Results for: dietary supplements
Failed Flaxseed and Bad News Brownies
Well, it’s been a tough month for herbs since my last monthly soiree here at SBM. Just last week at the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting, a group out of the Mayo Clinic presented data from a study showing that a well-characterized flaxseed extract was ineffective against hot flashes in postmenopausal women. But as Steve Novella noted here earlier this...
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June 10, 2011
The benefits and risks of folic acid supplementation
Could a vitamin with proven benefits in one group cause harm to another? That’s the growing concern with folic acid, the vitamin that dramatically reduces the risk of neural tube birth defects such a spina bifida. Studies designed to explore the possible benefits of folic acid for heart disease, stroke and cancer are giving out some worrying signs: At best, folic acid...
Dr. Mehmet Oz completes his journey to the Dark Side
A couple of weeks ago, both Steve Novella and I criticized Dr. Mehmet Oz (a.k.a. “America’s doctor”) for not only hosting a man I consider to be a major supporter of quackery, but going far beyond that to defend and promote him. After that, I considered Dr. Oz to be a lost cause, with nothing to excuse him for his having embraced...
The risks of CAM: How much do we know?
CAM products and treatments are often sold as "all-benefit, no-risk". While we can highlight the lack of evidence for benefit, even harder can be assessing the risks of CAM.
For shame, Dr. Oz, for promoting Joseph Mercola on your show!
Dr. Oz goes deeper into the quackery well by hosting one of the most notorious quacks of all on his show, Dr. Joe Mercola.
Simply Raw: Making overcooked claims about raw food diets
This week, I plan on taking on something that’s been sitting near the bottom of my “to do list” for several weeks now. Indeed, readers have been sending me links since November or so to what will be the topic of this week’s post, but something somehow has always managed to push it aside each weekend when the time came to sit...
New Recommendations for Calcium and Vitamin D Intake
A Walmart ad in my local newspaper trumpets “75% of all Americans don’t get enough Vitamin D” and offers to sell me Maximum Strength Vitamin D3, 5000 IU capsules to “promote bone, colon and breast health.” Meanwhile, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) tells me that “the majority of Americans and Canadians are receiving adequate amounts of … vitamin D” and that no...
Bill Clinton’s Diet
Bill Clinton loved hamburgers from McDonald’s. He used to eat a typical American high calorie, high fat, meat-based diet. No more. He had a heart attack and a quadruple bypass in 2004. Recurrent blockages required placement of two stents in February 2010. This got his attention and he went on a strict new diet, losing 24 pounds to get back down to...
The DC as PCP?
Subluxation-free chiropractic? The long-simmering internecine wars among various factions of chiropractic recently reached a full boil when the Council on Chiropractic Education (CCE) had the audacity to eliminate the word “subluxation” from its draft 2012 “Standards for Doctor of Chiropractic Programs.” The CCE is the official U.S. Department of Education-approved accreditation agency for chiropractic colleges. It intends to adopt the revised Standards...
CAM and the Law Part 2: Licensure and Scope of Practice Laws
This post is intended to illustrate a bit about how medicine, including alternative medicine, is defined and limited legally by state licensure. This is, of course, an enormous topic, especially given the variety of laws and regulations among the 50 states and District of Columbia, and the many, often mutually inconsistent, court decisions interpreting them. A comprehensive survey would resemble Gibbon’s history...