Ugh, my girlfriend believes all this crap and to conciliate her I read a book on naturopathic medicine. It was a load of garbage. Who knows, the conclusions in the book may have been correct, however the author just made unfounded assertion after unfounded assertion. Anyway, anyone have any resources on gently trying to steer someone away from this type of thinking?
This is very anecdotal, but in my experience with the people in my life that fall for these cures are very, very concerned with themselves and typically lean toward needing excessive control of everything in their life. It appears to me to stem from an obsession with ones own self/well being that leads to this overthinking.
I've had success with trying to steer them into the thinking that they'll probably be just fine and if not, it really isn't as huge of a deal since we're all going to die. On top of that getting sick has a whole lot to do with luck and genetics so they should try to accept that no matter what they do it isn't going to be up to them in most cases anyway. Lastly, I help them focus on the great people around them instead of continuing to dwell on whether or not they have optimum health.
Of course, you can't just call them a selfish jerk, but instead try to guide them out of that loop of self obsession.
Good luck, I'm afraid that you're up against a really difficult problem. I earnestly have no doubt your girlfriend is a wonderful person, but thought patterns that lead to such beliefs, once established, appear to be very hard to change for a number of reasons.
Hope you can work it out or work around it, stranger things have happened.
I've found trying to teach statistics via dice is a good start for people without background. Learning by observing to separate "the last roll" from "my expectations concerning the next roll" is surprisingly powerful and enlightening once they can generalize that into one-off claims.
