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The Man Who Convinced Us We Needed Vitamin Supplements
An anonymous reader writes "The Atlantic has an interesting piece on the life and work of the scientist most responsible for moms around the world giving their kids Vitamin C tablets to fight off colds, Linus Pauling. From the article: 'On October 10, 2011, researchers from the University of Minnesota found that women who took supplemental multivitamins died at rates higher than those who didn't. Two days later, researchers from the Cleveland Clinic found that men who took vitamin E had an increased risk of prostate cancer. "It's been a tough week for vitamins," said Carrie Gann of ABC News. These findings weren't new. Seven previous studies had already shown that vitamins increased the risk of cancer and heart disease and shortened lives. Still, in 2012, more than half of all Americans took some form of vitamin supplements. What few people realize, however, is that their fascination with vitamins can be traced back to one man. A man who was so spectacularly right that he won two Nobel Prizes and so spectacularly wrong that he was arguably the world's greatest quack.'"
In very rare cases does someone need to take any supplements at all. If one pays attention to having a proper diet one can get all the vitamins needed naturally. Part of the whole vitamin craze is how lazy people are. It can take some thought and effort to eat a healthy diet containing all the nutrients a body needs to thrive. It's quite worth doing so though.
Doesn't dosing on 2000 IU of D per day stave off cancer according to 100's of studies?
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A man who was so spectacularly right that he won two Nobel Prizes and so spectacularly wrong that he was arguably the world's greatest quack.
Being wrong doesn't make you a quack, slashdot. You can follow the scientific method perfectly and arrive at the wrong result. In fact, you can be fairly certain that most of what we think we know today will later be proven wrong. Even Einstein said he hoped people would one day prove him wrong -- being proven wrong means progress. It means a better understanding of the universe. Scientists, real ones, don't mind being wrong, or mistaken. Sure, there's pride in one's work, and yes, that can make it hard for people to accept a new truth. But by and far, scientists do get around to doing it.
A quack is someone who doesn't use the right process, who avoids peer review, who insists they can't be wrong. They aren't true scientists. This man won two nobel prizes because he followed the scientific process. And, today, that process is still being followed, and that man's original assertions are now wrong. Taking vitamins is something tens of thousands of doctors and medical professionals have advised. Researchers the world over have endorsed it. That doesn't happen with, say, magnetically vortexed water that some people believe has a "higher energy level" and is thus more beneficial to drink, or that crystals or magnets will somehow improve our health.
It's wrong to put him in the same category as those people. Slashdot, you fail, and you should be ashamed. You should issue a retraction immediately -- you're using words and making accusations that you don't really understand. Your editors are stating opinions that are overall harmful to the scientific and medical community.
People who search for the truth should never be called names, or subjected to ridicule. That is the ultimate goal of all science. The fact that people get it wrong is inconsequential, as long as they did their best to get it right. Shame, slashdot. Shame on you.
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Probably 'cause no one is perfect. Everyone messes up at some point in their life. His reluctance to refuse the vitamin C sham doesn't discredit his other accomplishments. Sure, the reluctance doesn't put him in a good light, but his other accomplishments still stand.
"To stop the terrorists."
that almost everything you know about nutrition is wrong, often started up by one person or a group of people who failed to prove even loose correlation, yet people take up their suggestions and after a while they become 'common knowledge'.
Most multivitamins contain ingredients that pass through your digestive tract without even being absorbed. What does get absorbed is excessive and the system is unfamiliar with these huge doses of bioavailable vitamins and your system works overtime to eliminate it. Puts a real beating on the kidneys.
To extend the ridiculousness, nobody has ever proved that fat or meat are bad for you, yet people avoid them both and suffer nutritionally. In the 50's, Ancel Keys wrote a paper on his lipid theory where he 'proved' that fat was bad for you by eliminating the data from 17 of 23 countries he studied. The 17 he threw out were large consumers of fats with no problems with heart disease or cancer, such as the Innuit and Masai. He also noted in his study that there was no connection between dietary cholesterol and cholesterol levels in blood, but everyone seems to have skipped that part.
