Posted April 27, 2015: by Bill Sardi
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Posted April 23, 2015: by Bill Sardi
News headlines say a new study reveals high-dose vitamins, in particular folic acid, may increase the risk for cancer. [ABC News April 20, 2015; Science Daily April 20, 2015] But wait. There was no new study. It was just Tim Byers, an MD at the University of Colorado Cancer Center mouthing off once again against vitamin supplements in a forum at the American Association for Cancer Research. [Colorado Cancer Blogs]
Dr. Byers has been on this vendetta against dietary supplements for some time now. [Journal National Cancer Institute May 16, 2012]
Dr. Byers fails to note the many contrary studies, including the largest analysis among nearly 50,000 individuals that concluded there was no significant increase or decrease in the risk for cancer as blood levels of folic acid rose. [Lancet March 23, 2013] Even 40 milligrams/day of folic acid over a period of 3.2 year did not produce an increased risk for cancer. [Journal American Medical Assn. Sept 12, 2007]
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Posted March 20, 2015: by Bill Sardi
You could almost hear the vitamin D advocates sigh in disappointment just like you hear the crowd at a baseball game groan in unison when a fly ball drops two inches into foul territory with the bases loaded. That was 2011 when the Food & Nutrition Board set the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for vitamin D at 600 international units (IU), equal to about 4 minutes of midday sunshine/skin exposure. Many criticisms of that decision followed.
The RDA is defined as the amount of a nutrient needed to meet the requirements of 97.5% of the population. Two leading vitamin D researchers claim the Food & Nutrition Board’s RDA of 600 IU achieves a blood concentration of 26.8 nanomoles per liter of blood rather than the optimal goal of achieving a 50.0+ nanomole/liter blood concentration, which is the goal for optimal health.
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Posted August 16, 2014: by Bill Sardi
A noted expert on the topic of vitamin D and public health is calling for universal vitamin D blood testing and widespread dietary supplementation to augment dietary and sunshine sources of this essential nutrient. Adoption of these practices should not wait for further definitive studies in an effort to “rescue as many patients with vitamin D-related illness as we can during the interim and not wait for further clinical trials to end.”
These are the words of Dr. Cedric F Garland, professor, Division of Epidemiology, University of California San Diego and were posted at Medscape.com in an article entitled “Vitamin D and mortality risk: should clinical practice change? [MedScape.com Aug 13, 2014] MedScape is a website dedicated to educating doctors.
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Posted July 22, 2014: by Bill Sardi
This report doesn’t cover new ground, just an old but forgotten topic.
A recent 15-year study of 74,645 men and women in Sweden reveals that consumption of red meat was associated with shorter survival (-2 years) compared to adults who were not red meat eaters. In the breakdown of the data red meat was only associated with reduced survival when processed red meat was consumed! [American Journal Clinical Nutrition July 16, 2014]
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Posted July 13, 2014: by Bill Sardi
According to one self-proclaimed authority, vitamin C therapy is nothing but health quackery. [Quackwatch.com] WebMD advises physicians that supplemental vitamin C is only marginally able to reduce symptoms and duration of the common cold. But the primary study referred to employed just 200 milligrams of vitamin C, barely enough to marginally raise blood levels of this essential vitamin. [WebMD June 20, 2012]
None of this negative science discouraged laboratory researchers in China however. They inoculated mice with influenza virus and then injected 3 milligrams of vitamin C per gram of body weight. (Laboratory rats weigh about 300-500 grams.) [University of Wisconsin] So these animals were injected with 900-1500 mg vitamin C.
Posted in Dietary Supplements, Modern Medicine, Vitamins ; No Comments »
Posted March 25, 2014: by Bill Sardi
Vitamin D was discovered to cure rickets in 1922. A short time later ergocalciferol, synthetic vitamin D, was developed and is still today the only FDA-approved prescription form of vitamin D despite it being inferior to natural form cholecalciferol – vitamin D3.
Over 90 years have passed since that discovery. The 1920 and 1930s was the era of vitamin discovery. During that time the practice of medicine gravitated away from use of crude medicines such as quinine, opium, cocaine, digitalis and nitroglycerin to synthetic molecules like procaine and barbital that garnered patent protection for pharmaceutical companies. Atabrine was among the first patentable drugs approved for many uses and is related to melfoquine used today to treat malaria.
Posted in Modern Medicine, Vitamins ; No Comments »
Posted March 23, 2014: by Bill Sardi
If a news reporter asks the vitamin C experts at the Linus Pauling Institute today about how much vitamin C is needed to maintain health they are going to answer with the same nonsense that has polluted the minds of millions over the past 3-4 decades – only 200 milligrams a day and forget vitamin C pills, fruits and vegetables will do.
As one reads the latest discourse from the experts (“Myths, Artifacts, And Flaws: Identifying Limitation And Opportunities In Vitamin C Research,” Nutrients Volume 5, page 5161, 2013), who certainly must know more than the rest of us, after careful examination one begins to wonder if they live in the real world or just their world filled with test tubes and lab rats where they can create their own reality.
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Posted March 11, 2014: by Bill Sardi
The world pays a steep price when its doctors turn a blind eye at nutritional medicine.
Imagine what eradication of polio would be like if it were treated nutritionally.
In 1988 the world set out to inoculate all the billions of people on the planet against the stomach virus known as polio. There were an estimated 350,000 new annual cases of paralyzing polio then which has now been reduced to just a couple hundred cases with a much larger world population. There are an estimated 10 million people walking today that would be crippled from polio if a polio vaccination program hadn’t been started. [World Health Organization] The indigenous wild-strain of the virus was mostly eradicated in 1999 [American Journal Epidemiology 2010] leaving the vaccine derived strain as the predominant form of the virus in circulation!
Despite such progress, total eradication of polio eludes modern medicine because it ignores nutritional medicine.
How did modern medicine almost totally eradicate polio but at the same time doom any possibility of abolishing it?
Posted in Modern Medicine, Vitamins ; No Comments »
Posted February 24, 2014: by Bill Sardi
A recent editorial published in the Annals Of Internal Medicine said this about multivitamins: “We believe that the case is closed— supplementing the diet of well-nourished adults with (most) mineral or vitamin supplements has no clear benefit and might even be harmful. These vitamins should not be used for chronic disease prevention. Enough is enough.”
I’ve already addressed this absurd report. There are a number of hidden catch phrases in that statement, such as “well nourished.” Is anybody really well nourished in a processed food society that over-consumes carbohydrates and sugars and brain stimulant-laden foods? According to the US Department of Agriculture, most Americans aren’t getting an adequate supply of essential nutrients from their diet.
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