evidence that kinesiology is effective, but you can learn about it here:
http://www.skepdic.com/akinesiology.html
It doesn't sound like something Beyond Chocolate should endorse.
And also that as a rule, any vitamin supplements should be prescribed by a doctor, as this recent article points out:
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2010/11November/Pages/vitamin-E-and-stroke-risk.aspx
I just feel that your blog might give the impression that this is proper medicine, or evidence-based practice, which it isn't. And a lot of women following Beyond Chocolate might be vulnerable to the claims on Melanie's website.
Sorry for the anonymity of this post, but experience has taught me that it's easy to get nasty emails when pointing these things out - I still think it is important to do so. And I obviously mean no harm to Melanie.
I have to say I do agree with the post above. Likewise I thought she sounded very caring and wanting to help people give up eating unhealthily in a gentle way - and she explicitly says she uses Beyond Chocolate principles - which sounds great, until you read the FAQs about her Nutritional Therapy. It uses the terms "diet" and "sticking to" and "giving up certain foods" - all of which are completely agisnt the BC Principles and made me feel anxious just reading them! Surely the whole point is to "Be Your Own Guru" and trust your own judgement etc etc - well, all the principles we know and love! And yet she definitely takes an approach of telling or guiding you what to eat/not to eat.....seems totally inconsistent to me, quite apart from the above very valid points about dubious scientific claims....Sorry BC, I just don't think this link should be here - I liked what she said about water but the rest I will steer well clear of, it looks like another diet to me!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your feedback, we always welcome it. I understand where you are coming from and can certainly see your point.
ReplyDeleteIt seems you know us quite well and so you'll know that like the 'Be your own Guru' approach. We encourage Beyond Chocolaters to be discerning and to base their beliefs on what they know from first hand experience. You'll also know that we are quite clear ion not giving nutritional advice - or any other health related advice for that matter. I couldn't recommend any other approach than Beyond Chocolate because it is the only I know works for me and is working for many, many women out there.
I liked Melanie's article because it was a nice illustration of the Beyond Chocolate 'Be your own Guru' principle. I also happen to know that her work with her clients is greatly influenced by the Beyond Chocolate approach as a result of her coming on our Professional Training course. This does not mean that Beyond Chocolate endorses or is promoting Melanie's other activities in any way. I'd like to make that clear.
Melanie emailed me today to let me know that she has removed the FAQs in question as "that section doesn’t truly reflect how I work now as they are from a time when I used to practise in a different way. And now, everyone that comes to see me gets a dose of the BC approach".
Many thanks again for flagging this up and giving the Beyond Chocolate community a chance to reflect:
- how do you decide what to believe in or not?
- on what criteria do you base your decision?
- to what extent are influenced by what you see and read in the media, on blog and on forums?
For a website that's trying to sell you something, you can always use the Quackometer; if the contents sound dodgy it will tell you to be careful!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.quackometer.net/?page=quackometer
Lots of interesting comments!
ReplyDeleteThere are many, many words I could write in response to what’s been said but here are a few points:
- I should have reviewed the FAQs on my website to remove the ones that were inconsistent with the Beyond Chocolate approach. I have now rectified this, thank you for bringing it to my attention.
- Complementary therapies (including kinesiology) rarely stand up to double blind, placebo controlled, randomised trials. There are many reasons for this, and this article by Jane Thurnell-Read explains them well: http://www.mytherapypractice.com/therapies/double-blind-trials.html. These therapies are not the same as orthodox medicine and do not claim to be, but this does not mean that they don’t help people.
- Most of my clients come to me via word of mouth. If what I did didn’t make a real, positive difference to people’s lives, I wouldn’t have a business to run.
- As a non-medically trained practitioner I do not claim to treat, diagnose or prescribe. If I see a client with a health problem, I always recommend they visit their GP if they haven't done so already. Those that make appointments with me have come to me because they are looking for a non-medical solution to their issues. Often I see people after they have been on a very long journey with orthodox doctors and they are looking for another way.
- The quackometer is not a serious way of evaluating whether a website is ‘dodgy’ or not. I just ran my own site through it and the comments were ‘It is full of scientific jargon that is out of place and probably doesn't know the meaning of any of the terms.’ This is untrue. Also, if there were scientific terms used on my website, I would probably be fairly well placed to know the meaning of them given that I have a degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University. The quackometer also says ‘It also looks like this site is trying to sell stuff.’. This is also untrue.
I visited Melanie for kinesiology when I was pregnant. I found the non-invasive therapy to be very beneficial. Obviously one has to be open to such a form of therapy in the first place. It works for me and I am happy to continue seeing Melanie for it.
ReplyDelete