This past week there were a couple of very interesting bits of health-related news worth taking note of. If you’re a committed skeptic — like I am — this news just re-re-re-re-reinforces the commitment to skepticism.
Let’s talk about how Vitamin D and calcium don’t reduce the chances of a person developing breast cancer. This news is a blow to the supplement industry and everyone who thinks that vitamins, minerals, or dietary habits can prevent, cure, or lessen the impact of disease. As a matter of fact, the vast preponderance of results from research done over the past few years has all but completely refuted the school of thought that diet and/or supplements can have this kind of affect.
A really brilliant guy, Dr. Jules Hirsch of the Rockefeller University in New York City, said it best in an article that appeared in the February 7, 2006 edition of the New York Times, so I won’t try to come up with a better way to say it.
Dr. Jules said, "These studies are revolutionary...They should put a stop to this era of thinking that we have all the information we need to change the whole national diet and make everybody healthy." This quote was in response to the news that the most complete study ever conducted on the subject concluded that the low-fat diet did not reduce the risk of getting cancer or heart disease. But what Dr. Hirsch said applies just the same in this instance.
If you disagree, you do so from a position of weakness, as you’re no match for Dr. Jules.
What is a little odd about this Vitamin D/calcium news is the study that is just being reported now appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine back in March of this year. For some reason — whether by the Associated Press or newspaper editors — this news was publicized on Saturday, June 24.
You can check out the AP story for yourself, but there seems to be a groundswell of non-support for Vitamin D and calcium in the fight against cancer. I wonder why we didn’t get more news on this study almost 4 months ago. But as the old saying goes, better late than never.
The bottom line is, if you’re the type who thinks a particular type of food or supplement is the key to good health, there’s less and less evidence to support this philosophy.
Article comments
1 - Mr. Real Estate
I always prefer to drink bottled water, myself, especially when I'm taking my vitamin D and calcium supplements. Aquafina, though, is definitely not the bottled water of choice, and Coke's Dasani isn't much better. Publix brand actually tastes better than either one of them, and it's also less expensive.
2 - Matthew T. Sussman
I guess I'll just have to drink more Diet Pepsi to make up for them young'uns. Slackers.
3 - Natalie Bennett
Of course if you just drink tap water, it will usually cost you about 0.00001% of what bottled water or other bottled beverages does, and you'll be being kind to the environment due to vastly lower transport costs, and lack of packaging.
4 - William Grant
The evidence that vitamin D and calcium reduce the risk of breast, colon, ovarian, prostate, rectal, renal, etc., cancer is very strong. The WHI study was flawed in many respects, such as having people take smaller doses of vitamin D than would be useful (400 I.U. vs. 1500 thought to reduce the risk by 50%). Of course, one can get vitamin D from solar UVB. For more info, visit my web site or PubMed
5 - sal m
despite individual studies that may show some benefits, overall the data doesn't indicate that vitamin d reduces any cancer risks whatsoever.
6 - harvey
Does smoking increase risk of lung cancer? The true skeptic would argue that since no randomized contolled clinical trial has ever shown this, it should be OK to keep puffing. Likewise, the vitamin D/cancer story is still in its early stages. It is based on associations and lab tests -- just like the smoking/cancer story. The point is, be a skeptic at your own peril, because perfect health information rarely exists.
Furthermore, the NEJM story that calcium and vit D failed to affect risk of colorectal cancer WAS covered quite intenesely when it first appeared. Sometimes news media then carry old items as filler. Why was Mr Marinello so slow to catch the story? Because he has not truly followed it. The credible skeptic should not be so obvious in showing his own superficial knowledge of the topic he criticizes.
If you want to keep up to date with medical research, then be a regular visitor to the PubMed website.
7 - sal m
thanks for the advice...and the deep philosophical question...however, you miss the point and have chosen to ignore the fact that any one study can show - or not show - anything...but overall those who maintain that vitamin d and calcium can prevent cancer don't have much of a leg to stand on...some pretty legit folks seem to feel the same way, no offense to you harv.
and why don't you show us some results of studies that show that cigarette smoking DOESN'T cause cancer or other health problems.
and it may be that the pub med website covered the vitamin d story...that's not the point and i never said that the story wasn't covered somewhere. what i said was that i found it odd that we didn't get MORE news on the study 4 months ago in the mainstream media...if you did a search on the story you'd see that newspapers across the country went with the vitamin d story this past weekend.
8 - RJ Elliott
"Pepsi is better positioned to handle this change in consumption due to their Aquafina and Gatorade brands, while industry-giant Coke doesn’t have very good brand recognition in these other areas, and will have to do something to catch this new wave."
They are trying, though rather pathetically, with their new Vault soda. They are attempting to market this as some sort of energy drink...but it's really just a cheap imitation of Mountain Dew...
9 - sal m
i think vault is just mountain dew that's gone flat.
10 - Ron Burk
Even a modest amount of time spent surveying Vitamin D research shows that there are two divided camps. Roughly speaking, the first camp is those folks who really have not followed the developments of the last 10 years. These folks can still be found saying provably false things like: "you get all the Vitamin D you need from incidental sun exposure" (really? at what latitude? what skin color? why the appearance of rickets in Afro-American children then?) and even "Vitamin D can be poisonous" (really? then what did you think of the study in which children with rickets were given 600,000IU? or the comprehensive study showing that industrial doses -- like swallow an entire bottle every day for a few months -- are generally required to hurt a normal person).
