Both sides of the picture?

I am not anti-supplements, I take magnesium, potassium and taurine myself because they dampen down uncomfortable ectopics post ablation, I take nattokinase and fish oil. I post this because I think we need to look at all ponts of view and examine all the available evidence.

[www.guardian.co.uk]

"Vitamin supplements are good for you, right? Wrong, says Paul Offit, they're a multibillion-pound con, and in higher doses can increase your risk of heart disease and cancer."

Thank you Gill. I just read the article. What shall we do??? The amount of information we get monthly from the news media about nutrition, supplements, medicine, etc. is truly mind boggling! I am glad I found this site, however; because the suggestions here are specifically for afib and based on personal success stories.

In all of the studies mentioned in the article (and all studies) it doesn't seem like too many people (relatively) participated and we don't know their individual health situation/history. Unless a drug or vitamin is tested on many people with the same similar health issues it doesn't make much sense.

I take Vitamin D, Magnesium, Potassium,CoQ10, Omega-3 daily. I was taking Omega-3 for many years. I absolutely know that since starting Vit D and CoQ10 I have much more energy and feel more mentally alert. I don't know what effect the magnesium and potassium are having on my afib yet because I only started 3 months ago.

I don't believe people should just read an article about a "miracle cure," whether supplement or medicine and start taking handfuls, but I am thankful for sites like this one and if everyone with any condition or disease have a site like this relating specifically to them it is a good idea to get educated by people who "have gone before" so to speak.

Louise

I am unable to read this link as my computer gives me a warning not to continue reading…. but I presume it comments on vitamins ‘proven’ to cause various adverse conditions…. and most frequently, it’s because a synthetic form or a useless form of a vitamin is at the core of the problem. When drug makers try to get into the supplement business, they typically rely on the cheapest form of the nutrient and often that’s not one that is bioavailable to the body or even a useful, active form. Those in the professional grade supplement field have the science to back up which forms work in synergy in the body and which do not. Inferior vitamin sources are worse than taking none at all. Before supplementing, it's always smart to do research from from well-known, reliable sources...not just opinion blogs or random articles. Just be sure you know what ‘quality’ supplements mean and which are synthetic and useless forms in the body.

This opinion piece could also just be another attempt to deter people from regaining health via supplements so that more people are locked in the illness-care quagmire where drugs and surgical procedures bring in more $$.

We know that supplements don't substitute for healthy lifestyle and 'clean' eating habits... fresh, mostly organic foods when possible to avoid the added burden of unwanted pesticides, chemicals, food additives, hormones and so on.

Often, what is not disclosed when discussing the benefits of supplements is a trend for unhealthy people with unhealthy lifestyle habits, taking handfuls of cheap supplements hoping they will offset the continual damage from bad choices of junk foods, sugar, alcohol, sodas, and environmental contaminants. It just doesn’t work that way.

However, as is substantiated by valid testing to evaluate cellular stores or optimal levels of nutrients required for various metabolic functions in overall tissue and organ support, very often we need to supplement that which tests deficient as it's often not possible to obtain those required levels from food sources alone. This requires diligent research, a nutritionally oriented practitioner who can order and help interpret test results and offer guidance to select the appropriate forms of supplements.

My personal history is testament to having tested positive over the years for various nutrient deficiencies. After targeted supplementing, retesting indicated normal or optimal levels with the original ailment complaints eliminated. It can take time, patience and dedication.

Most recently, by adding iodine supplements, I have been able to stop thyroid hormone (Armour) after many, many years. Better late than never!
Had I been clued in to the importance of total body iodine stores, long ago I could have avoided several unnecessary surgeries for fibrocystic breast disease, polycystic ovary disease (PCOS) and uterine fibroids. I did, however, avoid removing an enlarged submandibular gland ..thanks to SSKI but back then, no one picked up on iodine deficiency as related to the goiteroid tissue and thyroid nodules. Now, the tissue is shrinking and the nodules are disappearing. Even today, none of my past or current endocrinologists have ever been interested in learning my iodine levels. Amazing!
Iodine deficiency also factors into arrhythmia. More on that in another report.

