vitamin D supplementation was not associated with reduced major adverse cardiovascular events

It’s getting harder and harder to find credible data out there for any supplements, I just wish they did the same due diligence with pharma industry.


[jamanetwork.com]

Huh? Prescription pharmaceuticals are subject to far, FAR more scrutiny than supplements.

I don't see the dose of Vitamin D listed, or even if it was Vitamin D3 (critically important). Usually, in these biased studies, the dose is pitifully low, too low to make any difference.

Carey, initial scrutiny yes, but once FDA approved pharma drugs aren't scrutinized imo, unless there are deaths and thousands of serious side effects little is done, same with ongoing research data of active users. Yet, every month I see new studies negating benefits of supplements, which by the way is usually low dosed to have any reported benefits in the first place. Certain industry is hell bent on convincing people that pharma is the only answer to what ails you. Im not saying that supplements can't be dangerous, they can but usually the side effects are easily reversible unlike pharma. My mom almost died from vioxx, prescribed for Arthritis and this is after she complained to doctors and I insisted that it was a safe and an FDA controlled drug. Or how about Baycol or Bextra? All I'm saying is that its hard to make sense of any of these studies given the amount of irrelevant data and biases.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/24/2019 04:40PM by johnnyS.

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johnnyS
Carey, initial scrutiny yes, but once FDA approved pharma drugs aren't scrutinized imo, unless there are deaths and thousands of serious side effects little is done, same with ongoing research data of active users.

That's just not true. Take anticoagulants, for example. There have been dozens and dozens of studies done on warfarin (perhaps hundreds), and many also with the newer NOACs. There are far more studies conducted on prescription drugs after FDA approval than supplements. I mean, it's not even close. What doesn't happen is the press doesn't report studies on prescription drugs because they're not interesting to the public.

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Carey
That's just not true. Take anticoagulants, for example. There have been dozens and dozens of studies done on warfarin (perhaps hundreds), and many also with the newer NOACs. There are far more studies conducted on prescription drugs after FDA approval than supplements. I mean, it's not even close. What doesn't happen is the press doesn't report studies on prescription drugs because they're not interesting to the public.

Actually you missed my point, I was simply stating that the pharma industry is trying so hard to discredit any potential benefits supplements may have. Studies that relate to supplements cost nothing and demand very little involvement from participant groups or anyone, which is what this study is, a meta-analysis no access to any raw data, only previous conclusions based on keystroke search. I was involved in many studies back in my postgraduate degree and I know the complexity involved, and to compare pharma study to supplement industry is ridiculous. With Pharma the keyword is efficacy. How effective is the prescription drug at treating someone. Why would these doctors go out of their way and waste their time to disprove benefits of vitamin D? I don’t know how you can say there are far more studies on prescription drugs dealing with efficacy because I know that not to be the case in general, unless, and this is important a specific prescription drug is having unintended consequences like warfarin which prompts the general public to start questioning their doctors, hence the pharma studies.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2019 06:16AM by johnnyS.

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johnnyS
Actually you missed my point, I was simply stating that the pharma industry is trying so hard to discredit any potential benefits supplements may have.

Actually, I don't think the pharma industry pays much attention to supplements, and they certainly don't spend big money discrediting them. Take a look at the authors of the study you cited in your post. They're all university scientists. There's no affiliation with pharma companies and no funding from them. In fact, I've never seen a study on supplements that was funded by a pharma company.

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Carey

Actually, I don't think the pharma industry pays much attention to supplements, and they certainly don't spend big money discrediting them. Take a look at the authors of the study you cited in your post. They're all university scientists. There's no affiliation with pharma companies and no funding from them. In fact, I've never seen a study on supplements that was funded by a pharma company.

Okay let’s stay on Vitamin D, why did they even bother doing the study, and why would they have an interest in it? After all pharma is ten times bigger, or is it because they are afraid of losing profits and dominance in the market? For decades they have been buying credibility through alliances with academia. Take a look at the article below and see how it’s done. I’d love to hear your opinion.

Big Pharma also gives millions for research to medical schools. As a result, professors and students devote much of their time and effort to researching and promoting pharmaceutical drugs.

Since the best and primary source of vitamin D is from the sun, most people in North America are vitamin D deficient, even during the summer months when we are told to block the sun’s rays due to the fear of skin cancer.

When a natural substance like vitamin D can cure and prevent so many diseases, usually in ways far superior to FDA-approved drugs and vaccines, it should come as no surprise that Big Pharma will pull out all the stops to discredit the science behind these natural substances, as they affect their profits from pharmaceutical products.

This is routinely done by funding their own biased studies, and then attacking medical doctors and scientists who promote natural cures.


[healthimpactnews.com]

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johnnyS
Okay let’s stay on Vitamin D, why did they even bother doing the study, and why would they have an interest in it? After all pharma is ten times bigger, or is it because they are afraid of losing profits and dominance in the market?

