Offensive “Cures” and Why They Are Offensive

We’ve all read them, those posts on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram that tout keto will reverse your diabetes, eating paleo will help release toxins from your liver, drink this tea, eat this berry, stand on your head and chant for four hours a day and you’ll be magically cured.  This isn’t a new concept, people have believed in crack pot cures for what ails them for the longest time.  There is a reason why we call it peddling snake oil.  People have been gullible and vulnerable since the beginning of time and people have taken advantage of that.  It’s crazy to think it only started when social media made a huge boom.  Of course it didn’t.  However, the harmfulness of this practice was confined to how much power the person had to influence others and how many people they could reach.  With the popularity of social media at an all time high, so are the dangers of these suggestions, hints, claims of healing powers.  They are not only dangerous they are insulting as well.

Why are they dangerous?

They don’t work.  They. Do. Not. Work.  I did keto until I got pregnant with my child and my doctor absolutely told me it could kill me and my child because type 1 diabetics should not do keto.  Funny how that is when people try to promote keto diets specifically toward diabetics.  They conveniently either don’t know it could kill a type 1 or refuse to acknowledge that type 1 diabetics are diabetics because their pancreas doesn’t function not because of their diet or lifestyle (some type 2s aren’t either.  I cannot stress that enough.) It might even be fair to say that they don’t know there is a difference and think that all diabetics fall under the same umbrella.

They are also dangerous because people are gullible.  They will believe they will work and will stop going to the doctor because they want these things to work so desperately.  Who wouldn’t want to eat a certain way or say a certain thing and magically be cured?  Unfortunately, that isn’t how bodies work.  If it were we wouldn’t need manufactured insulin, chemo, surgeries, etc.  We could literally hospital people and force feed them a certain diet and cure them.  When people feel like this will cure them, they stop trying to actively manage their health in favor of the snake oil treatment. People have died from rationing insulin, eating keto, and going into ketoacidosis.  And you know what?  People peddling the idea that this is a cure don’t care that they died.  They don’t acknowledge it or they say they just did something wrong and will not take responsibility for what they did.

Why is it insulting?

Peddling these ideas to people who are sick implies that we didn’t try hard enough.  We either did something wrong to cause what is wrong with us or we just aren’t trying hard enough to cure ourselves.  It implies heavily that we would rather stay sick than just eat the right thing or say the right thing or try a little harder.  It implies that we enjoy the attention of being sick or the status of being sick too much to try to get better.  It refuses to acknowledge that we would literally give a limb rather than take another shot, another round of chemo, another pill.  It implies that we are simply too stupid to take care of ourselves. It implies that we deserve to be sick because we just aren’t trying hard enough.

I do not propose to know every person with a chronic illness in the world but I do know a few with varying illnesses.  Diabetics don’t deserve to be sick and take insulin because they won’t eat keto and die.  People with cancer don’t deserve to be sick and die after chemo because they won’t eat your berries or drink your tea or pray to your god. Just stop.