Results for: "Vitamin C"
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...
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...
Steven Fowkes (Part 2 of 2): Nutrients for Better Mental Performance
Last week, in part 1, I covered Steven Fowkes’ “cures” for Alzheimer’s and herpes. In part 2, I will cover a video where he goes further afield. It is titled “Nutrients for Better Mental Performance,” but he also discusses sleep, depression, hangovers, and a lot of other topics. Some of what he says are simple truisms: mental performance is affected by everything...
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...
Gullible George: A monkey goes to the naturopath
I get the occasional email. Very little hate mail, unfortunately, since hate mail is often more amusing. I read what little email I receive, and usually do not respond, mostly as I do not have the time. I am a slow writer and a slower typist, and there are just so many hours in the day, and the older you get, the...
Wishing Away Warts
Common warts (verruca vulgaris) are more of a nuisance than a serious health problem, but they are interesting. There is a whole mythology surrounding their cause (touching toads?) and treatment (everything from banana peels to vitamin C). Many people believe they can be made to vanish by suggestion or hypnosis. I used to believe that too. Every doctor has wart stories. Here...
New Dietary Ingredient (NDI) rules planned for the supplement industry
A rumble of discontent is being heard across the dietary supplement industry since a draft guidance document was published last month by the US Food and Drug Administration. In response to the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act signed into law in January by President Obama, the FDA was required to produce a documents requiring dietary supplement and foods companies to submit safety...
Electrodermal Testing Part I: Fooling Patients with a Computerized Magic Eight Ball
Remember the Magic Eight Ball toy? You could ask it a question and shake it and a random answer would float up into a window: yes, no, maybe, definitely, etc. There is even a website where you can ask an Eight Ball questions online. I have been meaning to write about bogus electrodiagnostic machines for a long time. These devices supposedly diagnose...
Cognitive Traps
In my recent review of Peter Palmieri’s book Suffer the Children I said I would later try to cover some of the many other important issues he brings up. One of the themes in the book is the process of critical thinking and the various cognitive traps doctors fall into. I will address some of them here. This is not meant to...
Coming to an emergency room near you in 2030?
I’ve frequently lamented what might happen if the current trend towards quackademic medicine continues unabated, and quackery becomes fully “integrated” with science-based medicine as a co-equal. Interestingly, this concept has provided fodder for several comedians. For example, the first comedy sketch I discovered on this theme was homeopathic e.r. Then a couple of years ago, Mitchell and Webb brought us the British...