#2837: Bruce Fife

More quackery! The technique known as oil pulling is part of traditional Ayurvedic method of oral care. The basic idea is that swishing sesame oil (or similar) in the mouth for 10–20 minutes prevents cavities and promotes gum health; evidence clearly shows that it is quite ineffective even for that purpose, but it has nevertheless, as quackery – especially quackery supported by appeals to ancient wisdom – often does, recently evolved into some sort of all-purpose detox nonsense promoted by a range of questionable practitioners, quack websites and social media posts.

 

Naturopath Bruce Fife, for instance, thinks the technique should be tried if “you suffer from asthma, diabetes, arthritis, migraine headaches, or any chronic illness”. There is, of course, no evidence that the technique has any effect against any of those conditions, nor any plausible reason to think that it should. For promoters of oil pulling, however, the vague idea of benefit is usually centered around a vague idea of never-specified toxins that are assumed (unsupported by any minimally reliable measurement of any toxin level) to be detoxed by some never-specified mechanism. For Fife, it is basically a religious creed, with oil-pulling taking on the role of some sort of purification ritual; according to Fife “All disease starts in the mouth!”, which means that Fife is a follower of the absolutely deranged New Age religion and thoroughly dangerous cult of Weston Price. Indeed, Fife is apparently deeply affiliated with the Weston A. Price Foundation, an anti-vaccine organization whose house journal Wise Traditions has received some attention not only for its dental woo but also for being a major pusher of the rather inane conspiracy theory that Covid-19 is not caused by a virus at all but by 5G network radiation and that Covid vaccines are a plot to murder you. 

 

Fife – who is ostensibly also a “certified nutritionist”, whatever that means – has also authored a series of books touting the alleged beneficial effects of coconut oil and coconut water, such as The Coconut Oil Miracle, Coconut Cures, Coconut Oil: The Worlds Most Powerful Superfood, The Coconut Ketogenic Diet, Virgin Coconut Oil: Nature’s Miracle Medicine and The Healing Miracle of Coconut Oil (one senses a certain strain of repetition), including touting coconut oil as a treatment for, well, more or less everything and anything, but in particular, perhaps, Alzheimer (“Stop Alzheimer’s Now!” claims one of the titles). There is no evidence whatsoever for those claims, of course, but Fife was never one to be overly concerned about evidence (or the lack thereof). He has also written conspiracy-oriented books e.g. on the alleged dangers of artificial sweeteners.

 

Among the more disconcerting works flowing from the deranged mind of Bruce Fife is Stop Autism Now! A Parent’s Guide to Preventing and Reversing Autism Spectrum Disorders. Naturopaths weighing in on autism is consistently bad news, and Fife is, unsurprisingly, no exception. After falsely claiming that autism is the result of gut disorders, Fife recommends a ketogenic diet with (but of course) coconut oil as a treatment, which is as useless as you’d imagine. But Fife also has … conspiracy theories. A large part of the book is devoted to an attempt to exonerate disgraced fraud Andrew Wakefield, and yes: Fife of course supports the thoroughly refuted piece of misinformation that vaccines are somehow causally connected to autism.

 

Diagnosis: This is Flat Earth-adjacent bullshit. Now, we’re sure Fife has managed to find a commercially relatively successful niche as supplier for adherents of various imagination-based health fads (in particular detox nonsense), but behind what is probably relatively innocuous nonsense (coconut oil), there is a dark chaos of deranged, pseudo-religious cult pseudoscience and conspiratorial paranoia. Dangerous.

 

Hat-tip: Sciencebased Medicine