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GERMS ‘R US
Mary G. Barry, MD
Louisville Medicine Editor
[email protected]
I
n my career so far I have fielded many
questions about dietary supplements.
Ordinary people who are not the vitamin-loving or the organic arugula-smoothie
type want to know, what actually helps?
What actually works? Are expensive ones
better? At least half of all Americans take
vitamins of some kind.
The vitamin-loving types take lots of
different pills for lots of different things
and care very much about the source of
the vitamin: vegan or not, organic or not,
which brand, and whether oral or sublingual
or liquid or sprayed. They often trust in
supplements more than in pharmaceutical
medications, despite the fact that the latter
have randomized data lending support or
rejection of use. Large randomized trials
of particular vitamins are difficult to find,
because of funding problems, and then difficult to interpret, because of a multiplicity
of confounding variables. Manufacturers
do not want to shell out millions for a study
for a drug that costs $30; it’s much more
attractive to spend that money on a drug
they will eventually sell for $10,000 per dose.
The vitaminophiles care not: they ride the
swell of popular opinion, currently swinging
towards coconut water, biotin, and apple
cider vinegar. They take Omega-3 (despite
the fact that the FDA recently said this did
not help to prevent cardiovascular disease).
They take mega doses of Vitamin C. They
t Z