Sound medical advice

I work for some nutjobs, and that might be putting it nicely. "Alternative medicine" is definitely important, and a lot of times it can be very helpful in treating some maladies. And there are definitely a lot of toxins in the environment and in common products that people use or ingest. No arguments there. 

Here's where you lose me:

In fact, research from Stanford Medical School says that the only way you can ever get a disease is if you are under stress. If you are not under stress, you can’t get sick.

Ha! Take that, AIDS! I can have all the unprotected sex I want as long as I’m not stressed out! Kickass!

Oh, wait. Except here’s what they really said:

This suggests that not only does stress change the bacteria levels in the gut, but that these alterations can, in turn, impact our immunity.

Oh. “Impact our immunity,” huh? You mean, like maybe make it easier for us to get sick? Oh, I see. Well, that’s pretty much the same, right? I mean, that pretty much means you can’t get sick unless you’re under mental, psychological, or emotional stress.

In conclusion, we have described the gene expression responses of cultured normal and neoplastic human cells to four classes of extrinsic stress: heat shock, ER stress, oxidative stress and crowding or starvation.

Oh, you mean, like, physical stress like heart attacks and shit. Oh. Well, at least we know that stress of some sort equally affects all of our cells.

Our systematic examination of the global transcriptional response to stresses in human cells, although limited in the variety of stresses and number of cell types examined, revealed that the responses are highly specific to both the type of cell and the nature of the stress. 

Oh. So you mean the stress response isn’t uniform throughout all cells? Oh. Well, it still makes sense because it’s not like certain cells or organs are actually equipped to deal with certain types of stresses.

In addition, different cultured cell types vary significantly in their responses to stress. In complex metazoans like humans, specialized tissues and organs bear the major burden in maintaining homeostasis with respect to distinct stressful conditions. The prominent role of cell-cell signaling in the gene expression responses of individual cell types to specific stimuli highlights the division of labor among specialized cells in these responses. 

Oh. So you mean the body is a complex organism with complex reactions to different stimuli? Oh. Well, at least this is comprehensive research that proves without a doubt…something.

The dataset is intended as a resource for further exploration and discovery and to help provide a framework for the interpretation of global gene expression patterns in human cells and tissues. 

Well, damn. What the hell does this research prove? 

Let me tell you. Nothing. The researchers’ conclusion is that we need more research. Also, maybe stress might make you more susceptible to disease. That doesn’t mean that if you have no stress you have no disease. That's like saying that Nickelback fans are idiots, so if you're not a Nickelback fan, you're not an idiot. This is entirely untrue. There are plenty of people in the world who hate Nickelback and also are idiots. 

Oh, well. It’s still better than the guy who said if you drink diet soda you can’t get pregnant.