Why did the thread on supliments get locked?

best to email that question to the moderator who locked the thread.

Questions like this tend to just reopen the issue and result in another locked thread.

I agree with Halbert. I probably should not comment beyond this but....I can't help myself.

As a practicing pharmacist, I defended the use of supplements up to 10 years ago. Personally I have taken vitamin C, beta-carotene, folic acid, vitamin E, saw palmetto, valerian, St. John's Wort, pomegranate, melatonin, etc, etc. One by one, each of these supplements have been shown to be ineffective for the reasons I was using them when scrutinized by random controlled trials. Before these trials, each of these supplements had case control studies showing benefit hence my reason for using.

The reason I used these supplements was to retain an element of control. The need to shift my odds. Unfortunately, the RCT studies showed I might have done more harm than good.

In my opinion, vitamins and supplements use are more based on faith than science. I truly understand it and don't demean it at all. However, there is a plethora of data showing diet and exercise are much more effective in achieving benefit than supplements.

Paul

Post Edited (PDL17) : 6/13/2017 7:01:24 PM (GMT-6)

Yep, straight from the horse's mouth:

/www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiS2oC6XUSw

Sigh, I suppose it'll be just as hard to get people to eat right and exercise regularly in the 23rd century as it is now.

Very astute tommyc...don't leave you take the heat of of me...seriously...you can make it better with your insight...I struggle with that decision...always and not just here...I got lotsa venues... It really goes back to Willy Sutton...just think peoples instead of money....sorry for the riddle...it stimulates the mind...the body gets enuf stimulation on its own...

hows that for irony?...Perfect...tis a puzzlement...oui?...non? now there is a an example of transfiguration...oiu?...non?...tee hee...

logoslidat.... you.....talk.....funny....

tommyc,
I hear you brother. I ask that you do not leave this forum, please we need all the thoughts and advise we all can get and each of us to make our own decisions what we are going to do.
I for one have turned down infusion chemo, four times, does that make me crazy or ignorant? Nope I believe chemo is just added more poison to my body that is fighting like hell to keep going. But I will never criticize anyone for doing what they choose to do. Two weeks ago I lost a good friend with stage 4 prostate Albert was diagnosed about the same time I was. Albert and I talk a bunch about our treatments. He did everything the docs told him to do including infusion chemo. I said Albert most docs dont know how to spell nutrition, but they take tons of classes about drugs, why??? the all might dollar that is why. He told me it knocked the heck out of him but "the doc said so" Now Albert is dead, 68 year old. Did the chemo kill him I have no idea but it sure did not help, my opinion. I did not tell him he was crazy, his choice, I will miss him a bunch. Soooo please dont leave we need your thoughts here. Funny thing my friends when I was a kid called my tommyj, cool beans

Based on some British research, I try to consume, curcumin, sulforaphane, pomegranate, and green tea. I added walnuts and chocolate for personal research purposes.... and a few D's as I am low.

www.nature.com/pcan/journal/v17/n2/full/pcan20146a.html

Post Edited (Gear) : 6/15/2017 12:37:46 PM (GMT-6)

tommyc said...
Thanks Halbert, that's interesting,
Rule number 3 seems to show why it should NOT have been locked?
"Respect other members' opinions regarding treatment decisions. Decisions about health and well-being are highly personal choices. >>>We should respect all points of view<<<. Flaming will not be tolerated."

I didn't flame anyone, unless saying Wal-Mart doesn't sell quality is flaming. That's more of a fact. I said there were false statements, is that flaming? If multiple doctors that I see are happy with my protocol and especially my results, how can we say here that we must dismiss any and all discussions of this kind?

We can drop it, I need to find a new place to play.
Last thing, with a psa that once got to 14, my John Hopkins grad uro says I have the lowest 4k score he has ever seen. Just coincidence...probably?

