AP writer LINDSEY TANNER has the inevitable position of meeting with my disdain over here story "Huge study boosts disappointment on multivitamins".
Her writing in my estimation is about the same low caliber as Carla Johnson another AP health writer who had worked at Spokane's Spokesman-Review.
Of course I don't look at these stories from the job oriented perspective of Johnson and Tanner; I look at them in a critical manner relevant to the factors that are known about the need for and effectiveness of using vitamin supplements.
It is unfortunate that AP fosters mainstream propaganda, rather than actually engaging in discovering whether or not the studies were good examples of junk science.
In this situation the studies were poorly designed, the schedule and dose of vitamins was not close to making a dent in the side of a Studebaker or Packard.
It will be a far sight better when we can get back to media stories with less or no bias, and until then we have ProPublica.org to help us keep on track, along with our own investigative efforts to substantiate fact.
You'll find many other posts here at Natural Health News discussing the benefits of vitamins for health and bogus studies via the search window.
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Personally I would like to see one of the investigators that do studies to show that vitamins are not helpful for health be required to do in-depth research on the vitamins prior to being funded. Maybe when the money train slows down they will approach their "research" from a different state of mind.
Double blind studies are a joke, and most serious researchers know this, but few will really say this is fact. All studies are affected by what is called the Rosenthal factor which has proven that all studies are altered in outcome by the mind-set of the lead investigator. A sharp skewer of data if I ever heard of one.
Vitamin E is an extremely effective anti-inflammatory vitamin and it helps oxygen (cancer doesn't like oxygen)cross the alveolar membrane in the lungs. Vitamin E also helps protect you from hair loss when undergoing standard medical cancer dictates. It also happens to have the effect of protecting you from colon cancer. And there are many more benefits, but it depends on the daily dose and the proper type of vitamin E supplement. (Not the synthetic or cheap stuff, but this seems to be what is relied on in most studies of late.)
Again, vitamin C reigns as one of the most beneficial vitamins for cancer prevention and treatment if you read the science that is found in nutrition journals or other journals that are "less aligned with maintaining the status quo".
Yet, while we see more and more anti-vitamin reports like this one -
Taking vitamin C or E does not reduce the risk of prostate cancers - or other forms of the disease, two large US studies suggest.
We also see some that seem to have a better insight on vitamin efficacy.
Vitamin E Shows Possible Promise In Easing Chronic Inflammation
ScienceDaily (2008-12-08) -- With up to half of a person's body mass consisting of skeletal muscle, chronic inflammation of those muscles -- which include those found in the limbs -- can result in significant physical impairment. Researchers have found that vitamin E shows promise in easing inflammation. ... > read full article
Just maybe the improved anti-inflammatory response is from the oxygen. And don't we already know that oxygen being a free radical scavenger, might just scavenge those cancer cells out from where they don't belong?
And as for selenium, this has been an effective anti-prostate cancer supplement, used in the correct form (selenomethionine) and in the correct dose for decades.
Without selenium, especially if you live in an area that is known geologically to have low selenium soil like the states bordering Canada, your thyroid won't function properly and low thyroid is clearly involved in immune issues, and may be a factor in cancer or other immune related dis-eases.
And then there is the need for zinc, but that's not a part of the study.
And, to counter the fallacious argument that all you have to do to get good nutrition is to eat a healthy diet, remember that food grown in low selenium soil is not healthy. Nor is that grown under stressful conditions with herbicides, pesticides, fungicides and fluoridated water.
Now you be the judge and I'd suggest you delve a bit deeper before accepting this story.
My observations are that these white coats are just asking the wrong questions.
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