Mindy Pelz? More like Mindy please, you ain’t no doctor. Despite presenting herself as some authority on nutrition, she is nothing more than a chiropractor whose confidence is mistaken for expertise. Please don’t take my word for it, however. If you know where to look, she will tell you that her advice isn’t worth a hill of beans.
Is Dr. Mindy Pelz a real doctor?
Dr. Mindy Pelz is not a real doctor. Not even close. She studied kinesiology at Kansas before collecting a degree from Palmer College of Chiropractic in San Jose. Please note that “school” is named after a guy who beat his son with a strap and claimed to cure deafness by cracking a man’s back. True story. Look it up.
Interestingly, she rarely mentions this. Occasionally, you will see a D.C. appear after her name but this qualification simply means she passed chiropractor school and nothing more. It doesn’t really show up on her main website. Of course, we all know why this is.
If Pelz openly admitted to being a chiropractor and not a doctor, the entire house of cards she built would come crashing down. Her entire business exists on a false reality which allows her to be an authoritative figure on subjects far beyond the realm of cracking backs.
I will say the same thing about Mindy Pelz that I did about Alan Mandell, another chiropractor masquerading as a doctor. I could care less about the claims they make about diets and other medical topics. They’re usually wrong, and we’ll get more into that in a bit, but as individuals, we are free to take advice as we see fit.
More Fake Doctors: Is the Motivational Doctor, Alan Mandell, a real doctor? The diagnosis isn’t good
The problem I, and we as a society, should have is the misrepresentation of qualifications. Is Dr. Mindy Pelz a real doctor?
Hell no. It’s likely she wouldn’t have been allowed to attend medical school in the first place.
And yet her schtick is that she is a doctor. Somehow, she is a qualified professional able to give advice on these topics. This is a deceitful practice. Would people have been inclined to accept her advice if she didn’t use the doctor title? I would guess not.
But then again, if it were good and trustworthy maybe they would have. And that is what it all comes down to. When a chiropractor puts the word doctor in front of their name, it’s a massive red flag stating they do not have enough credibility or facts to back up what they are talking about.
Unfortunately, not enough people do the homework on these quacks and check their credentials. Then again, a normal, honest person shouldn’t want to trick people by misrepresenting what they are all about.
While Dr. Mindy Pelz is not a real doctor, she also claims to be a bunch of other random things, including:
- A nutrition and functional health expert
- A recognized leader in the alternative health field
- A pioneer in the fasting movement
This is all nonsense. A bunch of unmeasurable statements designed to fool people into thinking she is more qualified than she really is. The oddest thing about all this is that Pelz goes out of her way to make you think she’s legit but also tells you not to take her advice. You just have to know where to look.
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“Don’t listen to me.” – Mindy Pelz
Disclaimers are amazing. It is basically people admitting to lying and then hiding the text somewhere in the public sphere. Mindy Pelz has not one but two disclaimers on her website. Both of them spell out why no one should ever listen to her.
Let’s start with the medical disclaimer. Here are the big three lines that scream do not take anything she says seriously:
- The information is not advice and should not be treated as such.
- We do not warrant or represent that the medical information on this website…is complete, true, accurate, up to date and/or non-misleading.
- You must not rely on the information on this website as an alternative to medical advice from your doctor or other professional healthcare provider.
Wow. I’m gobsmacked. For starters, this disclaimer says her articles and videos are not advice. What the hell are they? It sure seems like advice.
The second sentence is what gets me. Pelz won’t even say the medical information on her website is non-misleading. That is a massive problem. If someone can’t promise not to mislead you, you should definitely not be listening to that person.
Now for the second disclaimer:
On five separate occasions across two paragraphs, you are told to talk with a physician or qualified professional before doing anything Pelz says. Simultaneously, Pelz has admitted to not having any such qualification. The summary of this disclaimer is, “Talk to a doctor because I’m no doctor.”
About those medical citations
People often praise Mindy Pelz for citing medical research to support her arguments. But much like her doctor credentials, when you root around and gain an understanding of what she is referencing, it doesn’t hold up.
Pelz is extremely guilty of committing genetic fallacies. In other words, the source of something she states validates whatever she is saying despite the fact it has been wildly manipulated to create a conclusion far different than what was intended.
A great example of this is her video on the “shocking” benefits of carbonated water. For starters, she mentions carbonated mineral water which is not a focus of the studies. For reasons, Pelz adds the word mineral to support her other theories here. They only focus on broader, carbonated water.
She starts by proclaiming that no one talks about the benefits of carbonated water. The reason no one talks about these is because only two studies exist on the subject as it relates to digestion and each one is extremely narrow. The first, which took place in 2002, focused on the impact it had on patients with chronic indigestion and constipation and only had 21 participants. The second focused on those who had a stroke and were bedridden.
There is also much time here spent discussing the vagus nerve, a subject neither study on carbonated water mentions. While you will find some information about drinking any kind of water and the vagus nerve, linking it to the carbonated water studies she cites is misleading. Let’s not forget, she doesn’t have a medical background.
Ultimately, this video’s conclusion should be that drinking carbonated water may make you feel fuller for longer after a meal; it can help with indigestion and constipation; and will improve swallowing if cold. Interesting, sure. Shocking, not so much. What was Mindy’s conclusion?
She claimed drinking carbonated mineral water helps people lose weight. How you get that conclusion from these studies is absurd. Nothing supports that in the slightest. It is adding two and two and getting 69. Nice. What’s not nice is the misleading method used here. Wait, Mindy has a disclaimer on her website that states she may mislead you. Wonderful.
By the way, this is a pretty tame example. You will find plenty of other cases of this on Reddit. Of course, Pelz isn’t constantly manipulating studies to create fictitious conclusions. Here she is just making things up as she goes along.
That video contains the ramblings of a chiropractor speaking on things they know nothing about. And here’s the deal: it is said with such confidence and conviction that you might think it is true if you didn’t know any better. But that’s also why (SPOILER ALERT), children believe in Santa Claus. Even though it doesn’t make sense as a child, it is presented in such a way that makes the myth believable.
More like Mindy please
There is nothing wrong with fasting or keto diets. And Mindy Pelz does have some useful tips. Unfortunately, it’s lost in a sea of misrepresented medical studies and make believe. And her entire authority is built upon a falsehood. Mindy Pelz is not a doctor and shouldn’t be passing herself off as such.
If her advice, sorry I forgot her disclaimer says she doesn’t provide advice. If what she was saying was truthful and worked, there would be no need for a phony title prefix. Just be honest with people.
And that is what this all boils down to. Mindy Pelz is guilty of making stuff up and genetic fallacies. How often does the chiropractor cite studies or research as a reason to believe what she claims despite her conclusion being wildly different from what was presented?
We shouldn’t live in a world where phonies try to make themselves out to be something they’re not. But we do. That’s why you should always do the homework when it comes to this generation of YouTube medical experts. Maybe what they are saying is worthwhile. And perhaps they just want to make some money off you.
Judging by those disclaimers buried beneath mountains of classes and other comically overpriced products on Mindy Pelz’s website, I think it is easy to see what side of the fence she sits on.
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