Category: Herbs & Supplements
Antioxidants and Exercise: More Harm Than Good?
Multivitamin supplementation has been getting a rough ride in the literature, as evidence emerges that routine supplementation for most is, at best, unnecessary. Some individual vitamins are earning their own unattractive risk/benefit profiles: Products like folic acid, calcium, and beta-carotene all seem inadvisable for routine supplementation in the absence of deficiency or medical indication. Vitamin E, already on the watch list, looks...
Pediatrics & “CAM” I: the wrong solution
Oh no! Not again! The venerable medical journal Pediatrics devotes an entire supplement this month to Pediatric Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Legal, Ethical, and Clinical Issues in Decision-Making. We sense from the very first sentence that we are in familiar territory: Rapid increases the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) raise important legal, ethical, clinical, and policy issues. (S150)...
Collagen: An implausible supplement for joint pain
I’m one of those odd people that enjoys distance running. I end up spending a lot of time in the company of other runners. And when we’re not running, we’re usually griping about our running injuries. As the cohort that I run with ages, the injuries are getting more prevalent. Besides the acute conditions, the chronic problems are starting to appear. Our...
Premature Claims for Neurotrophic Factors
Scientific medicine is not easy. By this point we have largely picked the low hanging fruit, and continued improvements are mostly incremental and hard won. In order to get the most out of our limited research dollars, and optimize medical practice with the safest and most effective treatments, we need to use all available scientific evidence in the proper way. That is...
Weight Loss Customers Are Being Hoodia-Winked
I first wrote about Hoodia in my “SkepDoc” column in Skeptic magazine (Vol. 13, No. 1, 2007). The following is adapted from that column with an update from new research revealing that it doesn’t work and that it causes worrisome side effects. I first heard of Hoodia in 2006, when a radio ad informed me that it was the new miracle weight...
Milk Thistle and Mushroom Poisoning
If you’ve been fortunate to live in the parts of the US that were soggier than usually as of late – or unfortunate enough to have had flooding from hurricanes and tropical storms – then you’ve be noticing a tremendous burst of mushrooms. For mycologists – mushroom enthusiasts – there are two classic chestnuts: “There are old mushroom collectors and bold mushrooms...
/
October 28, 2011
Alpha Brain – What’s Wrong with the Supplement Industry
There is an endless stream of supplement products on the market that are of questionable value. They tend to follow a similar pattern: put an essentially random assortment of vitamins, minerals, perhaps herbs and nutritional elements into a pill and then make whatever pseudo-health claims you want. Usually the claim is implied in the name of the product itself – sleepwell, or...
Steven Fowkes (Part 1 of 2): How to Cure Alzheimer’s and Herpes
A correspondent asked me to review a video presentation by Steven Fowkes, “Nutrients for Better Mental Performance,” one segment of a 9-part series on preventing and curing Alzheimer’s that was mentioned recently by an SBM commenter. Fowkes is an organic chemist without a PhD; he says this means: I am not institutionalized [This begs for a joke, but I will refrain.] and...
Pursued by Protandim Proselytizers
I’m fed up! In August 2009 I wrote about Protandim, pointing out that it’s not supported by good evidence. I thought I had made myself clear; but apparently I had only made myself a target. True believers have deluged the Internet with attacks on my article, calling it mere “opinion,” ignoring its main points, and denigrating me personally. I have ignored the Internet...
The Prostrate Placebo
I seem to be writing a lot about the urinary tract this month. Just coincidence, I assure you. As I slide into old age, medical issues that were once only of cursory interest for a young whippersnapper have increasing potential to be directly applicable to grumpy old geezers. Like benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH). I am heading into an age where I may...