The Fight Is On

On February 27, the first shots... hate to use a word like that but it seems to fit... were fired at the natural supplement industry. The headline on CNN was "Antioxidant Supplements Tied to Death Risk."

Which supplements are going to kill us you ask? Why those nasty beta carotene, vitamins A and E.

How will this happen? Well here is the part I find particularly interesting.
Careful to mention that it's not the fruits and vegetables that will kill us but instead the manufactured supplements, the study from the Center for Clinical Intervention Research at Denmark's Copenhagen University Hospital said that "by eliminating free radicals from our organism, we interfere with some essential defensive mechanisms."

So the answer is that while about a million (not the official number) of studies have demonstrated that these nutrients can fight free radicals that can cause cell damage... this study says that getting rid of free radicals could harm us.

Luckily not too many people are falling for this logic or the validity of the study. As CNN reported, "critics who said it was flawed and based largely on studies of people who were already chronically ill before they were treated with the supplements." And the Natural Products Association, a supplement trade group, said the study "stands in stark contrast to large actual clinical studies that have not demonstrated any increased risks."

I would personally like to find out who funded this study. Could it be companies who manufacture drugs that will help us fight cancer? Are those drugs safer or more cost effective than natural supplements? That's the topic of another discussion, but I would suggest you read the new book by Dr. Brownstein called, " Drugs That Don't Work and Natural Therapies That Do "

What I find interesting is that in the past there have been studies that have said that natural supplements are ineffective. Now these studies seem to go further and say they will kill us. I don't think the timing is a co-incidence since lately all you hear about is the adverse affects of a variety of drugs.