Mainstream Exposes New 'Dangers' of Vitamin E...
Dear Reader,
Sometimes the mainstream media acts like a hulking, simple- minded, Frankenstein.
Here's the latest from "Frank" on vitamin E: "Vitamin E cause stroke. Me no like stroke. Me no like vitamin E! Argh!"
Thanks, big guy. That's really...not helpful at all.
Botched headlines
With headlines such as, "Vitamin E increases risk of internal bleeding stroke," and "Vitamin E could trigger a stroke," the mainstream media has, once again, completely botched the reporting.
For instance, here's what one newspaper article reported: "It turns out that taking Vitamin E, while reducing risk of ischemic stroke by about 10 per cent, actually increases risk of the more-dangerous hemorrhagic stroke by 22 per cent."
Well, no, it doesn't "turn out" — as if, finally, this is the end of the story. And there's zero evidence that a quality vitamin E supplement would "actually increase risk" of hemorrhagic stroke.
This vitamin E news isn't based on a clinical trial. It was a meta-analysis of several clinical trials, so it's open to all kinds of interpretation.
And you know who saw right through all that? The newspaper readers! It was like they became a mob of angry villagers, grabbing torches and pitchforks to go after the mainstream Frankenstein.
In the comment section included with the blog article, several readers asked about the forms of vitamin E used and the dosages. In comment after comment there are intelligent questions that SHOULD have been raised by the blogger, who instead just parroted the conclusion of the study.
So what's the real deal with the meta-analysis? Well, it's a mess. As usual!
First of all, many of the subjects in these studies weren't at all healthy to begin with.
One study enrolled only smokers — more than 28,000! That's a HUGE cohort already at risk of stroke. Another study recruited only subjects who had experienced cardiovascular disease events. And in two studies, a combined total of more than 17,500 subjects were at high risk of cardiovascular disease.
And vitamin E played a role in their strokes? Riiiight...
From very bad to much worse!
Of the nine studies included in the analysis, four of them used a synthetic form of E known as dl-alpha. Which is simply junk. In fact, Dr. Spreen recommends that dl-alpha only be used topically because, over time, it may actually do harm when taken internally.
The subjects in those four "synthetic" studies accounted for about half of all the subjects in the combined studies. Which means that half of this meta-analysis is based on junk.
So here's the ACCURATE headline for any media report on this study: "Junk form of vitamin E may slightly increase stroke risk among unhealthy patients."
Honestly, I don't have all the numbers, so my made-up headline is possibly misleading. But I'll bet it's more accurate than the blatantly absurd headlines suggesting that any vitamin E supplement increases hemorrhagic stroke risk.
You can put a torch to that one and stick a pitchfork in it.
Continues below...
Mark Haub has come up with a diet plan that seems to have been designed by a seven-year-old.
Haub is a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, in the US. He recently went on a weight-loss diet that strictly limited his calorie intake to 1,800 per day.
But most of those calories came from cakes, biscuits and other 'unhealthy' treats. He also consumed one protein shake per day, some low-calorie vegetables, and a multivitamin.
The results were impressive: He lost nearly 30 pounds in two months. And this is a guy whose previous weight-loss attempts with healthy diets were unsuccessful.
Haub says he wanted to show his students that pure calorie counting is the secret to a successful diet. Consume fewer calories than you burn and you'll drop the pounds.
Okay, he lost weight, but other health problems sprang up, right?
Wrong.
What's genuinely bewildering is that Haub's 'good' cholesterol increased by 20 per cent, his 'bad' dropped by the same amount, and his triglycerides dropped even more significantly — by nearly 40 per cent!
Haub is shaking his head in wonder at those three developments. He recognizes that the diet should be unhealthy, but as he told CNN, "The data doesn't say that."
Okay, so he lost weight, and his heart-health markers all went in the right direction, but he must have felt awful, right?
Wrong.
Haub says the first day was the worst, but after that he began to feel better and better. In fact, his nightly sleep apnoea problem was so dramatically reduced that his general quality of life improved.
Maybe it's time to buy stock in a cake company!
Haub limited his diet to 10 weeks, so we can only guess what the long-term results might be. I think they would be disastrous, with a complete reversal of those heart-health numbers and onset of type 2 diabetes.