OT: Dietary supplements shown to increase cancer risk if taken in excess

iPoop said...
Lol G7 and IaC, I guess there's not even a whisper of a chance of getting you to reconsider your viewpoints. You're both vehemently anti-pharmaceutical to a point that startles me. And neither of you will admit that supplements can cause harm and carry risk, despite backing evidence. There is risk getting out of bed each morning lol. Pharmaceuticals do have side effects, and I acknowledge it.

Cherry picking a few bad drugs hardly invalidates the good many others do. I could just as easily cherry pick some complete bs supplements that do nothing.

This isn't cherry picking. A trial is 4 times more likely (12 times more for statin drugs) to be positive if it is industry funded. It's a practice that is common and not restricted to certain "bad" drugs. There are very few people in America who are NOT taking these drugs. Chances are if you are taking it, the trials were cooked in some way or form. It applies to antidepressants, statins, biologics, immunosuppresants, you name it. Ben Goldacre breaks down the systemic reviews done on the trials in this article.

How industry influences the popular antidepressants and ulcer drugs:

We can begin with some recent work: in 2010, three researchers from Harvard and Toronto found all the trials looking at five major classes of drug—antidepressants, ulcer drugs and so on—then measured two key features: were they positive, and were they funded by industry? They found over five hundred trials in total: 85 per cent of the industry-funded studies were positive, but only 50 per cent of the government funded trials were. That’s a very significant difference.

Industry influence on statin drugs:

In 2007, researchers looked at every published trial that set out to explore the benefit of a statin. These are cholesterol lowering drugs which reduce your risk of having a heart attack, they are prescribed in very large quantities, and they will loom large in this book. This study found 192 trials in total, either comparing one statin against another, or comparing a statin against a different kind of treatment. Once the researchers controlled for other factors (we’ll delve into what this means later), they found that industry-funded trials were twenty times more likely to give results favoring the test drug. Again, that’s a very big difference.

Industry influence on psychiatric drugs:

We’ll do one more. In 2006, researchers looked into every trial of psychiatric drugs in four academic journals over a ten-year period, finding 542 trial outcomes in total. Industry sponsors got favorable outcomes for their own drug 78 per cent of the time, while independently funded trials only gave a positive result in 48 per cent of cases. If you were a competing drug put up against the sponsor’s drug in a trial, you were in for a pretty rough ride: you would only win a measly 28 per cent of the time.

I don't know about you, but I'd be pretty pissed if a company I trusted was profiting off a drug that never had solid evidence for its use in the first place.

G7, Yet supplements do not need to go through a single study to hit the market... no study of effectiveness or safety required... just the word of the marketing engine selling it.

Can study effectiveness be manipulated to make them look better than they are, those stats suggest it. However to claim they are all no better than a placebo seems a stretch.

The top 10 leading causes of death in the US are below together with the most recent statistics and facts:

Annually there are around 2,515,458 deaths registered in the US with the leading top 10 causes accounting for nearly 75% of all deaths.
1.Heart disease
2.Cancer (malignant neoplasms)
3.Chronic lower respiratory disease
4.Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases)
5.Accidents (unintentional injuries)
6.Alzheimer's disease
7.Diabetes (diabetes mellitus)
8.Influenza and pneumonia
9.Kidney disease (nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis)
10.Suicide (intentional self-harm).

Where do pharmaceuticals fit into this? I don't see them as #4.

Gary -

You misrepresent my argument on supplementation. I believe in using supplements that have clinical backing. It is preferable to get fish oil from fish and other natural sources, but not everyone has that luxury. The same applies to vitamin D because there are thousands of studies that show benefit. There is significant data on herbs like turmeric and coriander that justify their use over medicines. They also do not have any side effects associated with them.

If derived from natural sources and if reputable brands are used (which is often not the case for consumers), I don't believe most supplements have any evidence of harm. Using fish oil in excess might decrease blood clotting for those with recent surgery, but that's about it. Supplementing with knowledge is only guaranteed to benefit you.

