Help me lose weight

[Eolin]

More appropriate to your body would be having your car on top of a machine that collects all the water from that rain, filters it and then continually rewashes your car with that filtered water to remove the junk on your car. Eventually it will need some more water, but it'll do its job fine on the average amount it has already. Adding continually more water will just make the waste water on the other end of the filter (urine in your body) more dilute each time. The concentration of junk in your bloodstream won't change any real amount.

Eh, this is why I normally talk about lemon juice. Sweet, sweet lemon juice. I don't drink much water now that doesn't have lemon juice in it.

 

[Shemeska]

Excuse the lack of real science here ... but lemons, besides containing a host of good things, makes the body more alkaline, rid the body of toxins, and other things you woudn't believe. I've gotten high off the lemons on multiple occasions, my tastes for foods have changed, etc etc.

Making the body more alkaline in any way that would make a measurable change in blood Ph would make you feel sick, woozy, and if gone too far it'd kill you. The buffers in your blood actively keep your blood Ph in a certain range. If it goes above or below that range, proteins in your body denature (deform) and you start to die.

Now, I know somebody is going to say that something as acidic as lemons cannot make the body more like a base. And probably call me a tree-hugging hipping. Which isn't to far from the truth. As for lemons making the body more alkaline -- tis true. What I *think* goes on is that the stomach can use the acid in place of its more nasty acids -- so less acid is produced, and the body is more alkaline.

Acid is acid when it comes down to Ph. It's just the concentration of H+ ions in a liquid. I don't recall the exact pathway your body uses to produce gastric juices, but elevated H+ content in the stomach is the end result. Lemon juice just contains citric acid among others, and your body doesn't care where it's getting the substrates from.

Nice idea, but not sound from my perspective (I'm currently trying to finish up my thesis in molecular biology, but I've got a fairly decent background in biochem to draw back upon).

And on that note, dinner is done and I'm off to go eat that. Chicken w/ mushrooms and a cream sauce. Atkins would probably approve if he wasn't being tormented by imps dressed up as twinkies and sacks of flour. (joking)

 

[Eolin]

Shemeska, congrats on the thesis. Awesome stuff, getting a masters. I should be in about the same position in a couple of years.

That being said, what I have issues here is a challenge. I'm saying that you'll notice a difference. Given that its just lemon juice, its not going to hurt you, right?

So why not induldge the crazy man and give it a try? Even though there's no control, this is science -- or at least empericism. You're a scientist, so I'm sure you believe in emperical evidence. Give it a try, let us know if you feel any different.

 

[Shemeska]

So why not induldge the crazy man and give it a try? Even though there's no control, this is science -- or at least empericism. You're a scientist, so I'm sure you believe in emperical evidence. Give it a try, let us know if you feel any different.

I don't like lemons...

And honestly, it's too small a sample size. It could just be a change in the weather, or a change in the absorption of my insulin pump's injection site making me feel better, or I could be happier because my last class to teach was today and I've got those hours free next week. I'd need a statistically significant sample size doing this, and a matched positive and negative control group to see what was really going on. And then if it did do something that's where you start isolating and testing specific chemicals from the lemon.

I'd humor you, but I really just don't like lemons. Too sweet. Most fruit I don't care for anymore, having eaten a low sugar diet for over a decade now.

 

[Eolin]

I didn't use to like lemons either.

Sure, its a small sample size. But the *sort* of change is dramamtically differnet from what you normally feel. Leastwise, was for me.

Everyone I know who has tryed this now swears by it.

As for specific chemicals ... Bah! The whole thing is pretty good for you (except the pesticides) -- Except for a matter of taste, there's not much reason *not* to do this.

Use limes. But make sure you're getting about an ounce of juice a day. I mentioned this to my doctor, and hey looked at my like I'm a crazy person. There's something there that medical science hasn't pinpointed, and i don't really think its going to.

It cannot hurt you to try. But if you refuse to try it ... then you've refused.

Enjoy dinner.

 

[Torm]

But what I am saying, at least, is that I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that drinking water alone will help someone lose weight.

Okay. I misunderstood the argument - I agree with this. You either have to increase calories burned or decrease calories taken in. THAT has nothing to do with water - except insofar as drinking water may keep you from drinking high-calorie soda. Duh.

 

[Torm]

Radiation has nothing to do with free radicals.

It kinda does, but you have to go further along the history of those radicals to see what I mean. I'm not as ignorant of what I speak as I think you think.

 

[Eolin]

It kinda does, but you have to go further along the history of those radicals to see what I mean. I'm not as ignorant of what I speak as I think you think.

Huzzah, none of us are ignorant. I bet we've all got at least Bachelors degrees.

And I know I sound crazy -- but I'm no good at arguing against visible, obvious results.

Water helps cleanse much better than it does with weight loss. But cleansing helps with weight loss, they're connected. And what have you.

 

[Torm]

That people are so stuck in the science-framework that they do not believe answers can come from anywhere else.

There is nothing real that is OUTSIDE of the science-framework. So I can see why they would think that. Not to get religious here, but look at it this way:

Science is the exploration of the universe through empirical data and logical experimentation.

Religion/Metaphysics/Spirituality are the study of the universe through faith, feeling, and personal non-empirical exploration.

BUT - there is only one universe. So if science and spirituality disagree, one or both are wrong. When science produces demonstrable technology, I tend to reevaluate my belief system if it disagrees.

 

[Eolin]

There is nothing real that is OUTSIDE of the science-framework. So I can see why they would think that. Not to get religious here, but look at it this way:

Science is the exploration of the universe through empirical data and logical experimentation.

Religion/Metaphysics/Spirituality are the study of the universe through faith, feeling, and personal non-empirical exploration.

BUT - there is only one universe. So if science and spirituality disagree, one or both are wrong. When science produces demonstrable technology, I tend to reevaluate my belief system if it disagrees.

As do I. Either I'm being misinterpreted or misrepresented. Or I mispoke.

Science, quo science, absolutely, I'm all for. It tells us about stuff emperically, which is what we should make judgements, decisions and all that based upon. (Note: I don't want to get into religion. Let's not.)

What I meant is that the current scientific -- especially medical -- community has some dogmatic baggage. Tell your doctor that you're doing meditation and it has made you healthier and you'll just get a weird look. At least with my doctor. Tell him that the juice of a lemon a day has changed your biochemistry, and you're likely to get the same sort of look. Medical science looks at how to fix things, and that's great -- but it is not the end all, be all of health. Remaining healthy isn't necessarily a matter of taking vitamins, but can instead be about heating whole foods and being more *aware* of what you eat. Awareness has a lot to do with it, and again, medical science can't say anything about that -- because it only exists inside our heads.

I'm very pro-science. However, I'm a pragmatist, and am as willing to dismiss medicine that isn't working as I am pseudo-science that isn't working.

And, while I don't want to go to religion, I do want to say that science cannot claim that things exist outside of its framework. Science gives us a really good emperical view of the world, but it is only a modeling system. That is, while each new scientific paradigm brings about a new way of looking at the Universe -- Aristotle, Mechanichs, Relativity, Quantum Mech -- each one shows that the preceding model was insufficient in some way. So science gives us these excellent *models* of the world, but let's not forget that its just only a model. Like Camelot.