it also appears Oprah is giving out false info about thyroid disease. She did say she was "cured" of her problem, and that she went off medication.

One of the few people on planet earth that seem to be questioning Oprah on this, is Mary Shomon, who runs a thyroid website. she lists all the false information Oprah is giving out.
She also questions what Oprah said about her supposed "doctor".

It really sounds like complete BS, which doctor? Oprah can get the best doctors on earth...it really does sounds like bullshit, or a distortion. It makes no sense.

So how can a person put out such false info about something like this, be trusted to give good information about things that are 100x more complex?
Its just like the nonsense with The Secret, and the other New Age stuff Oprah promotes.
Oh well, its her TV show so she can do what she wants, but its too bad the public does not seem to be able to engage in much critical thinking.
TV is all about the money, selling products, selling soap. Advertisers want an audience that doesn't question, and just buys buys buys what its told.

PS: it appears that Oprah has been spreading New Agey BS about the thyroid, going back to last year when she was promoting some quackery that when Dr. Christiane Northrup said “your symptoms are actually your soul’s way of bringing deeper issues to your attention.”
Basically saying thyroid disease is psychosomatic.

One hopes people don't take health advice from TV hosts with large financial interests in food and health businesses, which claim to be the cure for a disease.


Oprah Winfrey is Falling Off the Thyroid Wagon: Claims She's "Cured" of Thyroid Problem
[thyroid.about.com]
"Oprah, if you want millions of women with thyroid disease to "live their best lives," you need to become better informed about thyroid disease, find better doctors for yourself and as resources for your program and website, and share more accurate information about thyroid disease!"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/06/2009 04:29PM by The Anticult.

one also noticed that Dr. Christiane Northrup is close buddies with Wayne Dyer!!
[www.drnorthrup.com]
and her books are published by Hay House, who publish most of the other New Age books Oprah promotes.

Its scary if people actually take advice from any of these TV showsor books, as every TV show states its only entertainment, and to NOT take its advice.
Even the website of Dr. Christiane Northrup states...

"The information contained on this Web site has not been evaluated by the FDA. This information is not intended to treat, diagnose, cure or prevent any disease.
All material provided on the Dr. Northrup Web site is provided for educational purposes only. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care provider with any questions you have regarding a medical condition, and before undertaking any diet, exercise or other health program."

But no one reads that part.
No wonder Oprah doesn't bring a licensed doctor onstage when she does this stuff, that could spell serious trouble.

Lesson: if you are going to promote New Age Quackery, its best to do it without any license, or education. Do it like Byron Katie, just make up a bunch of words and string them together.

Or like The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, just tell people your book can make them healthy, rich, and loved instantly.

It is starting to make sense.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/06/2009 04:41PM by The Anticult.

Know what a lot of this ridicule and distrust of mainstream doctors is probably about?

Doctors are members of the ultimate Do this Or Else League.

Ditto for nurse practitioners and nurses.

And its very humbling to doff your designer clothes, the clothes selected as part of your 'look' and instead, put on a generic paper gown, and sit bare assed on that paper covered exam table, one taht has been sat on by hundreds of other human butts before you came in and took your position.

Thats different from the Special Seat reserved only for Oprah or BK on the sound stage.

In that doctors office, O is not calling the shots. Its the doc's space, not hers.

And that can be hard to bear. Rather than admit this, most of us like to jeer at doctors, accuse them of being clueless, when in reality we feel clueless when we need them.

Welcome to the human condition. The doctors consulting room is the great leveller.

There was an old episode of All in the Family. Archie Bunker finds out he has been exposed to hepatitis. So he has to go get a gamma globulin shot. (They didnt have immunizations for Hep A back in the 70s).

Archie is panicking about getting the shot. The nurse gets his pants down and says, 'Mr Bunker, dont worry. You are just another face in the crowd'--and gives him that shot in his ass.

There are folks who probably cant stand being just another face in the crowd - or another butt.

So rather than consciously face this, they find all sorts of ingenious reasons to invalidate mainstream medicine--because they cant stand how in the context of mainstream medicine MOST OF US ARE NOT SPECIAL--NOT AT ALL.

In medicine you learn the fine art of telling the difference between the normal and likely cause of a condition, versus the unlikely rare scenarios. MDs and research scientists and statisticians look for the common denominator, work from the bell curve.

This is probably something a media empress like Oprah cannot cope with.

To a real doctor, a professional, O would be one human being among many, very many.

But thats the thing. To a very experienced doctor, a lot of the stuff Oprah (and BK) make such drama queen deals about on their shows--are not special problems at all. They are not even crises.

They are COMMON ISSUES. Not crises. Not so fucking special that only a terminally unique New Age healer can figure the situation out.

And, we tell medical professionals embarrassing stuff. They look up our asses, feel our balls and prostates or examine our coochies.

