The fitness and wellness space is a cesspool of misinformation. Our leaders and our media often misconstrue research, intentionally or not. The onus is on us to think critically – to evaluate the claims being made by weighing the accompanying evidence. Consider the source of the information, beware of red flags and logical fallacies, and hold the presenter accountable by making them prove their claim, rather than following it based on emotion. Watch the video below to find out how. The transcript is below the video.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
01:40 Deregulation in the Wellness Industry
04:39 Evaluating the Source of Information
07:00 Red Flags
10:44 Logical Fallacies
24:40 Hitchens’ Razor
25:32 Accounts to Follow

Transcript:
What’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Fitness Edda. As always, I am your host, Erik Castiglione, owner, and head coach of Viking Athletics here in West Hartford. Happy Valentine’s Day 2025. I was going to make a video on seed oils and all the hoopla surrounding them, why people demonize them, all that fun stuff. But since RFK Jr. was just sworn in as our Secretary of Health and Human Services, while trying to remain as apolitical as possible, I wanted to explore a larger topic, which is how to think critically in the health and wellness space.

Deregulation in the Wellness Space

It is a wildly unregulated space. Pretty much people can claim whatever the hell they want. And while we have literally the entirety of human knowledge at our fingertips, the vast majority of people do not think critically about these things and pretty much just accept what’s being told.

So, I want to arm everybody against that and encourage you to do your own research. As much as I would love to tell you to take my word for it, when we get into logical fallacies, that is an appeal to authority. I’m claiming I’m an authority and you should just listen to me. Don’t doubt everything. Doubt everyone. Do your own research. Make the parties that are making claims assert their evidence. Refute that evidence. That is how you stay informed.

So when it comes to the health and wellness space, examples of deregulation, when we get to supplements. I covered this in a previous video. We were talking about why the wellness industry is largely skeptical of the Make America Healthy Again movement.

And it boils down to the fact that much of what they’re aiming to accomplish would require more regulation rather than less, and they are aligned with an administration that is systematically tearing away the guardrails and regulations that are currently in place. So, kind of counterproductive to what Make America Healthy again would need to see happen. It’s early, could be wrong, we could see change in the right direction but that’s why I remain skeptical.

During that presentation, I went over a bunch of legislation that had been passed by both parties. We’re not going to blame one side over the other for our current situation. It’s everybody. It’s been 40 years of cumulative policy that got us to this point but when we’re talking about deregulation, one of the acts that I mentioned was passed in the early 1990s and it deregulated wellness supplements. So, they are regulated as food rather than as drugs. So, the FDA can no longer force manufacturers to show that they’re efficient, and that they work, and that they don’t cause harm before they’re put on the market.

Instead, these supplements are put on the market, and the onus is on the FDA to show that they cause harm before they can be removed. So, from a food standpoint, that’s kind of how the FDA works and the regulations currently work is that it’s not the FDA is not doing their job. It’s just they have to provide evidence to show that things are harmful before they’re removed. There is no regulation to show that we have to show things are healthy before they are sold to the American public. So, when it comes to the nutritional side of things, that’s one problem that we encounter in this space.

Another is freedom of speech. People can say whatever the hell they want. We see this on podcasts with people making wild claims. You see people demonizing substances left and right. The media is pretty damn bad at interpreting studies, and they mislead people with headlines, or blow things out of proportion. And fact checking is now more than ever nowhere to be found. So, my goal with this video, rather than assign blame to the systemic issues, again, I don’t want to blame one party over another. It’s a systemic issue. I want to arm people so that you can think critically and make decisions for yourself.

Critically Evaluate the Source

So, step one into doing that, consider the source. Who is giving you the information? What is their background and how does it change their filter? Just because someone has a PhD doesn’t mean you should listen to them. One of my favorite examples of this. There was a great clip in the West Wing where Martin Sheen is president. Again, I don’t want to get super political but is basically railing against a woman who has a PhD in English Studies, but her agenda is quoting the Bible as a source for the anti-homosexual agenda.

He pretty much shreds her. And, you know, again, it’s, oh, I thought given what you’re pushing, you would have a PhD in psychology or something else that is maybe theology, something else that’s relevant. But no, her PhD is completely unrelated to what she’s pushing. So, you know, just because someone is an expert in one field does not make them experts in all fields. And that is very much something that we need to be aware of.

 In a real life example, for the most part, a lot of what Dr. Andrew Huberman puts out there is good stuff. We need to consider the fact that he is a neurologist and the vast majority of what he’s putting out there is filtered through that lens. How does it affect your brain chemistry as opposed to how does it affect your body as a whole?

