In my studies at Wageningen University, I learned how to conduct scientific research and how to value scientific literature.
Many variables
This knowledge and expertise has helped me a lot in writing and developing my hormone factor programme and coaching people. But what I have also experienced above all are the limitations of scientific research, especially when it comes to a subject like human health and all its influences.
This is because there are an awful lot of variables that all interact within the larger lifestyle topics such as nutrition, training, stress and mental which makes unravelling this tangle incredibly difficult. If this is not complex enough, you also run into the problem that every person is different, so health advice is ultimately bespoke.
This, while scientists like to show that certain associations apply to large groups of people. Then those links should also preferably be proven causal (causal) rather than just an association under which all sorts of causality confusions can lie.
This is because there are an awful lot of variables that all interact within the larger lifestyle topics such as nutrition, training, stress and mental which makes unravelling this tangle incredibly difficult. If this is not complex enough, you also run into the problem that every person is different, so health advice is ultimately bespoke.
This, while scientists like to show that certain associations apply to large groups of people. Then those links should also preferably be proven causal (causal) rather than just an association under which all sorts of causality confusions can lie.
Cases are simplified first
Since everything is so complicated, you therefore often see that when you talk about nutrition, for example, things are simplified before scientific research is done. For example, you can flatten nutrition down to macronutrients. From there, you can try to investigate the effect of a low-carb diet, where you lump together brown rice, white pasta and sugar lumps and then investigate whether certain blood values improve when you eat less of these.
These blood values often don't say everything either. For example, you can measure in blood that LDL cholesterol rises when you eat a lot of saturated fats, which does not distinguish between saturated fat sources so that a Double Whopper or a smoothie with coconut fat are lumped together.
LDL- cholesterol is known as a blood marker of cardiovascular disease, a predictive value therefore, because in many people who develop cardiovascular disease, LDL cholesterol is elevated. Thereby, LDL cholesterol is only 1 blood marker for cardiovascular disease while there are many more such as HbA1C, triglycerides, Apo-B, hsCRP and homo cysteine.
These blood values often don't say everything either. For example, you can measure in blood that LDL cholesterol rises when you eat a lot of saturated fats, which does not distinguish between saturated fat sources so that a Double Whopper or a smoothie with coconut fat are lumped together.
LDL- cholesterol is known as a blood marker of cardiovascular disease, a predictive value therefore, because in many people who develop cardiovascular disease, LDL cholesterol is elevated. Thereby, LDL cholesterol is only 1 blood marker for cardiovascular disease while there are many more such as HbA1C, triglycerides, Apo-B, hsCRP and homo cysteine.
Helicopter view / holistic view
When I hear statements from scientists saying that coconut fat is bad for the heart because it is saturated fat which raises LDL cholesterol, then I really get a huge itch. Or that a scientist says vegetables are good for blood pressure because they contain nitrate, then my blood pressure actually rises. This is because I am someone who thinks holistically and thus looks at many lifestyle pillars and body processes at the same time from a helicopter view.
I therefore do not believe in flattening the scientific discussion into oversimplifications. It is not about individual substances in food, but about contexts in which those substances interact. It is not about blindly focusing on 1 blood marker, but about looking at many processes at once that interact with each other in the context of a unique human being.
I therefore do not believe in flattening the scientific discussion into oversimplifications. It is not about individual substances in food, but about contexts in which those substances interact. It is not about blindly focusing on 1 blood marker, but about looking at many processes at once that interact with each other in the context of a unique human being.
Holism versus reductionism
Holism is the opposite of reductionism. Reductionism is a philosophical and scientific view that states that complex phenomena can be reduced to their more fundamental components or principles. The idea is that understanding the basic components is enough to understand the whole. Holism holds that a whole is more than the sum of its parts and that the interactions between the parts are crucial to understanding the whole.
When I was studying at Wageningen University, I noticed that reductionism was the leading paradigm. And this only got worse the more the food industry got a finger in the pie there.
Biochemists and substance thinkers
Biochemists and substance thinkers became important in the health debate as the food industry incredibly keen on their unnatural highly processed food-like products wanted to give a healthy image. How ideal it was then to add omega-3 or vitamin C to your unhealthy product and then be allowed to use a health claim. Fortunately, this phenomenon did become more restricted over the past decade, but the effects are still felt in the scientific health debate.
In my opinion, medics have also interfered too much in the discussion of diet and lifestyle in relation to health. Equine remedies, as medicines often are, easily provide a proven effect compared to a placebo.
Separate nutrition and lifestyle intervention points rarely lead to such evidence.
And the fact that the Mediterranean diet is known as the most scientifically supported healthy way to live is really not because of a bit more olive oil or a glass of wine a day. These people are probably doing all kinds of things right in several lifestyle pillars such as not eating too much, traditionally eating less processed food, eating with attention, having nurturing contacts, being outside more in sunny surroundings, having meaning, having less chronic stress and much more.
In my opinion, medics have also interfered too much in the discussion of diet and lifestyle in relation to health. Equine remedies, as medicines often are, easily provide a proven effect compared to a placebo.
Separate nutrition and lifestyle intervention points rarely lead to such evidence.
And the fact that the Mediterranean diet is known as the most scientifically supported healthy way to live is really not because of a bit more olive oil or a glass of wine a day. These people are probably doing all kinds of things right in several lifestyle pillars such as not eating too much, traditionally eating less processed food, eating with attention, having nurturing contacts, being outside more in sunny surroundings, having meaning, having less chronic stress and much more.
Tunnel vision
I am not a fan of thinking too reductionist, because there is a high chance that you will have chosen the wrong focus anyway and that you will create tunnel vision with accompanying huge blind spots.
Yet I feel that this still puts me in a minority as a scientist and that reductionist scientific thinking still reigns supreme in the discussion of health, nutrition and lifestyle.
As a holistic thinker, you are quickly pigeonholed as alternative, unscientific, guru or quackery stopped. And this while I believe that holistic science will eventually win out and help modern 'ai' short-sighted scientists to be able to transcend their limited reductionist assumptions. And that is just as well!
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