Its hard to remember one's celebrity hood when getting a sigmoidoscopy.

And, medical professionals set limits on us. They are sometimes authority figures/punishment figures who tell us that our food intake is fucking up our lab results and advise us to set limits on our appetities and curtail our pleasures.

My dad had a chronic condition and he considered himself a special case. He refused to follow his diet. He got complications.

He used to piss and moan that none of his doctors understood him, they were incompetant.

Bull. Dad refused to change his diet, acted like a small child. His doctors knew this perfectly well. That was why Dad kept firing his old doctors and going to new ones--whoever told him what he didnt want to hear was fired. Period.

Dad considered himself a special case and refused to work with a physician who wouldnt support his fantasy.

And because my dad was an ordinary guy and not a zillionaire owner of a media empire, none of his doctors kissed his ass. They told him what he needed to hear, not what he wanted to hear, that was why he kept firing them.

So that is the danger of being rich and a celebrity--you can more easily surround yourself with flatterers. Just hope to god you dont develop a real medical condition.

(Warning to Oprah and all who are at risk: diabetic genetics cannot be bought off with flattery or with magical thinking. Lose the weight before you develop insulin resistance and diabetes.)

And people who refuse to accept limitations and who think they are Special, think they are Exceptions to the rules that govern ordinary people...that is probably why they love the New Age narcisisistic flattery of these little kid fantasies--

and why they hate and avoid mainstream medical folk who do NOT pander to these fantasies of specialness and who do set limits on us and tell us the stuff we hate having to hear.

My layman's hunch is that its a small child's dislike of being told what to do, combined with a small child's longing to be the center of attention--both agendas housed in an adult body.

Little kids and regressed adults prefer magical thinking. And the New Age is full of magical thinking. It panders to our craving for specialness.

Under stress we are all likely to regress.

But some of us manage to carry little kid agendas into adult life and become media moguls. When adult power and an adult media empire are used to pander to regressive and childish hopes, that is when the mischief is done.

My gripe is whenever the owner of an adult media empire uses those mighty resources to support an unworthy childish agenda--intead of encouraging us to grow up and become finer and wiser people.

(Imagine a classically trained French chef selling out and becoming franchise owner of a shit food/fast food operation)

As quoted from Dante's Inferno:, 'you were not made to live lazily and in sloth, but to pursue excellence and knowledge'.

New Age docs promote a false sense of egalitarianism--very different from an egalitarianship gained actual achievement that brings us up to their level by our learning enough science and rational thought to achieve adult parity with them.

This new age egalitarianism is just false emotion--cozy feelings fostered by 'healers' based not on our actual effort and achievement but mere flattery of us, telling us what we want to hear, not what we NEED TO HEAR.

They act all buddy buddy. They make you feel like you're their peer--which is probably soothing to a media empress like O who probably doesnt wanna take orders from anyone, not even an MD who might tell her 'You gotta eat less, exercise more--just like everybody else.

The New Age doc is likely to tell you that you are a special case, a unique case, with a condition that ordinary doctors are too dumb to pick up on. There is covert flattery involved.

Its damn different from a physician who makes it clear that he or she knows stuff you do not---like biochemistry and statistics and can tell you the long term info about your condition, its probable clinical course if you fail to take action and where YOU HAVE TO TRUST THEIR AUTHORITY AND FOLLOW THEIR ORDERS IF YOU WANNA GET BETTER.

An ordinary endocrinologist or bariatric specialist who sticks with the peer published research and treats you as a patient and not as a queen, and tells you the ordinary unflattering truth that you are eating more than you can exercise off and that's why you have excess weight...someone like that isnt gonna be mentioned on O'sshow.

An ordinary doc will not assure Oprah she is special or participate in her fairy tale.

An ordinary doc will prescribe for her a therapy that has worked statistically above average for the majority of persons its has been prescribed for, not some magic potion custom made for her.

PS I was on a premedical track in college and could not hack the math and organic chem courses. Calculus was a bitch. Anyone who gets through premedicine with excellent grades has accomplished something, whether or not they even get into med school.



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2009 01:24AM by corboy.

and a real licensed doctor is accountable, not like these new age Gurus who disclaim all accountability.
Of course, doctors are human, some are incompetent, drunks, or worse.
But that is why you have to use some critical thinking, at get a few opinions from different doctors.

But Oprah and her show, can spew apparently false information about thyroid disease, and because its entertainment, its ok. That's why they didn't have a physician on that show, just a personal trainer, and Oprah's personal opinion.
Same with The Secret, as long as its entertainment, they can do anything.

In the end, the real problem is with the audience, who seems to just believe almost anythiing they are told, and don't apply critical thinking.

I tell ya, if my thyroid were acting up, the last person on earth I would listen to would be Oprah, or Bob Greene. Last time I checked, they know nothing about that stuff.
Call me crazy, but I would find some licensed doctors who have spent their careers on the thyroid.

