This Newsletter is to be informative and not attacking any one profession or anyone involved. My purpose is to expose the truth behind some recent media hype and how the majority of what Americans hear on the news is tainted and flawed when it comes to healthcare. There are two main articles that have received a lot of media recently. They are both great examples of how flawed a study can be and still be presented to the public and subsequently viewed as truth.
Last year the Cochrane Library, a widely-read source of information on conventional health matters, launched an attack on vitamins A, C, E, selenium and beta-carotene, claiming that these vital nutrients were linked with a higher risk of mortality (i.e.” they’ll kill you!"), and immediately scientists and the media began telling consumers to stop taking vitamins altogether. With all the benefits of antioxidants already well known, how did the Cochrane Library arrive at such a conclusion?
The researchers reviewed 452 studies on these vitamins, and they threw out the 405 studies where nobody died! That left just 47 studies where patients died from various causes. From this biased selection of studies, these researchers concluded that antioxidants increase mortality.
Research done in this manner is flawed and leads to misinformation and poor representation of the truth, let me rephrase what happened. These scientists claimed to be studying the effects of vitamins on mortality. They conducted a meta-analysis by reviewing established studies. But instead of conducting unbiased review of all the studies, they decided to eliminate all studies in which vitamins prevented death and kept people alive! They did this by "excluding all studies in which no participants died." Left to review were only the studies in which people died from various causes.
They took Patients who were about to die, had them on antioxidants, and then tallied the inevitable death toll. Then it was announced ‘Antioxidant Vitamins Increase Mortality!' If I were to do a study like this in school and have the same conclusion I promise I would have failed that class, for not having a valid scientific approach. I am unsure how Cochrane Library and the Archives of Internal Medicine allowed this to be done. This is bad science and misleading reporting.
Unfortunately that's the world in which we live, and that is why one of my goals as a physician is to provide the truth about wellness when it is misrepresented. Without further delay let’s get into the latest piece of poor science that has many of my patients asking questions.
The February 9, 2009 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine reported that multivitamin use did not protect the 161,808 postmenopausal women from common forms of cancer, heart attacks, or strokes. Thus, the media plastered everywhere that taking multivitamins are “worthless.”
In the study, researchers simply asked the participating women a series of different questions, one of which was whether they took a multivitamin at least once a week or not. For those that were taking multivitamin, no additional information was asked for, such as what type and brand of multivitamin, how much or how often, why they were taking them, etc.
It was suggested by the authors, that people take multivitamins specifically to reduce risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease, and it was assumed that all multivitamins are created equal and that everyone took adequate amounts with regularity. However, there is a wide range of quality in supplement manufacturing, ranging from "pharmaceutical grade" (Metagenics) to simply awful.
There are also some fundamental problems with these assumptions and we must ask these clarifying questions:
• Do people really take multivitamins specifically to ward off cancer and heart disease?
• Is that the purpose of a multivitamin? Or is a multivitamin designed to prevent nutrient deficiency diseases?
• Are cancer, cardiovascular disease, and postmenopausal fracture risks exclusively nutrient deficiency diseases, or are there other factors that play into these diseases such as stress, SAD diet (Standard American Diet), lack of exercise, toxin exposure, etc?
Additionally there are a few stark contradictions in the article that were not reported.
From the article:
"...No one denies that an adequate intake of vitamins is essential; however, vitamins can and should be obtained from eating enough healthy foods rather than from swallowing vitamin supplements..."
So then, should we assume that everyone knows what “eat better” means and they do it? What does “eat better” mean in this day and age of nutrient-depleted, heavily processed and refined foods? What does “eat better” look like when even the “fresh” produce at your local grocery store is so nutrient-depleted from modern farming methods that there is scarcely any nutrient value left at all? In fact to get the same amount nutrients from one salad in 1940’s, would be the equivalent of 20+ salads in today’s market place.
The truth is, according to a Surgeon General report, 7 out of 10 leading causes of death in this country are related to poor nutrition. Most Americans are uneducated about diet and nutrition, and most are deficient in several important nutrients than can be resolved with supplements. Nutrient deficiencies is so bad, that most Americans are not obtaining the RDA’ recommendations. In fact scurvy – a vitamin C deficiency disease, is still present in developed countries because of the prevalence of widespread nutrient deficiencies. J Gen Intern Med. 2008 Aug;23(8):1281-4. Velandia et al.
Also here is another misleading part of the article that was not reported.
"...All this is not to say that specific vitamins supplements are never desirable. Vitamins can be valuable in certain situations. Folic acid supplements in women who are pregnant or plan to become pregnant can help to prevent serious neural-tube defects that affect the baby's brain and spine..."
Doesn’t the article say that supplements are worthless? So which is it?
Since the most important time for folic acid sufficiency is prior to conception, would it not be better to take a daily multivitamin that contains sufficient Folic Acid instead of finding out one is pregnant and then suggesting a prenatal?
It also states:
"...Supplements of vitamins C and E, beta-carotene, zinc, and copper may slow the progression of vision loss in people with early macular degeneration..."
Sounds like a case for a multivitamin to me.
So here are three good examples of a need for a multivitamin other than suggesting it is being taken specifically to reduce cancer and heart disease risk.
Most Western Diets are Nutritionally-Flawed
It can no longer be assumed that people can get all the nutrients they need just by eating better. The toxic load on the human race due to chronic stress and environmental toxicity is higher than it has ever been in human history, and that places a demand for life-giving nutrients to circumvent these challenges.
Think of the human body as an automobile, and the nutrients we take in as the fuel. If a heavier demand in placed upon the automobile by placing a big load in it and driving it uphill against the wind for a long distance, what will happen? The engine works harder and requires much more fuel. Similarly, when heavy demands are placed upon the body by stress and toxicity, the body requires more fuel in the form of vitamins and minerals in order to function optimally. If it does not get those vitamins and minerals, eventually systems begin to break down.
The prevalence of chronic disease such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, arthritis, etc. is ravaging the American landscape, and conventional medicine has not been able to slow the progression of it with medications. It states in this same article that, "Nutritional efforts should remain a principal focus of chronic disease prevention…” We know that chronic diseases is not caused by a Drug deficiency. So why do we continue to pump Americans full of drugs for chronic conditions, and try to discredit something that is health promoting (multivitamin) with poor science and misleading media hype?
The fact is, there are more well-designed studies showing the benefits of taking multivitamins than I have room to list here but here is one. The Journal of the American Medical Association – perhaps the most prestigious of all the medical journals – suggested in 2003 “that all Americans should be taking a multivitamin.”
Yours in Optimal Health,
Dr. Ryan E. Bentley and Dr. Travis R. Hulbert
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