 Dr. Mike Israetel is a great source, and his content is freaking hilarious, and I highly recommend it. But a lot of what he’s promoting, he’s a bodybuilder. He sells the Renaissance, RP hypertrophy app with the goal of getting as big as possible. So, when he’s critiquing exercises, it is with that in mind. That is the goal is how is this an exercise for muscle building?

And if it doesn’t serve that purpose, then it’s largely a useless exercise in his view. If you actually get him talking and you see interviews, he’s a lot more balanced and matter of fact, but when you’re pushing a product and when you are viewing things from a specific lens, it’s important to be aware of that.

Red Flag Warnings

Generally speaking, there are red flags when you’re listening to people that should tell you right away that something’s up. Number one is fear mongering. You’re demonizing specific substances. You should never do this exercise. Your spine will explode. You know, we see that with rounded back exercises. People are constantly railing again. You should never do Olympic lifts past the age of 50. Anything that generates fear is generally worth exploring a little bit more. It’s very rarely that straightforward.

Similarly, anyone that gives you a definitive answer to a question. The answer is it depends. That is definitive – that the answer is it depends. Generally, if people ask me a question, I’m going to reply with more questions. We need more context. We need to know what the end goal is and then we can filter the information appropriately.

Selling solutions. This typically goes hand in hand with fear mongering. I’m going to create a problem that may or may not exist and then I’m going to sell you the solution and that is me selling you a supplement or a product of some kind that’s going to solve your problem. It is not just presenting information. Information is free. You know maybe it’s an e-book and I can monetize that, but for the most part information is free, and it requires action on your part. If I’m just selling you something to solve a problem that I created that should be a big red flag.

And then a big one is promoting conspiracies. We see this a lot now with both the Broken Science Initiative, which unfortunately is Greg Glassman’s newest endeavor. And we see this a lot with RFK Jr. Has been pushing this claiming that there is a conspiracy to keep our people sick. You know, it’s the insurance companies hand-in-hand with the pharmaceutical companies, and they are all in bed with the CDC and the NIH, and they’re all corrupt and they’re all working together to keep us sick. That’s total bull crap.

 It’s really not hard to understand why we are in the health crisis that we’re in currently. It is 40 years of the food industry, and the pharmaceutical industry, and the insurance industry – healthcare in general promoting profit over public health. It’s that simple. The food that we eat is all hyper palatable. It’s been stripped of nutrients, and fiber, and it tastes super good so that you want more of it, and it’s hyper caloric.

 Because that’s what’s cheapest to produce, and the more that they sell the more that they profit. It’s not a conspiracy that’s out to get you. It’s simply, “we don’t care about you; we care about profit.” That is the result of the deregulation that we have faced for the last 40 years.

The same goes with pharmaceuticals. We’re not trying to keep you sick, but very few products that actually treat underlying causes are put on the market, because if we treat the underlying causes we’re not going to profit. So instead, it’s “let’s babysit this with medications and treat the symptoms.”

 There’s no conspiracy that we’re out to get people. It’s simply a logical conclusion of the system that we’re in. So, if they’re pushing a conspiracy, there’s something wrong there.

Logical Fallacies

Logical fallacies – when you are trying to have a discussion with somebody or they’re trying to convince you of their point of view be on the lookout for these. You see them all the time in the health and wellness industry on all sides.

False dichotomies – that is presenting something as black and white, and those are your only two options. There’s no gray in between. One of my favorites – I had a member, a previous member that suggested that I watch The Game Changers, which was a Netflix documentary about going plant-based. And the argument was trying to convince people that plant-based is the end-all be-all diet. And I made it about 10 minutes before I wanted to bash my head against a wall because of all the logical fallacies.

The biggest one was a false dichotomy. They were presenting their argument as “you are either plant-based or you are a meat eater.” The vast majority of people are omnivorous. We eat both. But they were presenting it as “this is what happens when you only eat meat.” And there is a carnivore diet out there now, but it wasn’t popularized at the time that this came out.

Which leads us to the next one, false equivalence. They conflated meat eater with eating only Popeye’s chicken. So, in a lot of their “studies” that they did, they’re feeding people Popeye’s chicken to get one result. And then they’re feeding them whole foods, plant-based, and comparing the outcomes and which do you think did better? Yeah, if I eat Popeye’s chicken before football game, I’m not going to perform as well as if I have real nutritious food. It’s not going to take a rocket scientist to figure that out.

False equivalence is also used to elevate an argument that has no supporting evidence, and to put that against an argument that is very well backed by science, and to claim both arguments are equal, and we can agree to disagree, and you can have your opinion, and I will have mine. Not all opinions are valid. You can have a wrong opinion. If your opinion is not based on any evidence and not supported in any way, it’s not a valid opinion. And trying to argue that point of view when you are patently false, compared to an argument that is very well supported, they are not equal.

