Good Day Boys and Girls:

I would be remiss if I didn’t let you know that I am thinking of you with a thankful heart on this Thanksgiving week 🙂

Now, many of you will have already seen the NY Times article on vitamins. Didn’t catch it? Well, here it is :

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/1…-for-vitamins/

I am sure you will have many comments, mine will be forthcoming shortly, but here is what a well known nutritional expert e-mailed me when I sent this off to my professional friends. These words echo my own sentiments and will give you a snapshot of the big “Pharma” picture:

“As usual, God is in the details, and the details of this study are interesting indeed. For one thing, the “dose” of vitamin E was 400 IU’s every two days, or a paltry 200 IUs a day. For another, though the researchers don’t say, we can imagine that they used synthetic alpha tocopherol for their vitamin E, which is what they typically use in these studies. Synthetic vitamin E is only half as well absorbed as natural vitamin E. Furthermore, of the eight fractions of vitamin E, alpha-tocopherol is probably one of the least effective by itself. So what this study shows is that people taking meaningless doses of an inferior form of vitamin E, along with a very small dose of vitamin C, didn’t have lower rates of cancer or heart disease than people who didn’t take these supplements. I’m not sure what we want to conclude from this- my hunch is not much- but one thing we don’t want to conclude is that these supplements have no use. Unfortunately the researchers- and especially the people reporting the study- are happy to conclude just that.”

On another note, I have been e-mailed quite a bit about flu shots – yes or no.. In general, I am not an advocate and an adjusted analysis of flu shot studies show that flu shots, in fact, do not lower the risk of pneumonia. This analysis appeared in an August issue of the 2008 Lancet, a most prestigious medical journal. The study was based on flu and pneumonia stats during the 2001-2003 flu season. These were the years when the vaccines were actually “matched” to the flu strains. The result, sad to say, was that there was no difference between those who had the shot and those who came down with pneumonia.

So, there you go…I hope you all enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday. I subscribe to the words of St. Ambrose who said “no duty is more urgent than returning thanks.” Thanks to all of you this holiday and always in all ways.