False headlines & the truth about vitamins and minerals....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 3-13-2012

Most doctors know little about supplements including vitamins and minerals and are too busy to find out more unless they somehow get updated by their patients or other doctors who know more.

The drug companies don’t like the competition from those supplements that do work but have none of the side effects most of their drugs do and the supplements cost less.

(Some drugs do important things and do them fast that supplements cannot do. And, for some things the drugs are the better choice. Then too some supplements may not be that effective.

But the drug companies appear to be deliberately misinforming doctors and the media and thus many of the rest of us about supplements that do work.)

So you may have seen headlines like “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” AND “Vitamin E causes Prostate Cancer.”

But the truth is far different. Very different!

1. Most vitamins and minerals are beneficial and some are spectacularly beneficial.

There a few vitamins and minerals that do have side effects in doses that are too large. But if you know what level is safe on those few, those same vitamins and minerals can benefit you.

This makes the headline, “Vitamins are a waste of money or dangerous” false & I think deliberately misleading.

2. We know 4 things about vitamin E and prostate cancer. The headline as quoted is completely false. And the other 3 things help prevent prostate cancer!

That headline isn’t just sloppy journalism it’s harmful to the public health and may even be deliberately publicized by the drug companies.

We’ll start with the vitamin E headline and go back to the other vitamins and minerals.

Vitamin E supplements come in two versions, the same vitamin E that’s in raw nuts, extra virgin olive oil, and avocados.

The other is man made and has different effects because it is different chemically.

Biologically effective compounds are like keys. The lock they are supposed to fit, does fit the natural compound. But if you use a molecule that is the mirror image of the real thing or has another chemical added to it, it often won’t fit the lock.

To get a safe and effective one, you have to use the natural version or make a truly identical version.

The commonly used and cheap man made vitamin E has both problems. In biological terms it isn’t really vitamin E at all!

So, if you study or read about vitamin E, it’s critical to know if the real version or the not that great man made version is what you are reading about!

a) The study that was done on real, natural vitamin E that I read of found that it did somewhat lower prostate cancer risk.

b) One of the forms of the vitamin E complex, gamma tocopherol, is actually very preventive of prostate cancer. If you aren’t allergic to tree nuts, raw pecans are high in it. And you can, so far, buy it as a supplement.

c) The study the headline refers to did NOT test vitamin E, they tested a double dose of the cheap and not too great man made vitamin E substitute instead.

They did not test the real vitamin E at all. But they did find that taking a double dose of the cheap man made vitamin E substitute DID increase the risk for prostate cancer.

d) The people in the study who took the double dose of the cheap man made vitamin E substitute AND took selenium were protected from that effect.

So, if you read the headline and take no real vitamin E because of the headline, you might get prostate cancer that more accurate information would have protected you from.

The real headline did NOT show up at all that I know of:

“Vitamin E itself may be helpful but the cheap man-made substitute caused prostate cancer.”

So, what to do?

The FDA should ban using the cheap man-made substitute for vitamin E in doses over 30 mg at the very least and strongly recommend its use be discontinued.

Since they haven’t, by all means do this for yourself! Never take the cheap man-made substitute for vitamin E in doses over 30 mg.

If you take vitamin E extra, ONLY buy natural vitamin E and/or the gamma tocopherol member of the E complex.

Eat the real foods that contain all of the vitamin E complex.

And take 200 mcg of selenium.

(For preventing the aggressive form of prostate cancer, eat raw broccoli or cauliflower florets every day or most days of every week. Studies found that cut your chances of getting the aggressive form of prostate cancer in about half.)

The reality is that you can take the real vitamin E and be less likely to get or be harmed by prostate cancer.

In this case an inaccurate headline and reporting can harm you and likely has harmed many people.

I see I’m out of time for this week. But I’ll resume covering the other vitamins and minerals next week.

Far from being useless and a waste of money, two vitamins are so beneficial they actually were tested to lower the death rate of people who took them. One of those even slashed the health care costs of the people who made sure to take enough!

Two vitamins, retinol the animal version of vitamin A and B6; and five minerals, calcium, copper, iron, selenium, and zinc can be risky in doses that are too large however, and we will cover those too.

If you know to take less of those they can still be quite beneficial despite that. Just find out the amount that IS safe to take and take that.

We will cover that next week or the week after.