Unraveling the lies about the antioxidant study on vitamins E and C by dquixote1217 ..... Supplements Debate Forum
Date: 8/14/2007 4:35:41 PM ( 17 y ago)
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Unraveling the lies about the antioxidant study on vitamins E and C
by Mike Adams
08-13-2007
A new study published in the August 13, 2007 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine found that vitamins E and C, when taken together, result in a significant reduction in the risk of strokes (31 percent) and heart attacks (22 percent). The study followed 8,171 women who were instructed to take relatively small amounts of these vitamins for more than nine years (600 IU of vitamin E, 500mg of vitamin C and 50mg of beta carotene were taken every other day -- a very small dose according to most modern nutritionists).
Despite these encouraging findings about the positive impact of antioxidants on health, nearly all the headlines in the mainstream media today are proclaiming vitamins E and C to be useless. In classic doublespeak, one press release blares, "Vitamin C and Other Antioxidant Vitamins Provide No Protection from Cardiovascular Events." This particular distortion comes from the drug-touting Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), an affiliate of Harvard Medical School. BWH goes on to state, "researchers... have found that there is no evidence of benefit or risk from vitamins C, E or beta-carotene on cardiovascular events for women at a high risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD)."
Other medical associations and pharmaceutical-affiliated groups are making similar pronouncements. Vitamins C and E, according to them, are nutritionally worthless. And they're basing that conclusion on a study that actually showed the vitamins to be far better at preventing cardiovascular disease than any prescr*iption drug!
How to lie with statistics
So how can anyone claim these vitamins are worthless when the study clearly shows a strong, significant health benefit in those who take the vitamins? It's simple: the results of the study can be made to look poor by counting the results of all the people who didn't take the vitamins!
Let me explain this again to make sure I'm communicating this properly: Overall, if you look at the entire group of women followed in this study, you find that cardiovascular protective benefits were only marginal: An 11 percent reduction in the risk of combined cardiovascular disease. But that benefit is diluted by the fact that it includes all the women who neglected to actually take the vitamins! If you include only the women who complied with taking the vitamins on a regular basis, the results increase substantially and become quite significant with a 31 percent reduction in the risk of stroke and 22 percent reduction of risk in heart attacks. In other words, those women who actually took vitamins E and C experienced substantial benefits from doing so. Those who neglected to take the vitamins, not surprisingly, had little or no benefit.
Pushers of pharmaceuticals, of course, want to make vitamins look bad. So they quote the results that include people who never even took the vitamins. "See?" they say. "The benefits aren't there." Of course they aren't! It's like taking a room full of a hundred hungry children, handing fifty of them a large sandwich, then declaring that sandwiches don't work as food because half the room is still hungry.
for the rest of the story, go to http://www.newstarget.com/021974.html
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