Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Spot on, Reader’s Digest, spot on!


While in line with my wife at the drug store last week I couldn’t help but notice the cover of the “mini-me” of magazines, the Reader’s Digest, which declared in intense red letters: THE VITAMIN SCAM: read this before you pop another pill! The featured cover story is entitled “5 Vitamin Truths and Lies” by Christie Aschwanden. (Read it here: http://www.rd.com/living-healthy/5-vitamin-truths-and-lies/article175625.html)


The article starts off by breaking down common vitamin myths like that vitamins make up for a bad diet, fight off the common cold, prevent heart disease, and protect against cancer. Yes, I have heard all of these myths, and even believed in the “makes up for a bad diet” falsehood when I was younger. In fact up until a few months ago I was a daily multivitamin popper. Not because I thought that it would give me any health benefits, but because I thought “What’s the harm?”


The more that I’ve looked at the supplement industry, and all of its outrageous claims, the more I have become disgusted. Now I don’t take a multivitamin in protest of an entirely corrupt industry. I have seen the harm of the vitamin trade first-hand. Yes, it is a lot of wasted money (funny how no experts were talking about the billions of dollars flushed down the drain by our government and individuals chasing this vitamin myth when discussing the “health care crisis”). However, my primary concern is the growing wave of gullible “victims” who fall prey to the misleading advertising campaigns of the industry and who listen to self-described “experts” who are just tapping into a gold mine, not looking to help people.


Some of these people are tricked into treating real diseases with vitamins until the disease progresses to the point where it is irreversible by traditional medical therapies. I have seen the harm of this industry first-hand. For an example of what can happen when susceptible people get sucked into the extremes of this industry, take a look at this blog post from Dr. David Gorski: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=1390. It describes a poor young woman who was treating her B-cell lymphoma with the Gerson therapy (this is a fringe cancer cure therapy that relies on a special diet, coffee enemas, and various supplements while selling standard treatments as toxins and poisons). Needless to say, these cranks dissuade people from getting life-saving medical treatment and take advantage of their ignorance of the sciences and mistrust in authorities to serve their own selfish interests. There is a special place in hell for the proprietors of this crap in my opinion.


Long story short, most people think that the average U.S. diet leads to nutritional deficiencies and, therefore, we should be supplementing. This thinking is completely false. Just last week on the Dr. Oz Show there was an alternative medicine quack who admitted that it is possible to eat a well-balanced diet without the need for supplementation (WOW!), but then he added the caveat that this is nearly impossible (AHA!). His statement is a common misconception, but is unsupported gobbledygook. Here’s the truth: don’t take supplements unless you have a known deficiency (vitamin D if you don’t get enough sun, folate if you are pregnant, iron, zinc, calcium and B-vitamins if you have an unbalanced vegetarian or vegan diet, etc).


The article also points out that excessive vitamin popping is not the harmless practice that it was one thought to be. Some of the dangers include possible increased risk of lung cancer and death in people taking beta-carotene (once thought to be protective against cancer, until taxpayer dollars were wasted to actually show the OPPOSITE), high-dose antioxidant pills can promote some cancers, excessive folate can increase risk of colon cancer, and there is even a link between vitamin supplementation and heart disease.


Conclusion: Since nutritional deficiency is exceedingly rare in the U.S. and excess supplementation can be harmful, get your vitamins and nutrients from your food, and only supplement for known deficiencies.

Warning: If a supplement makes medical claims, get some information from a reliable source (i.e. the American Cancer Society: http://www.cancer.org/), not from one of the many online “scare and scam” sites.


The reason that I was taken aback by the article is that it is very rare that this kind of honest, non-sensationalized reporting makes its way into the mainstream media. Much more commonly, you will find mindless regurgitating by the media of some purported health benefit of some herb, vitamin or quick-fix holistic therapy. After all, this is precisely what the audience is looking for; easily digestable concepts and easy fixes. The audience gets what it wants and the TV show or magazine gets what it wants (ratings and sales). Win-win, right? Wrong. We all, as a society, lose.


What we have is a system that rewards misinformation and dishonesty, so kudos to Reader’s Digest for squashing some vitamin mythology and fighting the good fight!
DoR

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