The other camp is the folks involved in the truly surprising and exciting Vitamin D research of the last 10 years. They know that a shocking percentage of the population of industrialized countries don't have enough circulating D to keep their skeletons from slowly falling apart. They know that D status is repeatedly correlated with improved odds of surviving cancer. They know that studies like the WHI are unethical because they are not giving patients enough Vitamin D to even guarantee they are not malnourished. A modern Vitamin D study on people starts by first measuring their circulating levels, and then supplementing the D-deprived patients until they have a level reasonable to prevent disease.
Think Vitamin D is a joke? Then just ask your doctor to give you a prescription for a blood test to measure your levels. Take it to a Quest Diagnostics and order test 680. Compare the results with the current consensus for what's needed just to keep your skeleton together. If you're like most Americans, you are Vitamin D deprived, and the odds go up with latitude, darkness of skin, and how low an elevation you live at. When you live at a latitude like Seattle (which has about the highest rate of breast cancer in the country), you can lay naked in the sun all day long and, during much of the year, not make a measurable amount of Vitamin D.
Don't choose to believe the strong hints that Vitamin D (in realistic doses, not the tiny doses used by dated studies like the WHI) is implicated in preventing and surviving cancer? Fine, but you might want to at least maintain your levels high enough to keep your bones from breaking.
11 - Doug
"Committed skeptics" want to read what people have to say on both sides of any worthwhile issue, I'm sure. Regarding vitamin D3, I invite readers to compare Sal Marinello's remarks to the materials both directly available at and linked from the website of The Vitamin D Council.
12 - sal m
ron:
no doubt that vitamin supplementation in general - including vitamin d - is a good idea from a overall health standpoint. but there just isn't the evidence that these vitamins have any other benefits. for every study that shows that "vitamin x" may do something, another study shows the opposite.
13 - sal m
doug:
just because a collection of citizens get together to serve and/or promomte a cause - as is the case with the vitamin d council - doesn't mean that the cause is on target.
there are organizations that promote the use of calcium for a variety of purposes, despite the fact that there is little if any basis to make any claims with regards to calcium with the exception that calcium can help bone strength.
there is still a flat earth society, after all.
14 - Harvey
I have been on the road, and can finally respond to items above (#6%7, Harvey and the response).
First: the contentious skepticism about the risks of smoking is well published. As an example, I direct the skeptic to the publication Uncovering the effects of smoking: historical perspective Richard Doll Statistical Methods in Medical Research 1998; 7: 87-117. It is written by the foremost of the anti-smoking researchers, and goes at length into why people (no doubt, predicessors of sal m would have been among them) ignored the evidence.
Second, contrary to sal m's argument about tardiness in reporting the failed vit D/calcium WHI trial, I point out that on Thursday, February 16, 2006 9:39 the New York Times published an article (which also appeared in AP and other wireservices) "about a seven-year study of women over the age of 50 which found no benefit from calcium and vitamin supplements in preventing broken bones - the study was part of the Women's Health Initiative in the U.S. The study is published in today's New England Journal of Medicine." Yes! AP does revive old stories on slow news days... to give sal m a chance to catch up.
The credible skeptic would have been more focused on the recent correspondence between the WHI authors and readers of the New England Journal www.nejm.org may 25, 2006. Bottom line of that: the WHI authors agree to the weak design, poor compliance and that the public should not change their behavior because of the WHI study. One could go on, but space is limited, and you get the point.
The credible skeptic would actually read what he is critiquing -- the original article, and not a simplistic newswire rehash.
It is ever so easy to be a skeptic... ignore true evidence, and challenge others to find proof. Lucky for the skeptic, others usually don't have the time.
15 - sal m
harv:
thanks for taking the time to respond.
first, you don't seem to understand the concept of a skeptic. a skeptic is one who instinctively or habitually doubts, questions or generally disagrees with widely accepted positions.
this isn't even a case - vitamin d helping in the fight against cancer - of their being a widely held acceptance that vitamin d can do anything. my stating that this is just another case of a vitamin study coming up empty has you annoyed for some reason.
your closing comment with regards to the ease of being a skeptic mentions ignoring true evidence - and sounds pithy - is actually empty. there is no true evidence with regards to vitamin d and its efficacy as a cancer fighting/preventing agent. there is conflicting, inconclusive data with regards to vitamin d and with almost every other of these kinds of vitamin/cancer studies.
i hope vitamin d or vitamin e or some other basic substance, mineral or vitamin does turn out to be effective against cancer, but at this point there is no evidence that any vitamin can do anything more than aid in basic health and well-being.
vitamin c was supposed to cure cancer, vitamin e was supposed to cure cancer, and now some people despite flimsy prelim evidence want people to think that vitamin d is going to cure cancer.
we've seen this movie before and we know the ending.
the position that vitamin d somehow in some dosage is going to cure cancer is laughable especially when you consider that there isn't even a consenus on what the effective daily dosage of vitamin d - and many other vitamins - should be.
and you can comb through the physician's desk reference or do google searches for info on studies and find conflicting evidence for all of these panaceas.
and you can continue to take potshots from the anonymity of the peanut gallery, but that doesn't change the fact that these vitamin cures have yet to be proven to do anything with regards to curing or treating diseases like cancer.
the results of these studies make the supplement lobby with their unethical and boarderline fraudulent marketing tactics unhappy, but that's too bad.
16 - kylegellatly
What about B17? This is not really a vitamin, but has been shown very convincingly to be reduce the risk of cancer. In fact, a defficiency in this is the root cause of ALL cancer. I'm not joking here, look at the links in wiseupjournal or worldwithoutcancer, and you will also see how strongly this evidence has been suppressed, as, after all, the medical-governmental complex has a massive vested interest in NOT preventing cancer and in keeping us all sick. I urge everyone to investigate thoroughly.
Love the blog
Kyle