Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Long-Awaited Study Results on Vitamin D and Fish Oil Supplements

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 248 posts

Re: Long-Awaited Study Results on Vitamin D and Fish Oil Supplements

#41

Post by ekianjo »

loeg wrote: post #35
codetrotter wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HN's absurd title policy is using a clickbait (and misleading) title chosen by NPR and amplifying it. In general I think the HN title policy works great, and I don’t think it’s fair to call it “absurd”. I think HN at its core always was a sort of social experiment revolving around online discussions. The title policy, along with the guidelines, is what makes HN be HN.

The absurd part isn't the convention of being true to the source's headline — which is good, generally — but the dogged persistence in keeping bad and misleading headlines, with extremely rare exception.

This is not a case of misleading headline. The study endpoints were not met. It is negative.

Re: Long-Awaited Study Results on Vitamin D and Fish Oil Supplements

#42

Post by elcinr »

dawhizkid wrote: post #20
staticassertion wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diet and exercise have considerably higher costs than pills. Seems like that should be apparent. I don't see it as lunacy. Some chemicals we put into our bodies kill us, some cure our illnesses, some keep us awake or put us to sleep. It's lunacy to believe that some can benefit our health? Regardless, this isn't zero-sum. I don't think people are advocating for a pill to replace diet and exercise, but it seems obviou…

If you want to lose weight, spending hours in the gym is a waste of time if you change nothing about a bad diet high in carbs and sugar. I think the same goes with vitamins or supplments...if you change nothing about your lifestyle and are at risk of developing a cardiovascular disease taking a vitamin probably won't do anything. If you make significant lifestyle changes that are already proven, or at least more prov…

Post body

Re: Long-Awaited Study Results on Vitamin D and Fish Oil Supplements

#43

Post by jryan49 »

So wait, what is disappointing about this:

"Taking fish oil lowered the risk of heart attack by about 28 percent, which is a "statistically significant" finding, says Dr. JoAnn Manson, who is chief of the division of preventive medicine at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. She led the research."

and

"African-Americans in the study experienced a 77 percent lower risk of heart attack when compared to placebo, which is a "dramatic reduction,"

Re: Long-Awaited Study Results on Vitamin D and Fish Oil Supplements

#44

Post by peterxpark »

cavisne wrote: post #30

"At this point, if one is thinking about supplementation, either omega-3s or vitamin D, talking to your physician or healthcare provider is the next step" Does anyone actually talk to their doctor before taking a vitamin? What information could they possibly provide

I have a terrific new naturopathic doctor who actually cares about my health and will run blood panels frequently and let me know what lifestyle changes and supplements would help me. I never knew before that I was deficient in zinc. Before her though, most of my doctors were of the bland "if you aren't in extreme pain then it's not a problem" camp.

Re: Long-Awaited Study Results on Vitamin D and Fish Oil Supplements

#45

Post by dawhizkid »

Leary wrote: post #39
dawhizkid wrote: post #9

Why do we keep looking for some magic pill and ignore diet and exercise, especially when we talk about cancer and cardiovascular disease? Expecting a pill to counteract a sedentary lifestyle and a diet high in sugar and carbs is lunacy.

Show me a randomized control study of healthy people with lower all cause mortality from either diet or exercise, and I'll gladly change my ways.

Nutrition studies are very difficult, which is exactly how we get to a place where governments are pushing food pyramids telling everyone to eat mostly carbs everyday. I won't show you anything, other than articulating that I genuinely believe sugar is toxic, we should be eating fewer carbs, intermittent fasting makes me feel better, and 3 meals a day is unnecessary.

Re: Long-Awaited Study Results on Vitamin D and Fish Oil Supplements

#46

Post by LeifCarrotson »

tarr11 wrote: post #27
resters wrote: post #11

This headline is quite misleading (and arguably very biased toward white readers). It describes a marked improvement in outcomes for African American study participants. So perhaps NPR views this as "disappointing" but the headline suggests broadly that everyone should stop taking those supplements, when in fact the results are far more nuanced. HN's absurd title policy is using a clickbait (and misleading) title cho…

I don’t know, the findings about African Americans seem to be a case of “outcome switching” [0] since it does not appear that this trial was specifically designed to test against that group. [0] https://www.vox.com/2015/12/29/10654056/ben-goldacre-compare...

A more approachable description of why this is bad: "Green Jellybeans cause acne, p=0.05"

https://xkcd.com/882/

No, outcome switching is not exactly the same as P-hacking, but either could be blamed here.

Re: Long-Awaited Study Results on Vitamin D and Fish Oil Supplements

#47

Post by daniel_iversen »

Isn’t fish oil also good for your joints?

EDIT: here’s some information - https://arthritisaustralia.com.au/managing-arthritis/living-... - and without doing much research I’ve been taking it to prevent joint strains from running - not sure if that’s worthwhile or not

Re: Long-Awaited Study Results on Vitamin D and Fish Oil Supplements

#48

Post by Leary »

ekianjo wrote: post #26
resters wrote: post #11

This headline is quite misleading (and arguably very biased toward white readers). It describes a marked improvement in outcomes for African American study participants. So perhaps NPR views this as "disappointing" but the headline suggests broadly that everyone should stop taking those supplements, when in fact the results are far more nuanced. HN's absurd title policy is using a clickbait (and misleading) title cho…

Does not matter. The effects on African American populations were probably not part of the pre defined endpoints, so yes, it is perfectly acceptable to say the study is negative. Looking at subgroups a posteriori is essentially what leads to p hacking and this is the behavior that we want to discourage in sciences.

Shouldn't one consider what the p-value is in weighing whether it is a fluke or not?

Re: Long-Awaited Study Results on Vitamin D and Fish Oil Supplements

#49

Post by avinium »

BadassFractal wrote: post #5

Been taking 10k IU of D3 for a few months now, managed to get my measurement from the teens or 20s into the 90s of whatever unit that's in. I believe 100 is the max of the healthy range. Can't tell the difference, but allegedly you're going to feel "worse" if you're low on this stuff. It would be amusing to find out that it actually makes no difference at all and it's all placebo.

Yeah, I've tried the same (my theory was it would help mitigate the effects of SAD through the long, dark winter).

I've noticed no difference (though to be fair, it was hardly an empirical approach). I have a pretty well-rounded diet, so I assume I'm not deficient.

I do think that fish oil makes a difference, at least in terms of exercise.

Re: Long-Awaited Study Results on Vitamin D and Fish Oil Supplements

#50

Post by erichocean »

thomasfedb wrote: post #23
freedomben wrote: post #8

In my opinion, the best benefit of fish oil and Omega threes and vitamin D are in combating depression. This article did not touch on that. There is pretty good evidence that fish oil is one of the best supplements for combating depression because it is used directly in construction of neurotransmitter pathways. I highly recommend reading Dr Mark Hyman's book the Ultramind Solution. It's loaded with great info regard…

Fairly recent Cochrane review concludes: > ... we do not have sufficient high quality evidence to determine the effects of [omega-3] as a treatment for [major depression]. Our primary analyses suggest a small-to-modest, non-clinically beneficial effect ... compared to placebo; however the estimate is imprecise, and we judged the quality of the evidence on which this result is based to be low/very low. https://www.coc…

> If the answer was easy we'd have found it, and we'd tell you about it.

Like washing hands before dealing with women in labor? smh

Also, enough with the "we", student doctor. You're not part of some privileged class of geniuses out to educate the rubes, on HN of all places.

Post reply on HN