50 years of studies showed that salt was also not at all harmful to the average person, but doctors couldn't shake the idea of salt raising blood pressure temporarily so they gamed a study called Intersalt, where...you guessed it...they deleted around 40% of the data that included people who ate plenty of salt and led perfectly healthy lives. The excuse? "We already know that salt is bad for you, so if people say they ate it and were healthy, then they were lying". Hmm. It should be interesting to note at this point that all these studies do go on what people say they did and didn't eat and did or didn't do. Faulty data in the first place.
No study has ever proven that MSG is bad for you, in fact its approved by each and every equivalent of the FDA worldwide with zero dissenters, and its been eaten by billions of people for a century with no ill health effects. All it does is make healthy food taste better so you're more likely to eat it. In fact, the studies that were run showed more false positives as a placebo effect than actual reactions. Fun part is the whole thing goes back to one doctor who wasn't a nutritional expert writing a letter noting a possible 'chinese food syndrome' that he suggested at random might be MSG related. Its an amino acid derived from boiling kombu seaweed.
Meat is bad? The studies that say so point out that most of the people who eat meat, bacon and so forth also smoke, drink, don't exercise and live a lousy lifestyle. Of course they do, we've been telling people that meat is bad for them for 60 years, so anyone that eats it doesn't care about their health. Yet there is no study whatsoever that ever tested perfectly healthy people with a good lifestyle whose health suffered when they ate meat.
What IS bad for you are most pills, supplements, things in cans, fake 'diet' brownies and cookies, sugar, processed foods, vegetable oils except for olive, processed starches, and high energy/low nutrition foods that make up the bulk of the 'western diet'. Eat meat, quality fats, whole fruits and veg and steer clear of the high profit, easy to produce items made from grains and processed starches.
If that seems hard to believe, recall that we were told for decades that cigarettes were good for us, with doctors recommending particular brands. We were also moved from relatively healthy animal fats/butter to transfats, partially hydrogenated fats and so forth. That recommendation probably killed millions. Eggs are bad/good/bad/good/bad/good. By the way, they're just fine and a great source of B vitamins and protein.
Seven previous studies had already shown that vitamins increased the risk of cancer and heart disease and shortened lives.
It shouldn't take a microbiologist or an organic chemist to figure out that vitamins aren't the problem; saturating ourselves with vitamins in a form we're not adapted to utilize are obviously the issue. Translation: stay away from the pills and and supplments section of that so-called "healthfood store" and go to the farmers' market, dumbasses!
Coincidence?
Almost all the studies in the article suffer from various statistical biases - selection bias, survivor bias, etc. I could find only 2 that may have been A-B blind studies over extended periods. One of those 2 is suspect because it was cut short and the article is talking about long term effects. This article was written to sell magazines, not to document biological effects. I take no stand whether vitamins are good or bad, but it is very clear that the article is poor science writing.
Mainstream and accepted view is that vitamin supplements in proper dosage are a good insurance for health. AMA, AAP, etc.
There are always studies supporting an opposing view of anything and everything.
This is almost endemic among Nobel winners. E.g. Josephson: pioneer in the field of superconductivity, but thinks Homeopathy is real.
My great uncle Gene and Pauling were classmates at Oregon Agricultural College (which later became Oregon State University), they graduated the same year with degrees in Chemical Engineering. When he began classes Gene couldn't hack the math at all, he hadn't taken the requisite courses or something; coming from a small farm town in eastern Oregon perhaps they weren't on the curriculum. Then, after breaking his leg and being laid up in a cast for a while, he devised his own approach to problem solving, a more roundabout method to things like long division that obtained the same answer as the conventional approach, but not as streamlined as what was usually taught. Armed with these methods he obtained his degree and went on to a respectable engineering career, overseeing projects like renovating the Mission at San Juan Capistrano and devising various formulas for asphalt used in road building.
I always wondered if Gene's crackerjack approach to problem solving didn't rub off on Pauling in some fashion.
First of all, a lot of modern vegetables are grown as fast as possible, so they contain less fibre and "nutrients" and more water than when we were satisfied with one harvest per year.
