Posted on 06/12/2008 6:46:05 PM PDT by blam
Vitamin supplement little more than 'snake oil'
June 12,2008
A popular vitamin supplement is being advertised with claims that are demonstrably untrue, as revealed by research published in the open access journal BMC Pharmacology.
Benfotiamine is a synthetic derivative of thiamine (vitamin B1). It is marketed heavily as a dietary supplement using a selection of unsubstantiated, 'not-quite-medical' claims that tend to characterize this field. A large part of this campaign has been built around the belief that benfotiamine is lipid-soluble and, therefore, more physiologically active. Scientific research led by Dr Lucien Bettendorff of the Center for Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology at the University of Liège, Belgium, has entirely disproved these claims.
A severe deficiency of thiamine is known to cause weight loss, emotional disturbances, impaired sensory perception, weakness and pain in the limbs, and periods of irregular heart rate. Deficiencies can occur as a result of alcoholism or malnutrition. As thiamine itself is very poorly absorbed by the body, it must be taken in as various precursor forms. This research shows that benfotiamine may not be as effective in this regard as has been claimed, in particular concerning its ability to raise effective thiamine levels in the central nervous system.
According to Bettendorff, "We suspect that those companies selling benfotiamine have poisoned much of the recent literature in an attempt to bestow it with properties that it does not have". Benfotiamine has been previously shown to prevent several diabetic complications in experimental animal models. The researchers carried out experiments in mice in which benfotiamine was administered using several different techniques and the resulting levels of thiamine were measured in various parts of the body. Contrary to other claims about its solubility, the results show that benfotiamine is only sparingly soluble in water under physiological conditions and cannot be dissolved in octanol or oils.
As Bettendorff explains, "Benfotiamine is very often considered a 'lipid-soluble' thiamine precursor from the disulfide derivative family though it is neither lipid-soluble, nor a disulfide. Sometimes, it is considered to have more biological activity than thiamine disulfides, but our study shows that it does not even penetrate cell membranes, except in those cells containing an ecto-alkaline phosphatase. There is no evidence that benfotiamine would be more effective than other precursors as a therapeutic agent for complications of diabetes."
Due to the wide-reaching nature of the false claims about this supplement, it was important to the authors that their work be published in BMC Pharmacology as it is an open access journal that makes research freely available.
Source: BioMed Central
I’ve been watching the pharmaceutical industry make counter claims concerning pharmaceuticals for the last 33 years. It doesn’t surprise me anymore when folks claim two different things. It’s more the norm than the exception.
The one thing you can count on, is that the pharmaceutical industry wants control of dietary suppliments more than most people realize. If that were to take place, prices would skyrocket. So would profits.
I wold love to see vitamins under the same scrutiny as pharma.
Vitamin and supplement companies make the most outrageous claims, often the potency of their products is minimal as well.
Billion dollar industry and lots of snake oil. I’m not surprised, we have insurance companies paying for “alternative” quackery. Noted surgeon Mehmet Oz is married to a Reiki practitioner and buys all of this stuff hook, line, and sinker, gets him on Oprah all the time though.
He’s such a “believer” he wouldn’t even dismiss a “psychic” surgery, where charlatans pretend to pull cancerous organs out of patients using magic tricks and chicken livers.
Gazes placidly out the window...
I have become very suspicious about scientific claims either in support of, or opposed to supplements and pharmacology in general. In the vast majority of cases, human physiology is so complicated that only animal followed by human testing proves or disproves both safety and efficacy, and then only in the short term.
An excellent example of how imprecise this is can be found in the commonly used measurement of poisons call LD/50. It means “Lethal dose of whatever poison for 50% of those exposed to it.” Think about that.
Say for example (just guessing) that the lethal dose of cyanide for 50% of the gerbils in a box, is 200 parts per million in air. Importantly, at this concentration 50% of gerbils will die, and 50% will live.
And they don’t know why. That is, why half the gerbils die and half will live. They do know that cyanide is poisonous.
Now, let’s apply this logic to say, a vitamin. You won’t be getting anywhere *near* the precision of life and death, at least hopefully, or unless the gerbils are eating a heck of a lot of that vitamin. This is because you want to see if the vitamin is good for them, or not.
How the heck can you tell? Maybe three of the gerbils feel good, 10 of them feel a little queasy, and the rest cannot tell. But then again you can’t tell that the three feel good, or ten feel queasy, either.
And gerbils might react completely differently to that vitamin than do people. And gerbils might not eat or take other stuff that reacts with the vitamins as well.
Pretty soon you are at the bottom of the ocean of doubt.
Butter Pecan
They just found out Vitamin B is a cure-all.
We know a chiropractor who is a good one and gets results, has some innovative alternative spinal corrective machines (stretching the spine) that help people . . but, she has evidently been scammed by the salesmen who sold her one of those “foot baths” that are supposed to wash out toxins from the body. It’s just a little wash tub and they put a bit of salt in the water, then it bubbles and finally corrodes the metals in a mechanism in the tub. All sorts of different colors come boiling out into the water, rust color, brown, red, putrid green (rust and corrosion). I really think that she is genuine in her belief in this silly thing and is very invested in it. I’ve wanted to tell her what I found on the net about it, but the only thing is that she was perfectly capable of researching it on the internet before she got so heavily invested in it and had been selling “footbaths” to her patients for so long. Every time she mentions this thing to me and how much I need it, it’s almost all I can do to keep from laughing in her face.
She initially helped me a lot when I started going to her over ten years ago, but after several years and diminishing returns (a sore back and numbness from too many rough “adjustments”) and I quit having the adjustments done any more several months ago. She works on my husband’s feet and keeps the gout crystals dissolved through adjusting the joints. It is VERY painful with the sharp uric acid crystals sticking into the joints when they are broken up. . anyway, I go with him and wait for him there, but she keeps at me to let her start back romping and stomping on my spine. No dice any more and I mean it.