Previously, I reversed adrenal burnout with supplements. I also reversed the symptoms of Chronic Fatigue/Fibromyalgia completely with a supplement protocol since none of the rheumatologists were able to offer relief with numerous drugs. (Failed to test my vitamin D level). At one point, I had Metabolic Syndrome with Insulin Resistance. Thanks to supplements and dietary choices, I no longer have either and my Hemoglobin AlC is normal.

Almost forgot to mention I tested positive for Leaky Gut Syndrome and Intestinal Dysbiosis and reversed those with supplements, gut repair nutrients and probiotics. I also had an odd generalized skin condition that no dermatologist could diagnose or treat successfully but which disappeared with abundant dosing of Omega 3 fish oil. Same was true with patches of inflammed, tender oral mucosa that dermatologists tried treating with at least 4 different drugs (unsuccessful)..the tender tongue lesions were so painful yet biopsy thankfully revealed no cancer. After methylation testing showed vitamin B deficiencies, and with subsequent high-dose B complex including weekly B12 injections, the mucosa cleared completely and never recurred. More spinning of wheels with the medical establishment...and supplements to the rescue. All this courtesy of my FM MD who studied nutrition before going on to med school.

Today, I am pain free and do not take Rx or OTC drugs of any kind. I do, however, rely on a core group of essential nutritional supportive supplements, thanks to spending the past 20+ years learning the fine points of functional nutrition for regenerative purposes. My focus continues to be on missing nutrients that facilitate the development of Atrial Fibrillation along with ongoing interest in antiaging or regenerative medicine protocols to maintain brain health (also another report). My health science eduction helps but I'm adding to more knowledge through countless hours spent with CE webinars and seminars on the current thinking of functional medicine today. You can see why I favor a nutritional approach for afib as well....even though I did have an ablation almost 10 years ago, I have proven to myself, as have others, that most often, nutritional supplements are generally most helpful.

As GM foods creep into the food supply whether we knowingly avoid or not, nutritional supplements and interventions that help prevent or forestall the genetic expression of compromised, malfunctioning genes will become even more critically important.

Jackie



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/09/2013 06:16PM by Jackie.

Jackie

I would not have posted if this had been an 'opinion piece'. He is discussing some real studies and I still think it is worth reading. You make some excellent points, especially about the quality of the supplements, which he doesn't consider.

If you want to read the article and the link doesn't work you can find it by searching for Paul Offit on guardian.co.uk. It was published last Friday. The Guardian is a very reputable newspaper in the UK.

Gill

These are interesting studies, and the article also appeared in yesterday's Post here in DC. I supplement with magnesium, potassium, and fish oil. And I'm not going to change that. What the study only aludes to is my real concern. I have always had very real concerns about the quality of any supplement, given the industry is not regulated. I don't have the money to send samples off to a lab to make sure I'm getting what I'm buying every time, so it's just a cross your fingers and hope.

In an interesting editorial in the British Medical Journal, it seems that the same conclusions are being reached about medications! Two quotes - "Unfortunately in the balance between benefits and risks, it is an uncomfortable truth that most drugs do not work in most patients." and “Regulators need to recognise that failure is the norm.”

[www.bmj.com]

Nancy,

May I suggest that you subscribe to ConsumerLab.com. They analyze many popular supplements to insure that what is in them is as stated. They also test for contaminants like heavy metal etc. It is a very informative site, well worth the money

Nancy - even if something is "regulated," that doesn't mean it's safe, effective or isn't harmful. Often because supplement companies are not typically behemoth organizations, they are more conscientious when it comes to raw material purity assay or GMP standards. Whereas, the larger the pharmaceutical, the more chance for more errors... as we note lately in the news about contamination etc. It's wise to buy from reputable supplement producers ...preferably who use US sources of raw materials... and not buy the cheapest version possible as often they are loaded with fillers.

