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More Evidence Against Vitamin Use
21–30 of 33 posts
Re: More Evidence Against Vitamin Use
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want to discredit your experiences, because if they work, they work, but have you considered the possibility that you're achieving a placebo effect with your supplements? In some studies, iirc, placebos have been shown to be as effective or more effective than SSRIs.
In some studies, iirc, placebos have been shown to be as effective or more effective than SSRIs. You wrote, "if I remember correctly," so I'll mention here some sources I have checked recently for other Hacker News threads. In actual practice, placebos only look effective when the statistical tests in a study are poor, and most especially when the symptoms are self-reported by patients. Placebos are NOT effective in…
There is a huge range of placebo effectiveness. Placebo's that cause side effects work better than those that don't. Placebo's handed to you by people in lab coats work better than people in normal attire etc.
Also, while placebo's have little effect on cancer or broken bones they do show significant and measurable effects with increased immune response, reduce pain, reduce signs of depression and a host of other things.
PS: This get's really complected there is even evidence that many anti deprecation work on the side effect and only show up as better than 'placebo' when the placebo's have no side effects.
Re: More Evidence Against Vitamin Use
#23It's pretty hard to get the (now increased) recommended allowance for vitamin D (600 IUs ... especially as an indoor-programmer-type). You need 10 glasses of milk to get that without supplementing.
http://www.docgurley.com/2008/05/18/the-greatest-drug-in-the...
http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/nutrition_articles.asp?i...
Re: More Evidence Against Vitamin Use
#24It's worth noting that they're describing the effects of high doses of vitamins. Given the average modern diet (at least, for Americans like me), vitamins may be necessary to achieve "normal" doses. I take a fiber supplement (which, I know, is not a vitamin) because I try to avoid refined carbohydrates, which tends to mean I have to avoid carbohydrates altogether except when making a home-cooked meal. Since the avera…
Exactly, most vitamins are dietary supplements and not meant as wonder drugs. What the article fails to mention is the hazards of being deficient in any of these things and how easy with a modern diet it is to be deficient.
That's a study I would like to see: how deficient people's diets actually are. I hear many claims about this, but never heard of any systematic attempts to verify it.
Re: More Evidence Against Vitamin Use
#25Good-quality commentary on the recent study announced in the article submitted here by a regular contributor to the Science-Based Medicine group blog: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/vitamins-and-m... And since it has been a while since this link has been posted in an HN comment, and since commenters here have mentioned that they haven't even read the fine submitted article, much less the underlying stu…
I encourage everyone to read the conclusions. (And they're actual conclusions! Not just a summary! Yes, that makes me so excited as to warrant three exclamation marks!)
Re: More Evidence Against Vitamin Use
#26It's worth noting that they're describing the effects of high doses of vitamins. Given the average modern diet (at least, for Americans like me), vitamins may be necessary to achieve "normal" doses. I take a fiber supplement (which, I know, is not a vitamin) because I try to avoid refined carbohydrates, which tends to mean I have to avoid carbohydrates altogether except when making a home-cooked meal. Since the avera…
> I take a fiber supplement (which, I know, is not a vitamin) because I try to avoid refined carbohydrates
I clamped down on useless carbs altogether. Bread, potatoes, rice, popcorn, soda, etc - either eliminated or greatly reduced. I eat fruits as much as I want. Fiber issue - solved.
> Anecdotally, my ... er, system ... seems to work better that way.
Absolutely. :)
Re: More Evidence Against Vitamin Use
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, most vitamins are dietary supplements and not meant as wonder drugs. What the article fails to mention is the hazards of being deficient in any of these things and how easy with a modern diet it is to be deficient.
That's a study I would like to see: how deficient people's diets actually are. I hear many claims about this, but never heard of any systematic attempts to verify it.
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Re: More Evidence Against Vitamin Use
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, most vitamins are dietary supplements and not meant as wonder drugs. What the article fails to mention is the hazards of being deficient in any of these things and how easy with a modern diet it is to be deficient.
That's a study I would like to see: how deficient people's diets actually are. I hear many claims about this, but never heard of any systematic attempts to verify it.
I sat in a lecture from a Harvard professor who claimed the average American consumed less than 50% of the fiber they should be. Don't have a link/paper for you, though. He cited it as a major contributor to colon cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.
Re: More Evidence Against Vitamin Use
#29It's worth noting that they're describing the effects of high doses of vitamins. Given the average modern diet (at least, for Americans like me), vitamins may be necessary to achieve "normal" doses. I take a fiber supplement (which, I know, is not a vitamin) because I try to avoid refined carbohydrates, which tends to mean I have to avoid carbohydrates altogether except when making a home-cooked meal. Since the avera…
Also important is that they are not describing the effects of high doses of all vitamins. Superfluous amounts of Vitamin E seem to be mainly what they are seeing negative results from, and you'd probably only be getting that much Vitamin E if you were taking Vitamin E-specific supplements on purpose.
This type health news confuse people; everything we think will make us healthy is later claimed as an unhealthy exercise in some other research, should we distrust health news in mainstream media totally?
Re: More Evidence Against Vitamin Use
#30I'm sick of this hand-wavey selective nonsense. Yes, healthy people with good diets probably shouldn't be taking any vitamins, but the people I know who are this healthy are a small minority, including myself. Lets look at these cases specfically. Should women over the age of 50 take iron? Probably not, but why are they taking iron? Because they've been told their whole lives they're low on iron by their doctors, who…
This article is so against the hacker ethos its not even funny.
In what way? This is a summarization of scientific research.