Ipoop -

Data from Harvard on drug deaths and hospitalizations as of July 27, 2014. I would assume this is the most recent. Drug deaths are tied with stroke deaths as the 4th leading cause of death:

Few know that systematic reviews of hospital charts found that even properly prescribed drugs (aside from misprescribing, overdosing, or self-prescribing) cause about 1.9 million hospitalizations a year. Another 840,000 hospitalized patients are given drugs that cause serious adverse reactions for a total of 2.74 million serious adverse drug reactions. about 128,000 people die from drugs prescribed to them. This makes prescription drugs a major health risk, ranking 4th with stroke as a leading cause of death. The European Commission estimates that adverse reactions from prescription drugs cause 200,000 deaths; so together, about 328,000 patients in the U.S. and Europe die from prescription drugs each year. The FDA does not acknowledge these facts and instead gathers a small fraction of the cases.

Harvard questioning drug efficacy and benefit vs older drugs:

But as far as we can tell (very little research is funded on prescription drugs as a health risk compared to less deadly risks like diabetes or Alzheimer’s disease), millions who take new, patented drugs experience only modest benefits over established drugs. Only a small percent of new drugs provide significant advantages for patients to offset these risks of harm. Independent reviews over the past 35 years have found that only 11 to 15 percent of newly approved drugs have significant clinical advantages over existing, better-known drugs. These contribute to the large medicine chest of effective drugs developed over the decades. But the 85 to 89 percent with little or no clinical advantage flood the market. about four-fifths of the additional $70 billion spent on drugs since 2000 in the U.S. (and another $70 billion abroad) have been spent on these minor new variations rather than on the really innovative drugs.

Harvard pointing out that the FDA uses biased trials only because they are an expansion of the pharmaceutical industry. The FDA does not have an independent review branch because they are funded by the industry. This is a major problem:


The FDA accepts these biased trials and uses them to approve drugs. Congress strongly supports having companies fund the division that reviews new drugs rather than having the FDA be a publicly funded, independent reviewer and regulator. Financially, the FDA is an extension of the pharmaceutical industry and plays a major role in expanding markets for more people to take more drugs.

Post Edited (Guardian7) : 4/21/2015 1:26:59 PM (GMT-6)

CCinPA -

1) Those stats from Harvard are verified by the ISMP non-profit committee. I posted a PDF from that committee highlighting the same data. You can scroll to the bottom of the PDF which cites the FDA and Med watch data.

2) Two years ago I was about to pull the trigger on surgery because my case was so bad, but this is the year I gained nearly all of my weight back. I am almost back to my pre-diagnosis shape, bowel movements and weight. This is perhaps the greatest I have ever felt. I have to resolve a few more things, and it will take a month or two to do so. I'm not going to sugar coat my pathology and say everything is fine, but I will get there with hard work. My goal here is to give people hope, because there is very little of it.

Bottom line is that I (and probably mostly everyone here) would be either dead or missing a colon without medication.

A famous GI near me has people on med free remissions with the disease. I wish I had access to her before going through the gamut of medicinal therapies (that just suppress the symptoms). I wasted years of my life by not understanding the role nutrition and bacteria plays in our pathologies. There is accumulating research on the use of resistant starches and dietary techniques to manage UC fairly well, since we know now that fermentable fibers promote butyrate synthesis in the colon. Science would say the colon is capable of self-repair if it has the materials and precursors to do so. Resistant starches cut down colon cancer risk so significantly that it's a non factor.

There are numerous posters here who have resolved their pathology through other means, and they just don't post here anymore. It says you joined in 2014, but there is a great deal to catch up on - I encourage you to research the Brigg's protocol, PathogenKillers journey (she signed herself out of the surgery), Hurst's near surgery and resolution with FMT.

I want to emphasize that these were people who had the hardest hitting cases and were on the verge of surgical outcomes. They resolved their pathology completely and are no longer taking medications. They are living normal lives and as if the disease never existed. I truly wish they posted here, because there is nothing but doom and gloom here. It's very depressing to post here nowadays. I should probably stop.

Many people choose to believe the disease is incurable, and doctors gave me the same rap. I believed them for the longest time (see my post history), but all I need to see is one case being resolved to give me hope. I think there is much we can do to recover from the ravages of the disease. There is a great deal of information accumulating on resistant starches, the microbiome, epigenetics, stress and how it all ties into autoimmune disease.

