Latest Vitamin Studies Are Flawed - Media's Rush to Judgement Misguided

Drs. Daniel Heller and Alan Gaby Show How The Mainstream And Medical Press Have Misinterpreted The Latest Studies On Vitamins. The Conclusions Drawn By The Editors Of The Annals Of Internal Medicine Are Not Supported By The Evidence.
By: PMS Comfort
 
SAN FRANCISCO - Dec. 20, 2013 - PRLog -- The Women's Health Organization PMS Comfort is a leader in natural health for women. Its founder, Dr. Daniel Heller, has criticized the media for its uncritical embrace of the editorial opinion regarding dietary supplement on the part of the medical journal The Annals of Internal Medicine. PMS Comfort has enlisted the help of the world renowned nutritional medicine expert, Dr. Alan Gaby to help clarify the scientific basis, or lack thereof, of the claims being made for the most recent series of published studies.

The current firestorm of media attention stems from three studies in the most recent issue of Annals, from which the editors and the vast bulk of mainstream media outlets have concluded that, in the words of the Annals editors, "the case is closed" on whether there is any benefit to the use of vitamins as a preventive measure for the vast majority of Americans. We question whether any of the large media outlets have even read the studies in question, and we are puzzled how, with the available evidence, any researcher can reach such a conclusion from the available data as regards the benefit of nutritional supplements.

The first study in Annals examined whether one of the most commonly used multivitamins was able to prevent a recurrence of heart disease in people who had already suffered a heart attack. The study population had an average age of 65; it was 82% men; and the multivitamin intervention was begun four and a half years, on average, after the study subjects had first experienced a heart attack.

Because it largely looked only at older men, the results of this study don't apply to younger populations, to women, or to people who begin a preventive supplement regimen earlier.

Ironically, in this study the multivitamin did result in an 11% reduction in cardiovascular events such as heart attack or stroke. However, this result did not meet "statistical significance", meaning statisticians could not be 95% certain that the benefit wasn't simply a result of chance. It is incorrect to say that the multivitamin had the same effect as placebo: it is correct to say that the multivitamin had an effect that did not meet the arbitrary criteria, 95%, for statistical significance. It is also correct to conclude from this that more studies are needed. But it is shoddy science, and shoddy journalism to deduce from this evidence that, as we're being told, "vitamins are worthless."

One example of the many flaws in this study: the supplement used contained the alpha-tocopherol form of vitamin E, whereas in food, vitamin E exists in four different forms. One of these forms, gamma-tocopherol, appears to be a more powerful antioxidant that alpha-tocopherol. Nutrients interact in the body in a complex fashion, and in the case of vitamin E, isolated alpha-tocopherol actually depletes gamma-tocopherol. In other words, the negative consequences of vitamin E supplementation may not be an indictment of vitamin E itself but rather of the use of an un-natural isolate that imbalances the body's complex antioxidant systems.

In contrast to the medical and mainstream media editors who are drawing sweeping conclusions from these results, the authors of the study on multivitamins and heart disease prevention explicitly state that there were no negative effects of taking a multivitamin, and they do not generalize their results to any other population.

The second study examined the effect of a multivitamin on cognitive decline. This study was performed on nearly 6000 male medical doctors over the age of 65, and found no effect for the multivitamin. It is certainly fair to conclude that highly educated and relatively well off older men should not expect to be able to preserve their cognitive function simply by taking the least expensive, most easily available multivitamin. That conclusion is supported by this evidence.

The third recently published study was a systematic review of the literature on vitamins and multivitamins. It examined a wide range of published literature that used several different combinations of nutrients, including two studies of multivitamins.

Stephen Fortmann, MD, and the other authors of this paper state:

 "One explanation for this result (that studies on individual nutrients often don’t find the benefit that some would expect) could be that the physiologic systems affected by vitamins and other antioxidant supplements are so complex that the effects of supplementing with only 1 or 2 components is generally ineffective or actually does harm."

Their conclusion is not that dietary supplements are useless, or that "the case is closed", but rather that the studies themselves are (in many cases) flawed.

While these three studies are the tip of the spear currently being hurled against nutritional supplements, other recent studies are being cited, and misconstrued, in an apparent effort to discredit the whole field of nutritional supplementation.

A November 2012 study published in the Journal of American Medical Association compared a popular multivitamin to placebo for the purposes of heart disease prevention. This study found that this product had no significant effect on heart disease prevention. However, Dr. Gaby has pointed out flaws with this study. First, the popular multivitamin used in this study contains a panoply of chemical additives that may well have adverse consequences for human health, including crospovidone, butylated hydroxytoluene, FD&C Blue 2 Aluminum Lake, FD&C Red 40 Aluminum Lake, FD&C Yellow 6 Aluminum Lake, polyethylene glycol, polyvinyl alcohol, sodium aluminum silicate, sodium benzoate, talc, and titanium dioxide. 14 years of daily ingestion of these substances may have a negative effect.

Another arm of this same analysis looked at cancer incidence in this population. Among those who had already had cancer, the group that took the multivitamin had a 27% decrease in new cancer diagnoses, compared to the placebo group. Those taking the multivitamin also had a 6% lower risk of dying from any cause, though this was not statistically significant, and they were 8% less likely to develop cancer.

The results of these studies do not support the conclusion that multivitamins or dietary supplements are harmful, worthless, or a waste of money. What they do support is the need for more and better studies, using better products that do not inadvertently interfere with their own possible benefit.

To learn more about PMS Comfort and Women's Health: http://www.pmscomfort.com/blog/

To learn more about Dr. Alan Gaby: http://doctorgaby.com/author.html

For PMS Comfort's free online PMS & PMDD quiz: https://www.pmscomfort.com/assessments/pms-symptoms.aspx

Media Contact
Dr. Daniel Heller
***@pmscomfort.com
(415) 488-5305
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Source:PMS Comfort
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Tags:Vitamins, Supplements, Multivitamins, Nutrition, Women
Industry:Health
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