33 and a Third

Well, had an interesting experience with a Naturopath the other night. I went to go see her because I’ve been having trouble with arthritis, and I was just a little bit curious about the whole thing. The first appointment was interesting. She gave me an electrodermal scan. I was very skeptical. But it was interesting to see that “radioactive” came up. I asked if that normally comes up on a person, and she said only if they’ve recently had an x-ray. Of course, it came up for me because of the radioactive iodine I took in February to treat my thyroid. I was intrigued, and yet concerned that there are still traces of radioactive iodine within me. Anyway, the first few things she wanted me to take, like fish oil extract and B12 sounded great. I already knew I needed the B12.

My second visit was a few days ago. Things got weird that day, however. I have to say she’s a lovely woman. I know she has the best intentions and only wants to improve my health. But I didn’t like it when she suggested I take some homeopathic iodine. I told her I was sure my endocrinologist wouldn’t approve. She told me that if she didn’t, it was because she was ignorant. I must say I argued a bit. She insisted that homeopathic iodine could do no harm, was not in mineral form, and would not get absorbed by my thyroid.

This is when it got really weird. She told me that the homeopathy was like the theory of relativity. Yes she really did say that. I’m sure I must have look a little stunned. She said, “Don’t you remember your basic physics?” I told her no it’s been so long, and I only took it in high school. So she wrote down E=mc² on a piece of paper. I think she was trying to say that the energy remains the same if you remove it from one place, you add it somewhere else. So she drew a little arrow pointing down under mass and a little arrow pointing up above energy, and said if one side goes down, the other must go up. Holy cow. I tried to explain that if you decrease one side, the other side decreases. I probably went on a little too long, trying to give an example with numbers and telling her that c was a constant. Then she said she may have it wrong, and mentioned something about quantum physics (I don’t think she actually said quantum mechanics) but by that time I was too shocked to question much else. I suddenly imagined Reid sitting next to me and the extreme shock on his face. Then I imagined John Swain, a friend who’s a physicist, sitting next to me laughing uproariously like he does when he hears someone say something stupid.

I looked at her for a moment, and thought, is she trying to snow me? Does she use this to try to impress naive people? And I realized she doesn’t, she probably just heard or read something that made an analogy between homeopathy and physics without understanding it. I suppose that’s why I didn’t get up and leave right then and there, although Reid thinks I should have. I get a big kick out of her calling my endocrinologist ignorant, though. Who’s the ignorant one here?

She spent some time telling me about something called LGS, which is supposed to help my gut, but I’m deathly afraid of taking something with a long list of ingredients which I don’t understand. I really don’t want my ulcerative colitis to flare up again. Of course she claims it won’t. If anyone’s heard about it, let me know.

All this reminded me of a silly “language” made up by some friends at university that they called Hamelian. Lots of simple words, often featuring the words “truck” and “sandbag”. Something like, “Get sandbag. Put in truck”. Here’s the theory of relativity in Hamelian: “Truck go fast, clock go slow.”