Of Vitamins, Antioxidants and False Dichotomies

[jbark]

VERY INTERESTING ARTICLE


And very informative too. Read the whole thing, it'll be worth your while. It covers many topics, dispels several myths and considers both sides of the story intelligently. Here's a sample:

"Terms such as conventional and alternative medicine are misleading. If a clinical trial shows that a therapy works, it's not an alternative. And if it doesn't work, it's also not an alternative. In a sense, there's no such thing as alternative medicine.

Although mainstream medicine hasn't found a way to treat dementia or enhance memory, practitioners of alternative medicine claim they have: ginkgo biloba. As a consequence, ginkgo is one of the 10 most commonly used natural products. Unfortunately, sales exceed claims. Between 2000 and 2008, the National Institutes of Health funded a collaborative study to determine whether ginkgo worked. More than 3,000 elderly adults were randomly assigned to receive ginkgo or a placebo. Decline in memory and onset of dementia were the same in both groups. In 2012, a study of more than 2,800 adults found that ginkgo didn't ward off Alzheimer's disease.

Another example is St John's wort. Depression is a serious illness; to treat it, scientists have developed medicines that alter brain chemicals such as serotonin. Called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), these drugs are licensed. Because they've been shown to help with severe depression, doctors recommend them. Alternative medicine practitioners, however, have a better idea – a more natural, safer way to treat depression: St John's wort. Between November 1998 and January 2000, 11 academic medical centres randomly assigned 200 outpatients to receive St John's wort or a placebo, finding no difference in any measure of depression."

Happy reading!

JBArk

 

[benzyme]

take it with a grain of salt.

for years, there have been scores of articles, on how wine, coffee, tea, you name it.. is good/bad for you.. one day, something is the bees knees, the next day, they find it contributes to heart disease or cancer. obviously, not everyone is affected the same by every chemical, all of the time (perhaps except for water and oxygen, carbon dioxide, etc.)

the only thing studies conclude, is that nothing is ever conclusive.

 

[jbark]

take it with a grain of salt.

for years, there have been scores of articles, on how wine, coffee, tea, you name it.. is good/bad for you.. one day, something is the bees knees, the next day, they find it contributes to heart disease or cancer.

the only thing studies conclude, is that nothing is ever conclusive.

(My vitamin C with a grain of salt? Iodized? )

...Precisely. That is what I weaned and gleaned. It was posted in the spirit of myth dispelling and to demonstrate how fads, from vitamin C to Zinc to Echinacea, govern the marketplace more than information and sometimes - common sense. The latter part of the article I found interesting as it sums up a position I have been defending quite succinctly.


JBArk

 

[benzyme]

part of the paradox is, that across various populations (asians, and europeans, for example) you have highly varied enzymatic expression (oxidoreductase, methyltranferase, acetyltransferase, etc.); this plays a huge role on how the body/brain is affected by medicines.

 

[jamie]

Im somewhat skeptical of that article..sounds like propeganda in part honestly. To write off all benificial effects of vitamines etc sounds shady to me. The benifits of high dose vitamine C for exmaple for certain diseases is pretty well studied. Any article who wants to just write all of that off is one I would not take very seriously.

 

[DeMenTed]

I find it ironic that the element that keeps us alive eventually kills us. Oxygen

 

[jbark]

The benifits of high dose vitamine C for exmaple for certain diseases is pretty well studied. Any article who wants to just write all of that off is one I would not take very seriously.

Do you have credible sources for this?

And insofar as propaganda, i am open to the idea - but whose? It's not propaganda if no one's biased results are evident and there is no party who benefits. The article attacks pharmaceutical companies, individual researchers, so called "alternative medecine" practices....

Who's left to benefit? Whose propaganda are you proposing the article peddles?

JBArk

 

[Handel]

I've probably spent over $600 for vitamins/supplements in the last 2 years. I have about 30 different kinds. I'd say that from all these, only 3-4 were a waste of money.

I was coming out of 10 years of undiagnosed celiac disease. By 2011, I was feeling in my gut that the end was very near. I didn't know what was wrong you see, the best doctors couldn't figure it out. I was frail, and so afraid to even catch a cold, because it could be the end of me. In September 2011, after having read lots of online reports about "magical" health results of the Paleo diet, I gave it a try. Lo and behold, my main problems went away within a week! Within 3 months, 90% of my rest of my problems went away (I had a huge list of various autoimmune & inflammation issues).

But I had to supplement. The right food (and the removal of bad food), didn't do the trick alone. Apparently, my gut was so damaged, that I couldn't absorb vitamins anymore (and it still can't do so completely, but it's not as bad anymore). I was eating oysters and liver by the pound, and I was still diagnosed with... B12 deficiency! This is unheard of.

So for my case, I could justify these supplements, and in fact, I found them very beneficial. I was getting about 10 different ones every day. These days, I don't take more than 2-3. My body doesn't need supplementation as much, because it has mostly healed, and I provide it very high-density food (no grains, no vegetable seed oils, no processed foods, no added sugars, no unfermented legumes, no unfermented dairy -- everything else is ok).

