"Experts" Mean Nothing to Me
Follow them at your own risk.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, lately:
Experts can be bought.
Experts can be lead.
Experts can lie.
Experts appeal to other experts and often don’t have first hand knowledge or data.
Experts are biased and stress studies that they like and suppress studies they don’t.
And so, from painful life experience, I have learned that it does not pay to trust experts. I’ll listen to what they have to say with the respect due them as fellow human beings, but my mentality is that the buck stops with me and I have to decide whether I will take their advice or not. If their advice doesn’t make any logical sense or seems extreme and/or overly simplistic, I don’t take it. I find my own way.
Most recently, I disregarded all the experts during Covid. I did not wear a mask in public, avoid gatherings, test for every sniffle, or get the shot. And here I am in better health now than I was before Covid hit.
Backing up further in my life, I did not finish my Bachelor’s degree like everyone said I should. I was ill and too exhausted to concentrate, I was spending money hand over fist to get that silly piece of paper, and it was preventing me from working and actually making money. So, I quit, cold turkey, and have never looked back.
When I developed a miserable bladder condition that started acting an awful lot like interstitial cystitis, I took one look at what the experts in urology said needed to happen to get a diagnosis, and said, “Like heck you’re going to stick a scope up that tiny hole and then put me on Elmiron which can cause blindness! No, thank you! I’ll find another way.” I knew there had to be a better way, so I got busy studying and trying different things, found my functional doctor and four years later (putting up with periodic bladder misery the entire time) figured out that oxalates were the main instigator for my bladder flares. I haven’t had a bladder flare in over a year. You know what else hasn’t happened? I haven’t had a cystoscopy yet or suffered ill effects from conventional treatment like vision damage.
And these are just a few examples from my life where I have bucked convention. I’m just an ornery person, all around. It’s served me rather well.
I’d like to encourage all of you to embrace your inner ornery, because I would like to spare you the pain of bad things happening to you because you just did what the experts said and didn’t ask questions or seek a second opinion or do some research yourself. Experts are great and all. But they’re just people, and they have to pull down their pants to poop just like everyone else. And you shouldn’t revere them and unquestioningly do what they say just because they have a trail of capital letters behind their names.
To further illustrate, enjoy this fun story:
Sometimes, you must go against expert advice and do the opposite. Not for the sake of doing the opposite of whatever they tell you to do, of course. That would be stupid. But because after carefully reading and studying and researching, you realize that doing the opposite of what the experts say will likely lead to a better outcome or at least avoid adding another condition to your set of conditions caused by the treatment for the first condition.
I did this again over the last year with my dogs’ food. I wrote a long post about this on Facebook which some of you may have already read. Here’s what happened:
Last year, about the time I realized that oxalates were the main source of irritation for my bladder and NOT acidic foods like the experts usually say (I drink a LOT of coffee and it doesn’t bother my bladder at all), I began to get concerned when I realized that the very high-quality and expensive food I was feeding my dogs was full of high-oxalate vegetables. Hmmm. I began to consider starting both my dogs on a raw carnivore diet. I had read up on this a lot and it seemed like a really great option, but of course, very few vets recommend it. Most of them rail against it as dangerous and unnecessary. (However, a small but growing group of veterinarians are beginning to recommend it after seeing results first hand.) So, I hesitated and kept feeding the old food.
It wasn’t long after this that it was time to take my German Shepherd, Argos, to the vet for his yearly well-dog check up.
From this appointment, I discovered two things. First, he had the beginnings of periodontal disease with abnormal gum growth and his creatinine came back as high-end of normal. The vet was concerned about kidney stress.
The vet said that I would need to get Argos’ teeth professionally cleaned soon to prevent any further deterioration. This, of course, means undergoing complete anesthesia. I did not like this idea one bit. Anesthesia is a modern wonder and I’m grateful for it, but it isn’t risk free and having to do that repeatedly even over the course of a dog’s lifetime, surely couldn’t be less risky than just not having to undergo it at all. And just to get his teeth cleaned?! I was also not excited about putting Argos on a trajectory of kidney disease “management.” I also had questions. Couldn’t the dental issues possibly be causing the kidney stress? (Yes, turns out dental issues can lead to just that and a whole other host of chronic health issues.)
That did it. Without a word of warning to the vet or any more rigamorole, I phased out the old food and added raw chicken leg quarters with the bones.
Don’t get me wrong. I love our vet. I love the whole clinic. They are the sweetest and kindest people and they saved my Bob’s life about a year ago when he tested positive for heart worm in spite of the fact that I had him on heart worm prevention the moment he showed up at my door. But they are just people. And they only know what they’ve been taught and trained to do. Sometimes, I actually know what’s best for my dogs over them.
I also decided to refrain from trying to brush my dogs’ teeth as recommended. I really wanted to see what just having to chew raw bones and cartilage would do for the dental problems.
Now even within the “raw carnivore diet for dogs movement,” there are experts. I ignored them, too. I do not have the time or money to do carnivore the expert way—weighing out crude protein to bone to organ meats to this and that supplement.
I just got the most economical and safe meat I could find. This ended up being ten pound bags of chicken leg quarters for a little over a dollar a pound, some ground beef from time to time, and whatever organ meats I can find at a reasonable price. I also decided to add a sprinkle of Himalayan salt. My rationale for this is that animals seek out mineral licks in the wild all the time. My dogs don’t have access to salt licks, so I had to give them some salt somehow.
Here’s how I feed the dogs: I get out a pound of raw chicken legs with the bones for Argos and a half a pound of the same for Bob. I sprinkle salt over the top, bring this and the dogs outside, make them sit and wait, then put the chicken right on the patio in front of them and give them the command to eat. And boy, do they ever eat! Never have my dogs been so enthusiastic about their food before. They love it.
So, I did this for a year. Within a month, the abnormal gum growth the vet showed me in Arogos’ mouth just…disappeared. I looked and looked and looked for it and I could not find it. Cool beans. Then I just had to wait a whole eleven months to repeat his blood work and find out what his kidneys were doing.
That happened last week.
The vet gave me a glowing report on his teeth and gums. They looked fabulous without a single sign of periodontal disease. She also said his joints were moving great. (Joint health is a big deal for German Shepherds as their hips tend to go down hill really fast.) She raved about the health of his coat and his weight. All his abdominal pulses were nice and strong. Best of all, though, all his bloodwork came back 100% normal!
I was so psyched!
I still haven’t told the vet I’m feeding him raw chicken and raw bones. What do you say? Should I?
So, just to recap: by following my own research, generally ignoring the experts, and making an educated decision, I have successfully avoided having to subject my dog to complete anesthesia for a teeth cleaning and have hopefully headed off kidney disease at the pass.
Of course, this doesn’t mean other problems might pop up with the diet and I may have to adjust and tweak things, but the main point still stands.
Never turn off your brain to follow experts. It’s not worth it. It’s also pretty expensive, as a whole bunch of hapless people found out when the government told them to stay home and stay safe not so long ago.
That’s all for now. Until next time, folks…
Be careful. This article is so thoughtful, with multiple success stories, that I think you are at risk of being an expert on these topics! 😁