With studies on nutrients, the problems that typically surface is the human variable itself. In lab studies for drug trials, when animals are used, they are all fed the same, drink a measured amount of the same water, dose properly at specific times and the results are not prone to the huge number of variables that show up in human trials....since they don't cage people and feed them the exact diet etc.

When analyzing critiques of supplement studies, the experts who have many years of hands-on experience in using a certain vitamin or nutrient protocol often write rebuttals pointing out the study flaws which tend to be numerous.... often a form of the nutrient is used that is synthetic and not able to be utilized in the body...so the report says: "found to be ineffective." Or in some cases, they'll use a form of the vitamin that is known to have adverse affects and then the report shows the vitamin in a negative light, whereas, the natural or bioavailable form, functions perfectly well. Unfortunately, the public isn't told that; doesn't know enough to even be suspect of the flaws and so the publicity is negative. I've read numerous study critiques and it's amazing how many poorly designed studies there are with multiple flaws so the results can't possibly be accurately reflective of the substance evaluated. Lots of money wasted; yet people take the study results as gospel and worse, the 'press' is quick to repor without knowing the facts.

Those professionals who practice nutritional healing are typically well-versed in how to determine which supplement is effective and which to avoid.... but not all are well-educated so one has to be very aware as there are doctors hawking vitamins who dont have a clue as to what's effective or worthless... they are just pushing product.

In past posts, we've listed the number of years that no deaths have been reported from supplements.

Jackie

I finally had a chance to read the article by Paul Offit. What a magnificent piece of propaganda for the pharmaceutical industry! This is an industry whose “rigorously tested and FDA-approved” products have killed and maimed thousands of people – remember thalidomide, Vioxx and Baycol??

This article and others like it attacking the supplement industry and praising the pharmaceutical industry are becoming more and more frequent and, apart from raising obvious concerns about conflicts of interest, also raises the question: “Are medical doctors qualified to do research in the field of supplements?” The answer, with a few exceptions, is clearly “NO”. Knowledge of anatomy, pharmacology and the ability to diagnose disease and write prescriptions are about as useful as astronomy and English literature when it comes to understanding the intricacies of vitamins and other supplements. Here a solid grounding in organic chemistry, biochemistry and physical chemistry and a good knowledge in the field of nutrition is needed, and current medical education simply does not provide that.

As Jackie so aptly points out, most of the studies on supplements carried out by mainstream medical researchers are poorly designed and executed and results are often improperly interpreted. It is also obvious that many studies are designed to produce negative or null results and thus support the myth that all supplements are useless or dangerous or both and that taking them just “produces expensive urine” or some other catchy phrase. The design of these “doomed to fail” studies may be intentional or simply due to ignorance and often involve the use of an ineffective dose or form of a vitamin or other supplement.

A typical example of this is the SELECT trial evaluating the use of selenium and vitamin E in the prevention of prostate cancer. During the design phase of this trial the choice of the type of vitamin E to use was discussed in some detail and it was decided to use synthetic alpha-tocopheryl acetate even though the Steering Committee agreed that natural alpha-tocopherol or gamma-tocopherol would likely be far more effective. Why put 32,000 men through a lengthy and costly trial knowing that one of the components of the intervention was inferior?(1)

It is, unfortunately, difficult and time-consuming to check the claims made by Dr. Offit in his tirade as he, most unscientifically, does not substantiate them with references to the studies he is quoting. However, I can comment on two studies involving patients at elevated risk for lung cancer. The study involving 29,000 male, Finnish smokers carried out by the National Cancer Institute and Finland’s National Public Health Institute (ATCB trial) and the study involving 18,000 patients with an elevated risk of lung cancer (CARET trial) carried out by researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle (2-4).

My comments on these two studies are summarized in my report “Beta-carotene: Friend or Foe” which you can access here: [www.yourhealthbase.com]

I would urge you to read this report just to get a feel for the intricacies involved in supplement research.

To summarize the findings of my report:

Supplementing with excessive amounts of synthetic beta-carotene in isolation is of no benefit and may be harmful, especially for smokers.

