Moving through my daily news reads of the industry I have found more and more articles on a study released about the risks of vitamins. Simply put the news said the majority of women who took these vitamins or minerals had a higher risk of dying. Calcium was the only one that didn't. So I'm going to get on my soap box for a minute.
There are some good explainations for this. One is that these individuals may have been taking vitamins due to known illness. for example, cancer patients take specific medication in an attempt to alleviate their illness. Saying "Older Women who take cancer medication are at a higher risk of dying" is true, but it maybe due to a third party, which is cancer.
The news does a very poor job of translating scientific research properly. This is why our profits have been dedicated to medical research, we want to actually have rigorous studies in place. This is often difficult and when we are doing research for products there are a ton of different items of scientific study that appear to have all sorts of methodological issues or do not demonstrate a threshold for dose effect, the minimum amount needed to see an intervention.
Could vitamins cause this? Yes. Could something else be causing this? Yes. Due to the correlational status we don't know the actual cause which is vital to making the best decision.
I'm done with my little soap box now. Here is a prime example of a poorly written article that doesn't explain the science behind it very well. Sorry Alaska news, you just happened to be the one I picked out.
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