I really do not 
I’m always hesitant to cast myself in any sort of expert role, also because of how the concept of professional liability bleeds into everything for me lol. But if it was like “if you’ve taken college classes on this, or are passionately a hobbiest, weigh in and mention your background” 
I read the original iteration of the post though, I think I saw you edited it and I haven’t reread.
Ets or use my dads definition. The person in the room who knows the most about it 
What we change the description to included enthusiasts willing to offer perspectives on various rabbitholes people have gone down, with the goal of offering greater understanding on complex issues from multiple areas of expertise? I can add examples that are not just nutrition based, because I think this is broadly a phenomenon we experience.
Basically, the goal of this thread, for me, was to have a kind place to ask tricky questions of smart people who have exposure to hobbies, fields and competencies I do not.
Success in this thread looks like: having more questions or resources to consider, additional context that the questioner may not already have, counterarguments to show the other side of the aisle, generally getting to be very excited and enthusiastic about something, etc.
The goal is not absolute truth or Answering the Question Correctly, so the stakes are much lower.
Idk what the title would be? Some thoughts from cheeky to literal:
Down the Rabbithole
Armchair Experts
Tricky Questions, Smart People
No Dumb Questions, No Right Answers
other recs welcome.
I like Armchair Experts. I think it encompasses the idea of “a thing you know a weirdly large amount about” without limiting it to professionals.
Absolutely this! I can design a lab based biology experiment for a narrow variety of mechanical and biochemical outcomes, but I have no idea where to even start designing a nutrition experiment. And I really only understand what I’ve read about nutrition experiments in comparison to how I would run the lab experiment.
Also you started with a really hard question! Nutrition literature is really hard and the media is especially terrible about disseminating accurate information about what the science actually says.
just here overachieving don’t mind me
brb, more shooting myself in the foot to do
Very true. Nutrition is one of the youngest fields of research science, and also one of the hardest to be reductionist about. The scientific method is wonderful, but by necessity is reductionist. And as @Gdogg mentioned, biology doesn’t take kindly to being reduced to simple, non-interacting parts.
At a certain point you get down to operating bias: what’s your baseline assumptions? One of my baseline assumptions is that, in absence of evidence to the contrary, the long term practices of cultural groups are likely beneficial. (Ie- it’s not clear what you should eat post partum to best recover. So I’ll look at what different cultural groups do) Is that for sure an appropriate view? Not necessarily, there are some instances those practices have been proved harmful. But at a certain point when you’re asking “what do I want to put into my body to optimize my health”, you just need to try and ID your basic biases, see if those hold up for you, and proceed on your merry way until you find more evidence.
So to take this back to the folate question- for my personal health, I’d say- okay, it’s easy for me to avoid/minimize folic acid and to instead ingest folate in naturally occurring forms. Also, we know there are other benefits to those folate rich foods. So, the downside is small for me and the potential upside is large. Therefore, I will opt to act as though those studies are valid until I see otherwise. It’s a very different question what I would advise a patient to do, though, particularly given variations in fresh food access, time for cooking, anxiety, etc etc. Giving that advise could just add to stress and lead to perfect being the enemy of good, ie someone shutting down because they can’t do things “perfectly”. Or, when the evidence changes, feeling like the rug has been ripped out from under them.
This was rambling but hopefully expanded on some of the complexities here.
That ^^ is also how I approach nutritional info. “Do I have the bandwidth? Y/N. If Y, accommodate where possible. If N, disregard but reconsider in future.”
Like, I’m “supposed” to be doing a whole heap of supplements and perfect diet things because I’m gestating another human. I am not.
However I can weigh in on hydrology, hydrogeology and other natural science and engineering issues with more confidence!
OK! I have updated the description. Whew!
Just wanted to say I really appreciated the pros and cons you put together and how you would approach it differently in different contexts 
While nutrition is not my field of expertise, my mom has a really great take on this, she says: look across different cultures. I don’t think you’ll find a grandma in the world who recommends sweets over vegetables for overall health.
PS, and this is my area of expertise, sautee kale, gai lan, bok choy, spinach, or about any other green with some thin sliced garlic. 
forever!
So my relatives are all alt health nuts basically. One of them is really into coffee enemas as being the solution to leaky gut. But I’m pretty sure that leaky gut isn’t a thing. Has anyone looked into this/has any thoughts? If not I’m gonna get to googling XD
I’m not an expert here, but my gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic (whose expertise is in Celiac disease) refers to this as “increased intestinal permeability”. You might find more clinical research using that term.
