Downtown Chiropractic Newsletter

Vitamin E --- The REAL truth

For your personal information....

Most of the information contained in the following note is from the NIH (National Institutes of Health). The vitamin E study design was flawed. The researchers examined a group of chronically ill patients who were not expected to have good survival rates prior to taking Vitamin E, plus they used data from earlier studies that did not or barely qualified as scientific.

The sheet below, in a PDF file, is from the government-funded National Institutes of Health. There are a plethora of studies that validate vitamin supplementation.

The sheet link below gives the real facts of vitamin E based on research. The evidence for its effectiveness is in the research and not in false assumptions or conclusions.
http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/vitamine.asp

The study in the Wall street Journal on Vitimin E was flawed for several reasons. But most important, I think that for an established, well read, supposedly authoritative newspaper like the W.S.J., there is no excuse for failing to properly investigate the validity of the study particularly because of the consequences to people who stopped taking Vitamin E based on this article. As a result of the media generated by this study, an estimated 18% of the population that could benefit from this antioxidant have stopped.

The problems with the study are as follows:

• The authors themselves admit that the research reviewed, which was conducted with older subjects who had chronic illnesses, might not apply to younger, healthy people.
• This type of review, called a meta-analysis, was a review of other studies, some of which were more than 10 years old and of varying quality. This type of "armchair science" is only good as the research on which it is based, which in this case is questionable.
• Information was pooled together to - barely - achieve statistical significance.
• U.S. dietary guidelines, which tend to be conservative and reflect the totality of scientific evidence on a nutrient, recommend an upper limit of 1,500 IU.
• There are various types and compounds of Vitamin E, including synthetic and natural forms, which research shows to have varying effects. However, the differences in the effects of varying types of Vitamin E were not addressed in this study.
• This study needs to be placed in context. Vitamin E has been studied for many years and there are literally thousands of citations in the scientific literature. There is solid evidence showing the benefits of Vitamin E, including double-blind clinical trials, that report 400 to 800 IU of natural Vitamin E can reduce heart attacks.

Newsletter and article archive:

• Early Predictors of Lumbar Spine Surgery after Occupational Back Injury
  
• Spinal manipulation compared with back school and with individually delivered physiotherapy for the treatment of chronic low back pain
  
• Pilot Study Suggests Chiropractic Reduces Health Care Costs, Need for Surgery
  
• Relief for Aching Backs: Consumer Reports May 2009
  
• Chiropractic and Children: Shown to be Safe
  
• Long-Term NSAIDs May Not Be Useful for Osteoarthritis
  
• Study Compares Medication, Acupuncture, and Spinal Manipulation for Chronic Spinal Pain
  
• Chiropractors rejoice: Study hints at benefit of chiropractic for back pain
  
• Study Compares Medication, Acupuncture, and Spinal Manipulation for Chronic Spinal Pain
  
• Vitamin E -- The REAL Truth
  
• Efficacy of preventive spinal manipulation for chronic low-back pain
  
• Cracking the Problem of Back Pain
  
• Getting an accurate back pain diagnosis
  
• Exercise: The Ultimate Anti-Aging Pill
  
• A Randomized Trial of Combined Manipulation, Stabilizing Exercises, and Physician Consultation Compared to Physician Consultation Alone for Chronic Low Back Pain
• Objective Physiologic Changes and Associated Health Benefits of Chiropractic Adjustments in Asymptomatic Subjects