Posted on 03/01/2008 2:40:50 PM PST by blam
thanks for the analysis
and for fixing my math. I left off the decimal.
My thoughts exactly. Anyway, my vitamin E intake can't be giving me lung cancer. I never could keep those slippery little things lit.
Yup.
I really wonder is science is backward on this one. They assume that oxidative stress causes pathology, but I wonder if it could be a form of repair or protection. (for example; a fever doesn’t cause a cold. it’s a symptom and an attempt by the body to fight the disease. chicken or the egg.) For years I’ve wondered if antioxidants are doing more harm than good by eliminating a protective/healing mechanism.
“Vitamin E Linked To Lung Cancer”
You don’t have to have a name like
Philippus Theophrastus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim (aka Paracelsus)
to understand that “it’s the dose that makes the poison”!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus
Legend and rumour
Paracelsus is often cited as coining the phrase
“the dose makes the poison”.
Although he did not say this precisely, it seems that Paracelsus was
indeed well aware of the principle
Definitely a nominee for Post of the Day.
Or maybe they are just getting the sheeple used to not having medicines that will actually do some good and get them used to waitng years to see a doctor or get medicine prescribed
More correlation being mistaken for causation.
Show me the mechanism that makes vitamin E cause lung cancer.
OH, NO! Anyone over 50 is OLD? Why didn't someone tell me that when I turned 50? Dad Gumb!!!
I never did take to those things. They are slippery and too damned hard to light and get a decent coal burning.
Well, first, of all the cancers that happen in people (worldwide), smokers or not, lung cancer is number one. So I think it is safe to say that because of genetic disposition or environmental factors, people are somewhat prone to lung cancer.
Second, I’ve heard about some of the protocols used in some of these studies. (The bad ones). Sometimes people don’t take the stuff and don’t report that they’re not taking it, sometimes people are ALREADY taking other supplements or dietary items that expand the effect.
Thirdly, there are multiple active forms of Vit E. Unless you get the right ones in the proper balance, I could see where it very well could cause some damage. Sometimes the wrong form can attach to a receptor and because it is the wrong form (wrong stereoisomer or whatever), the receptor gets blocked and not turned on.
Everything in moderation. The antioxidant properties of Vit E are well established, also it’s importance to healthy cell membranes.
This is suspect unless repeatable and verified by meta-analysis.
Get your sunshine! It's the best form of vit D.
Good analysis.
The world is full of agenda driven individuals and groups that must scare us all to death to get their way.
Yes, there are two statistical risks involved here, “relative risk” and “absolute risk”. They are focussing on the relative risk.
Yes, they found a relative increased risk of 28%, but, as you point out, the absolute risk was 0.7% of developing lung cancer at all. So, even with the relative risk added, folks were extremely UNLIKELY to develop lung cancer.
The problem is, people are succeeding in making careers out of the notion of eliminating all risk from your life. But at what expense? Witness the recent idiotic Mississippi bill against serving bad food to obese folks in restaurants!
Get your sunshine! It’s the best form of vit D.
In fact it’s not.
The UVB rays that make Vit D in your skin only get through the atmosphere if the sun is within 15 degrees or so of the zenith, the highest point in the sky.
For most of North America, there’s a good six months of the year when the sun never gets far enough up - you can sit in the sun all day then and make none at all.
So you can eat eggs. And lard. No, I’m not kidding! Lard!!
http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/Vitamin-D.html
Oxidation is a process by which compounds or elements are slowly consumed or ‘burned’ by oxygen by definition; at best, to imply or assert that antioxidants are beneficial or curative must be specious since without oxygen, we should all surely die.
The whole mess revolves around the mysterious ‘free-radicals’ just like the answers found in the proverbial entrails.
Give that boy a Cup O Gold... (apologies to Roger Miller)
Actually, this result isn’t surprising. It has been known amongst serious vitamin organizatinos for a long time that alpha tocopherol by itself is not good for you. It competes for concentration with gamma tocopherol. If you supplement with just alpha (which 90% of vitamin supplements do), you deplete your gamma. They have distinct physiological roles and low gamma is quite bad for you in several different ways. Together, they are quite good for you, even as supplements.
What “oxidation” in a biological sense means is this:
Something that wants to steal electrons.
Singlet oxygen can do it. So can chlorine.
And by “stealing” electrons, it can (sometimes, not always), change the chemical bonds and composition of the thing it stole them from. If it steals it from a sugar molecule, probably no big deal.
If it steals it from your DNA, that could be a major calamity.
Antioxidants work by having some extra electrons (rather, loosely bound ones) that it can give away to the thieving bunch.
So they are free to just wander around with all the electrons they could want, and they won’t attack your cell membranes, arteries, or DNA. That’s a good thing.
High vitamin E doses were found to increase risk
Linked? It is somehow attached?
Have they proved causality?
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