Eckhart Tolle is not going to cure your thyroid, neither is The Secret.
If people don't get proper medical treatment, some people are going to get seriously hurt.

hmm, interesting.
The Oprah message boards are completely different. They have subsections on numerous health problems.

[www.oprah.com]

even a thyroid section
[www.oprah.com]

and if you look at the masterlist, they are covering everything on earth!
[www.oprah.com]

Spirit (this is the New Age area)
[www.oprah.com]

Health and Food and "Spirit" are just a few of many areas. It seems she is starting her own TV network too? they will have food, health, new age spirit, and everything else.
It seems they've built an entire Oprahuniverse.

Yikes, any cultish group could easily copy her model just on a smaller scale, and influence every single area of their people's lives. Tony Robbins wanted to do what Oprah is doing, but hasn't been able to make it work.

One has to wonder how far all of this is going to go over the next 10 years.
The Oprah companies are creating a "destination" where they can influence and inform every aspect of a person's life. It ain't a TV show anymore.

She is literally doing what Tony Robbins wanted to do 10 years ago, create an entire lifestyle "branded" system for people.

Now, any cultish group could easily just copy this model, and just add in their own content. All they have to do is slot in their own "beliefs" into "Spirit", their own diets, relationship models, and everything else.
And just market it under a charismatic personality leader.
Its a total lifetyle influence system, and its profit-centered, and media friendly.
Complete life influence.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2009 05:19AM by The Anticult.

[thyroid.about.com]

Mary Shomon

[thyroid.about.com]

additonal links given on MS's website:

[thyroid.about.com]

and a comment by one of the discussants on MS: blog lists why it is important to consult and then be followed by a physician who understands thyroid conditions:

Quote

Take it seriously. I was told by my M.D.,I was depressed and given meds for that. After a year of fatique, forgetfulness, and learning difficulty, I went to an Endocronologist. I have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. Please take thyroid problems seriously.

Optimal adjustment of thyroid hormone dosage, based on Lab tests rather than symptoms is critical. If dose is not adequate, the gland may continue to enlarge and may be associated with increased serum cholesterol levels.

If the dose is too strong it can cause an increased risk of developing osteoporosis. So much more.!!
Get all info you can and check with a specialist !

Hear this?

Untreated low thyroid can cause cholesterol problems.

(And carrying excess poundage can put genetically susceptible people at risk for Type 2 diabetes, which is rampant in the African American community)

Two, taking too much thyroid hormone can put a person at risk for osteoporosis.

So a thyroid condition is not something to write off as trivial or as something that can be treated with will power and 'loving oneself'.

And when you have the power and publicity and public trust that O has elicited and seeks to maintain, you have a frigging responsibility to the audience that is enriching you with their money and empowering you with their adoring attention.

And O cannot wiggle off the hook by saying, 'I dont tell anyone to do anything.'

Sorry girl. People do take your recommendations.

That is why so many folks are banging on your door, eager to appear on your damn show--its because your audiences are likely to follow your example and trust your endorsements.

You have power, Oprah. Dont deny it. And dont deny that people look to you.

Otherwise, whats the point of your magazine with you on the cover?

The people running PSI Seminars, and Byron Katie International, and Landmark, and everyone else will be taking note of what the Oprah companies are doing.
Her companies have developed a complete system of total life influence, from beliefs, to behavior, to relationships, to products and services, food, supplements, health products, branded clothes, everything in life, top to bottom.

All they have to do is change the "content" of each module to their own system.
This is the exact system Anthony Robbins was talking about back in 2000, with his online company, that failed after the internet boom.

Influence their beliefs, and their behaviors.
Of course it can be done in a way that can help some people, or to simply enrich those running the systems and to exploit people.

But its the complete life system of influence that is amazing.
Expect to see many of the biggest LGAT style cultish groups copy this model of total life influence.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2009 05:35AM by The Anticult.

sadly, Oprah is going to have one of the people from The Secret back again, the self proclaimed "visionary" Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith.

Some of these things are complex, some are not.
For example, any guy who calls himself the Rev. Dr. when his degrees are defacto bogus, is someone to watch out for!
Michael Beckwith is not a real "Dr." as in a real PhD earned over many years of study.
He just calls himself the Visionary Rev Dr Michael Beckwith, to try to get people to respect him.

Someone of this stuff is tricky, but a guy like Michael Beckwith, who is so obviously exaggerating, selling, self-promoting, ducking and weaving?
Beckwith has already made many ridiculous claims, like he's seen tumors "dissolved" by New Thought power, and he also said in The Secret...

"It has been proven scientifically now that an affirmative thought is hundreds of times more powerful than a negative thought." (Michael Beckwith)

Its amazing that some guy can just fabricate something like that, which not only is unproven, is actually meaningless. Now he is going to be given a forum to dump his junk into the minds of millions.
Amazing.