We can’t always meet in the middle and assume that that’s the best way to go. If we agree on the problem, and we have two points of view that are backed by fact, and we just can’t decide on how to proceed forward, that’s where compromise may come into play. But if you have somebody that is presenting their total bullshit argument as equal to one that is backed in science, that is a logical fallacy. And hopefully they are unaware of it, because if they are aware of it then they’re deliberately misleading you and that’s just messed up.

The nostalgia fallacy, we see that a lot particularly in the health and wellness space. The idea that we were healthier in the past and there’s some golden era that we should return to. This is the notion of the paleo diet. The Liver King profited off of this one by convincing people to eat bone marrow. It’s not a great source of protein, not a whole lot of calories.

Why did our ancestors do that? Because they were fucking starving. They ate whatever they could get their hands on. They were not super healthy and jacked. Life expectancy was like 35 years old if that. So, to argue that it was this age of pinnacle health is just ridiculous. So, we see that one a fair amount.

I mentioned truth by authority or an appeal to authority earlier. “Trust me, I’m an expert.” If Someone is truly an expert, they will welcome questioning and they will back up their claims with evidence. That is the mark of a true expert. They don’t rely on credentials. They rely on facts and evidence. So, if you see someone that’s just claiming, “trust me, I’m an expert,” doubt them. And if they can back it up with evidence, they may very well be an authority on the subject. But that in and of itself should never be a reason to believe somebody.

Truth by consensus. This is the idea that just because something is common knowledge, you should believe it. Common knowledge changes a lot. You know, we all thought that eating fat made you fat. That was common knowledge in the 80s and 90s. Now, apparently it’s carbs make you fat. The truth is It’s eating too much in general that makes you fat. It’s both, it’s not either or.

Ad hominem attacks. This is my favorite. We’re going to cover this a few different ways – but in general, it is if you can’t attack the argument attack the messenger. So, “don’t trust that person, they’re a corporate shill.”

Or I saw a new one this past summer in a family argument was a preemptive ad hominem attack. “This is the way it is, and if you don’t believe that, you’re a moron.” Basically, trying to shut down arguments before they even begin because the position cannot be backed up. So instead, it’s “If you disagree with me, you’re a moron.” and it’s trying to stop the argument before it begins.

 We’re also seeing this on a systemic level these days. Again, the Broken Science Initiative is attacking universities and claiming that all of the research done there is tainted. We see this with the Make America Healthy Again movement, claiming that the CDC, the NIH, and the FDA are all corrupt, targeting the media, claiming that they’re all lying. It’s been done systemically over the last decade. Those would be systemic examples of ad hominem attacks. So, beware of that.

Straw man arguments. This is where you distort somebody’s argument into an extreme version of it so that it’s easier to dismiss by making it ridiculous. You know, for example, the fact that Starbucks switched out their red cup to be a little bit more inclusive rather than catering exclusively to Christians for Christmas, and you get the other side claiming that this is a war on Christmas and we’re attacking the Christian faith. Misconstruing what’s actually happening into a distorted and extreme version of itself.

And then cherry picking data. We see this a lot in the fitness and wellness space. You can find one study that pretty much proves anything. It’s one of my favorite scenes in Thank You for Smoking, a great movie. The German scientist working for the lobbying company, Aaron Eckhart’s character basically says, “this dude could disprove gravity.” The key is to find what most studies say. What does the preponderance of the evidence say? And again, this is different from truth by consensus because of the presence of evidence.

So, here’s another great example of a straw man argument. The Broken Science Initiative is claiming that peer review has no place in the scientific method and as soon as you hear “nine out of ten scientists agree,” you should immediately dismiss it. That is not what peer review is. Peer review requires replicating studies, repeating them, and showing that you too can get those results and that you concur based on the outcome. That has been misconstrued into basically “we’re voting on whether or not we believe this and we’re going to go forward based on that vote.” That would be a great example of a straw man argument in the health and wellness space.

So cherry picking data, we see this a lot with fitfluencers who are trying to sell you something. We also see rodent studies misrepresented. So, a good example of this is with mechanisms versus outcomes. We’re looking at whether or not a pathway for something to happen actually exists. So, for example, there is a pathway in the body by which if you have too much protein, and you are in a caloric surplus with protein and protein alone, protein can be converted into adipose tissue and stored as body fat.

An outcome is the cumulative effect of thousands and thousands of mechanisms. And a lot of times a particular mechanism doesn’t happen in the real world because it is influenced by other mechanisms. So again, going back to the protein being converted into body fat, we don’t see that in the real world. Your body is going to use that protein and what actually gets stored as adipose tissue is number one, excess calories in the form of dietary fat, and then number two, carbohydrates, if there’s more of those left. So, just because protein can be converted into body fat in a lab, doesn’t mean that you’re going to see that happen in the real world.

