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My beef with the Medical Community"You're more apt to die from prescription medication than from an accident, pneumonia, or diabetes. That's the unsettling news that last week came out of the Journal of the American Medical Association, which found that adverse drug reactions may be the fourth-ranking cause of death in the United States, right after heart disease, cancer, and stroke." Prescribed Killers, U.S. News & World Report, 4/27/98 I think it’s ironic when I read the studies involving tens of thousands of people that show things like: Two B vitamins reducing heart disease by 45%. Vitamin D reducing breast cancer by 40%. Vitamin E reducing heart disease by 41% and prostate cancer by 34%. Selenium reducing overall cancer by 42% and prostate cancer by 66%. Vitamin C reducing stomach cancer by 50%, etc. Folic Acid reducing colon cancer by 75%. Then the medical establishment saying they need more studies before they can recommend it. Yet they pass out prescriptions for drugs like Phen-Fen and Viagra and Prozac, which doesn’t have near as many studies or long term safety record, as if it were candy. There was a recent study on Prozac indicating that it might cause permanent brain damage. See my page on other drugs with serious side effects which doctor don't have any problem with prescribing. People with glass houses like that should not through stones at the supplement industry. If you were in a business, would you recommend something that might decrease your business by 30 to 50%? Just had to vent that but is shows a definite conflict of interest. A recent CNN article pointed out that adverse reactions to prescription and over-the-counter medicines kill more than 100,000 Americans and seriously injure an additional 2.1 million each year. A recent Time Magazine article pointed out that 98,000 Americans die yearly from doctor's mistakes. In college I did two term papers on interest groups and their influence on government. The most powerful interest group at the time was the American Medical Association. The AMA represents and is supported by the physicians in their organizations. If vitamins do what many studies suggest, those physicians could lose a lot of their business. It’s amazing how conservative the AMA is regarding nutritional supplements but when it comes to pushing something like Fen-phen or Xenical through the FDA, were is their conservatism? I see the AMA as being anti-vitamins to protect their jobs just as teachers are pro-bilingual education to protect their jobs even though 82% of the Latinos are against bilingual education because they know that it is bad for their children in the long run. The medical establishment will always argue that there needs to be more studies and that the supplements may cause more harm than good. I feel that you are never going to see those studies and you have to go by the best information you have at the time. Considering the history of prescription drugs, I feel that the remote possibilities of side effects from nutritional supplements should be the least of your worries. The medical establishment has a lot of gall stressing the possible side effects of nutritional supplements and not even mentioning the poor history of prescription drugs. It's like "everything we have is good and everything the competition has is bad." I'm sure some readers will say that I'm the same way, however, read my top recommendations and you'll see that many are only available by prescription. A new report by the National Defense Council Foundation found that the federal government could save up to $6.3 billion annually by increasing the health of active and retired military personnel through a anti-aging program that includes the use of vitamin supplementation. That's $6.3 million just for the military and retired military which I would guess only represent 4% (or 1/25th) of the population. If you multiply the $6.3 billion by 25 (for the rest of the US population) you get $157.5 billion in annual health care savings, most of which would come from the physicians the AMA represents. I recently saw an advertisement on TV which encouraged people to come out against the burning of the rain forests. I agree. One of their arguments was the number of prescription medications that were derived from plants. I forget the number but it was huge. However, I get suspicious when the AMA does not have any problem with the plant derived medication that their members get paid big bucks to write a prescription for, yet seem to be against all the ones that they do not get paid to write the prescription. The AMA claims that you get all the vitamins you need in a balanced diet. Even if you don't believe in optimum amounts (vice RDA's), according to a report published by the Council for Responsible Nutrition, entitled "Optimal Nutrition for Good Health, The Benefits of Nutritional Supplements", a study of more than 8000 adults found that only 1% consumed diets that meet the five food-group recommendations of the USDA's food guide pyramid. A study was recently released regarding selenium. The men with the highest amount of selenium had 65 percent less prostate cancer. The medical establishment came out with the usual comment: "We need more studies before we can recommend it". That selenium study involved nearly 34,000 men. Plus, it was not the first study on selenium. The trials I have read regarding prescription drugs usually involved only about 400 people. Am I the only one that sees the irony in that they need more studies on the selenium but the drugs that they get money to write prescriptions for and which have been studied on only about 1% as many people, they don't have any problem with it? Xenical