In my years on the “Bodybuilding Revealed” and “Fat Loss Revealed” forums, I’ve had to field a number of questions related to the rather bizarre mix of sense and nonsense spewed by Dr. Joseph Mercola.\u00a0 Sorting out the truth from the half-truths and outright, self-serving\u00a0BS is no mean feat – Dr. M is a skillful writer, who knows exactly what buttons to push in order to convince his audience. As I put it to one forum member:<\/p>\n
If you’ve read my posts on the good doctor, then you’ve certainly encountered this statement:<\/p>\n
“…I read his stuff periodically (I’m on the e-mail list), but take some of what he says with a grain of salt. He’s got an agenda, and frequently selects or spins info to support a predetermined position.”<\/em><\/p>\n
That is my honest opinion. For the record, I don’t see him as “crazy.” Nor do I see him as “legit” (I do not know the source of his title, nor do I care – I judge him on the basis of his writing, not his credentials…I’ve known legit MDs and PhDs who couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel). There are points he makes that I would agree with completely. But, IMO, he’s less concerned with the health of his readers than he is with their wallets… it’s not black\/white; right\/wrong. But I don’t trust him to be completely honest, and therein lies the problem I have with him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
My\u00a0BBR colleague, Mark, describes Dr. M. as an “overwrought professional alarmist,”<\/a>\u00a0which\u00a0– I think – sums the man up pretty well.<\/p>\n
Of course, Mark and I are hardly the only ones who’ve done time deconstructing\u00a0Dr. M’s\u00a0m.o.\u00a0 Fortunately, several members of the health\/skeptical community have also weighed him in the balance and found him wanting.\u00a0 This recent post, “Joe Mercola’s Shampoo Woo<\/a>,”\u00a0by surgical oncologist\/researcher Dr. David Gorski<\/a> (who blogs under the nom-de-plume “Orac”), provides a fantastic look at how Mercola misleads his readers, by presenting them with cherry-picked, selected facts about commercial products (in this case, shampoo), in order to drive sales of products from his own store.<\/p>\n
Mercola lists five “toxic” ingredients that many shampoos contain. He starts out with a particularly hilarious example, sodium lauryl sulfate, also known as sodium dodecyl sulfate or SDS:<\/p>\n
Did you know the same ingredient which produces all that foam and lather when you shampoo your hair is also the ingredient used in car washes and garages as a degreasing agent?<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n
Um, no, but so what? SDS is basically soap. It can help solubilize grease and suspend dirt on cars so that they can be more easily removed the same way it can solubilize grease on your skin to help remove it. That’s what soap does. In fact, if you consult the almighty Wikipedia, you’ll find that SDS is usually made from cocunut or palm kernel oil, just as other forms of soap are made from fatty acids from animals. Normally, Mercola would consider that to be natural, except when he doesn’t. That’s because SDS has a nasty, chemical name, making it more conveniently demonized in front of all those devotees of all “natural” lifestyles. If SDS is an evil, vile chemical, then so is soap.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n