Mind Optimization Part 13: PubMed vs Yelp
It’s easy to find scary stuff on the internet. Most people having a “normal” experience say nothing, and the outliers will go on to write the best and worst outcomes. Stay rooted in science rather than anecdotes. Having negative expectations can hurt.
This video is part thirteen of twenty-six excerpts from a presentation hosted by SOUL Food Salon in March 2019.
You may check out the full playlist of this video series on The Art and Science on Mind Optimization here. Alternatively, you can also click here to watch the previous video and here for the next one.
Video Transcript
Everybody goes online and reads about medication side effects. Terrible idea. Sure do some, get a sense for it, talk to your doctor, but at the end of the day, you can’t rely on blogs and people’s individual reports for how things work. Why? Because like Yelp, restaurants, and reviews of anything else people tend to go on to say either really good things or really bad things.
My belief is that 80% of people that had an average experience didn’t care to do anything at all. Too many times people end up reading the scariest stuff. I want to point out also that there’s something called a nocebo. Do you guys know what a nocebo is? There’s a placebo, which is expecting good things to happen. Oh, I’m going to get better, this sugar pill will make my headache go away, this is great. But there’s also a nocebo. The nocebo is expecting bad things to happen. The longer you spend focusing, and obsessing, and thinking about everything that could go wrong the worst this could be.
I tell everybody stick to PubMed. If you’re curious about any drug, any intervention PubMed is it. PubMed is a giant free online repository of randomized clinical trials. Magnesium Threonate is supposed to improve cognition and cognitive performance. You’re reading the reviews on Amazon. Sure probably better than Yelp or any other blog, but ultimately whenever people ask me what do you think of this nutraceutical, this supplement or this medication I go straight to PubMed. If you take anything home from this slide just remember, if you’re looking to search for something type PubMed in with it. Do that search and look at real scientific data, not people’s anecdotal reports because I promise you those will scare the crap out of you.
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