DjinTonic said...
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(6) It's not unreasonable that some phytochemicals might protect against other conditions, perhaps by reducing inflammation. That's OK too.
My rationale is:
I don't have time to wait! Do I wait, say, 15 years to learn that supplement X really does work, and that I should have been taking it all these years? I base my choices on journal papers, not popular advertising. By "work" we shouldn't set the standard as a magical cure -- if a supplement slows the rate of PCa growth, that's a good thing....................................................................
But researchers continue to test these compounds and identify the specific pathways in which they work in animal models of PCa (these studies aren't looking at PSA, BTW). This literature is fascinating in its own right, BTW. Keep in mind that big Pharma is not interested in discovering that a natural compound works against PCa!..........................
Djin
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Very good point about
"don't have time to wait". If we are waiting on studies to tell us of some benefit to some non-prescript
ion approach, we might be waiting a long time. Unless of course the study shows no benefit, or the rare ones that might actually show some harm. We can expect to hear about
those right away, probably even on TV network news. There is rather huge financial incentive to show that they don't help anything, and zero financial incentive to show that they do help.
Now you might say "wait a minute, vitamins are big business". True. But they are a drop in the bucket compared to patented medicines and treatments. We can be dealing with billions for a single patented medication. OTOH, if some one is willing to spend large $ on a study big enough to be accepted as proof by us and the FDA and our docs, what would that get for the company funding the study? True, sales of vitamin ABCD might amount to a lot of dollars world wide, but the company funding the study will have to split those profits with an almost endless number of companies which can supply vitamin ABCD. So any individual company has little financial incentive to supply the kind of studies which the FDA would count as proof allowing claims to be made. And anything shy of a big, expensive study placebo controlled RCT will not do for making claims. If you make the claims, you might just find the FDA coming down on you. ( and somewhat similar, rarely will a newstudy be done on the benefits of some out of patent, or worse still also OTC, generic drug. There is no money in finding out new benefits or proof for these drugs. Unless they can change the formula just slightly and get it back on patent. )
But there might be a big financial incentive to release the results of a study- done by folks who only favor prescript
ion drugs- which fails to show that ABCD really helps, and thus will not reduce need for the drug which costs thousands of $ per year, and which might also have significant unwanted side effects. There is a financial incentive for the results of this study to become big news.
Here is an example of poorly done studies purporting to show how useless vitamin D is: a couple of years ago, there were two different placebo controlled RCT studies, one from Canada and one from Japan, on whether vitamin D helped reduce occurrence of colds in young children. The headlines for both studies: Nope, no help. But upon digging a bit deeper, I found this surprise: the placebo was not really a placebo, but rather just a lower dose of vitamin D(why would they do that?). However, in the small children, the "placebo" was still a dose that is pretty big for them, and might have already provided all the anti cold benefit these kids would be expected to get. So, we don't know if these kids were already helped a good bit, a little bit, or not at al by the lower dosel. All we know is the bigger dose did not help improve that. But even more troubling, also down in the fine print, BOTH studies did show that the higher dose of vitamin D reduced flu(vs lower dose) by an additional 50%. Did the lower dose already lower their flu compared to a true placebo, or even nothing at all? Who the heck knows. but wouldn't it be nice to know, while they were right there doing the study? But whatever the lower dose did or didn't do, the higher dose did twice as good compared to the lower dose at reducing deadly flu.
Despite all that, show of hands of those whose doctors and/or governments or TV news, while pounding the table for flu shots, have ALSO advised them to take vitamin D supplements during flu season? You know, advising vitamin D along with those flu shots which often have a mere 10% to 30% effectiveness? Anyone?
So, bottom line, don't expect any unbiased studies in favor of anything non prescript
ion to show up faster than a newly formed glacier. The mega bucks are with the prescript
ions. Hence those endless prime time TV ads we see every night. "Ask your doctor about
XYZ............... oh BTW, XYZ might kill you if you have such and such(or even don't have it), so be sure to tell your doc about
......". I guess these folks are assumed to have stupid docs, if they need to be informed by their patients about
drug XYZ. Those ads in themselves cost megabucks. And something has to pay for those ads.
Now, don't get me wrong. Some of the meds are down right miraculous, and some don't even have bad SEs. But there is simply no question that the financial incentive is on the side or patented, prescript
ion meds(and studies for them), and not on the opposite. Thus, the unbiased studies attempting to show benefits for any thing other than prescript
ion drugs can not be expected to be done at a very fast rate. It would be financial suicide for Pharmacy corporations to attempt to do such studies. And who has the big $ for the studies compared to them?
Post Edited (BillyBob@388) : 1/26/2020 1:38:34 PM (GMT-7)