There are a few exceptions -- people like you who refuse medications -- or at least refuse the stronger medications -- who are getting by without meds.

I refuse meds now because I gave them 10 years to do something and they didn't do anything except give me brief glimpses of remission. I took ALL medications except simponi and entyvio. I gave them a fair shot. I would have periods of remissions and then flares, and I wanted to find out why this kept happening. You would think I would have learned my lesson after the first 5 years but I continued to believe they would do something for me. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. They did very little for me except give me adverse reactions and hospitalizations. There is also some research indicating mesalamines might not be effective 4-5 years after diagnosis.

But even you admit that you are not in complete remission without drugs. Based on everything I have read about this disease you are significantly increasing your odds of getting colon cancer with the lingering inflammation.

Again - I have gained almost all my prediagnosis weight back and have just a few more lingering issues I need to resolve. It takes time to resolve decades of issues ya know (I believe the disease begins to take shape from childhood onwards). I can eat almost anything I want to, and am no longer afraid of any food or situation. I just choose NOT to eat the same junk that perpetuated the disease. The best signs of progress to me is weight gain, lack of symptoms, formed bowel movements.

As far as the consequences - what determines cancer risk is inflammation and we have the same likelihood as the rest of the population in getting all types of cancer. In other words, IBD is not an inclusion criteria for cancer. I want to know why those who don't have IBD have high cancer risk anyways, and why it is going up. I would implore you to look up the research on how environmental and dietary factors trigger some of these things.

I have no idea how long you have been doing this, but you are likely putting yourself at as much risk (or more) of long term serious consequences from the on going inflammation as you would incur with the more serious drugs. And that is your choice so I respect that.

If you can pinpoint the source of the inflammation (bacterial imbalance, nutritional deficiency) then there is hope in resolving the pathology. The examples here gave me hope when I was contemplating surgery and experimental therapies. I choose to sacrifice everything to heal myself. It's either heal myself or die trying.

If I am putting fourth the time and work to understand and resolve my pathology, I am going to be that much healthier than everyone around me. My risk of all diseases and cancers go down significantly, and even more than the normal population. Other people (even non-IBDers) can't possibly be healthier than me because they have other commitments.

So I've already won. The UC is gone.

What page on the PDF has the stat that drugs are the 4th leading cause of death? I did a quick scroll and didn't see it and don't feel like reading 25 pages. I did do a google search and couldn't find anything from a reputable site that says that. Most of what I could find didn't offer back up of where that stat came from.

One thing about that report -- the beginning said that Warfarin was one of the worst drugs, and that drug is why my mother is still alive and relatively well for being 88 -- she still lives in her own apartmant. She has a heart issue and is at risk of blood clots, hence the warfarin. One person's devil is another's savior.

I said that I would have been dead or minus a colon because of how sick I was when I was first diagnosed. Without meds I would not have been able to wait for any alternative treatments to kick in. I was far too sick and weak. Based on the stories I have read here from so many people they were/are as sick or worse than I was. Medical intervention was a necessity.

You say your UC is gone ... that's great! I misunderstood something I thought I had read on a different post. I thought you had said you weren't in remission. Just curious -- have you had a colonoscopy to confirm that? I ask, not because I don't believe you, but because I won't believe it for myself until I get a clear scope. Right now I am doing really well, but until I get it confirmed I will have a lingering worry -- mostly because of how I reached this point. Asacol alone wasn't enough, but adding nopal has made a huge difference for me. The scope will tell me whether it actually helped me to heal or if it is just masking symptoms. Hoping for the best!

I wish you continued good health. I would hate for you to die trying!

Amen, Gary!

Man, that is a lot of ifs and estimates and it refers to hospitalized patients. There is a reason people are in the hospital - because they aren't doing very well in the first place, thus the need for medications, which MAY have adverse side effects but if they don't try something these people aren't going to fare well anyway. That's why they're there. You're crazy if you think people admitted to the hospital or taken there by ambulance should be denied meds and given herbs and diet changes instead.

