Over the last 5 years, I really haven't spent that much time perusing the online health & fitness space. That may be hard to believe, it's my job, right?! That's true, but mostly, I tend to post-and-ghost. I produce content, rather than consume it. Recently, that changed...
As you'll have noticed if you have been following our content on my Instagram, the Triage Instagram, or Triage YouTube, we have been paying more attention to what is going on around us, discussing current topics, reacting to what others are saying, etc. As part of this process, I have been consuming a lot more content from the sides of the online health & fitness space I don't often encounter.
And?!
Things are worse than I thought.
As we have explored topics that tend to be a little more controversial
(but really aren't that controversial), we have attracted more critics in our comments sections, who often point us to other pages where we can really "learn". This has really been an eye-opener. I thought we had made more progress. I was naive. I thought many of the myths and fads that people still swear by were stuck in the 2010s, 2000s, or in the case of some cholesterol claims, the 1980s.
The point of this is not for me to sit on my high-horse and tell you how I know better than everyone else and I can't believe how stupid others are. That's simply not the case. I've been there. I believed many silly things, I made all of the errors in thought, evidence appraisal, exhibited all the cognitive biases, and made mistakes. That's life.
Instead, what I want is for us at Triage to be able to help you avoid the mistakes that many of us made.
One way to avoid falling into information traps online is to review your Information Hygiene Checklist, which was covered in detail by Dean in his latest video on YouTube.
1.) Does the person you are listening to have specific expertise pertaining to this topic?
2.) Does this person have a financial conflict of
interest, such as selling supplements that are relevant to the advice provided?
3.) Is the communicator very certain with their statements on many things, even in the absence of much evidence?
4.) Are they very conclusive, rather than speaking like a scientist (i.e. "studies show", "probably", "this suggests")?
5.)
Is this information confirming my biases, and thus keeping me in an echo chamber where I am comfortable just having my worldview confirmed?
6.) Are you being emotionally manipulated by someone pointing at insecurities?
7.) Double-check the claims made with other experts in the field. Is this person somehow right, while every other expert is wrong?
I hope that, if more people out there can consider information skeptically with this framework, I won't constantly be getting called a BigPharma shill that's trying to make people sick. But hey, maybe that's just the cost of doing business... I mean healthcare... they got me!!
Then again, if you want to avoid all the noise and just focus on improving your health, performance, and body composition, hit us up to chat about coaching.
If you have any
further questions about this topic, you are welcome to respond to this email and I will get back to you.