• All the trials used synthetic beta-carotene which is almost 100% trans-beta-carotene. Although trans-beta-carotene is well absorbed and readily converted to vitamin A, it does have a serious drawback. Intake of beta-carotene in isolation markedly lowers the concentration of lycopene in the blood; this effect is particularly significant in the case of trans-beta-carotene(5,6). Since lycopene is the most active fat-soluble antioxidant in human blood (even more active than vitamin E), a reduction of 25% or more in its concentration could have serious consequences. It is worth noting that at least one experiment has shown that supplements containing beta-carotene from natural sources do not cause a statistically significant drop in lycopene concentration(5).

• The average dietary intake of beta-carotene is somewhere between 2 and 5 milligram per day, yet one of the studies added 30 mg/day of synthetic supplement; this caused the beta-carotene level in the blood to rise by a factor of 10 or more (a 1000% increase). Little is known about the effect of such abnormally high levels but they could conceivably be toxic over the long term and almost certainly will cause serious imbalances in the concentration of other important carotenes(7,8).

• Beta-carotene shows its greatest activity as an antioxidant at low partial pressures (tension) of oxygen such as found in blood vessels and most inner organs of the body(9,10). It is not effective at higher oxygen tensions such as would be found in the lungs. Some researchers believe that beta-carotene acts as a pro-oxidant at higher oxygen tensions(8,9). This effect is especially strong at high beta-carotene concentrations(9). Considering that beta-carotene concentrations in several of the studies were ten times the normal level it is conceivable that the pro-oxidant effect could have been magnified to such an extent that it contributed significantly to the initiation of lung cancer.

It is indeed unfortunate that the synthetic, most ineffective versions of vitamin E and beta-carotene were picked for the trials discussed above. Had natural gamma-tocopherol and natural beta-carotene been evaluated instead the results might have been quite different, especially in light of recent findings that high blood levels of gamma-tocopherol are associated with a substantially reduced risk of prostate cancer (11). Unfortunately, the conclusion that vitamin E and beta-carotene are useless in cancer prevention is by now so firmly entrenched in medical lore that it is unlikely that the SELECT, ATCB, and CARET trials will ever be repeated using effective forms of vitamin E and beta-carotene.

Not surprisingly, Dr. Offit completely fails to mention any of the numerous studies that have found vitamins to be beneficial such as:

The study carried out by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention involving 450,000 men and 610,000 women who were followed from 1982 to 1989. This study concluded that participants who supplemented with multivitamins and antioxidants (vitamins A, C or E) had a 15% lower risk of dying from heart disease or cancer than did participants who took only multivitamins or no vitamins at all(12).

The 2004 study carried out by a group of distinguished medical researchers from 4 US universities which concluded that supplementation with vitamins C and E reduces the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by 78% (13).

The Harvard Medical School study that found that women with a daily intake of vitamin C between 240 and 360 mg/day (from diet and supplements) have a 66% lower risk of developing cataracts than do women with an intake of less than 140 mg/day(14).

Evidence that vitamin E can prevent and reverse heart disease is now incontrovertible. In 1992 researchers at the University of Texas reported that vitamin E protects against atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) by preventing oxidation of the low-density lipoprotein fraction of blood (15). In 1993 researchers at the Harvard Medical School released a study showing that vitamin E supplementation prevents heart disease. Nurses who took more than 100 IU/day of vitamin E for more than two years reduced their risk of heart disease by 41%. A related study involving almost 40,000 male health professionals showed that men who supplemented with between 100 and 250 IU/day reduced their risk of heart disease by 37%. Vitamin E is also highly beneficial in the treatment of intermittent claudication and recent research has confirmed its ability to prevent and, in some cases, reverse the progression of atherosclerosis(16-20).