I'd personally claim that most people eating the Standard American/Western Diet have a degree of inflammation or health problems coming to Paleo, and that for the first 2-3 months, they might need to supplement with vitamins/minerals (depending on each person's individual deficiencies, e.g. B12, if you had IBS/IBD). But after that initial healing period, I'd advocate the use of these few supplements only (Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor):

The must-have:
- Magnesium (our water/soil is depleted of it, almost everybody is deficient of it, even people on Paleo). Taken 30 mins before bed, daily.
- CoQ10 Ubiquinol (not Ubiquinone) (our mitochondria are very damaged in the western world, and we don't eat enough offal to make up for it). 100 mg, 3-4 times a week, during lunch.

The conditional ones:
- Vitamin D3 (ONLY if you're not spending at least 30 minutes outdoors daily, with little clothing). Supplementing with 3000 IU for 3 months in the beginning, might be important. Taken in the morning.
- K2 Mk4 (or Mk7) (ONLY if you're not brewing your own, lactose-free, goat-milk kefir). There is no food with K2 Mk4 in the Western world, because we don't eat insects anymore (we should). Fish roe might have a bit in it though. Twice a week.
- B1 (ONLY if you're not eating fermented legumes or nutritional yeast). Once a week.
- Folate (not folic acid). (ONLY if you're trying to get pregnant). Daily, 6 months before conception.

As long as people eat WILD fish DAILY, and they don't cook with vegetable seed oils (coconut/olive oil are ok), they don't need to supplement with fish or krill oil to get their Ω3 & DHA. I personally serve wild fish and pastured meat on both lunch and dinner (and 1-2 pastured eggs for breakfast). It doesn't have to be huge quantities of fish & meat (just 80 gr each), so the price can stay low. We don't need much anyway. The bulk of the plate should be veggies (some raw). That misconception that people have online that Paleo is all about meat, is wrong. Fruits and nuts (except peanuts) are ok too, as deserts or snacking!

This regime has saved my life. The right diet got me 75% "there", but for the rest 25% I needed the help of supplementation in the beginning. Also, before I buy anything, I do my research first on PubMed, e.g.: kefir - Search Results - PubMed Be informed and don't buy useless things, just because some tradition says so, buy a supplement because you found research papers that say that they could help you with the problems you're having.

As a last example, last year, I was diagnosed with large tumor (a nasty fibroid, located in a place that only 1 in 10,000 cases had it there -- couldn't find a surgeon to take care of this for me, they all were afraid of the location). So I searched on PubMed about which supplements could help me, along the Paleo-ketogenic diet (up to 50 gr of "net" carbs per day) which has shown to suppress SOME types of tumors. I found that green tea extract, grape seed extract, and turmeric extract had all shown promise in reducing fibroids in mice. So I bought these. 6 months later, I visited my oncologist again. He seemed very surprised that my tumor had NOT grown! It didn't shrink, but it didn't grow either. Eventually, a Stanford professor surgeon agreed to operate on me (after lots of begging), and all is well now.

 

[jamie]

High-dose vitamin C (ascorbic acid) therapy in the treatment of patients with advanced cancer - PubMed

Vitamin C (ascorbic acid, ascorbate) has a controversial history in cancer treatment. Emerging evidence indicates that ascorbate in cancer treatment deserves re-examination. As research results concerning ascorbate pharmacokinetics and its mechanisms of action against tumor cells have been...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Vitamin C and cancer prevention: the epidemiologic evidence - PubMed

Epidemiologic evidence of a protective effect of vitamin C for non-hormone-dependent cancers is strong. Of the 46 such studies in which a dietary vitamin C index was calculated, 33 found statistically significant protection, with high intake conferring approximately a twofold protective effect...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Effect of high-dose intravenous vitamin C on inflammation in cancer patients - PubMed

The high dose intravenous ascorbic acid therapy affects C-reactive protein levels and pro-inflammation cytokines in cancer patients. In our study, we found that modulation of inflammation by IVC correlated with decreases in tumor marker levels.In summary, our data support the hypothesis that...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Intravenously administered vitamin C as cancer therapy: three cases - PubMed

Early clinical studies showed that high-dose vitamin C, given by intravenous and oral routes, may improve symptoms and prolong life in patients with terminal cancer. Double-blind placebo-controlled studies of oral vitamin C therapy showed no benefit. Recent evidence shows that oral...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Intravenous Vitamin C administration reduces fatigue in office workers: a double-blind randomized controlled trial

Studies of the efficacy of vitamin C treatment for fatigue have yielded inconsistent results. One of the reasons for this inconsistency could be the difference in delivery routes. Therefore, we planned a clinical trial with intravenous vitamin C administration.We ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

I could go on and on with peer review sources to support vitamine D, E..herbaL supplements etc..anyone writing their use off completely is full of shit and must have some kind of other agenda they are not telling you. There is enough legit positive research now to discredit anyone who attempts to discredit this whole area of medicine.

