Ironically, The HuffPo ‘Living’ Section Is Trying to Kill You

Pictured: A HuffPo Living section editorial meeting

Oh, god. I only just came to grips with “systems medicine” expert/diet book entrepreneur Dr. Mark Hyman and his wonderful HuffPo Lifestyle section story on how a bit of the old “UltraWellness” will cure any chronic disease you might suffer from, and now there are like ten more of him strewn across the featured posts sidebar of that august internet newspaper. Seriously!

And look, here is the huge honking lead story today: “The 2 Most Important Questions to Ask Your Doctor,” by Dr. Frank Lipman, adorably illustrated with a stock photo of a ruddy-cheeked child in scrubs pointing at a pretend X-ray of a ridiculously fat skeleton (you should probably prepare more than two questions if that is your doctor).

Dr. Frank Lipman is…

the founder and director of the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center in NYC and author of SPENT: End Exhaustion and Feel Great Again (2009).

And he is here to tell you the good news about “Functional Medicine!” It is related to “systems-based biology!” He has Chinese Medicine teachers! They told him about plants!

This model helps us understand how the disruptions of molecular pathways cause dysfunctions in various body systems that then result in disease. It is less concerned with a diagnosis and more concerned with the underlying dysfunctions that lead to the symptoms and the disease.

Yes, of course! Wait, the plant bit is good too:

My Chinese Medicine teachers taught me to think of myself as a gardener when I see patients. When a plant or tree is not growing well, when the leaves are drooping and turning yellow, we do not call it yellow leaf syndrome and paint the leaves green or cut off the sick part.

Right. Unless the tree has a tree disease. Then cutting off the sick part can occasionally be helpful!

And what, finally, are the two vital questions you need to ask your doctor, after he has diagnosed whatever is wrong with you? “1) What is harming you and needs to be removed to permit the body to heal?” and “2) What is lacking or what does your body need to promote healing?” So try those out during your next trip to the emergency room, I guess.

Elsewhere, a Dr. John Neustadt of “Montana Integrative Medicine” just started his promised multi-part series on how to “fix primary care medicine.” Is he a crank? He is selling books! And he thinks “health insurance reimbursement should be expanded to cover all licensed healthcare providers and the treatments they prescribe.” Which presumably includes doctors like John Neustadt, who have degrees in Naturopathic Medicine. These are given out in sixteen states and can also be freely adopted by anyone who wants to call himself a doctor.

The Huffington Post will publish literally anything by literally anyone—we know this—but the active promotion of bullshit by pretend doctors is actually way worse than all the traffic bait T&A everyone’s been complaining about lately, isn’t it? Or not! It’s in the “sad old lady” section of the site, after all, so no one anyone cares about will be harmed.