It seems that some people will do just about anything to get ahead, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise when a mostly falsified study is released to put down what is primarily known as a fundamentally healthy and intelligent choice. Unfortunately, people still will try to spread discord amongst their fellow man in an apparent attempt to get ahead; sacrificing the good of the people is unfortunately a small price to pay for an insurmountably large personal gain, in many cases. This dishonest act can be seen in one such case of misinformation – a ‘study’ performed in order to bring the market for multivitamins and other very respectable health supplements down a notch.
In the article Iowa Women’s Health Study, much of the piece takes many things that are widely known as beneficial within a large number of vitamin supplements, and links some of these to various deaths in which people with diseases would essentially overdose themselves on vitamins in a desperate grab to fight off the disease. The article then discounts the fact that many people do not even use vitamins except for when they are sick, wrongfully linking an absurd amount of deaths directly to the use of vitamins and other supplements. As an example, a person was diagnosed with a life threatening disease, and in a sense of sheer panic began using as much as 40 supplements all at once, going up from using literally nothing the previous day. This example was then taken out of context and used as a source of evidence that supplements are in fact potentially deadly – a completely biased and ridiculous claim!
More specifically, the amount of iron within these vitamins was under heavy fire, being dubbed the major culprit behind the high mortality rates associated with the use of supplements – not an entirely wrong accusation, but nonetheless blown vastly out of proportion compared to other very real causes of death. The article essentially throws out the fact that a great many people will attempt to reverse any disease or ailment – ranging from a common cold to stage 4 cancer – with copious amounts of supplements and vitamins and other pills that serve little purpose in the users. There are no doubts about it, using supplements and vitamins in this method is not the best or even smartest way to reap the benefits, and it is at the users fault when they misuse the vitamins themselves.
There are many discrepancies within the article itself: Many of the studied patients also used unnatural amounts of hormones found in doctor recommended supplements, as well as supplements found to have a copious amount of iron and copper in them. The study also discredited other known beneficial substances such as omega-3 fatty acids, and would instead take an absurd amount of vitamin C over just about everything else as a basis of information. This kind of bias and misinformation is what leads the public to believe in mostly anything that major ‘scientific’ studies continue to propagate.
Related stories: Why Many Vitamin Studies are Absolutely Worthless
Findings from Flawed Study Used To Discredit Multivitamin/Mineral Supplements
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