 

[jamie]

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/54/6/1281S.abstract

Vitamin C Prevents Radiation Damage: Nutritional Medicine in Japan

 

[DeMenTed]

Jamie

 

[jbark]

Jamie - the contention was not concerning the effects of vitamins per se, but of supplements generally and of macro-dosing particularly. There is no question your body needs vitamins, the question is source and quantity. Though those are interesting sources, I am surprised after screaming propaganda and insinuations of agenda you would cite US government sources in such quantity.

I am still struggling to think of the player who's propaganda is playing us when you take the usual suspects (and the peripheral ones) out of the equation. Unless the guy is just trying to sell books.

JBArk

 

[jamie]

"but of supplements generally and of macro-dosing particularly"

Pretty much every study I linked to is referring to macrodosing..up to 25g of IV ascorbic acid.

I can find all kinds of similar studies done on the benificial effects of cannabinoids(of which a large portion is due to the antioxidant properties btw), as well as psychedelic studies done at highly respected US universities etc..it does not change the fact that there is still bs propeganda spread about both cannabis and psychedelics.

 

[jbark]

"but of supplements generally and of macro-dosing particularly"

Pretty much every study I linked to is referring to macrodosing..up to 25g of IV ascorbic acid.

You're right, I should have looked closer. I do have to say I wish I was more literate in these studies so I could look beyond face value and maybe consider context. All the reading I have done (magazine and news articles I would be at a loss to find and source) for the last 20 years has discredited vitamin C as being the panacea it is purported to be by pharmaceutical companies, but given those US government studies one can conclude that my information may be wrong and that the large pharma companies are actually very likely worthy of our trust.

JBArk

 

[jamie]

there will be other studies that will conclude that they "dont know" about vitamine C etc..My conclusion is that there is lots of studies in support of the theraputic effects of very high doses of ascorbic acid, and then there is studies that conclude that they dont have enough data, too many variables etc to come to a solid comcluson..it seems to me that there is more evidence to support it than there is to discredit it.

Propeganda is everywhere man..people from all walks of life come to a subject with their own biases etc and that is reflected in how they approach an issue. Lots of people are really into science and dont like hippies, natural or alternative health care, herbalism etc and can easily go find 10 studies on most of these things that will conclude that there are too many variables or not enough data etc and completely ignore all of the other legit data out there in support of these things. That to me is just some persons own propeganda and bias that they spread..it really is often just about how people wish to interprete data, and what data that choose to interprete. Everyone does this to some degree.

It is not really just "big pharma" vs naturopaths or the gov vs us etc..individuals unrelated to any of that spread their own bias all the time. It's a spectrum..and some of those people inevitably write articles.

 

[jamie]

another thing abotu that article..towards the end they start talking about echinacea studies..but they dont specify what echinacea. There is a real difference between stuff grown in it's native region and the stuff grown outside of it..for some reason that I cant recall the stuff grown in the native region(maybe the soil I cant remember) has a different alkaloid profile. People always talk about "echinacea" but never specify. That article talks about the only findings with echinacea is is causes rashes..

But then I can find things like this..

Echinacea purpurea stimulates cellular immunity and anti-bacterial defence independently of the strain of mice - PubMed

One of the major functions of the immune system is anti-bacterial defence mediated among others by non-specific immunity (macrophages, granulocytes). Echinacea purpurea extracts are widely used in prophylaxis and therapy of various infections, mainly the respiratory tract, in animals and humans...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Echinacea intake induces an immune response through altered expression of leucocyte hsp70, increased white cell counts and improved erythrocyte antioxidant defences - PubMed

The pilot study suggests that Echinacea may invoke an immune response through altered expression of hsp70 and increased WCC.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

and then I can also find other studies that claim that they just dont know or only observed benificial effects on combatting a cold or flu but not for prevention etc..

..not to mention that they have now found cannabinoid receptor activity with echinacea..which would bring one to assume the herb might also be exhibiting some theraputic effects via those recepetors similar to cannabis.

Native american tribes have been using echinacea for a long long time. I dont really think indigenous tribal peoples have the luxury of using placebo herbs etc..I trust the wisdom of these people, especially when it is backup up by years of effective folk herbalism in our culture and some positive scientific data behind it as well now.

After being on a SAD, then vegetarian, then back to meat, then vegetarian..then vegan..then hard core raw vegan..working with a naturopath and supplements(which helped tremendously), then going back to a omnivoire diet trying to model something more like an indigenous diet..all just trying to get my health back..and what I learned is that you really have to be careful about what any one source is telling you and look into it yourself. There are so many sources out there who all claim to have the answer yet hold completely opposing paradigms, and are amazingly selective about what studies they choose to provide in support of theyr ideas.