Well, if you are leaving you may not even read this, but I feel I must make the comment while the thread is still open. And BTW, I have no problems with this subject you want to discuss. But on the subject of certain low quality supplements, and the fact that many seem to believe that most or many supplements(high quality or not) don't even contain what is advertised: I had been taking WM vitamin D @ 2000IU/day for a few months when I had my vitamin D levels checked for the first time(I wish I had them checked a year or 2 before I even started taking vitamin D). I was a bit disappointed that my level- even with that much supplementation was only 30 ng/ml. I now realize that is not all that surprising from what other folks have told me about their pre-supplementation blood tests and how much they had to take just to get it up to 25 or 30, even sometimes when taking prescription VitD. I now realize that most likely I was deficient most of my life. Anyway, I bumped my WM brand Vit D3 up to 10,000, and had my level checked again shortly before my RP: 80 ng/ml! Which I thought was a little higher than I was shooting for so I backed it off to 5000 IU/day, unless I am getting a lot of sunshine, then I usually cut back even more. (There is a lot of sunshine to be had most of the year where I live, and hiking and yard work gets me out in it a lot)

Point is, even what I normally would consider a really low quality supplement had no problems getting my levels quite high. So there is for sure some Vitamin D3 in those even "low quality/cheap" pills. Also, can you imagine the potential law suit to certain Giant companies if it was proven that their supplements were bogus or even contained harmful substances? That would be easy money if you lived through the bad supplements!

And also FWIW, if you are still hanging around here, do a search and find the poll I did a while back asking for guys who had their vitamin D blood levels checked at or near the time of their PC diagnosis but hopefully before they started supplementing. Though proving nothing- too small a sample etc- I thought the results were pretty interesting.

Personally, Tommy, I find the subject you have been trying to discuss quite interesting. There is actually another thread active on this subject, by Pratoman I believe. Good luck with your research, Brother!

Bill in mS

halbert said...
If all of us would remember, all the time (or at least most of it) that all any of us have to share is our experience: what happened to us, and what we did about it, and how things came out, then we'd have many fewer locked threads.

A wise person once told me that one should never tell anyone else what to do, about anything--at least do it very cautiously-- because, if I give advice, and it goes badly, then I bear some responsibility for the outcome. And I've got enough of my own problems to live with.

Telling someone in this forum, "look at all the options and make the best decision for you and your situation" is good advice. Telling someone, "Do what I did, because I've had a great outcome and you will too" is dangerous advice.

Well said Halbert.

We just continue slogging through that swamp of lots of good evidence but no gold standard proof:
/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24402990

Somebody said...
Vitamin D and prostate cancer survival in veterans.
Der T1, Bailey BA2, Youssef D1, Manning T3, Grant WB4, Peiris AN1.
Author information

1
Department of Internal Medicine, East Tennessee State University, P.O. Box 70622, Johnson City, TN 37614.
2
Department Family Medicine, East Tennessee State University, P.O. Box 70621, Johnson City, TN 37614.
3
Mountain Home VAMC, Mountain Home, TN 37684.
4
Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Center, P.O. Box 641603, San Francisco, CA 94164-1603.

Abstract

Prostate cancer remains the second most commonly diagnosed cancer among the male population worldwide. Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to prostate cancer and its aggressiveness. Herein, we initiated a retrospective study to evaluate vitamin D status and monitoring in veterans with prostate cancer, and to examine the potential link between vitamin D and survival status and length of survival in this population. We found that veterans who were initially vitamin D deficient were significantly less likely to survive than those who were not initially deficient, and that both initial and follow-up vitamin D deficiency were associated with decreased likelihood of survival after prostate cancer diagnosis. We recommend that vitamin D deficiency be replaced in veterans with prostate cancer.

/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25207358

Somebody said...
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2014;810:17-32.
Vitamin D and cancer: an overview on epidemiological studies.
Ordóñez Mena JM, Brenner H.
Abstract

In recent years, a rapidly increasing number of studies have investigated the relationship of vitamin D with total cancer and site-specific cancer obtaining diverse findings. In this chapter we provide an overview of epidemiological studies of vitamin D intake, 25-hydroxyvitamin D and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D serum levels and vitamin D associated polymorphisms in relation to total and site-specific cancer risk. Overall, epidemiological evidence for total cancer is inconclusive. However, a large number of studies support a relationship of vitamin D with colorectal cancer and to a lesser extent with breast cancer. Findings are inconsistent for other cancers including all other gastrointestinal cancers and prostate cancer. Different vitamin D associated polymorphisms were found to be significantly associated to colorectal, breast and prostate cancer risk.