Vitamin E is also highly effective in warding off a heart attack. Researchers at Cambridge University in England reported in 1996 that patients who had been diagnosed with coronary atherosclerosis could lower their risk of having a heart attack by 77% per cent by supplementing with 400 IU or 800 IU/day of natural source vitamin E(21). Researchers at the Toyama Medical University in Japan have reported that patients with unstable angina can reduce their risk of angina attacks by a factor of six by supplementing with vitamin E (300 mg/day of alpha-tocopherol acetate)(22). Supplementation with vitamin E has also been found useful in preventing complications after heart surgery and helps slow the restenosis (reblockage) of arteries subjected to angioplasty(18,19,23). More recently, researchers at the Harvard Medical School reported that supplementing with a combination of vitamin E and vitamin C reduced stroke risk in women by 31% (24).

And the list goes on [www.yourhealthbase.com]

So who is this Dr. Offit anyway? He is a pediatrician who strongly pushes childhood vaccines as a paid consultant to Merck, a major manufacturer of such vaccines. Does this qualify him for writing a book discussing the merit or lack thereof of vitamins and other supplements? You be the judge! In any case, Dr. Offit would seem to be a very controversial individual who is not a stranger to making unsubstantiated claims. [www.naturalnews.com] and [www.ocregister.com]


REFERENCES

1. Lippman, SM, et al. Designing the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial (SELECT). Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Vol. 97, January 19, 2005, pp.94-102.
2. Albanes, D, et al. Effects of alpha-tocopherol and beta-carotene supplements on cancer incidence in the Alpha-Tocopherol Beta-Carotene Cancer Prevention Study. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1995 Dec;62 (6 Suppl): 1427S-1430S.
3. Albanes, D, et al. Alpha-Tocopherol and beta-carotene supplements and lung cancer incidence in the alpha-tocopherol, beta-carotene cancer prevention study: effects of base-line characteristics and study compliance. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 1996 Nov6:88(21); 1560-70.
4. Omenn, Gilbert S., et al. Effects of a combination of beta carotene and vitamin A on lung cancer and cardiovascular disease. The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 334, May 2, 1996, pp. 1150-55.
5. Gaziano, J. Michael, et al. Discrimination in absorption or transport of beta- carotene isomers after oral supplementation with either all-trans- or 9-cis-beta-carotene. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 61, 1995, pp. 1248-52
6. Micozzi, Marc S., et al. Plasma carotenoid response to chronic intake of selected foods and beta-carotene supplements in men. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 55, No. 6, June 1992, pp. 1120-25.
7. Omenn, Gilbert S., et al. Effects of a combination of beta carotene and vitamin A on lung cancer and cardiovascular disease. The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 334, May 2, 1996, pp. 1150-55.
8. Woodall, Alan A., et al. Caution with beta-carotene supplements. The Lancet, Vol. 347, April 6, 1996, pp. 967-68.
9. Burton, G.W. and Ingold, K.U. Beta-carotene: an unusual type of lipid antioxidant. Science, Vol. 224, May 11, 1984, pp. 569-73.
10. Frei, Balz. Reactive oxygen species and antioxidant vitamins: mechanisms of action. American Journal of Medicine, Vol. 97 (suppl 3A), September 26, 1994, pp. 5S-13S.
11. Huang, Han Yao, Prospective study of antioxidantmicronutrients in the blood and the risk of developing prostate cancer. American Journal of Epidemiology, Vol. 157, February 15, 2003, pp.335-44.
12. Watkins, Margaret L., et al. Multivitamin use and mortality in a large prospective study. American Journal of Epidemiology, Vol. 152, July 15, 2000, pp. 149-62.
13. Zandi, PP, et al. Reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease in users of antioxidant supplements. Archives of Neurology , Vol. 61, January 2004, pp.82-88.
14. Jacques, Paul F., et al. Long-term nutrient intake and early age-related nuclear lens opacities. Archives of Opthalmology, Vol. 119, July 2001, pp.1009-19.
15. Jialal, Ishwarlal and Grundy, Scott M. Effect of dietary supplementation with alpha- tocopherol on the oxidative modification of low-density lipoprotein. Journal of Lipid Research, Vol. 33, June 1992, pp. 899-906
16. Azen, Stanley P., et al. Effect of supplementary antioxidant vitamin intake on carotid arterial wall intima-media thickness in a controlled clinical trial of cholesterol lowering. Circulation, Vol. 94, No. 10, November 15, 1996, pp. 2369-72.
17. Stampfer, Meir J., et al. Vitamin E consumption and the risk of coronary disease in women and men. New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 328, No. 20, May 20, 1993, pp. 1444-56.
18. Stampfer, Meir J. and Rimm, Eric B. Epidemiologic evidence for vitamin E in prevention of cardiovascular disease. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 62, December 1995, pp. 1365S-69S.
19. Hodis, Howard N., et al. Serial coronary angiographic evidence that antioxidant vitamin intake reduces progression of coronary artery atherosclerosis. Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 273, No. 23, June 21, 1995, pp. 1849-54.
20. Paolisso, Giuseppe, et al. Chronic intake of pharmacological doses of vitamin E might be useful in the therapy of elderly patients with coronary heart disease. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 61, 1995, pp. 848-5216.
21. Stephens, Nigel G., et al. Randomised controlled trial of vitamin E in patients with coronary disease: Cambridge Heart Antioxidant Study (CHAOS). The Lancet, Vol. 347, March 23, 1996, pp. 781-86.
22. Miwa, Kunihisa, et al. Vitamin E deficiency in variant angina. Circulation, Vol. 94, No. 1, July 1, 1996, pp. 14-18.
23. Meydani, Mohsen. Vitamin E. The Lancet, Vol. 345, January 21, 1995, pp. 170-75.
24. Cook, NR. Et al. A randomized trial of vitamins C and E and beta carotene in the secondary prevention of cardiovascular events in women. Archives of Internal Medicine, Vol. 167, August 13/27, 2007, pp. 1610-18.

