OK,
I went to the drmyhill site. Sorry, it is full of outright quackery. Doesn't disprove your point, but doesn't support it either.
The nutrition and pancreatic cancer study is based on a design well known to be among the most untrustworthy of all: patient diet history questionnaires. Remember the coffee and pancreatic cancer scare? Same junk method.
Note the odds ratios (hazard ratios): not one even reaches 2.0. Such ORs are absolutely meaningless. Confidence intervals (CI) which include 1, e.g. "1.69 (CI 95% 0.99, 2.89) are statistically invalid. All of the CIs in that study include 1.
The chromium study I can't trust because the references are not included. In any case, correlation does not equal causation. And when a scholarly-looking blurb for chromium just happens to end with a sales pitch for chromium supplements, my BS alarm goes off.
If some folks take supplements and notice health improvements, that's great, but it ain't science. The plural of anecdote is not data.
If the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition publishes studies with such shabby design and ORs and CIs, I can't really trust it. AND they don't specify what they mean by pancreatic cancer. There are several types: adenocarcinoma, cystic neoplasms, mucinous neoplasms, endocrine and neuroendocrine, etc.
I don't trust Dr. Whitaker:http://www.acsh.org/healthissues/newsID.901/healthissue_detail.asp
The age-related eye disease study gets back to my earlier point: they were looking at disease, not normal eyes.
Look, it may well be true that supplements, chromium, avoiding sugar etc etc do improve health. But the studies and sources cited here don't back that up.
When a properly done study shows a discernible benefit ( and odds ratios of less than 3 don't do that), I will be the first to recommend them. I'm not saying you guys are wrong or stupid. I'm saying that the sources don't support your beliefs.
Sorry if I sound testy, but there is so much junk science out there, and it is infuriating to see people led astray by it. Our best science is slow and blind enough as it is without all the lousy science being published. Remember when dietary fiber was supposed to prevent colon cancer? Turned out not to be true. Yet we all got on that fiber bandwagon, and food merchants made millions on it.
I went to the drmyhill site. Sorry, it is full of outright quackery. Doesn't disprove your point, but doesn't support it either.
The nutrition and pancreatic cancer study is based on a design well known to be among the most untrustworthy of all: patient diet history questionnaires. Remember the coffee and pancreatic cancer scare? Same junk method.
Note the odds ratios (hazard ratios): not one even reaches 2.0. Such ORs are absolutely meaningless. Confidence intervals (CI) which include 1, e.g. "1.69 (CI 95% 0.99, 2.89) are statistically invalid. All of the CIs in that study include 1.
The chromium study I can't trust because the references are not included. In any case, correlation does not equal causation. And when a scholarly-looking blurb for chromium just happens to end with a sales pitch for chromium supplements, my BS alarm goes off.
If some folks take supplements and notice health improvements, that's great, but it ain't science. The plural of anecdote is not data.
If the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition publishes studies with such shabby design and ORs and CIs, I can't really trust it. AND they don't specify what they mean by pancreatic cancer. There are several types: adenocarcinoma, cystic neoplasms, mucinous neoplasms, endocrine and neuroendocrine, etc.
I don't trust Dr. Whitaker:http://www.acsh.org/healthissues/newsID.901/healthissue_detail.asp
The age-related eye disease study gets back to my earlier point: they were looking at disease, not normal eyes.
Look, it may well be true that supplements, chromium, avoiding sugar etc etc do improve health. But the studies and sources cited here don't back that up.
When a properly done study shows a discernible benefit ( and odds ratios of less than 3 don't do that), I will be the first to recommend them. I'm not saying you guys are wrong or stupid. I'm saying that the sources don't support your beliefs.
Sorry if I sound testy, but there is so much junk science out there, and it is infuriating to see people led astray by it. Our best science is slow and blind enough as it is without all the lousy science being published. Remember when dietary fiber was supposed to prevent colon cancer? Turned out not to be true. Yet we all got on that fiber bandwagon, and food merchants made millions on it.
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