The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

photo credit: kansasliberal

Eating Fabulous points to this Consumer Reports article on designing a heart-healthy diet. Advice offered includes recommended fruits and vegetables to load up on, designing a diet around the “Mediterranean eating plan,” and whether “heart-healthy supplements” actually promote heart health. Their supplement advice is particularly interesting, as they investigate three supplements currently marketed as heart-healthy, including B vitamins (like folic acid) and fish oils. For example, here’s what they have to say about vitamin E:

While considerable observational evidence has associated high intakes of vitamin E with protection against heart disease, several large-scale clinical trials have failed to find persuasive evidence that vitamin E supplements yield any benefit to the heart. In fact, some suggest the opposite.

Upshot: We feel that taking supplements of vitamin E to lower your risk of heart disease is a waste of time and money.

Consumer Reports also recommended eating a diet with enough “healthy fats” (as opposed to those nasty ones the USDA recently reported on) and various colors of fruits and veggies to ensure a wide variety of micronutrients. Personally, I’ve always thought consuming vitamins and nutrients naturally is probably much healthier than taking supplements. Of course, there’s so many chemicals in our food now, maybe it doesn’t matter.

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I’m not too hip on multivitamins. Not only do we take on faith what’s in them, we take on faith they’re healthy. My own personal opinion - get your vitamins the way they’re meant to be processed, from food.

There’s a new study out that makes me even more wary of multivitamins. The U.S. News and World Report recently ran an article about a study from the National Cancer Institute that indicates taking more than 7 multivitamin pills a week could increase mens’ risk of “advanced and fatal” prostate cancer:

Researchers followed 295,344 men for five years and found that while high multivitamin use did not correlate with higher rates of localized cancer, it increased the risk of advanced cancer by 30 percent and nearly doubled the risk of fatal prostate cancer. Taking additional beta carotene and zinc supplements increased the risk even more.

…

Goran Bjelakovic, a researcher at the University of Nis in Serbia who has looked at the impact of nutritional supplements and wrote an editorial accompanying the study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, points out that the average American diet provides 120 percent of the beta carotene and vitamins A and C needed, suggesting that additional vitamins could upset the body’s balance of micronutrients.

Wow, the average American gets 120% of the body’s required beta carotene, vitamin A and vitamin C from diet, before even taking the multivitamin? The National Institute of Health has this to say about taking too much vitamin A:

Hypervitaminosis A refers to high storage levels of vitamin A in the body that can lead to toxic symptoms. There are four major adverse effects of hypervitaminosis A: birth defects, liver abnormalities, reduced bone mineral density that may result in osteoporosis (see the previous section), and central nervous system disorders [1,48-49].

Toxic symptoms can also arise after consuming very large amounts of preformed vitamin A over a short period of time. Signs of acute toxicity include nausea and vomiting, headache, dizziness, blurred vision, and muscular uncoordination [1,48-49]. Although hypervitaminosis A can occur when large amounts of liver are regularly consumed, most cases result from taking excess amounts of the nutrient in supplements.

Makes me wonder about the other vitamins and minerals we take “for health” without thinking about the damage we might be doing to ourselves.

Fast food burgers, fast food vitamins, fast food money - before long, we’ll be driving up to McDonalds and purchase hamburgers enriched with E. coli and vitamin A with our credit cards. All we’re missing is the vitamin A.

What do you think about alli? Take my poll.

I’ve been thinking a lot about GSK’s orlistat/alli since the FDA released their approval last week, and I believe alli is only half of GSK’s plan for orlistat.  The other half?  Multi-vitamins.

I’ve talked a little about alli in general; I even did some math to figure out exactly how many calories alli will block - around 180 calories per day based on a 2300 cal/day diet and following GSK’s recommended maximum fat consumption.  If someone can simply drink one less Mountain Dew a day and get the same benefits as taking alli without all the nasty side effects, why is GSK spending the money to bring alli to the market?

Alli will be marketed as a weight-loss pill lifestyle-change pill.  Broadcast advertisements for OTC drugs are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission, as opposed to ads for prescription drugs, which are regulated by the FDA.  Under the Federal Trade Commission Act:

• advertising must be truthful and non-deceptive;
• advertisers must have evidence to back up their claims; and
• advertisements cannot be unfair.