The authors of that study are medical school professors. That's what doctors in an academic setting DO. They're required to do research and they're required to publish. That's how they advance in their field. Many of them are quite passionate about it.

I don't know what profits and market dominance you're talking about. Those guys are all on salary at universities and don't have markets to dominate or profits to gain. If you want to believe scientists are so utterly corrupt that's your choice, but I think you're wrong and I think you're belittling honest people. In fact, this is exactly the narrative the supplements industry pushes and I think it's far more dishonest than anything the pharma industry does.

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Carey
The authors of that study are medical school professors. That's what doctors in an academic setting DO. They're required to do research and they're required to publish. That's how they advance in their field. Many of them are quite passionate about it.

I don't know what profits and market dominance you're talking about. Those guys are all on salary at universities and don't have markets to dominate or profits to gain. If you want to believe scientists are so utterly corrupt that's your choice, but I think you're wrong and I think you're belittling honest people. In fact, this is exactly the narrative the supplements industry pushes and I think it's far more dishonest than anything the pharma industry does.

I'm in the field so I know what i'm talking about when it comes to pharma buying credibility through alliances with academia, that's the way it always been done. No one is going to fund your study unless it aligns with someone's interests, and then the same people get rewarded with kickbacks and high paying jobs within the industry. In this case, it seems the doctors are promoting a certain agenda, which ultimately hurts the general population that relies on facts and science. For more than two decades doctors have been telling people to stay out of sun when the opposite is in fact true, and now according to the same agenda, Vitamin D supplements are also useless. It's not in my character to belittle anyone, just questioning their rationale.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2019 03:44PM by johnnyS.

There are many drugs on the market that cause lots of problems, for instance Aminodarone is a terrible drug which causes many health problems which Doctors push on us. Lasix is a common drug which can deplete the body of minerals especially potassium, low Pot. can be lethal. Probably most drugs have bad side effects, your AC drugs have side effects. Most docs don't tell you about all the side effects these drugs can cause. If I can take something that could help without all of the side effects drugs cause, then I will do it. We don't know how many people die because of the drugs they take and the interactions that may occur. The death certificate will only say the heart stopped or whatever the person was being treated for was the cause.

The FDA isn't infallible:

Aspartame's regulatory history, its having been forced through the FDA by Donald Rumsfeld, when he was CEO of G.D.Searle, back in 1981; as part of the Reagan Transition Team, he was able to arrange the appointment of Arthur Hull Hayes as FDA Commissioner, who then immediately overturned 15 years of prior FDA objections, based on obvious neurotoxicity, and issued an order approving aspartame. Aspartame is bad.

Liz

This could go on forever. Both are in it for profit and are guilty of mis-promotion. Both have a place, the trick is knowing when they are appropriate.
Neither is a substitute for optimum diet and exercise life style.

Joe::

You are right on.

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johnnyS
I'm in the field so I know what i'm talking about when it comes to pharma buying credibility through alliances with academia, that's the way it always been done. No one is going to fund your study unless it aligns with someone's interests, and then the same people get rewarded with kickbacks and high paying jobs within the industry. In this case, it seems the doctors are promoting a certain agenda, which ultimately hurts the general population that relies on facts and science. For more than two decades doctors have been telling people to stay out of sun when the opposite is in fact true, and now according to the same agenda, Vitamin D supplements are also useless. It's not in my character to belittle anyone, just questioning their rationale.

I work in the field too and have for over 20 years. Although I'm not going to tell you pharmaceutical companies don't exert influence with their money, the degree of that influence is greatly exaggerated. For example, take this study. Did some pharma company somehow pay these highly respected doctors to falsify evidence and put their entire careers in jeopardy in order to paint vitamin D in a negative light? After all, this was a meta analysis so the only way to bend the results without it being obvious would be outright falsification of data. And why would some company do this? How does making vitamin D look like a poor choice do them any benefit? I can't think of a single drug that "competes" with vitamin D supplements.

I think it takes a lot of conspiracy theory thinking to arrive at the conclusion that Big Pharma is funding anti-supplement research. The reality is supplements have little or no effect on the pharmaceutical industry and its profits. So they literally just don't care about supplements and they're not about to go around spending money on putting down supplements and risking the legal and PR backlash that would result if they got caught.

The reality is much simpler. These scientists did some legitimate research and published their results. The results seem to suggest that oral supplementation doesn't have much long-term cardiovascular benefit. Um, okay, so what? We know it has other benefits, so who cares? I take D supplements for the simple reason that I live in a northern latitude and getting it from the sun simply isn't practical in northern latitudes. And for those who live in more southernly climates, the sun exposure needed to get enough vitamin D also presents a risk of skin cancer, so it's not such a simple tradeoff. Nothing in science ever is.