Guardian, don't you understand that most of us don't want a Guardian Angel who knows everything talking down to us dummies that need to be shown the way. I remember you said once that even your own family doesn't listen to you and thinks you are an extremist. God didn't appoint you to save the world. Surely there must be a website where you can talk soley about your extremist views. That doesn't mean that I don't think you can do some good here because you can but we are not poor shepherds that need to be shown the way to the promised land if only we could have the faith to follow you without question.

No G7, the topic was not "about the harms of supplements vs drugs". You have completely invented for your own purpose.

And that is precisely the point, that you are endlessly promoting your own agenda.

You didn't offend me. I just did not understand why you are so anti medications. Now that I know more of your background I do understand it a bit better. I look at it this way -- If 6.7% of people have adverse reactions, that means there are 93.3% who don't. If you are part of that 6.7% it truly sucks and my hope is that with better medicines that can be further reduced. I choose to focus on the 93.3% of good outcomes.

You didn't offend me. I just did not understand why you are so anti medications. Now that I know more of your background I do understand it a bit better. I look at it this way -- If 6.7% of people have adverse reactions, that means there are 93.3% who don't. If you are part of that 6.7% it truly sucks and my hope is that with better medicines that can be further reduced. I choose to focus on the 93.3% of good outcomes.

Again... my point was that it is NOT 6.7 percent and much, much higher than that. You have to realize those are only the FDA's own estimates, and they willingly admit the estimates cover a small fraction of the events since 1-5% of all adverse reactions are actually reported to med watch. There is a major discrepancy in how many events actually occur and what is reported. The article from Harvard mentions if everything is accounted for, there is a 1 in 5 chance of getting an adverse reaction, so the number is closer to 20 percent.

This is also partially because the effects of medications are more lethal over a prolonged period of time as well. I don't think there is a single person who will not suffer the some kind of reaction from a medication they continue to take. Whether it is decreased immunity from azathioprine that leads to c. diff, or even liver failure from prolonged tylenol usage, it manifests in the body in one way or another. I would assume the impact of even occasional tylenol usage is seen in liver panels, showing decreased liver function and metabolism.

This is a recent statistic on just tylenol alone:

Acetaminophen overdose sends as many as 78,000 Americans to the emergency room annually and results in 33,000 hospitalizations a year, federal data shows. Acetaminophen is also the nation’s leading cause of acute liver failure, according to data from an ongoing study funded by the National Institutes for Health.

As an another example, the studies on how past antibiotic usage or abuse affects future disease risk are surfacing right now. The increasing IBD rates correlate with the use of accutane and other medications during childhood. I shudder to think what will happen to all these youth who are taking ADHD and anti-anxiety medications. There just isn't enough long term data. I have a feeling we'll be seeing a greater rise in autoimmunity and other mystery conditions. I would never want to be on a drug that does not have decades of data.

This applies to OTC medications as well. I think there are emerging studies showing prilosec and other popular OTCs causing bone density issues, h. pylori, kidney failure and so fourth. I just posted a study where prilosec is indicated in kidney failure in the elderly.

Post Edited (Guardian7) : 4/21/2015 9:02:59 PM (GMT-6)

These issues are far more complex than you realize G7, and I don't believe iPoop's post was in any way an excuse for you to go off another tirade against medications in this thread.

Misleading, mistaken statements are made when people take an extreme, one-eyed approach to highly complex issues.
For example, quoting from David Light, the sociologist who penned the “Harvard” paper (and who has written a book bashing everything to do with pharmaceuticals) is a one-eyed approach.
Using a balanced variety of sources is critical to having balanced views.

Old Mike's original post highlights the point that supplement use is a complex, as well as highly individual matter, as does IAC's (see his thoughtful post).

The sensible approach would be to use caution in the use of both supplements and pharmaceuticals.

I am NOT anti-supplement (use some myself), but to be honest, I do wonder when people use a LOT of them and are still having problems. Not so sure they are helping the way it was hoped they would and by throwing even more supplements into the mix no one knows what could be happening internally or how they interact. Someone said that supplements are like the Wild West -- be careful with what you ingest!

Here's some additional info about supplements:

www.doctoroz.com/article/hidden-dangers-dietary-supplement

consumerhealthchoices.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Dangerous_Supplements.pdf