The Purest Bunk

[Guest guest]

" HSI - Jenny Thompson " <HSIResearch

 

The Purest Bunk

Tue, 16 Nov 2004 08:19:36 -0500

 

The Purest Bunk

 

Health Sciences Institute e-Alert

 

November 16, 2004

 

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Dear Reader,

 

I'm going to go out on a limb here.

 

Vitamin E supplements will not kill you.

 

Write that down. If it's ever proven to be untrue, bring it back to

me and I'll eat the paper it's written on. In fact, I'll also eat my

house and my car. Because contrary to widespread reports, vitamin

E supplements will NOT kill you.

 

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Media overboard!

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Pity the mainstream media outlets. Every hour they strain to get

our attention in an information environment that's become a 24-7-

365 buzz of hyped up info-bites. To draw our eye amid all this

chaos, they'll promote anything that's sensational, even if it's not

actually sensational at all.

 

This is what happened last week when the Annals of Internal

Medicine released a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine meta-

analysis of vitamin E supplementation. Researchers analyzed the

results of 19 studies in which vitamin E supplements played a role.

Their conclusion: Doses of vitamin E in excess of 400 IU per day

may slightly increase the risk of (drum roll please) death!

 

The media outlets immediately seized on this and sent out the

sensational, detail-free message: Vitamin E supplements can kill

you. Here are just three of the wildly generalized scare headlines:

 

" Vitamin E's Fatal Flaw "

" Vitamin E Can Be Deadly "

" Vitamin E Dosages May Be Lethal "

 

Run for your lives! The vitamin E sky is falling!

 

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What a joke

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I knew that HSI Panelist Allan Spreen, M.D., would have some

choice words for the Johns Hopkins results, and I was right.

 

Dr. Spreen: " Good Lord... what a joke. I can't believe such a

moronic study even got published. "

 

Dr. Spreen cites a major problem with the length of the individual

studies. The 19 studies represent a total of 45 years of research.

That averages to less than three years per study. " First of all, "

writes Dr. Spreen, " three years when you're talking about long-

term mortality studies means nothing. Second, the 'conclusions'

certainly weren't definitively backed up by the study.

 

" This flies in the face of decades of research, using doses up to

2400 IU. The Shute brothers (both M.D.s) used even higher

amounts and documented excellent results. (But I guess 'old'

research somehow becomes untrue due to age or something.) "

 

Dr. Spreen's take on the Hopkins conclusions run parallel to a

response from the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN). A

CRN representative pointed out to NutraIngredients.com that it

was inappropriate for the researchers to draw conclusions for the

entire population based on studies of subjects who were " already at

grave risk with existing diseases including cancer, heart disease,

Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and kidney failure. "

 

Funny... I didn't hear that detail pointed out on the evening news.

 

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Getting generalized

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In short, the Hopkins conclusion is a stretch. And even the editors

of the Annals of Internal Medicine seem to agree. In a note that

accompanies the study, the editors state that, " these findings may

not be generalizable to healthy adults. " And they add this

interesting detail (also missing from the evening news): " Some

trials evaluated multivitamin combinations. "

 

In other words, some of these studies weren't even exclusive to

vitamin E! And yet network news anchors had no qualms about

delivering the sweeping generalization that vitamin E supplement

intake may be fatal.

 

Which all leads to MY sweeping generalization: Vitamin E

supplements will not kill you.

 

But that's not to say that ANY vitamin E supplement will do. Dr.

Spreen again: " There are a few caveats to vitamin E, of course. No

one should be taking the synthetic form of the nutrient (dl-alpha

tocopherol) – it should be d-alpha tocopherol at least. Even better

is to take 'mixed' tocopherols (alpha, beta, delta, gamma). Also,

vitamin E functions better when it's mixed with selenium (neither

mentioned, nor, of course, used in the study). "

 

Once again, we see how the major media outlets can be completely

trusted to go to any lengths to grab our attention. But when it

comes to accuracy and responsibility they get a failing grade.

 

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