7 replies to this topic

[pamojja]

Additionally "alternative" "health" movements can be very cultish, like the followship of Linus Pauling for instance. No science in the world will change their mind, and supplement manufacturers simply want to cater to such people and those with a similar mentality ($$).

Dear kismet,

please stop spreading contempt for high dosage orthomolecular medicine in treatment of certain conditions, as long as you aren't able to provide sources or good verifiable reasons against.

I'm only for a very short time on this forum but already in two threads I asked you for sincere reverences - but on both you simply went quiet with silly excuses!

I feel personally offended if you continue to talk of people like me as a cultish following - because I successfully use Pauling's therapy against a PAD. This has nothing to do with religiousness but about regaining health. I haven't even heard of Pauling before being diagnosed PAD.

You advised to me I would fare much better with Statins and Aspirin, ignoring that both of them obviously only make cosmetic changes to symptoms with no healing in sight .

With Pauling's therapy I was able to improve all Cholesterol markers in average by 25%, with still much more improvement potential because I cautiously increased all ingredients gradually with still some sensible increase possible in my case.

You're recommendation to me that I should take Statins and Aspirin (where there is no healing in sight) instead of high-dosage Vitamins (which already has improved my situation more than could ever be expected), on ground of an alleged harmfulness of the later is just quack.

If you look at the numbers of the chart below with most fatal poisonings in 2007, you can see that Statins and Aspirin have a that high mortality toll - despite being much less widely used in comparison to Vitamins. However, Vitamins caused just Zero deaths in that same year!

How obstinate stiff must you have become if you can't acknowledge this distinct difference between vitamins to dangerous medicines with many serious side- effects?

It would be something completely different if you could provide sources for you silly claims. Just repeating them doesn't makes them more truer. And calling other people silly does only tell something about you self!

2007 annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers:

Number	-	% of all exposures in category	-	Substance
377	-	0.250	-	Sedative/hypnotics/antipsychotics
331	-	0.990	-	Opioids
220	-	0.250	-	Antidepressants
208	-	0.270	-	Acetaminophen in combination
203	-	0.240	-	Cardiovascular drugs
188	-	0.410	-	Stimulants and street drugs
170	-	0.230	-	Alcohols
140	-	0.190	-	Acetaminophen only
99	-	0.230	-	Anticonvulsants
80	-	0.200	-	Fumes/gases/vapors
80	-	0.740	-	Cyclic antidepressants
70	-	0.270	-	Muscle relaxants
69	-	0.090	-	Antihistamines
63	-	0.350	-	Aspirin alone
45	-	0.120	-	Chemicals
44	-	0.230	-	Unknown drug
44	-	0.040	-	Other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs
36	-	0.280	-	Oral hypoglycemics
28	-	0.200	-	Automotive/aircraft/boat products
21	-	0.080	-	Miscellaneous drugs
21	-	0.040	-	Antihistamine/decongestant, without phenylpropanolamine
20	-	0.050	-	Hormones and hormone antagonists
20	-	0.300	-	Anticoagulants
16	-	0.150	-	Diuretics

regards..

Edited by pamojja, 28 October 2009 - 07:56 PM.

[kismet]

please stop spreading contempt for high dosage orthomolecular medicine in treatment of certain conditions, as long as you aren't able to provide sources or good verifiable reasons against.
But I do not hold contempt for their use in *certain* conditions. I hope that's not what you are implying, because I repeatedly and just before you posted said the opposite. Personally I am a great fan of the orthomolecular approach, the evidence based one. I do, however, consider the use of (oral) mega-dose vitamin C quackery.

I'm only for a very short time on this forum but already in two threads I asked you for sincere reverences - but on both you simply went quiet with silly excuses! That's not true. Blue & me were the only ones who provided primary sources in the last thread, you didn't the last time I checked. Although, I haven't had time to read any updates to this thread.

You advised to me I would fare much better with Statins and Aspirin, ignoring that both of them obviously only make cosmetic changes to symptoms with no healing in sight .

