Media Distortion of Vitamin Studies
After 30+ years working in connection with nutrition and natural health care methods, I’ve noted the persistent pattern of media distortion of scientific studies. This is another version of the familiar “journalistic” rule — If it bleeds, it leads. When it comes to nutrition and natural health care, the more sensationalistic the story, the better. It doesn’t matter if decades of studies have shown a particular nutrient helpful, the one study supposedly showing it “harmful” or “ineffective” is news, though it’s not really true. Let me give two recent examples:
VITAMIN E INCREASES MORTALITY?
A study presented in the Annals of Internal Medicine (2005:142(1):37-46) created a huge amount of controversy and negative press on the value of vitamin E. This was not an original study, but a “meta-analysis” of previous vitamin E studies. The study found increased mortality from all causes for individuals taking more than 400 i.u. of vitamin E daily. Naturally, the authors then concluded that people should avoid vitamin E supplementation. This conclusion was false and foolish because:
1. This was not a controlled study designed to determine if vitamin E supplementation increased the risk of death, but a meta-analysis of previous studies to attempt to answer a question not posed in those original studies. Meta-analyses thus cannot definitely establish cause and effect relationships.
2. The authors reviewed 19 studies, of which only 9 studies supplemented with vitamin E alone. Most were also using other nutritional supplements.
3. Generally the vitamin E used in the studies was d-alpha tocopherol, not the full vitamin E complex (mixed tocopherols) nor the tocotrienol isomers that are part of the vitamin E family. Also, many of the studies did not use the natural form of vitamin E — d-alpha tocopherol — instead using the synthetic “dl” form. It is well-known that there are major differences in the efficacy of natural and synthetic vitamin E.
4. Subjects in these studies were either not healthy or were already at an increased risk of developing the disease investigated by the particular study. It is a quantum leap therefore to superimpose conclusions from such unhealthy populations onto healthy individuals.
5. Of the 19 studies, 11 showed a reduction in mortality, but the findings of just 3 studies (one of which was not peer-reviewed) were allowed to skew the overall result.
6. Numerous previous clinical studies have shown the benefit of vitamin E supplementation with an upper safe limit of 1600 i.u. per day by the Institute of Medicine.
CALCIUM & VITAMIN D DON’T PREVENT FRACTURES?
36,000 women were involved in this Women’s Health Initiative study designed to determined the ability of calcium and vitamin D supplementation to prevent fractures (N Engl J Med 2006;354(7)684-696). They took 1000 mg of calcium carbonate and 400 i.u. of vitamin D daily and were followed for 7 years. But the following factors distort the result:
1. Only 40% of the women followed the dosing schedule. The subgroup of women that actually took the full dose or calcium and vitamin D had their fracture incidence reduced by 29%!
2. The placebo group were allowed to take calcium and multi-vitamin supplementation, so they weren’t really serving as a proper comparison.
3. Many of the women were already taking a baseline of 1100 mg of calcium and 360 i.u. of vitamin D, thus making the additional supplementation used in the study less significant.
4. Calcium carbonate (eating rocks) is the worst, most poorly assimilated form of calcium, with as little as 4% assimilation. 400 i.u. of vitamin D is almost an insignificant amount, based on the latest research. Most people need 4000 – 5000 units of vitamin D to bring blood levels into the optimal range.
Conclusion: Don’t pay too much attention to headline-grabbing stories on vitamin studies. Upon closer examination such studies are usually not correctly interpreted, but simply used in yet another vain attempt to turn the public from natural medicine approaches that threaten the conventional, drug-oriented medical establishment.
– Monte Kline
Tags: calcium study, inaccurate studies, vitamin E study, vitamin studies
