Therefore, trials involving mixed tocopherol supplementation, beta carotene solely in non-smokers and not with vitamin A seem likely to give more favourable results and I would recommend anyone taking vitamin E to buy a mixed tocopherol form.

One other point, saying “just eat a well-balanced diet” really just begs the question: what is “well-balanced?” At the end of the day, whether it comes through conventional food or in the form of pills we still face the question of what quantities of various nutrients result in optimal health (if we are interested in achieving that).

Can you program the Dymo label printer currently advertised to print thousands of labels saying “Not a real doctor”, to smuggle into your local shop selling “Dr.” Gillian McKeith products? Bonus if you also make them say “reduced”, because arguably she is. And I think the sell by date may apply.

However: I don’t eat a balanced diet.

Partly that’s because I do a lot of bushwalking and long-haul motorcycle touring (where I’m surviving on either instant noodles or dodgy roadhouse food for extended periods), but it’s also partly ‘cos I’m a geeky science student who drinks too much, smokes too much and routinely forgets to eat.

So: given that I don’t have a nutritionally great diet, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon, is a daily multivitamin worth the money? Or is it still going to be just providing value-added urine?

http://www.bio-resonance.com/qxci.htm

plant mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

mmmmmmmmmm

> ..anyone got any more suggestions?

Yep: he’s a singer. Regular exercising of facial muscles tends to keep the face a bit younger-looking. See also Tina Turner. Or compare Page to Plant. And ignore Mick Jagger.

Zero in BOTH groups gives you NO information from which you can estimate the DIFFERENCE in mortality rate plus/minus supplements in the “populations” from which the study group are derived. All you can say is “overall death rate in the underlying populations from which these groups were derived probably can’t be greater than x%, as if it were bigger than this we would expect to have seen some deaths in a study this size”.

This is the other side of what the stats people call “power calculations”. The studies w no death rates in either group are,as the stats lot say, “underpowered” for telling you anything useful about death rates, though they may have recorded other “outcome measures”.

The insinuation is that the Cochrane collaboration is ‘under the influence of drug companies’ – which is really quite amusing given that one of the writers of the press release defending supplements was (at least until recently) employed by a firm selling food supplements (Ultralife). The other writer was working at Nutrition Associates Ltd – who offer medical advice and treatments based on nutrition and allergy principles, which can mean recommending tests using, e.g., Great Smokies Diagnostic Laboratory and YorkTest.

Sporty types need ‘energy’ – so *they* drink it, apparently. Therefore millions of couch-potatoes who wish they could look like sporty types drink it too, by the gigacalorie. Stands to reason.

CD

If there are studies that didn’t keep count of people who did die, that’s… surprising.

One could propose the theory that vitamins are bad for most but good for for everyone else.

Another theory would be that people who correctly believed they were going to die both knew they weren’t taking placebo and were much less likely to drop out of the studies. There was a small difference between healthy and disease-based studies that might show this.

The other notable correlation found is that those studies which the authors could verify as being more scientific showed an even worse result for vitamins.

Furthermore, the authors included 4 studies without placebo controls and still couldn’t find a benefit.

The increased mortality rate is so small that it’s not worth paying attention to.

What hard to dispute here is that if megadose vitamins make the general population live longer, it’s so tiny as for that effect to be discounted.

Mind you, the same can be said for nearly all medications.

The basic point is that they mean that they excluded trials where there were no deaths in either the control or the supplement patient groups. If you are measuring and comparing death rate you need enough deaths to measure.

I suppose also that it could be conceivably that antioxidants improve the quality of life whilst not making it less likely to end during a trial period, or even more likely. For instance if the pill cures your disease but itself may kill you. Perhaps that is covered by combining trials of healthy people and trials specifically of the sick.

Finally, what does “Harley Street-ish” mean, is it like off-Broadway, and where in the world do you find people to be impressed by a “Quantum Xrroid Consciousness Interface” instead of running, or hobbling, a metric mile upon hearing of the thing?

But more on that later.
#
Dr Aust said,

April 26, 2008 at 11:53 pm

Cliff Richard, I suspect, has many things that often help rich people to look “well preserved”:

1. Bags of money
2. Flunkies to do most things for him that ordinary mortals have to do themselves
3. His own tennis court, gym, swimming pool, chef etc etc
4. A top-notch cosmetic surgeon who does discreet and subtle work
5. Botox

..anyone got any more suggestions? I was also tempted to add “no children”
#
don_pedro said,

April 27, 2008 at 2:47 am

Dr Aust wrote:

..anyone got any more suggestions?

A portrait of the man, kept locked in the attic, relecting the wear and tear of sustained and depraved debauchery, so that he doesn’t have to.”

I can confirm that this is true. It is a picture of Keith Richards.

Didn’t Holford say (on the infamous Radio 5 admission of more vested interest than Dr Gluud) that he got about a fifth of a drug rep’s salary from Biocare?

Can someone please direct me to the pharma company that pays its reps £2.5 million. And a reference for a job with them!