...
You're recommendation to me that I should take Statins and Aspirin (where there is no healing in sight) instead of high-dosage Vitamins (which already has improved my situation more than could ever be expected), on ground of an alleged harmfulness of the later is just quack.
I never recommended that you take statins. I said that Aspirin and statins are outstanding drugs and/or that you should take them if they were prescribed for your conditions. Sincerely, do you read my posts? In contrast to vitamin C statins have been demonstrated to decrease cardiovascular mortality in primary and secondary prevention (Clin Ther. 2009 Feb;31(2):236-44.).

If you look at the numbers of the chart below with most fatal poisonings in 2007, you can see that Statins and Aspirin have a that high mortality toll - despite being much less widely used in comparison to Vitamins. However, Vitamins caused just Zero deaths in that same year!
I like this claim, because we can learn a lot from deconstructing it. Reporting of supplement side-effects is neither mandatory nor encoureged, so they're underreported. Drugs have more effects and side-effects per design -  per definitionem. How can we expect anything else? Side-effects from drugs are known, so more will be reported through sheer confirmation bias, but it also means that every single severe reaction to a supplement is one too many compared to drugs; because it will be an unexpected reaction as people think supplements are safe.
Only acute effects were reported in this database. But we do know that many supplements can increase mortality in the long term e.g. vitamin A and very likely high doses of vitamin E.
Supplements can contribute to morbidity, this is proven beyond doubt (e.g. B6 and neuropathies), but those side-effects will also go unnoticed in many cases.

All in all I think this line of reasoning is really absurd: Obviously, drugs have more side-effects; that's how they have been designed. Most supplements lack any effects whatsoever, so their ratio of effects:side-effects still looks awful. Despite their relative safety.

Edited by kismet, 29 October 2009 - 05:24 PM.

[pamojja]

I do, however, consider the use of (oral) mega-dose vitamin C quackery. ...
Blue & me were the only ones who provided primary sources in the last thread, you didn't the last time I checked.

You and Blue only cited negative studies with only 500mg of Vitamin C daily. While I posted one positive which comes at least closer to what 'mega-dose vitamin C quackery' recommends against heard disease: 6,000 to 18,000 mg Vitamin C!
http://www.imminst.o...o...t=0&start=0

Tell me of one remedy which could work with only 5 percent of the actual recommended dosage??? It's designed to fail.

To take such studies for trying to prove that Vitamin C high-dosage therapy isn't working isn't science, but what I consider quackery. And the blinding out of other studies which do suggest that with higher dosages there would be more positive results is just an other aspect of that.

Although, I haven't had time to read any updates to this thread.

That's what I consider silly excuses, you already told you would have no time to respond elsewhere - but you always seem to find enough time to repeat the same unfounded claims in different threads again, though never providing meaningful sources, nor responding to reviews to your sources which found substantial shortcoming with them.

I never recommended that you take statins. I said that Aspirin and statins are outstanding drugs and/or that you should take them if they were prescribed for your conditions.

You said I should take them if they where prescribed for my condition - and as you knew it were in fact prescribed for my condition - how does that differ from recommending them?

Well, 66 mortal intoxications with Aspirin and 203 with cardiovascular drugs - in total 266 by what I should take per your advise - compared to ZERO mortal intoxications with vitamins in just one year in the US (2007) isn't really funny.

But I sure you're only jealous and couldn't be stopped to boast about 'vitamin madness' if 266 person a year would die of vitamins.

ehh?

statins have been demonstrated to decrease cardiovascular mortality in primary and secondary prevention (Clin Ther. 2009 Feb;31(2):236-44.).

Could you please post a link to this source, so I could verify. I know that the Statin prescribed to me has only a 3% improvement of absolute mortality and a lot of really nasty side-effects. Beside I would have to take it for the rest of my live while it was only tested for 5 years.

Supplements can contribute to morbidity, this is proven beyond doubt (e.g. B6 and neuropathies), but those side-effects will also go unnoticed in many cases.

Beyond doubt its for Aspirin and Statins, that's for sure. Sources?