Yep, that’s the terminology I’ve seen as well in the literature. And we know some things do increase intestinal permeability, like drinking a lot of alcohol, but so far it seems to be more transient and/or more secondary to other things (like autoimmune disorders) than the alternative medicine crowd currently discusses it as. (Also worth noting it’s a normal state in newborns). Which isn’t to say it isn’t actually an issue, but so far it seems more like it’s secondary to UC or IBS or so on, and you should treat what’s underlying it first. Also, since it’s a really new Avenue of research, the snake oil salesmen pile on, and it provides a “hope point” for people who haven’t found answers elsewhere- but unfortunately the research data, much less clinical practice, just isn’t there yet in providing concrete answers it seems like.
Eta re enemas, they wouldn’t help. Enemas only are effecting the distal end of the colon. Intestinal permeability concerns occurs in the small intestine primarily I think? I need to keep scraping the literature but it’s time for baby walk and nap. I’ll come back to this. (Eta or maybe not since gut bacteria plays a role? But then SIBO co occurs. I need to think on this more)
This was my intuitive reaction - enemas aren’t getting to the “problem” area.
So as @brackenjoy pointed out, leaky gut is a thing, but most weird statements about it are going to be false. I can get behind claims that a leaky gut wouldn’t heal if it’s being irritated, i.e. one theory of severe food intolerances. But I also know we don’t have the science behind it and just…ew.
If I wanted to really stretch myself…and we’re thinking about inflammation in the gi tract secondary to leaky gut, I can believe that in 1830 I’d squirt coffee up my butt and maybe the caffeine would reduce inflammation for an hour or two. And then it would stay in alternative medicine because no one had figured out the cure…
But I am 99% sure the cure isn’t coffee up my butt. I can also empathize with people desparate enough to try.
And hey! Fecal transplants actually might work for some conditions, so we just need to science things
Thank you everyone for letting me talk about butts and coffee.
Coffee impacts my butt. 
Thinking on it- coffee enemas probably would provide temporary relief. Caffeine is a vasoconstrictor, so you’d have temporary (order of hours) decrease in uptake from the gut there. It’s acidic, so it would temporarily (order of days, perhaps) change the balance of bacteria, and it’s a high antioxidant load so maaaaaaaaaybe you’d see some transient benefits there as well. But again, distal end of the colon only, and since it’s not changing anything underlying, everything would go back to homeostasis- it’s normal balancing point it has found. Unless you do something like antibiotics that effect the gut and strong probiotics or a fecal transplant, often coupled with dietary changes or treatment of underlying inflammation (steroids usually for GI conditions, NSAIDs have too many GI side effects to be good candidates). So, yes, maybe you’d see very temporary relief, but it wouldn’t cure anything and we have better courses of treatment available to us now.
This is one near and dear to my heart, haha, since I have actually received and had massive benefits from treatment for SIBO that was underlying my IBS, which very much toes the line between western and “CAM” (complementary and alternative medicine, what we call it in nursing) approaches. But they never used coffee up my butt 
Gonna ask another tricky nutrition one, sorry.
Considering another attempt at gestating a human. How much of “fertility diet” stuff is worth trying vs BS? As usual, I assume fruits and veggies are always good. What about the “drink whole milk, not skim?” Do antacids actually do anything for fertility? And ubiquinol comes highly recommend but is like $1 per pill. Does it actually do anything?
As an inpatient person who wants to get pregnant the day we start trying I want to know these things but I don’t want to spend a ton of time and money on BS that isn’t tasty.
Ooh now I’ve heard @Bracken_Joy go down this hole and she has an excellent resource:
https://www.booktopia.com.au/it-starts-with-the-egg-rebecca-fett/book/9780999676189.html
I would also think about whether you generally tolerate supplements well and find diet change easy. If not, I’d start making whatever changes you want to your diet now, and not when you start trying. That includes trying out the supplements you intend to take, so you can find a form you like (i.e. if you know you want to take B vitamins, Vitamin D + Calcium, and iron, then you can spend time now working out if there’s a combined form for some of those or if separate ones suit you better, and plan how to take the iron since it has to be taken a few hours apart from calcium). I am not sure which ones bodies are good at storing except iron (your body uses quite a bit in pregnancy) and that it’s generally accepted that folate be started 3 months before you start trying.
The book linked does a nice job of laying out the info based on where your assumed fertility is at the moment so you can pick and choose what is likely to suit your situation.