This is a clarification of my original post on 'The Politics of
Vitamin Research.'
Part I: The Politics of Vitamin Research
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Having gotten a few replies worth replying to, I am now in a position
to restate my original whining with 'greater specificity' and
'precision' in several separate short posts. 🙂
I run a Yahoo Mailing List. Over the last year and a half I have
covered some 700 health new stories that are mostly from 'MEDLINEplus'
and 'Reuters Health.' I didn't cover all of their news stories, only
the ones that are remotely related to 'Prevention & Healthy
Lifestyles,' ie, Preventive Health Services.
Each of my posts have further been classified into 8 different
categories: Diet, Supplements, Exercise, Attitude, Resilience,
Lifestyle, Medicine, and Alternative Medicine. So, of these 700 news
stories over 100 posts were dedicated to the subject of 'Vitamins and
other Nutritional Supplements.'
And, from my coverage of 'Vitamins and other Nutritional Supplements'
in the news coverage of 'MEDLINEplus' and 'Reuters Health' over the
last year and a half I have noticed an alarming trend (ie, the
'troubling studies'😉 which I will expand upon later in my other posts.
But, before continuing I must to present some other background
information.
I think that most informed persons would agree that you could support
virtually any position on the use of 'Vitamins and other Nutritional
Supplements' from the abstracts and/or Full Texts of health research
published since 1966 that is accessible on the internet, in general,
and particularly in Medline.
I certainly was able to find citations to specific research studies
that supported all of my positions on the use of 'Vitamins and other
Nutritional Supplements' that have been published on my web site since
1999.
Furthermore, most of the new stories from 'MEDLINEplus' and 'Reuters
Health' during the last year and a half have tended to support the use
of 'Vitamins and other Nutritional Supplements.'
The problem is that there are a handful of studies on antioxidant
supplement usage that 'appear' troubling to me (ie, the 'troubling
studies'😉. In short, while most of the news coverage was favorable on
the usage of 'Vitamins and other Nutritional Supplements' these
'troubling studies' inexplicitly presented a very negative picture. 🙁
Furthermore, I must confess that for a while the negative news
coverage of these 'troubling studies' had me going for a while. I was
actually starting to buy into their negative propaganda. 🙁
At any rate, I was somehow convinced that many recent research studies
had shown antioxidants to be effective for some men, but not for women
in general. And, that the men who have been most protected are those
who smoke and otherwise engage in other unhealthy lifestyles. And,
this was in regards to protection from 'a large group of diseases that
the general public associates with heart disease, atherosclerosis,
CAD, and CVD.' 🙁
And, I was pretty well convinced from these 'troubling studies' that
taking antioxidant supplements only created expensive urine, since
their effectiveness for preventing 'a large group of diseases that the
general public associates with heart disease, atherosclerosis, CAD,
and CVD' was seriously put into question by these five (5) specific
'troubling' research studies. 🙁
Then amazingly another recent research studied published in the 'J Am
Coll Cardiol.' found that after taking into account the women's age,
whether they smoked, and other factors, that the risk of heart disease
dropped as vitamin C supplement intake increased. Women who used
vitamin C pills were actually 28% less likely to develop heart disease
than women who didn't according to this favorable study. 🙁
Thus, I was awaken from my stupor. 🙂
Of the troubling research, two were published in The Lancet, and one
in JAMA, Ann Intern Med., and in Circulation. These four health
research journals carry a lot of prestige and many people incorrectly
assume that these journals are speaking directly for the medical
establishment. 🙁
Further, I found that the study in JAMA was particularly troubling
because it didn't bother to point out that another study published in
JAMA in the year 1997 appears to directly contradict the findings of
this recent study. 🙁
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My message will be continued in a couple of other posts.
I will post one of these posts a day, as time permits. 🙂
--
John Gohde,
Achieving good Nutrition is an Art, NOT a Science!
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