Second of all, it's not just about vegetables. We need to get some "rare" vitamins from nuts, meat and such. With the current diet as we have it, meat is grown way faster too, containing arguably less of these rare vitamins than before. We eat a lot less unprocessed food than we used to, especially nuts tend to be roasted and such. A lot of processed food contains arguably less vitamins and nutrients than it used to when we ate more fresh and only slightly cooked food.
Maybe some cultivates are more nutrient than others, but a lot of cultivates are cells with water in them these days. We eat way more processed food than we used to, also diminishing the nutrient value of our food. It may be that we can grow bigger, faster and healthier crops, but once they enter our mouth, they are probably less nutrient than they were on average 50 years ago.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Not convinved that there is a cause and effect here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-cause_fallacy On the Vitamin E prostate cancer link that is easily resolved. First assume that there is no correlation then assume that people have read articles saying that it is helpful (this link implies that such information was around http://www.nih.gov/researchmatters/october2011/10172011supplements.htm). So people with prostate cancer or at high risk took vitamin E and eventually had a higher death rate. Does the article take such things into account?
The Atkins diet can be quite healthy. You need to read up on Vilhjalmur Steffanson; he lived among the Inuit eating meat almost exclusively for over a year, and then replicated the experience in New York under medical supervision.
I have eaten very low-carb, typically under 20 g/day and essentially always under 50 g/day, for over a year. Lost a bunch of weight, no difficulty keeping it off. I'm going to eat (unbreaded) chicken wings for dinner tonight, had a nice salad with bacon and homemade ranch dressing for lunch. Aside from the aftermath of a scheduled cheat day every couple of months, and the very occasional cheat week (hey, I was in Paris), I've been in ketosis the entire time. I feel much better in ketosis than out of it. Eat plenty of salad greens, they're nutritious and (via dressing) a great way to up your fat intake.
Most of what I eat is paleo-compatible as well. Essentially the paleo people put enough fences around vegetable products that there are very few high-carb veggies in the paleo menu - sweet potatoes, really. So relax, enjoy your new life, and know that it's incredibly easy to eat this way essentially forever.
Also, you don't need fiber. Fiber was prescribed as a way of getting people to eat less refined flour and more actual vegetables, but just adding fiber won't do anything for you. You've already done the right thing by getting rid of starches, which are what will actually bind up the bowels anyway.
From what I recall Pauling thought there was a connection between very large doses of vitamin C and a boost of the immune system. There's a very large distance between that and what he's being blamed for in the article here. The two examples are Vitamin E problems and multivitamin issues. It's easy to think Pauling had daft ideas if you believe he proselytized about vitamin supplements.
I think Pauling is being blamed for things he's got nothing to do with.
One of the biggest problems with vitamin supplements is that neither the takers nor the manufacturers (nor doctors prescribing supplements) pay any attention to absorption pathways. They also tend to ignore variants, which is a problem with a broader category of nutrients than just vitamins. There is a pretty decent scientific basis for the idea that good levels of vitamins are healthy, but supplements are usually taken in ways that are likely to make things worse rather than better through crowding out other essential vitamins and minerals that get absorbed through the same pathway.
Take zinc. It was found that zinc can denature viruses, so a viral sore throat can have its symptoms somewhat alleviated by zinc lozenges. But zinc is absorbed through the same pathway as copper, and the sort of large doses of zinc that people are taking for cold remedies is probably crowding out reasonable levels of copper absorption. And guess what copper's critical for? White blood cells and your immune system, the functions that can really do something about colds. Usually there's some bit of news, that the media gets wrong, then the general public gets even more wrong, and what the average consumer does in respect to a new scientific development ends up being completely counter-productive. Thus the news that zinc can denature viruses on contact turned into people taking zinc supplement pills with ads on the side of the bottle about taking them for colds. But pillsâ"as opposed to lozengesâ"do not result in significant concentrations of zinc where the virus is, and then they end up weakening the immune system by crowding out copper absorption.
Vitamin E is another excellent example. "Vitamin E" is 8 different vitamins that serve very different roles in the body. But they are absorbed through the same pathway and are highly subject to crowding-out. Basically, due to a terminology problem that the 8 distinct vitamins got lumped together as "Vitamin E," people who take vitamin E supplements end up deficient in 7 essential vitamins, unless they're taking reasonable doses of multitocopherol supplements, which isn't what much of anybody takes.