Interestingly the symptoms of reversible peripheral neuropathy: numbness, tingling and pain in extremities were just the most bothering symptoms of the PAD I now almost got rid of with high-dosage orthomolecular medicine... However, a serious PAD isn't easily reversing - like the neuropathies do by discontinuing the high doses of B6. Some more effort is needed.. ...you name it: high-doses of vitamin C daily along other things :-)

Regards..

Edited by pamojja, 30 October 2009 - 12:19 AM.

[kismet]

Could you please post a link to this source, so I could verify. I know that the Statin prescribed to me has only a 3% improvement of absolute mortality and a lot of really nasty side-effects. Beside I would have to take it for the rest of my live while it was only tested for 5 years.

Clin Ther. 2009 Feb;31(2):236-44.
The relationship between reduction in low-density lipoprotein cholesterol by statins and reduction in risk of cardiovascular outcomes: an updated meta-analysis.
Delahoy PJ, Magliano DJ, Webb K, Grobler M, Liew D.

BMJ. 2009 Jun 30;338:b2376. doi: 10.1136/bmj.b2376.
The benefits of statins in people without established cardiovascular disease but with cardiovascular risk factors: meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.
Brugts JJ, Yetgin T, Hoeks SE, Gotto AM, Shepherd J, Westendorp RG, de Craen AJ, Knopp RH, Nakamura H, Ridker P, van Domburg R, Deckers JW.
http://www.bmj.com/c...p;pmid=19567909
Treatment with statins significantly reduced the risk of all cause mortality (odds ratio 0.88, 95% confidence interval 0.81 to 0.96), major coronary events (0.70, 0.61 to 0.81), and major cerebrovascular events (0.81, 0.71 to 0.93). No evidence of an increased risk of cancer was observed.

...and looking at the *subset* analysis within the paper is not necessarily a good way to judge the benefit as the subset analysis is underpowered compared to the whole set. IAC any mortality benefit is great.

Beyond doubt its for Aspirin and Statins, that's for sure. Sources?

Two reviews come to mind:
"Opinion of the Scientific Committee on Food on the Tolerable Upper Intake Level of Vitamin B6"
http://ec.europa.eu/...f/out80c_en.pdf


Ingvild Gangsaas (1995) “Dispelling the Myths of Vitamin B6 ”

shazam - Adaptogens what for? How much fishoil EPA/DHA and why do you want to take it?

Edited by kismet, 10 November 2009 - 04:22 PM.

[pamojja]

BMJ. 2009 Jun 30;338:b2376. doi: 10.1136/bmj.b2376.
The benefits of statins in people without established cardiovascular disease but with cardiovascular risk factors: meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.
Brugts JJ, Yetgin T, Hoeks SE, Gotto AM, Shepherd J, Westendorp RG, de Craen AJ, Knopp RH, Nakamura H, Ridker P, van Domburg R, Deckers JW.
http://www.bmj.com/c...p;pmid=19567909
Treatment with statins significantly reduced the risk of all cause mortality (odds ratio 0.88, 95% confidence interval 0.81 to 0.96), major coronary events (0.70, 0.61 to 0.81), and major cerebrovascular events (0.81, 0.71 to 0.93). No evidence of an increased risk of cancer was observed.

...and looking at the *subset* analysis within the paper is not necessarily a good way to judge the benefit as the subset analysis is underpowered compared to the whole set. IAC any mortality benefit is great.

Re: The risks of statins are underestimated: Uffe Ravnskov, Magle Stora Kyrkogata 9, 22350 Lund, Sweden

Based on a meta-analysis of ten randomised, controlled statin trials Brugts et al. concluded that healthy people can reduce their risk of dying during the next 4-5 years by 12 %. Another way to show the benefit is to calculate the users’ chance to survive. According to the figures it was 94.3 % without treatment and 94.9 % if they took a statin drug every day, providing that the figures of the meta-analysis are valid. Of interest is also whether the benefits persist after a life-long exposure to the drug. There are reasons to question both assumptions.

So you would have me take statins for the tiny decrease in absolute mortality of 0,6%?
(Even much lower than it would have been for the Simvastatin prescribed to me!)

