Re: Prominent Nutritionist Says Wall Street Journal Wrong on Vitamins
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-----Original MessageFrom: Stanislav AV [mailto:exst***@o*****.ru]
Sent: Friday, April 14, 2006 5:09 AM
To: science.news.bessmertie (3784843)
Subject: Prominent Nutritionist Says Wall Street Journal Wrong on Vitamins
Prominent Nutritionist Says Wall Street Journal Wrong on Vitamins
PR Newswire
04-13-06
BLOOMINGDALE, Ill., April 12, 2006 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- "The Case
Against
Vitamins, an article by the Wall Street Journal
which originally ran on March 20, 2006 and is being widely reprinted, should
be thrown out of court," says Neil Levin, a
Chicago-area Certified Clinical Nutritionist. "The danger here is that a
reporter
who is neither a nutritionist nor a doctor may
dissuade people from utilizing products which can help them maintain their
health.
And that is harmful."
There is an understandable tendency for the media to embrace controversial
stories
in an environment where a single study is touted
as negating all other studies, even though rogue studies are usually deeply
flawed.
The "several studies" cited in this report have
been seriously criticized by experts without their rebuttals resulting in
any
real effort to set the record straight, Levin points
out.
Provocative reports get wide coverage, but not the subsequent, legitimate
criticism
of the studies. This leads to public confusion
about supplements and fuels a growing mistrust of the reliability of media
reports
on all nutrition topics. Levin says that dietary
supplements are singled out as being harmful or useless, or both at once,
when
these accusations are often not supported by good
data.
"This WSJ article singled out beta-carotene as promoting cancer, mentioning
a
study on Finnish smokers. Yet that study's data was
recently reanalyzed, with researchers looking instead at total antioxidant
intake.
They discovered that low antioxidant intake was
the real culprit in that original cancer study, not beta-carotene
supplementation,"
Levin said.
The article reported that antioxidants may "promote some cancer and
interfere
with treatments." The peer-reviewed journal CA from
the American Cancer Society published (online) Levin's analysis documenting
dozens
of studies proving that specific vitamins and
antioxidants actually enhanced medical cancer therapies.
Many negative studies state that their results are not applicable to
populations
other than the ones studied, yet get wide press
coverage positioned as being universally definitive. And evidence that the
researchers
and the WSJ admit is "inconclusive" is still
publicized as an argument against taking Vitamin E, which Levin stresses is
a
safe and effective nutritional supplement.
"The Vitamin E controversy should have been cleared up after the American
Journal
of Clinical Nutrition did a far more thorough
review than the handful of studies used in the Annals of Internal Medicine
review
article," Levin says. "Annals has, to its credit,
published dozens of critical comments from physicians and scientists,
including
mine. The vastly more authoritative AJCN report,
"Vitamins E and C Are Safe Across A Broad Range Of Intakes", determined that
the Annals data indicated problems only in doses over
2,000 IU; not the 400 IU widely reported. The Food and Nutrition Board of
the
Institute of Medicine has set the safe, upper
tolerable intake level for vitamin E at 1,500 IU daily. Research shows that
Vitamin
E may be useful for people suffering from
Parkinson's, macular degeneration, cataracts, cancer and mercury toxicity.
The
substantial body of evidence supporting supplements
may not sell papers the way controversial studies do, but it is weighty."
Reports that 'B-Vitamins don't lower risk for heart attacks' miss the point
entirely,
according to Levin. Vitamins do lower levels
of homocysteine, an inflammatory substance, and reduce the number of
non-fatal
strokes. Homocysteine as a theoretical cause of heart
disease is being challenged, but the B-Vitamins performed exactly as
predicted.
The well-respected Lewin Group has published reports showing that proper use
of supplementation can save billions of dollars in
health care costs while reducing pain and suffering. There are FDA-approved
health
claims for vitamins and minerals supported by
solid scientific claims. The total body of evidence supports benefits of
dietary
supplementation. The risk of being hurt by a
vitamin is so low as to be unquantifiable, far less than the risk from
contracting
a food borne illness or from taking a
pharmaceutical or OTC product like acetaminophen. "That's the real truth
about
vitamins," Levin concludes.
Neil Levin, CCN, DANLA, is nutrition education manager at Bloomingdale,
Illinois
based NOW Foods, Inc. and works to dispel
inaccurate health information.
CONTACT: Suzanne Shelton
suzan***@s*****.com
SOURCE The Shelton Group
CONTACT: Suzanne Shelton of Shelton Group, +1-847-676-4337,
suzan***@s*****.com
URL: http://www.prnewswire.com
http://www.SheltonGroupPR.com www.prnewswire.com
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