An Alarmist’s Approach to Health (a Plea for Moderation) : SuperFoodsRx

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An Alarmist’s Approach to Health (a Plea for Moderation)

By Geoffrey R. Harris, MD

I often wonder how journalists and advertisers sleep at night. I wonder what they eat. I wonder how many medications they take. I can’t imagine they get as worked up about health as they push the public to be. Honestly, I don’t know which is worse, the multiple 24-hour news channels that are ravenous for any little tidbit to spin into content or the “direct-to-consumer” advertising for medications designed to treat rare conditions that most people will never suffer. I am often amused when I hear the line “ask your doctor if this medication is right for you;” I think about the woman who once asked me about a prostate medicine and why I had never checked her prostate. The news media is full of contradiction and confusion. One week we’re told coffee is bad, the next it’s good. The medicine that helped an arthritis patient walk to last year’s family reunion has been shown to cause heart attack and stroke. Red wine prevents heart disease but binge drinking is destroying college campuses. “Cardio” workouts are best for weight loss until the next “weight lifting” article is released. “Carbs” are good; “carbs” are bad. Car airbags seem to save lives one day and kill people another. I’m not sure how we are supposed to figure out what is safe, healthy, or how to live.

I do understand how these stories are created. It is very simple. Say you have to fill time on your news show or channel…you can’t talk about war and crime the whole time… you need something to draw people in so that the advertisers don’t pull out…so, take a recent scientific study about a popular pastime or fad (like coffee)…and make an outrageous headline about how your favorite drink is killing you. It doesn’t matter that the scientific study was based on feeding shaved emu in Antarctica a coffee bean-only diet. It also doesn’t help that the public relations department at Antarctica University created a press release about coffee causing emu deaths. Antarctica University relies on scientific grants to fund research and professor salaries, and trendy research tends to get better funding.

None of the “Antarctica Emu Coffee scare” is true, but the motivations are very real. Universities rely on funding and strive to make their research pertinent and fashionable to keep grant money coming. The news media needs stories and the more en vogue the better. Where is the moderation?

Case in point:
Your vitamins may be causing prostate cancer.” I heard this as a teaser for the eleven o’clock news the other day. Unfortunately, I stayed up for the report. The story was based around a recent article published in the May 16, 2007, Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The article discussed a large, multi-state study that looked at multivitamin use and risk of prostate cancer. It was well-done and reputable. Let me quote the first line of their discussion section of the paper, “In this large prospective study, we found that multivitamin use was unrelated to overall risk of total and organ-confined prostate cancer.” So, how is my daily vitamin causing prostate cancer?

Well, the study did find, “an increased risk of advanced and fatal prostate cancer among those who took multivitamins more than seven times per week compared with never- users.” In the study, they referred to these men who took multivitamins more than seven times per week as heavy users. To reiterate: these heavy users took “daily” multivitamins and stress-tab type vitamins more than seven times a week, that is they took the daily dose of their multivitamin supplement more than once a day. The heavy supplement users who were most at risk reported that they additionally used supplements of beta-carotene, selenium, or vitamin E.

One thing I’ve learned in life is that more is not always better. Taking more pills than you are prescribed in a day can actually cause something we in the medical business like to call an overdose. Taking too many vitamins and supplements isn’t good either. Even worse is focusing on and taking high doses of one individual supplement like beta-carotene or vitamin E. Once again…moderation.

Moderation is the reason I am involved with SuperfoodsRx. For example, a well-known study showed that people who included foods high in beta-carotene in their diet had a lower risk of lung cancer than those who didn’t. That doesn’t mean we should go out and slam beta-carotene supplements. It means we should include foods high in beta-carotene in a well-balanced diet. Foods are complicated, beta-carotene is complicated. Slamming high-dose beta-carotene supplements actually increases your risk of lung cancer, especially if you smoke. Carrots and pumpkin don’t increase your risk of developing lung cancer.

So, I am calling for moderation. Eat superfoods. And if you are taking a daily multivitamin supplement, only take a single day’s dose within a single day. Don’t slam high-dose single nutrients like beta-carotene, vitamin E, or selenium. Instead, take a well-balanced daily multivitamin or multinutrient supplement. Everything in moderation.

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