First, by excluding trials shorter than one year a bias is introduced because some of them may have been terminated prematurely because of unexpected side effects. An example is the EXCEL trial2 which included more than 8000 healthy individuals with moderate hypercholesterolemia. It was stopped after 48 weeks at a time where total mortality was 0.5 % in the treatment group but only 0.2 % in the control group.
Brugts et al found no significant increase of cancer, but the results from four of the ten trials were lacking because cancer incidence was not recorded. Why didn’t the authors ask for such data when they requested the number of other events from the principal investigators? By omitting this step, another bias may have been introduced because of the increased cancer incidence in PROSPER,3 one of the excluded trials. It is not reassuring either to exclude that risk based on a few trials on healthy people because a significant increase of cancer has been seen in statin-treated patients in other types of studies.
The lag time between carcinogenic exposure and the clinical diagnosis depends on cancer type; easily detectable types arrive first, and this is also what has been observed. An increased number of non-melanoma skin cancer was noted in 4S4 and HPS,5 the two first simvastatin trials. The difference between treatment and control groups becomes statistically significant if the results are calculated together (table). It has not been possible to evaluate this risk in the trials that followed because by unknown reason all authors have excluded non-melanoma skin cancer from their reports.
Another type of easily detectable malignity is breast cancer, which was seen significantly more often in the CARE trial6 (table). Several of these cancers were recurrences, again a disquieting finding because recurrences may occur earlier than primary cancers. It is not possible to calculate the risk of recurrence because since the publication of the CARE tria,l previous cancer has been an exclusion criterion in all statin trials.
Dormant cancer cells are common in old people which may explain why all types of cancer occurred significantly more often in the treatment group in PROSPER,3 all participants of which were above age 71. In the SEAS trial,7 where cholesterol was lowered effectively with two different drugs both cancer incidence and cancer mortality was significantly higher in the treatment group (table).
In a cohort study of almost 50,000 patients treated with low-dose simvastatin and followed for six years, cancer mortality was twice as high among those whose cholesterol at follow-up lay between 160 and 179 mg/dL (p<0.01), and almost four times higher among those whose cholesterol was lower than 160 mg/dL (p<0.001) compared with those whose cholesterol was 200-219 mg/dL.8
In a case-control study of 221 patients with lymphoid malignancies and 879 orthopedic and otorhinolaryngological control individuals, 13.3 % in the first group had been on statin treatment, but only 7.3 % in the control group (p<0.001).9
In a 46 months follow-up of 84 patients with bladder cancer progression was seen in 53 % of patients taking statins and 42 % had to undergo radical cystectomy, against 18 % and 14 % among those not taking statins (p=0.004 and p=0.01, respectively).10
A carcinogenic effect from statin treatment has been dismissed based on meta-analyses of the statin trials, but in these calculations non-melanoma skin cancer was excluded. Today millions of people all over the world are on statins, a treatment intended to continue for the rest of their lives, and the number is steadily increasing. As the effect of carcinogenic substances may first appear after decades, it is urgent that we acquire more information about this issue as soon as possible. Meta-analyses should therefore include all statin trials and all types of cancer as well as subgroup analyses of early detectable cancers and of obvious high-risk groups such as smokers and old people.

[pamojja]

The table talked about:

	Cancer incidence (i) or mortality (m)					Type of cancer
	Statin group		Control group
	n/total	%	n/total	%	p
4S + HPS; i	256/12490	2.0	208/12490	1.7	0.028	Non-melanoma skin cancer
CARE; i	12/286	4.2	1/286	0.35	0.002	Breast cancer
PROSPER; i	245/2891	8.5	199/2913	6.8	0.02	All cancers
SEAS; m	39/944	4.1	23/929	2.5	0.05	All cancers
SEAS; i	105/944	11.1	70/929	7.5	0.01	All cancers

And the corrected link to Uffe's commend: Re: The risks of statins are underestimated:

Edited by pamojja, 11 November 2009 - 08:26 PM.