is a prefect example of how the medical establishment will push what they make their money in prescriptions and shun other products. With Xenical, the average weight loss was only three and a half pounds per year less than the control group. There were two short term studies. No long term studies like the medical establishment is always claiming they need before they will recommend supplements. In the first study on Xenical, 10 women got breast cancer as opposed to one in the control group. They argued that it was a fluke because there was no theoretical reason for that to happen, even though Xenical blocks carotenoids and carotenoids have been shown to protect against breast cancer. The company didn't like that study so they went to Europe for the second one where breast cancer rates have always been lower than in the US. That study produced the results they wanted, so out of two studies, they went with that one. The medical establishment is quick to point out the misinformation being put out in health food stores. I agree but people in glass houses shouldn't through stones. I should keep a list but here are a few I can recall off the top of my head: In October 2000, a pharmacist told a friend of mine's father that the flu vaccine being given out by at the Albertson's stores was last years vaccines (an absolute lie). A MD at the Balboa Naval Hospital told me that you can't take niacin with a statin such as Lipitor (some statins are even sold combined with niacin to raise the good cholesterol). An endocrinologist at the Balboa Naval Hospital with the rank of captain told me that high cortisol is good. I view the AMA like the cigarette companies back in the 1950s. Basically what I see them saying is the following: "Don't take these supplements which have been shown to significantly reduce the degenerative diseases of aging. We need those degenerative diseases to bring in money for our business". See Hopkins: Superfluous Supplements? by Benjamin Caballero, M.D., Ph.D. as an example. Up until the early 1990's, the cigarette companies were telling us that there was no scientific evidence that smoking was hazardous to health. As more and more studies came out, it got to the point where they just couldn't convince people anymore. I see a similar thing happening with the AMA. They are saying that there is no scientific evidence that supplements reduce the degenerative diseases of aging. As more and more people read the news, the AMA is loses more credibility. I'm 50 years old and have been taking the finest supplements I could find since I was 18. Everyone says I look about 35 years old. Every doctor I know that shuns vitamins looks about 10 years past their age. I had a doctor write and call me a few names and say that I was in the same boat as the doctors in that I make money off supplements. First of all, the money I make from my web site is pitiful compared to the amount of time I put into it. I'm a retired navy pilot so I can afford to do that. Also, my site has nearly as much positive information on conventional medicine as alternative medicine. Plus, unlike the medical establishment who shun all forms of alternative medicine, I approve of a lot of prescription drugs such as growth hormone, deprenyl, metformin, Armour, testosterone, estrogen, dilantin, etc. The following is a quote from the book "Grow Young with hGH" by Dr. Ronald Katz, page 167: "To become a physician, you have to take the Hippocratic Oath, in which you swear to "do no harm." But there are many ways to interpret that phrase. As all Catholics are aware, there are sins of omission and sins of commission. Cutting off the wrong leg of a diabetic or operating on the wrong side of the head in a patient with a brain tumor as happened recently in two New York hospitals is clearly doing harm. But what about not keeping abreast of the latest diagnostic treatment or advances? Or failing to inform a patient of lifestyle changes or options that could drastically lower risk of disease? Or taking a authoritarian, I-know-better-than-you attitude that effectively cuts off all questions about alternative measures and treatments? All these "sins of omission" may end up doing you harm in terms of accelerated aging, disease, and death." In other words, a patient asks a doctor about selenium to help prevent prostate cancer and the doctor, without even reading the research, comes back with a belligerent "I know better than you" remark and says not to take it. If that patient, who may have been one of the 66% that selenium would have prevented the disease, died from prostate cancer, he is just as dead as if the doctor screwed up an operation. Sincerely, Update 2/13/99 I'm convinced that the medical establishment is out to discredit the supplement industry. Healthy people don't see doctors as often and there are already too many doctors. Today I read the news report "Herbs could badly impair fertility, Researchers report damage to reproductive cells". I couldn't believe what I was reading. The medical establishment is always pointing out that tests done with supplements on animals do not necessarily translate to humans. This test wasn't even done on animals. They soaked sperm in a high concentration of St. John's wort and after about a week, it showed damage. Give me a break! Soak your sperm in half of items in your refrigerator for a week and see what happens then. Let's see: coke, lemon juice, beer, wine, mustard, ... I think the medical community has stooped to their lowest on this one. They might see what happens when you let sperm soak in Prozac for a week also. Udate 2/24/99 ABC News agrees with me. Read the "Juice Effect" section. Further Reading:
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