Hans



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/13/2013 08:21PM by Hans Larsen.

Thank you, Hans, for that enlightening post. It makes me very sad. I realised long ago that statistics in the world of politics can be easily manipulated to support any point of view, but hadn't realised that was true of medical research as well.

I have just finished reading Dan Walters's book 'Collateral Damage' and was astonished when I saw the list of declared funding received by the doctors who published supposedly independent research papers. Is this worldwide I wonder?

Gill

Thank you Hans!

You saved me a lot of extra writing on this one after returning from San Diego and seeing this thread.

Paul Offit is an utterly discredited hack for Big Pharma and its multi billion dollar dedicated war on nutritional supplements.
At the medical conference I was working at including some of the top researchers in the field of functional medicine. , they completely shreaded and exposed Offits duplicitous efforts in carefully cherry picking only those study's designed for failure from the outset, as you so clearly noted above, to spin his yarn through the venues of the heavily lobbied lay press. Many of whose medical or 'scientific' writers are firmly in the back pocket of Big Pharma intensive lobby efforts to propagandize the public with such seemingly logical sounding 'research' that is flawed to the core from the outset.

Its l almost funny how often these kind of dire warning pieces about vitamins that come out in carefully coordinated waves every so often repeat the same narrow focus on the few supplements every person in the supplement industry knows full well are ineffectual and/or potentially harmful in the specific form and dosage used in these mostly poorly designed studies intended from the outset to show little to no benefit for the supplement in question.

And Gill, I appreciate how easy it is to just accept and assume these findings are accurate on face value due to it being publish in the main news outlets, when in most cases these kind of studies reveal one of two things to those with a deeper understanding of nutrients and how they work in synergy with each other ... That either the people who designed, conducted these studies and then drew these conclusions from these more obviously biased from the outset evaluations, either don't have a clue about how these nutrients work, or they have deliberated structured the study to underestimate the actual bioactive form of the nutrients in question potential value ... these people aren't stupid and know exactly what they are doing.

These are the same folks who can so cleverly design clinical trials of heavy weight new drugs schedule to bring in many billions of dollars over the patent period of said drug, and carefully 'edit' the structure of the trial and studies such to only highlight and emphasize .. often over-emphasize ... the benefits, while downplaying and in many cases actuall concealing the downsides and serious side effects of these drugs.

