Showing posts with label supplements are safe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label supplements are safe. Show all posts

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Supplements ARE Safe

I always get riled when I see a report in the media attacking supplements because some poorly designed government "study" came to a (pre-planned) conclusion that supplements are bad.

I also get riled when I read that a health care provider who uses a formulary mostly based on the use of plants, says that there are no studies, when thousands do exist, about the efficacy of herbs or supplements.  At the same time the FDA faces daily the problem of poorly studied pharmaceuticals that kill hundreds of thousands of people every year.

One attacking tome appeared recently in Scientific American, and yet at the very same time one providing evidence of effectiveness says -
"Decades ago, when Linus Pauling and Abram Hoffer first proposed mega-dose vitamin therapy as a serious treatment, mainstream medicine, aided by the press, promptly discredited this as quackery.  To this day, the media faithfully bombards us with the message that vitamins and minerals are useless, harmful or even killing us.(1-6)  When one considers the lowly vitamin pill as an economic rival to drugs, and the dependence of the media on drug company advertising, the motivation to discredit mega-dose vitamins becomes all too obvious.  Seemingly oblivious to this negative message, physicians quietly go about their business using megadose vitamin therapy in the intensive care unit with considerable success.  Recent reports of this have been appearing in medical journals, finally vindicating Linus Pauling and Abram Hoffer as yes, of course, they were right all along.(7-9)"
Problems with Big PhRMA are rampant, have been reported for years, and few changes happen. 
"There are not many wonder drugs still to be discovered, and new pharmaceutical developments are usually more about improving quality of life than saving lives. Often the biomedical companies' latest product is just the same old pill in a new package, so they need to spend billions of dollars on marketing, advertising and lobbying to ensure sales". Read complete article
With all the research that exists about herbs one wonders what are government employees are doing with foolish spending of taxpayer money.  And perhaps there is a reason why Orthomolecular Medicine isn't indexed in PubMed.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Cardiologists, dermatologists and orthopods: They're Using Supplements

Score one for the good guys like me who have been educating doctors (and the public) in the safe and effective use of supplements for many decades!

This is great ammunition for our argument that supplements are effective and they do not cause deaths.

And the statistics are very good.
Health Practitioners Increasingly Turning to Supplements12/11/2008
WASHINGTON—Cardiologists, dermatologists and orthopedic specialists are taking dietary supplements for their own well-being, and recommending them to their patients for overall wellness and for reasons related to their specialties, according to new data from the “Life...supplemented” Healthcare Professionals (HCP) Impact Study. In addition, the practitioners surveyed generally believe usage of dietary supplements by consumers is more popular than it was just five years ago.

“We learned from the 2007 HCP Impact Study that physicians and nurses are taking supplements as part of a proactive wellness regimen that also includes healthy diet and regular exercise,” said Judy Blatman, senior vice president of communications at the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), which manages the campaign. “With the second year of this study, we were able to dive into specific specialties and find similar trends, further demonstrating the important role for doctors in incorporating dietary supplements as an integral part of wellness.”

Some of the specific highlights from the 2008 study:

Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of orthopedic specialists use dietary supplements for reasons including general wellness (43 percent), joint health (29 percent), heart health (26 percent), bone health (25 percent) and flu/colds (22 percent).

94 percent of orthopedic specialists who take dietary supplements recommend them to their patients, as do 82 percent of those who don’t take supplements. The primary reasons: bone health (75 percent), joint health (73 percent) and musculoskeletal pain (53 percent).

Among cardiologists, 57 percent use dietary supplements, 86 percent of whom recommend supplements for their patients. Cardiologists are using dietary supplements for general wellness (32 percent), heart health (29 percent) and lower cholesterol (20 percent); for their patients, supplements are recommended for lower cholesterol (58 percent), heart health (55 percent) and maintaining healthy cholesterol (36 percent).

A full three-quarters of dermatologists are using dietary supplements for reasons such as overall wellness (42 percent), bone health (24 percent), skin/hair/nails (16 percent) and heart health (15 percent).

While 79 percent of dermatologists who take supplements recommend them to their patients, only 28 percent of those who don’t take supplements do so. Top reasons for recommending supplements: hair/skin/nails (81 percent) and overall health (30 percent).

Council for Responsible Nutrition (www.CRNusa.org).

 
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