Yes big Pharma and the FDA are quite a hoax. The vitamin companies DO NOT do “psychic” surgery, they generally work with known variables and facts. Oprah probably has interest’s in a chicken farm.
They are the competition to big Pharma and the FDA keeping them honest. Withdraw competition and you see what you get. Some politicians law based on very little fact and chicken guts.
Just eat half a gerbil and go to bed early.
I take vitamins because I like what they do to the color of my pee.
I have noticed lately that some of the local PBS affilliates have been extended infomercials for the idiot crackpots that promote stuff like this—Guys like “Dr.” Daniel Amen are excoriated on www.quackwatch.org, but get trotted out and interviewed for pledge breaks. Amen sells a very questionable “brain-mapping system” and “treatment” for about four grand, and no evidence of effectiveness whatsoever.
So nice to know that our public funds are now actively promoting 21st century snake oil on “public” television.
How in the world did you read my post and decipher that I said that vitamin companies engage in psychic surgery???
That and your comment that big Pharma and the FDA are quite a hoax shows me where you’re coming from.
Also where did I say “withdraw competition”, I don’t feel like I’m on FR replying to your post, I feel I’m somewhere much....dumber.
If chiropractors stuck to what they can legitimately do the would be nothing more than an adjunct to a Physical Therapist, along the lines of a massage therapist.
I know a whole family of chiro’s some are whackier than others, a LOT of chiro’s buy into all forms of quackery and believe they can cure just about anything, “naturally”.
The vitamins I take do meet pharmacology standards.
Gotta guess which ones now, don’t you?
LOL!
http://healthcare-economist.com/2006/04/29/802m/
Cost to bring a drug to market in 2006 — 800 MILLION. 800 million before you see a penny of profit.
I believe it’s up to 900 million now.
Somehow I don’t think vitamins, supplements, herbs, etc. are operating under the same guidelines as their “competition” in the pharma industry.
Homeopathy, now there’s a scam for you.
“Head On” and all the related placebos.
Would it be the same without Benfo? I don't know. I do know that the drs told me 5 years ago that he'd be having trouble about now due to unstable blood glucose. I do know that his eyes were starting to go before Benfo and now are 20/20.
I also know that there are many folks who I've spoken with who have had relief from their neuropathy after taking Benfo.
I'll take my chances with the vitamin. Can't hurt, seems to help.
LOL
I would simply like the food suppliments to have to be proven to be effective or the manufacturers prosecuted for fraud.
As for homeophathy, I do not think it should be used instead of accepted medical practices. I have no problem at all with it being used in conjunction with it. I would stipulate that bonified documented practices be adhered to though.
As learned as the medical profession is, I still believe there are times when it does not have all the answers, and homeopathic measures can help.
I don't suggest folks should enter this field without a full dose of skepticism. Frankly, I would urge the same thing in some instances as it realtes to conventional medicine as well.
My favorite vegetable is popcorn!
Not a dumber forum, just one that uses your tone and quotes.
“Billion dollar industry and lots of snake oil. I’m not surprised, we have insurance companies paying for “alternative” quackery. Noted surgeon Mehmet Oz is married to a Reiki practitioner and buys all of this stuff hook, line, and sinker, gets him on Oprah all the time though.
He’s such a “believer” he wouldn’t even dismiss a “psychic” surgery, where charlatans pretend to pull cancerous organs out of patients using magic tricks and chicken livers.”
Your most recent reply is as incoherent as your initial one.
This chiropractor makes a lot of money by the time all things are considered. Her office is full all the time, and she runs them through on an assembly line - probably averaging at least half a dozen “adjustments”, or more, an hour - most to the tune of $60 apiece. She does give “seniors” a discount, but a majority of her patients aren’t seniors. Add to that all the x-rays for new patients, supplements and arthritis creams and gels, a cut from the massage therapists and other therapists, foot bath and spine stretching machine therapists who work out of her building and I can’t help but think there is no way she isn’t turning a pretty penny. - She has had at least two husbands who took her to the cleaners, which is a sad fact that’s really irrelevant to the point I’m making. I rode over there with my husband today for his appointment, but I sat out in the waiting room where she could’t pressure me to let her romp on my spine any more. - I do have to hand it to her; she keeps his gout at bay by breaking up the uric acid crystals in the joints in his feet, and she did really almost instantly clear up a bad problem I’d had with my neck for ten years. So, she is good at what she does, up to a point. If I get another neck problem like the one I had over ten years ago when I first started going to her, I’ll go back to her - but I’m hoping I won’t have to.
Twinkie - Yes . . Twinkie . . I know . . I know . . only Twinkies go to chiropractors in the first place . . . .
The “Godfather” of the family of chiropractors I know does brisk medicare business in the Bronx. He used to work 3 or 4 days a week, total assembly line, EVERYONE gets the same series of adjustments, crack, crack, crack, crack, 2 minutes tops, NEXT. Mind-boggling number of patients seen each day.
All business, I’m not sure how much he believes in chiro’s more outrageous claims.
His brother, sister and 2 daughters on the other hand went totally over the deep end, you can find pamphlets in their offices claiming they can treat ANYTHING. Very anti M.D., anti vaccination, anti-drug, anti-everything except for every quack, unproven and even totally discredited alternative therapy they can get their hands on.
If you look there are a few “straight” chiropractors who have rejected their radical brethren and only perform limited adjustments. They are in the distinct minority though. Much harder to make big money though.
ALL back pain will heal itself in 2-3 weeks with nothing but rest, chiro’s can provide some temporary relief. I can massage out my own cramps too, but I don’t call myself a doctor.
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