This tendancy to lump things together has lead to another super popular modern marketing disaster, Omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 is not a type of fatty acid, it's a class of fatty acids encompassing many different molecules. It turns out that only the fish-derived versions demonstrate any of the health benefits, but basically every food in the grocery store touting "Omega 3" all over the label is using plant sources, where they might as well be adding a gram of canola oil or corn oil for all the health benefits you'll be getting. Everything touting the helath benefits of flax seeds have no scientific basis, the the science is quite clear that the Omega 3 fatty acids in flax do not exhibit any of the hormone-like beneficial properties such as reducing inflammation that the fish Omega 3 fatty acids have.
I strongly suspect that in the long-term it will turn out that taking appropriate supplements is a very good idea for health, but right now, the science hasn't explored the area thoroughly enough to make solid recommendations given the complexity of the subject, and what little we do know has very little effect on what manufactures make and advertise and what consumers actually take. Which probably leads to the negative outcomes.
If you want to try to figure out, based on what we know, what the best guesses might be about what supplements to actually take, try reading up on the work of Bruce Ames and Andrew Weil. They don't have easy answers, but Bruce Ames did brilliant research, and Andrew Weil makes practical best-guess recommendations based upon the current state of the science.
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I get the impression that Pauling was simultaneously very smart and very full of himself. He glibly dismissed evidence simply because it didn't agree with his world-view, which is actually a hallmark of a bad scientist.
From URL http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/nobel-chemistry-idUSL5E7L51U620111005 :
Pauling's story shows us that the self-marketing which stemmed from his enormous ego had quite a bit to do with the overall good scientist legacy which still surrounds him (and ditto for some others from his era, like Watson and Crick). I'm not sure what we are supposed to learn from that, though. I get the impression that the really best scientists, when approached by the media about their new breakthrough, would actually say something like "I'm really excited, but let's not forget that this still has to be replicated, and I'm sure that future work will show that I'm not 100% correct, and I couldn't have done this without the work of generations of previous scientists" --- which isn't exactly something which makes for sexy news.
I am on Atkins diet. Basically I am eating only meat. (Almost) No vegetable, no fruits, no bread, no rice, no sweets. YES YES I know this diet will horrify some people and yes I know it is not very healthy. ...
A few years back, Consumer Reports published a study of diets (complete with their usual ratings table ;-). One of their conclusions was that the Atkins diet was the one with the best long-term results, but they did say that this was mostly because people were generally able to follow it longer than other diets. They also recommended talking to a nutritionist about it, to make sure you get the vitamins and other micro-nutrients that you need, some of which aren't plentiful in most meat.
The "not very healthy" qualification applies to most weight-loss diets for pretty much the same reasons. Humans are obligatory omnivores, and if we exclude some kinds of food from our diets, we easily end up with deficiency diseases. This is sometimes expressed by saying that the best diet is "eat less and exercise more". ;-) Except that that only works if the starting diet that you eat less of is sufficiently omnivorous. It won't work if you just eat less of the fast/junk food that put you in the shape you're in. So in general, talking to a nutritionist is probably still good advice (if you can find a good one ;-).
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Shortened lives? Correlation v causation strikes again. It is entirely possible that the people who took vitamins lived long enough to develop cancer (and didn't die from other organ failures caused by shortage of vitamins). This is almost like arguing that nursing homes cause deaths because people in nursing homes die at higher rates than residents of other homes.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Are cats really that delicious? How do you usually cook them?
Article is an excerpt from a book written by a guy that sold vaccines for big pharma. I'm not against vaccines, they're a good thing (although there is still plenty of room to be nervous without believing in autism/mercury).
But you have to keep in mind the vaccine industry has been at war with Pauling since he showed a IV drop of C will cure Polio. If you actually look it up you can find where he did that, and unlike everybody else here will have verified something in the article.
Because every claim made by the author in that article is probably wrong.
Shame on The Atlantic for this puff piece. They usually have good science.
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It is now known that sunlight exposure leads to the production of nitric oxide, which is important in blood pressure regulation. The health benefits of nitric oxide are independent of Vitamin D, and in fact may outweigh the risk of skin cancer.