[kismet]

So you would have me take statins for the tiny decrease in absolute mortality of 0,6%?
(Even much lower than it would have been for the Simvastatin prescribed to me!)

The risk reduction varies between 4-11% in the subset analysis and across the much broader dataset (n=70388) it is 12%. No cancer increase found in the meta-analysis and their selection criteria do not look arbitrary (or is there something off with their selection criteria? Can you see anything?).... but I don't want to "have you take statins" as I am not your doctor -- I am merely reporting the data.

Edited by kismet, 11 November 2009 - 11:25 PM.

[pamojja]

So you would have me take statins for the tiny decrease in absolute mortality of 0,6%?
(Even much lower than it would have been for the Simvastatin prescribed to me!)

The risk reduction varies between 4-11% in the subset analysis and across the much broader dataset (n=70388) it is 12%. No cancer increase found in the meta-analysis and their selection criteria do not look arbitrary (or is there something off with their selection criteria? Can you see anything?).... but I don't want to "have you take statins" as I am not your doctor -- I am merely reporting the data.

First I thought you finally gave up by giving the weakest argument possible - by stating the irrelevant decrease in relative mortality - while for absolute mortality it isn't significant at all (Without even considering possible long term harm for which there simply isn't any data available yet). But then I read in an other parallel thread:

By the way, I'm not sure what you even are saying anyway. Do you think Statins are better than niacin? Fish oil? Vit D?

I am saying that you repeated a lie about statins which was just debunked in another thread and that you could search for this very thread.

It's quite difficult for me to grasp why you still don't understand the difference and significance between relative to absolute percentages!

It’s big! Absolutely?

Dr Faust: I've studied clinical medicine; biochemistry, pharmacology; and even, alas!, epidemiology and bio-statistics; from end to end, with labor keen; and here, poor fool, with all my lore I stand, no wiser than before. [1] I still doubt: should I take statin to reduce my risk of death in the coming years? I have reached the mid-fifties, my blood cholesterol is slightly elevated. But, as far as I know, I am healthy.

Mephistopheles: Healthy? Don’t deny that you have a substantial risk of cardio-vascular diseases, “the leading cause of death in the Western world”! [2]

Dr Faust: But could statin use reduce all cause mortality in people like me?

Mephistopheles: Absolutely. Look at the evidence: this study pooled data on more than 70,000 men and women aged 55 to 75. [2] It’s big! And all cause mortality over four years, the primary end point, was reduced by 12% in participants taking statin!

Dr Faust: Absolutely?

Mephistopheles: Well, not exactly. The absolute mortality risk reduction was 5.7% - 5.1% = 0.6% over four years. I let you calculate uncertainty around this estimate or the number needed to treat, if you bother.

Dr Faust: Any differences in risk reduction by sex or by age categories?

Mephistopheles: No heterogeneity was found by sex or by age categories.

Dr Faust: Do you mean that the reduction was observed in both sexes and in older and younger participants?

Mephistopheles: Well, not exactly. I just mean that the risk reduction was not heterogeneous. Subgroup analysis did not show statistically significant all cause mortality reduction in men or in women, or in participants aged more than 65 or less than 65. Merely a statistical power issue, if you bother.

Dr Faust: And you conclude that, potentially, “from current risk scoring systems, as well from current data”, the benefit could be greater notably among "older men (>65 year) with risk factors", don't you? [2]

Mephistopheles: Absolutely. Convinced?

Dr Faust: Well, I think that, for the moment, I rather need an aspirin…

Re: It’s big! Absolutely?

Mephistopheles : Aspirin ? Aspririn !!! ? have you not read the Antithrombotic Triallists' BMJ Paper showing the utter uselessness of that particular pill in primary prevention ??

Faust: No.. But I was taking it for the evidential headache.

What do you think, kismet?

Should I give up and leave your strong believes that Statins and Aspirin would do any good with Cardiovascular Desease - despite its death toll by acute intoxication alone going into hundredths each year?
And your other believe on the other hand - that orthomolecularia is harmful, useless at best, despite it's death toll for the last 25 years merely being 10? (both for the US)