A thought: For some of us, WOO was our only option.

[haele]

46. Well, woo supplemented by careful habits is not "bad" if there isn't much of an issue to begin with.

Especially since one person has a different sense of what is an illness or pain than another person might be. But the caveat is that there is not much of an issue to begin with, and that the person isn't going whole hog into "it's natural, so it's all good" belief system that many hucksters pitching woo for profit.

Look, exercise, vitamins and specific dietary supplementation (a change of balance in the intake or citrus, leafy greens, garlic, fats, sugars, meat) are not really "woo" when used in a balanced manner to the healthy average person who doesn't have access to a good diet that includes fresh healthy food and regular doctor's visits. They are also not "woo" to a person who's condition or disease creates a lack or excess of a critical mineral in the body but is otherwise fairly fine (like coping with stress, pregnancy or during the recovery period from an injury or illness). A guy with kidney issues who needs to take a diuretic also may need a potassium supplement in his diet. A pregnant woman usually (not always) needs additional iron, calcium, vitamins A , D, and folic acid in the first trimester of her pregnancy.
I have a couple co-workers who, after getting a diagnosis of a condition and getting treated for it, now do the "no gluten/green tea" or "paleo-diet" that also do cross-fit, swim regularly, and see their doctors regularly for the conditions they have. Is it the diet, or the exercise, or the regular doctor's visits and monitoring of their body condition that is keeping them healthy as they age? Those co-workers will say it's their diet that "fixed" their condition, but the truth is that they went through a modern medical procedure to fix the problem, then have their doctors monitoring them and are now following good habits to keep the original condition at bay.

However, depending on a type of diet or supplement to "cure what ails ya" without real medical monitoring as a cure-all or medicine is Woo. It is not "holistic", it is dangerous as any other self-diagnosis can be.

Supplementals are supposed to "supplement" a medical process or make up for a specific lack - they're not going to cure. They can make you feel better, and if you don't have the instruments or tests to actually see what's going on, the appearance that you are being healed is purely subjective. That's where the woo comes in.
Y'know, when you're slowly dying of undiagnosed testicular cancer and genetic high cholesterol, but you're feeling better because your endorphins are being triggered through your brand new modified paleo-diet that is being promoted for testicular health, the protein supplements, and your new routine at the gym.
If you depend on your diet, exercise, and herbal products made Gawd-Knows-Where under questionable conditions that some homeopathic/paleo-vegan/"born-again Navajo Shaman"/private practice M.D. is hawking on the internet along with his/her newest "Wanna Feel Like You're 21 Forever" book which contains:
A 40 page psuedo-scientific (i.e. mash of his/her old college Botany 243 and Human Biology 324 notes checked against WebMD and the EU's naturopathic Medical Guide) hypothesis combined with,
the pilfered diary and formulary from their ex's Missouri midwife great-granny's home remedies,
a Punjabi Vegan cookbook from the 1960's, and,
a mix of Irish, "Sioux" and Basque folklore, bio-feedback, Tai-Chi, and New Age Mysticism...
...Well, you're not getting better, no matter how special and "better than modern medicine" the "treatment" seems to be. You have slipped into the Woo Zone. You will still die of either your testicular cancer or of problems brought on by your cholesterol, and it will be far sooner and the end would be more painful than if you had gotten to a responsible doctor with access to real equipment and treatment options in time to catch your condition and get it stabilized and regulated.

True, you could take a risk that you will be one of the 1 in 100,000 or so that might be stuck with a quack (like the one who wrote the "Wanna Feel Like You're 21 Forever" book, only with hospital privileges) or your insurance/health provider service will f* you over for profit, but Woo is far worse for someone who really has a problem than going to a doctor regularly is for someone who is pretty much healthy and doesn't need any medical assistance to remain so.

If you're healthy already, you can potentially maintain with judicious use of granny remedies, folk medicine, and good habits. Yes, I had a great X 3 midwife granny, who's diary and formulary are in a college archive somewhere and I've got copies that were passed down of some of her formulary; most of her remedies came down to a healthy, balanced diet, good hygiene habits, and basic herbalism for simple conditions and mild chronic ailments. But anything that would normally put people in the hospital - requiring surgery or long-term critical care, her remedies were all palliative, not curative.
The other thing to point out is that she was very careful to note that all of her herbs and other components, her tinctures and oils, her wines and syrups and salves, were grown or collected by her, and there were specific conditions that her components needed to be at before she would use them.
She didn't go down to the Walgreens, Trader Joes, or WalMart to get some "Naturella" brand St. Johns Wort capsules or Evening Primrose Oil - which could just as easily be processed in China from the stems, twigs, and sawdust at the bottom of the barrel using minimally filtered drain water and glycerin from factory hog hooves falsely labled as "vegan", because the supplemental market is unregulated.
G-G-G-Granny carefully went into the local fields or in her garden and picked and prepared those herbs and seeds to make her compounds herself. It was on her to insure the quality of her components, and even a difference of how much it rained the week prior or a few degrees in temperature or soil contamination could drastically affect the way her medicine worked - and she knew it. She watched helplessly sometimes as patients didn't get better, because it was a rainy or dry spring, or someone had dumped their still leavings and adversely affected the soil around the area she picked her field ginseng or Queen Anne's Lace that year.

So as much as I respect what she did at the time and her successes, trying to claim medicine of her day is better than modern medicine and using it beyond what it was intended to be used for is frankly Woo. It's "good in a pinch", but it's limited in the benefits it can actually bring.
An honest doctor recognizes and focuses on the points between when supplements and alternative procedures can help, and when they're just placebos to help the patient feel better while they're going through another treatment - or if they should be getting different treatment.
It's dangerous, dissembling and disturbing for a doctor to foist off the placebo effect as the "major component" of the treatment.

Just my two bits. (This was a bit more than 2 cents)

Haele