/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25085835

Somebody said...
Format: Abstract

Send to
Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2014 Aug;23(8):1447-9. doi: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-14-0520.
Vitamin D in blood and risk of prostate cancer: lessons from the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial and the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial.
Schwartz GG1.
Author information

1
Departments of Cancer Biology, Urology, and Epidemiology and Prevention, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina [email protected].

Abstract

The effects of blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25-OHD) on the risk of total, low-, and high-grade prostate cancer were examined in the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial (SELECT) and the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial (PCPT). In the SELECT study, plasma 25-OHD levels were associated with a linear decrease in prostate cancer risk for high-grade cancers in African American men and an apparent "U"-shaped effect in other men. The "U-shaped" curve may reflect detection bias. In the PCPT study, in which detection bias was minimized, serum 25-OHD levels were associated with a linear decrease in the risk of high-grade prostate cancers. The results from these large prevention trials support the hypothesis that circulating levels of 25-OHD decrease the risk of clinically relevant prostate cancers. .........................The hypothesis that vitamin D, or its major source, sunlight, inhibits prostate cancer has gone from a “dark horse” to a front-runner in the race to understand the epidemiology of prostate cancer. Clinically relevant prostate cancer preferentially afflicts the elderly, Blacks, and residents in northern latitudes (1). Conversely, the prevalence of subclinical prostate cancer (cancer detected in asymptomatic men) increases with age but does not vary by race or geography.

©2014 American Association for Cancer Research.

PMID:
25085835
DOI:
10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-14-0520

[Indexed for MEDLINE]

Free full text

clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/20/9/2241.long

Somebody said...
Abstract
Clin Cancer Res. 2014 May 1;20(9):2241-3. doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-14-0369.

Vitamin D deficiency is associated with increased risk of prostate cancer for those with elevated prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level or abnormal digital rectal examination. Vitamin D deficiency is also associated with aggressive prostate cancer. Vitamin D level could be added as an additional factor to consider before ordering a biopsy. Clin Cancer Res; 20(9); 2241–3. ©2014 AACR.

See related article by Murphy et al., p. 2289

In this issue of Clinical Cancer Research, Murphy and colleagues associate vitamin D deficiency with increased risk of prostate cancer diagnosis on biopsy (1). Men in this study had their first prostate biopsy after a finding of an elevated or abnormal prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level or abnormal digital rectal examination. For African American (AA) men, serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels <20 ng/mL were significantly associated with prostate cancer, whereas for European American (EA) men, an insignificant increased risk of prostate cancer existed for serum 25(OH)D level <20 ng/mL. For both AA and EA men, serum 25(OH)D level <12 ng/mL was associated with a significant risk of stage ≥T2b and Gleason score ≥4 + 4. Thus, these findings add vitamin D status to the biomarkers for prostate cancer for those with other indications of prostate cancer.

This study offers further evidence that vitamin D deficiency is a risk factor for aggressive prostate cancer . Gilbert and colleagues associated low 25(OH)D levels with a 2-fold increased risk of advanced versus localized prostate cancer or high-grade versus low-grade prostate cancer (2). As with most observational studies (2), this study also found no correlation of serum 25(OH)D level with overall prostate cancer risk.

But sadly, we still have no proof for some mysterious reason. So let each proceed as common sense, in consultation with your doctors, seems to dictate.

Post Edited (BillyBob@388) : 6/13/2017 10:07:15 PM (GMT-6)

Explorer59 said...

halbert said...
If all of us would remember, all the time (or at least most of it) that all any of us have to share is our experience: what happened to us, and what we did about it, and how things came out, then we'd have many fewer locked threads.

A wise person once told me that one should never tell anyone else what to do, about anything--at least do it very cautiously-- because, if I give advice, and it goes badly, then I bear some responsibility for the outcome. And I've got enough of my own problems to live with.

Telling someone in this forum, "look at all the options and make the best decision for you and your situation" is good advice. Telling someone, "Do what I did, because I've had a great outcome and you will too" is dangerous advice.

Well said Halbert.

Yes, very well said indeed! Please, do not ever decide to take a supplement or eat a food based on any perceived advice from me! However, feel free to read any studies I or others supply, discuss the theories with your doctors, and make your own decisions! And good luck on your search/research!