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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