12 Responses to “UPDATED FOR 2014: Snake oil? Scientific evidence for health supplements”

1. 

   January 24

   John Kennedy

   Why are probiotics at the bottom and the top?

2. 

   January 24

   Marius van Voorden

   John: It has a subscript: probiotics are proven against diarrhea from antibiotics, but not for other applications.

3. 

   January 24

   Marius van Voorden

   Oh man, this is such a good chart!
   *Considers adding basically everything above “promising” to his Soylent, if relevant

4. 

   January 24

   Marius van Voorden

   There’s an interactive version, too. But oddly, it seems to vary slightly. For example it has anti-oxidants as being against infertility in men? 😡
   http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil-supplements/

5. 

   January 24

   Scott Fowler

   If you want to know about a particular health supplement, check if http://examine.com/ has an article on it. It’s quite good at discriminating between good and bad studies

6. 

   January 24

   Vincent Ocasla

   Still generalizing “anti-oxidants”. They are not all made alike.

7. 

   January 24

   Marius van Voorden

   The horizontal axis of the chart has no meaning, right? It would be nice if it had some form of “effectiveness” scale.

8. 

   January 24

   Vincent Ocasla

   Also does this chart discriminate supplements from the dietary substrates they were derived from?

9. 

   January 24

   John Salvatier

   Creatine for cognition? Are there more studies than that one vegetarian study? I was looking a while ago and didn’t turn anything up.

10. 

    January 24

    Daniel Satanove

    I’m a little surprised to see echinacea above the worth it line

11. 

    January 25

    Taurus

    This is bubblegum, Lou. I remember when it first came out as well (when I knew less than I know now), and it should have a giant disclaimer: FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY.

    Meta-analyses and systematic reviews may be (and usually are) worth less than they might seem if there is no (or only selective) context and no deep elucidation of mechanism of action for both the intervention and any underlying pathology or deficiency state.

    Much of the research on specific phytochemicals, micronutrients, etc. is dominated by the work of a single researcher or handful of researchers and everybody else who’s trying to ride their coat tails so that they can attract attention and up their citations. This was the case with David Sinclair and resveratrol (which, as he and everybody else now knows, is essentially worthless).

    As the evidence starts to turn against their cause celebre, they’ll crank out more and more research; they’ll suddenly have lots and lots of time to engage more fully with the media, and you’ll see the lead authors directly quoted across a variety of lay publications.

    Another example is Michael Holick and Vitamin D. Case in point:

    http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(13)00404-7/fulltext

    …which essentially ADDS ZILCH in terms of new data (basically just a bunch of words)…

    Then there’s THIS:

    http://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(13)70212-2/fulltext

    http://www.news-medical.net/news/20140124/Study-examines-existing-evidence-related-to-health-benefits-of-vitamin-D.aspx

    There’s a reason the IOM and every other major NGO or government body that provides nutritional guidelines for the citizens of their respective countries aren’t recommending 2,000 IU of Vitamin D (it’s not a conspiracy by “Big Pharma”).

    When it becomes unambiguously clear that they were charging windmills, some survive and change course; Sinclair abandoned the resveratrol dead-end, but he hasn’t lost his addiction to unwarranted hype. http://hms.harvard.edu/news/genetics/new-reversible-cause-aging-12-19-13

    I’d like to say that the hype surrounding Vitamin D is similar to Vitamin C, and that Holick is like Linus Pauling in this regard. But, of course, Linus Pauling was one of the most brilliant scientists of the 20th century, one of the founding fathers of modern biochemistry…and even HE got it dead-freaking-wrong on Vitamin C and micronutrient mega-dosing. Holick, on the other hand, will just be the “Vitamin D guy,” which gives him less of a motivation to cease shilling for Vitamin D and move on to some real work.

    • 

      January 25

      Louie Helm

      Good points. I agree that research fiefdoms around different supplements are a real thing. MSM comes to mind.

      And I also agree that researchers having time to talk to journalists is normally a red flag. It usually signals that their research program has completely fallen apart. If their research really worked, they would be busy patenting it and starting companies.

      Examples of busted research like this: CRISPR-Cas, Anti-vas cancer treatments, etc.