A Closer Look at (Mostly Useless) Supplements

By Ruth Kava — February 28, 2018 @ American Council on Science and Health

Anyone who regularly reads ACSH's writings knows that we look askance at the practice of many Americans to gulp down vitamin and/or mineral supplements (VMS), in the belief that even if one isn't deficient they will provide some sort of insurance against dietary deficiencies, or even better that they can protect against diseases. Recently a couple of Harvard doctors, Dr. JoAnn E. Manson and Dr. Shari S. Bassuk, attempted to educate physicians about what supplements are useful (or harmful) when. Their editorial was published in JAMA. Although their message is directed towards other clinicians, it's worth a look for all of us.
 

First, they point out that most randomized trials of VMS simply do not provide any evidence that they protect against chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes or against cancer in generally healthy people who are not experiencing nutritional deficiencies. And second, they note that supplementation in excess of the RDAs (e.g. of folic acid or beta-carotene) can in fact have harmful consequences.

Further, they state

Micronutrients in food are typically better absorbed by the body and are associated with fewer potential adverse effects. A healthful diet provides an array of nutritionally important substances in biologically optimal ratios as opposed to isolated compounds in highly concentrated form. Indeed, research shows that positive health outcomes are more strongly related to dietary patterns and specific food types than to individual micronutrient or nutrient intakes

They're not inveighing against all supplementation. Instead they point out the situations in which additional nutrients provide a benefit. These include:

• folic acid and prenatal vitamins for pregnant women
• vitamin D until weaning and iron from 4-6 months of age for breastfed babies
• vitamin B_12, vitamin D and calcium might be of benefit for middle-aged and older adults
• vitamins A,E,D,and K, B vitamins, iron, zinc, copper, magnesium for patients undergoing some types of bariatric surgery
• vitamin B₁₂ for patients with pernicious anemia
• iron, B vitamins, vitamin D, zinc, magnesium for those with inflammatory bowel disease or celiac disease
• vitamin D, calcium, magnesium for bone health issues such as osteoporosis
• vitamin B₁₂, calcium, magnesium people using proton pump inhibitors or long-term 
• vitamin B₁₂ for those using metformin long-term
• VMS, vitamin B₁₂ calcium, vitamin D,magnesium for people with restricted diets or poor eating habits

I repeat these indications to emphasize that we at ACSH are not against all supplementation — it can be life-saving when needed. However, most of us don't fit in those categories. Also, they reiterate what we've said before:

...the US Food and Drug Administration is not authorized to review dietary supplements for safety and efficacy prior to marketing. Although supplement makers are required to adhere to the agency’s Good Manufacturing Practice regulations, compliance monitoring is less than optimal. 

Yes, because of the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) supplement manufacturers can put anything on the market, and then the FDA must show how and why a supplement is dangerous.

In spite of repeated statements of these facts, the US supplement industry is now valued at around $30 billion, and 52 percent of US adults recently reported that they take at least one supplement product. That's a lot of money being wasted. Hopefully, clinicians will pay attention to the words of wisdom in this editorial, and advise their patients accordingly

When a Stethoscope Doesn't Mean Integrity

By Ruth Kava — September 22, 2017

When we think of a healthcare provider, the picture that most often comes to mind is of someone in a long white lab coat with a stethoscope slung around his or her neck. And we tend to accept much of what they tell us (although not as much as we used to) because we understand the extent of their education and experience. As my colleague Dr. Jamie Wells described it, a physician’s background includes “college, innumerable pre-med requirements, medical school, internship, residency and possibly specialty fellowship (sometimes more than one).”

However, Americans’ trust in the medical profession as a whole isn’t as great as it used to be — as depicted in the New England Journal of Medicine:  “In 1966, nearly three fourths (73%) of Americans said they had great confidence in the leaders of the medical profession. In 2012, only 34% expressed this view. But simultaneously, trust in physicians' integrity has remained high.........To Read More....

More Illnesses Linked to Raw Milk, This Time in Texas

By Ruth Kava — September 18, 2017

As if Texas didn't have enough to deal with after hurricane Harvey, there's now a problem that is, at least, preventable - brucellosis from drinking raw milk. The CDC said that raw milk from the K-Bar Dairy in Paradise, TX, has tested positive "for a rare but potentially serious bacteria known as Brucella RB51."

According to the Mayo Clinic, brucellosis is typically passed from animals to humans. Its symptoms can include fatigue, fever, cardiomyopathy, and joint pain that can become chronic. Even when treated with antibiotics, it can take months for the symptoms to disappear.........So why do people insist on drinking raw milk? And worse still, feeding it to their children who are more vulnerable to the effects of contamination? One reason is the perpetual misinformation promoted by various supposed "experts". For example, one website touts milk as "the perfect food" and supposedly we can exist on it alone........To Read More....

