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The
Heartland Naturopathic Clinic Email Newsletter - March 2006 The following are our email newsletters with helpful information on staying well and our practices. They include articles on home care, natural healing, cured cases, commentary on current issues in the field of health care and medicine and other interesting and useful information. If you are interested in receiving this newsletter simply send your email address, name and a request asking to be added to our email address list to: Staff@HeartlandNaturopathic.com. CONTENTS: You can’t trust them! A study published July 6th
2005 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
was reported in the news. It was a major study of 40,000 women who were
given 300 IUs of vitamin E or placebo for 10 years. The news reported
that the researchers concluded: “the data does not support
recommending vitamin E supplementation for cardiovascular disease or
cancer prevention among healthy women.” Sounds like bad news for vitamin E, doesn’t it?
Here is the rest of the story. The researchers did not summarize some
important information from their own study in the abstract or their
release of the results to the press. Buried on page 59 of the study is
the following quote: “A significant 26% reduction in major
cardiovascular events was observed in women over 65 years of age
assigned to vitamin E, due to a 34% reduction in MI (heart attacks) and
a 49% reduction in cardiovascular death.” So how does a reduction of
49% in cardiovascular deaths not warrant recommending Vitamin E? That is
a very good question, one that the authors of the study avoided by
reporting to the press the opposite of what their research actually
showed. Unless you read the study yourself you would have missed this
important finding. More and more research is finding that the supposed
“gold standard” of modern medical research, the placebo-controlled
double-blind study, is often being corrupted by the influences of who
pays for the studies and the deep biases of pharmaceutical medicine.
This study in JAMA is a classic example of how these biases make it
impossible to trust published research as it is reported in the press.
There is just no money in natural medicines for the
medical/pharmaceutical industry. There seems to be no other explanation
of this deliberate effort to mislead everyone about the true benefits of
vitamin E. So in the end, the JAMA study actually shows what we have been recommending for supplementation of Vitamin E is correct. To reduce your risk for heart disease take about 400 IUs of natural vitamin E every day. Natural vitamin E is called d-alpha tocopherol, d-alpha tocopheryl acetate or d-alpha tocopheryl acid succinate. Synthetic vitamin E starts with “dl-alpha.” A vitamin with the “mixed” tocopherols is best. |