You only have to read through the laundry list of formerly top tier drugs that were billed as giant breakthrough miracle agents in the beginning from the outcomes of large early clinical trials which had every doc in the western world writing scripts for them as fast as they could to a hungry public all pumped up by the same kind of glowing puff pieces in the NY Time, UK Guardian and other mainstay mouth pieces for Big Pharma ... only to then have the real side effects blow up in every ones faces .... Vioxx and Celebrex comes to mind at the moment, Statins as well overall, Fosamax and so many others once they had been in the wild for a few years and that rosey glow from supposedly state of the art clinical trials wears off in the face of hard core reality.

These same people uses the same tactics to skew the real potential of a well thought out combination of good dietary practice augmented by thoughtfully considered supplement protocols to better support good health to begin with, before you ever need to resort to powerful drugs in an urgent manner after the horse has left the barn.

I'm all in favor of well-developed drugs when appropriate and support good drug research and development, but also fully support and embrace a solid nutritional repletion program to help mitigate the need for those drugs as much as is possible as well. That is true integrative health care. Taking the best of both worlds and not trying to dismiss or demonize one side while elevating the other to the only game in town.

Unfortunately, Big Pharma with select medical writers and reporters in their hip pockets want to press their agenda to sway the mass lay public audience, including doctors who mostly forgot the quick review on bio and organic chemistry and core physiology they were exposed to all too briefly in medical school and just as quickly wanted to forget as soon as they could after getting their MD license. To all of us, most doctors as well, this all seems reasonable and defensible .. After all, all they have ever heard from the NY Times and UK Guardian, which are two of the biggest mouthpeices and most devoted zealots of Big Pharma propaganda, is them telling us all constantly that supplements are worthless.

"Just eat three squares a day" (of our disasterous upside down) official food pyramid and all will be well", the claim over and over. Of course, you will need lots of follow up medical care the rest of your life when you do follow that advice and ignore learning how to really eat well and replace other key biochemicals that are missing. Alas, that is their real Big Pharma agenda. To get every person in the world .. at least in the modern countries ... on at least 5 drugs for life by the time they turn 55 to 60 years old.

Make no mistake, this is a big time war waged by Big Pharma and the AMA and the European medical agency counterpart's perspective against nutritional approaches to health care. There have been thousands of well conducted study's done around the world on nutrients and herbs , though most of them not as large as a typical drug financed trial, but you almost never hear of these more positive outcomes publicized in the major national press and news organizations who are so thoroughly beholding and hoodwinked to and by the drug company lobbyists and the influence of the AMA.

Its a real shame as there doesn't have to be this either/or split. Drugs have their valuable role in helping address urgent conditions once the horse has left the barn, but for the most part are no where near as effective as a good diet and lifestyle combined with adequate high quality supplements for keeping the horse in the barn to begin with. Its a battle over power, turf and huge amounts of money, and the supplement world is vastly under gunned in all three areas.

Keep this and what Hans and Jackie wrote above in mind next time you read anything having to do with nutrients or supplements in the NY Times and UK Guardian, in particular and take it all with a huge grain of salt. Especially when you see these "vitamins don't work' articles featured as a prominent article in these publications as opposed to a small article buried in the back page which us where you will only find mention of any of the huge numbers of positive results on select natural biochemical, if they publish anything at all about those. They have an agenda here along with the will and means to make it the only 'news' the vast majority ever hears.

Shannon



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/14/2013 02:39PM by Shannon.

Shannon - thanks for adding your additional comments to Hans' post. I recently heard a webinar wherein the speaker brought up similar points regarding the attempt to discredit the value, function and safety of nutritional supplements. He commented that in drug trials, they are intentionally designed to show the best possible performance or benefit of the drug being evaluated...and he then said, "you can rest assured that if any results are negative, they will never see the light of day. The trials are meant for one intention and that's to get that drug to market and make money for Big Pharma."

Jackie

Hi Gill,

Here's a new rebuttal article to the NY Time and UK Guardian propaganda piece by Dr Offit that echos what Hans, Jackie and I said above.

Rebutal to Paul Offit's biased attack on supplements

Take care,
Shannon