My Take - I grew up on a farm and we not only drank raw milk - my grandmother made her own butter from that milk - and we never once had a medical problem related to that milk. 

So what?

Just because we didn't have an issue doesn't change the medical facts and science behind pasteurizing milk.  We need to stop believing all this clabber about the "great" health benefits of raw milk.  It's nonsense.  We need to start - once again - believing the dangers raw milk represents.  I've concluded this falls into the 40-year belief cycle.  Those who promoted the pasteurizing of milk are now gone and the generation that benefited from it are in charge and have somehow come to believe the good health and longer life we have today didn't come about as a result of good public policy regarding milk, vaccinations, pesticides, GMO's and a host of other beneficial scientific discoveries and public policy decisions.  Since they never saw the disasters all of this prevented they believe good health and long life a right.

Another mystical semi-pagan concept embraced and promoted by watermelons.

As for the argument not many people died of heart disease in 1900 to support raw milk use - that's a correlation is causation fallacy - since it might be noted most people didn't live long enough in those days to die of a heart attack.  The average age was around 40 or 45.

We all have to die of something and heart disease and cancer are big killers of the elderly.  In 1900 not that big a percentage became elderly.  There was a reason the federal government made 65 the retirement age.   They didn't expect that many to live that long.   So, if we use the same correlation is causation fallacy these irrational advocates use - drinking raw milk caused shortened average life spans. 

Sucralose Study Ripe for Scare-Mongering

By Ruth Kava — October 26, 2016

A recent article, published in the journal Toxicological and Environmental Chemistry reported that when people eat the non-nutritive sweetener sucralose (the sweetening ingredient in Splenda®) some of it is absorbed into the blood and then excreted by the kidneys in urine. Such a report is ripe for the scare-mongers, especially since the report found that the level of sucralose in the blood is higher in children than in adults. But is this something to be worried about? Unlikely......To Read More...

Chemists Were Wrong About Splenda - Medicinal chemists — organic chemists who study drugs — frequently develop an ability that is sometimes informally called "eyeball toxicology," or the ability to determine a rough idea of the toxicity of a substance just by seeing its chemical structure on paper. It is a form of intuition. The longer you do the job, the better you get at it. It would be reasonable to call this skill a "highly educated guess," which is acquired through years of studying the relationship between the structures of a variety of chemicals and their toxicity. It's not perfect, but we often get it right. It could just as easily called acquired toxicological judgement. Or, "that is one nasty looking molecule!"  ......
 

Sugar, Gallbladder Cancer Supposedly Linked, Study Claims -  As you're probably aware, everything from obesity to baldness is being blamed on high consumption of sugar. Now there's a new ailment to add to the list — gallbladder cancer — at least according to a new study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.  The gallbladder is a small sack (usually depicted as green) that's tucked away between lobes of the liver. Bile produced by the liver is collected and stored in the gallbladder. When a fat-containing food is consumed, the gallbladder contracts and sends the bile, through a series of ducts, into the small intestine where it helps digest fats so the body can absorb them. Gallbladder cancer can occur in the sack itself, in the collecting ducts in the liver, as well as in the ducts leading from the bladder to the small intestine (the "biliary tree" includes the whole set of ducts both within and outside the liver).......

 

Health Panel Applauds Approval of New Sweetener - The American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), a consortium of more than 250 scientists and physicians today applauded approval of the use of a new noncaloric sweetener, sucralose, by the federal Food and Drug Administration.This approval significantly broadens the dietary choices of Americans stated Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, president of ACSH.  Sucralose is made from table sugar, or sucrose, which is then slightly modified to make it even sweeter and able to resist metabolism by the body. The resulting compound is approximately 600 times sweeter than sugar, and thus can be used in truly tiny amounts to sweeten a wide variety of foods.......

 

Blog hits the right note on chemophobia - The American Council on Science and Health has been fighting chemophobia since its inception in 1978. Unfortunately the advent of the Internet, while providing much valid information, has also become a venue of inaccurate and fear-mongering sites. Thus, we were more than pleased to discover a blog on the website of Scientific American by chemistry Ph.D. student Chad Jones that debunks some pseudo-scientific fear-mongering on the site of Dr. Joseph Mercola about the synthetic sweetener sucralose (sold as Splenda).......

 

Will Sugar Substitute Psychos Like Psicose? Go ahead. Tell me you didn't already think of this image. Irony is a beautiful thing. But irony that causes multiple neurons to fire in people who have a tenuous grasp on reality is far better.  Artificial sweeteners have been accused of causing everything from cancer to autism to the Hindenburg disaster. "Crazy Joe" Mercola has referred to aspartame, perhaps the least toxic chemical you will ever find, as "By Far the Most Dangerous Substance Added to Most Foods Today.".......