___________________________________
(info about Beckwith from last year)
[forum.culteducation.com]
Michael Beckwith: is a slick guy, gift of the gab. He calls himself a Dr., but he is not a real doctor, he got a diploma a few years ago from the church of Religious Science, and then left their church, and started his own church. He claims 10,000 members, whereas he is listed as having 2,500.
This is Oprah's pet-project, maybe her new Dr. Phil.
This guy needs to be watched, he has started his own church, and is asking for cars, leases, gas money, phones, whatever you got, he'll take it!!
These guys have taken their sleazy DONATE page down, to hide it from the Oprah public, but its in the google cache
_____________________________________

and of course, Reverend Dr. Michael Beckwith, is hooked-in with a couple of other Secretrons, to milk the beast as much as possible.
There seems to have been some conflict with Jack Canfield, Bob Proctor, and Beckwith, but it looks like Beckwith is back in.
One doubts Jack Canfield was cutting his partners in 33% each perhaps? Read the fine print guys!

The SGR Program, Science of Getting Rich (scam?)
[free-info.thesgrprogram.com]

Notice how deceptive they are from the start, they say its FREE-INFO, right in the website.
Its $1,995 USD.



[Cosmic Connie had some thoughts before, in this terrific article compilation]

The Wrath of the Secretrons by Connie L. Schmidt
[www.csicop.org]
"Most significantly, The Secret’s stars are busily touting their own enhancements and auxiliary products that, for a price, will help you get the most out of the law of attraction. The most notorious example so far comes from three Secret stars I’ve dubbed the Three Amigos – Jack Canfield, Bob Proctor, and Michael Beckwith, who have unveiled their Science of Getting Rich MLM scheme (entry fee: $1,995 USD). While SGR is not authorized by the producers of The Secret, the Amigos are definitely capitalizing on their Secret connection, and to my knowledge haven’t yet been told to cease and desist."

yikes, there is a new book,

Spiritual Liberation: Fulfilling Your Soul's Potential by Michael Bernard Beckwith

This is pure New Thought. He even lists the New Thought writers, and he also lists Osho, and many others.

The bottom line with this book is the old Christ Consciousness gag.
That is, you can literally have the exact same superhuman powers as Jesus Christ, if you believe you can, and attain Spiritual Liberation, which is called Ascension by others. (of course it takes years to learn this, so you have to take dozens of courses at his church for years to learn this).

Marianne Williamson wrote the forward, but its strange. All she says is that to her he has always acted like he is for real and believes what he says. That is curious, as it leaves a window for her, in case things go sour for him. She will say, hey, he was always nice to me.

But he begins the book, by saying its written with blue type, as blue = Christ Consciousness.
(that is your first test).

Even in the introduction to the book, he says there is no room in this book for him to explain Life Visioning, so buy his 6 CD set.
People bought this book, as they want The Secret, and he opens by selling you a CD set. Very smart, as he knows most people don't read past page 20, so sell quick. That is excellent salesmanship.

Then he says he ORGINATED Visioning, which is obviously false. All his New Thought guru's did that, that is what its about. So that is the first false statement in the book.

He then states he was a drug dealer, selling weed across the USA, and got off on a technicality.
On the way out of court, he used his mind power to get a weather vane to point straight at him, and that was his sign from God/Universe. (not kidding).
I guess the wind never changes directions where he is from.
(that is your next test, if you believe he moved a wind weather vane with his mind, then you are the kind of person he wants! Literally, that is a screening process, he will lose half his audience right there, but that is ok with him, he doesn't want people who ask for proof. He wants people who believe he moved a wind weather vane with his mind, because he said he did. If you believe that, you'll believe basically anything else he tells you.)

Then it goes from there, hundreds of pages of blue type, in a tiny font that is hard to read.
But of course, there is no room to explain Visioning, so people better buy the CD set. (that is upselling).

Oh, the book also says he is one of the Foremost Spiritual Leaders, and he also writes songs with the wife, and the book is full of these too.

This guy is a raging egomaniac.
How is it possible for people to not see through this? By page 7 of the book, warning flags are flying all over the place.

The New Thought system this guy is selling is extremely dangerous, it wrecks people's lives, if you really try to make it work.
It seems that many people have to learn by the school of hard knocks, which is why these folks make out like bandits.

If a person is smart, they would be wise to stay far away from the Rev Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith.
(notice he dropped his unaccredited "Dr" surname title for the book).






(the people from his church are going berserk promoting him on Amazon, will this stuff ever end? Nope)
____________________________________
[www.amazon.com]
Spiritual Liberation: Fulfilling Your Soul's Potential by Michael Bernard Beckwith
Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: Atria Books/Beyond Words; 1st edition (November 11, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1582701997



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/2009 08:19AM by The Anticult.