Because the FTC carries a less-onerous test for drug advertising, GSK will be able to make much craftier claims about the drug and have much more leeway than Roche had with Xenical.  Specifically, there is no requirement for listing side effects, limitations in use and a balance between effectiveness/advertising and indications/side effects.  Likely, we will soon begin seeing commercials that focus on losing 8lbs for every 5 you would normally lose.  If they’re crafty enough, they’ll even create an emotion-based illusion that the alli pill inspires the lifestyle changes suggested by the myalli.com program without the hard work associated with making lifestyle changes.  Effectively, they will market a lifestyle-change pill.  Never mind the skidmarks.

GSK sells multivitamins.  Since alli blocks fat, it will also block the body’s ingestion of fat-soluble vitamins, like A, D, E and K.  If I were a marketing consultant at GSK (and surely they’ve already thought of this), I’d be putting this fact in all alli literature as a preemptive disclosure and use it to my advantage by selling multivitamins either stocked next to alli on the shelves or even boxed with alli as a “kit.”  GSK already sells multivitamins in the US - Geritol already has A, D, E and K in the formula.

So, let’s do a little more math.  We’ll take that unscientific MSNBC poll I mentioned before - 59% of 137,301 respondents are in favor of taking alli.  Walgreens sells Geritol Complete for $5.00 per 40 pills.  If just the 81,008 respondents polling favorably take alli along with Geritol Complete, that’s an additional $405,040.00 per month for GSK - and that’s just based on 137,301 respondents.  I’m betting it won’t be long after alli’s release that GSK releases a specially-formulated multivitamin containing just the fat-soluble vitamins (and omega-3 for buzzword recognition), and I guarantee their profit margin will be higher on that pill.  Using organic growth methods, GSK will double their consumer base using a complementary pill they already manufacture - no R&D cost, very little marketing cost, very high profit margin.

All in the name of Americans refusing to eat one less hotdog a day.

A vitamin a day may do more harm than good (@ msnbc)

MSNBC points to a study on multivitamins performed by ConsumerLab (an independent tester of nutrition products, visit their about page for more) on 39 products, 21 of which are available in US and Canada.  Of those 21, only 10 met the stated claims on the labels and other criteria set by ConsumerLab (including the time it takes for the pill to break apart).  Failures of note included:

The Vitamin Shoppe Multivitamins Especially for Women - contaminated with 15.3 micrograms of lead per daily dose of 2 pills.

Hero Nutritionals Yummi Bears - contained more than twice the amount of daily tolerated vitamin A for kids, which can lead to bone weakening and liver problems.

Freaking lead in multivitamins!  What was their response?

David Morrison, vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs at The Vitamin Shoppe, said his company’s products are all tested more than once, including screening for lead, and he questioned the new results. “It would be very surprising to me if this were actually true,” he said.

Steve Mister, president and CEO of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade group in Washington, D.C., that represents supplement manufacturers, said that if the findings on lead and vitamin A are, in fact, accurate, “that is not acceptable for the industry. … If we had a serious issue of safety, we’d be hearing concerns from consumers in large numbers and we’re not.”

One more reason to eat healthy - get as many of your vitaimins from foods as possible.  I’ll have to do some research myself to learn where to find the important ones, and in what levels.

Here’s the report excerpt from MSNBC’s article:

Multivitamins that met standards:

• Centrum Silver
• Member’s Mark
• Complete Multi One A Day Women’s
• Flinstones Complete

Those that failed:

• The Vitamin Shoppe Multivitamins Especially for women: Contaminated with lead
• Hero Nutritionals Yummi Bears: Had twice the labeled amount of vitamin A
• Nature’s Plus Especially Yours for Women: Took twice as long as allowed to disintegrate
• AARP Maturity Formula: Took nearly twice as long as allowed to disintegrate
• Eniva VIBE: Had only 54 percent of claimed vitamin
• A Pet-Tabs Complete Daily Vitamin-Mineral Supplement for Dogs: Contained lead