By David Blyweiss, Advanced Natural Wellness
“Are your vitamins killing you?”
The answer is a resounding ‘No!” But bad science just might.
Unless you picked last week to take a vacation on a secluded tropical island (in which case, lucky you!) you might have caught the dozens of variations on this headline in the news. Perhaps it even made you a little nervous, or tempted you to stop taking your daily supplements.
Or maybe you just got suspicious. Like me.
A study, rather grandly titled “The Iowa Women’s Health Study,”1 released its findings last week…making it one of those weeks when alternative health practitioners keenly feel our position as David up against the Goliath of Big Pharma and conventional medicine.
(Now, I admit, I can’t prove that a pharmaceutical company – or a bunch of them –funded this incredibly flawed study. But I also can’t explain why every time I Google the lead researcher’s name, I come up with connections to a major pharmaceutical company’s statin drug study, either. Things that make you go, hmmm…)
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And I’m not the only one who is suspicious. Dr. Robert Verkerk, Executive & Scientific Director of Alliance for Natural Health International said, “It’s supplement bashing, a well-known pre-occupation of Big Pharma – and an approach that appears to be central to the protection of Big Pharma’s profit margins.” 2
Regardless of where the money trail of this study leads, the bottom line is that it has the potential to do an extraordinary amount of damage when unleashed in the mainstream media. The headlines alone are enough to scare people from following health regimens that can dramatically improve their lives.
That’s why I wanted to make sure you have all the information you need about this study, and fully understand why I advise you to disregard it, despite the screaming headlines of doom and gloom.
The Story Behind The Study
You don’t have to dig too deeply into the study to find the flaws, faulty logic, and misconstrued conclusions. Let’s look at a few of the problems:
1) Faulty Study Type: The data in the study was collected by the subjects themselves, which is called an “observational” study. There are no supporting scientific measurements or tests recorded to confirm or substantiate participant answers on a questionnaire.
Even more disturbing is the timeframe of the reporting…once every 10 years! Plenty of people can’t remember what they ate for breakfast yesterday, let alone report on their food and supplement intake accurately for ten years. The margin of error – as innocent as it might be – makes it nearly impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions from a study of this scope that uses this design.
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Finally, there was no discernment of supplement types, quality or quantities taken. For that matter, there are numerous other factors that contribute to mortality that are also not considered or included in the study. It is as if the bullseye was painted on supplement use, so that’s the only direction this particular smoking gun points.
2) Limited Study Group: It certainly sounds impressive to say that over 38,000 people participated in this study. But when you consider that all of the participants were post-menopausal women, 99.2% of them were white, and they were concentrated within a relatively small geographic region…you can see the danger of making sweeping generalizations and applying the findings to the general population.
For example, one of the study’s main findings is that iron supplementation is “associated with increased mortality risk.” But the truth is that iron is not recommended for older women unless they have anemia, and iron is generally not included in multi-vitamins designed for women in the study’s gender and age group.
To use this finding to support the claim that “your vitamins are killing you” is not only misleading…it’s downright irresponsible. At most, this finding simply confirms what we already know, and what physicians would already recommend to their patients.
3) Correlation Confused With Causation: And the mother of all flaws in scientific studies is the final nail in the coffin for this one: correlation is confused with causation.
For example, we don’t know why the women in the study decided to take supplements in the first place. Was it because they were in good health and wanted to stay that way…or because they were in poor health and they were trying to improve? Or was their health status not a factor at all in the decision?
What are the environmental factors in the region? How does the rate and causes of death compare to other groups, and other parts of the country?
In other words, there is not enough data to get at the true causes behind any of the findings. Without a cause, all you have is a correlation…two factors that occur at the same time. Factors that may or may not be related to one another.
From Insult to Injury
To me, the lowest blow comes in the Invited Commentary section at the end of the AMA-published study:
“The belief that antioxidant supplements are beneficial seems likely to have resulted from a collective error. Perhaps oxidative stress is one of the keys to extension of our life span.”
Incredible! In just two sentences, the AMA is attempting to discredit years of credible research on the enormous benefits of antioxidants with the “findings” of this observational, flawed, highly suspect study.
And the implication is that you should replace your supplements with pharmaceuticals, of course.
I don’t buy it, at any cost. In the end, I recommend that you don’t either. You won’t like the price you pay…or what you get in return.
References:
- Dietary Supplements and Mortality Rate in Older Women: The Iowa Women’s Health Study. Jaakko Mursu, PhD; Kim Robien, PhD; Lisa J. Harnack, DrPH, MPH; Kyong Park, PhD; David R. Jacobs Jr, PhD ; Arch Intern Med. 2011;171(18):1625-1633. doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2011.445
- ANH FEATURE: Iowa Women’s Health Study: Do supplements kill older women more quickly? ANH exposes the deception that lies behind the latest anti-supplement study. By Robert Verkerk PhD, Executive and Scientific Director, ANH-Intl. LINK: http://www.anh-europe.org/files/111012_ANH_feature_Iowa_Womens_Health_Study_2011_F.pdf last accessed 10/21/11