So, citing purely a mechanism, we see this when people are trying to scare you for, oh, there’s a pathway by which your blood sugar is going to be elevated if you eat X. But when we eat X with something else, that effect is muted. We see that a lot when people are trying to scare you into buying something. They’re going to cherry pick a data from a mechanistic study rather than what happens in the real world.

And then we also see people rely too much on rodent studies. I’m not discounting rodent studies, but typically if something happens, you know, for brain chemistry, rodent studies are very much analogous to what happens with humans. For other physiological studies, anything that happens in rodents merits further testing in humans. You can’t discount it, but it’s not the end all be all. And so, when people cite that and conflate it also with the mechanistic study and try to claim that this is definitive proof, you got to pick that apart. And we see that a lot in the health and wellness industry as well.

We saw this with red dye number three. Basically, the rodents in that study were fed ridiculous amounts, I think it was 400,000 times what you’re likely to have in humans. And that was enough to cause cancer. So that was 100% reliance on rodent studies. Now there is a legal, it was an addendum to an act that’s in the books that says basically if any substance causes cancer in rodents or humans in any study, it needs to be banned. And that’s why red dye number three was banned.

But again, it was based on this one study. And the study flat out says that the mechanism, I’m sorry, it wasn’t the study, it was a review, a peer review of the study done in Europe that says that the mechanism by which the rodents develop tumors does not exist in humans. So, they didn’t have a mechanistic study here, it was just a rodent study, and they explicitly found that the mechanism doesn’t exist in humans.

So it’s easy to pick data that is not relevant to the real world in order to prove your point and they’re relying on the fact that people aren’t going to dig, and are not really scientifically literate, and so they can say this and try to back up their claim when really they’re just picking data out of studies that doesn’t really apply.

So that’s one that is why I encourage people to do their own research if someone cites a study. NIH has the studies, actually they’re all public record you can go find it. Look at the study number. In most cases you can find what they’re saying in the abstract. It doesn’t take much digging – it’s a couple of minutes’ worth of work and you can decide for yourself. That way you’re not relying on what other people are telling you.

Hitchens’ Razor

The flip side of that, when they don’t have evidence always remember Hitchens’ razor: “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.” Basically, if you’re making a wild claim and you have nothing to support it, I don’t need any evidence to refute what you’re saying. You are full of crap, and I can dismiss it as such.

The onus is on you to back up your claim with evidence, and then it would be on me to refute what you are saying with additional evidence of my own, and we can let the evidence, we can basically make arguments based on the evidence and try to come to a conclusion and a resolution there. But if you are claiming something without any evidence whatsoever, then it’s not on me to disprove you. You’re already wrong. So, I do like Hitchens’ razor.

Accounts to Follow

Accounts to follow – you know, now that you’re thinking critically, who do you turn to? Who is speaking the truth out there? I like all of these accounts because they routinely give you the studies that they are quoting. Dr. Alan Aragon and Dr. Allan Bacon collaborate a lot, but they do a great job of refuting the crap that is permeating the space. Layne Norton also does a hell of a job with that. Even if he agrees with your overall premise, if you make a claim to support your premise that is wrong, he’s going to call you on it. Love his account.

Dr. Brett Contreras is, I brought him up here, he’s the glute guy. He invented the hip thrust and I wanted to bring him up as an example, because in his PhD dissertation he disclosed up front a potential conflict of interest. While his dissertation was on EMG activation in the glutes based on the hip thrust, basically claiming that the hip thrust is a great exercise for growing your booty, he measured that and wrote a dissertation on it. But while he was studying it, he created the hip thruster machine.

So, the conflict of interest there is, “yes, I make money off of this exercise and I’m disclosing that up front.” As long as a conflict of interest is disclosed, it does not negate the study. When it is hidden, that is where we have to worry about impropriety. So, he does a lot with critiquing exercise and evaluating claims.

Dr. Jessica Knurik is fantastic when it comes to refuting misinformation in the nutrition space, in the health politics space. Dr. Mike Israel, I already discussed, just be aware that he tends to view things through the bodybuilding lens, but he also does a great job. Presenting information and making it digestible and hilarious.

And then Dr. Morgan McSweeney, who goes by Dr. Nock on Instagram, also does a great job of refuting claims. If you see misinformation perpetuated on podcasts, I’m sorry, if he sees misinformation perpetuated on podcasts, he’s one of the first to call it out and stamp it out. And what do all these accounts have in common? Evidence. They refute claims and back up their own claims with evidence, which is what it is all about. So, these are accounts that I recommend you follow.

These are logical fallacies and ways to think critically and things to be aware of when you are evaluating health and wellness claims. I encourage you to do your own research, think critically, rather than just taking someone’s word for it. And don’t take my word for it. That would be an appeal to authority. Do your own research, and we’ll see you guys later.