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snake oil?

Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2012 10:54 pm
by southeast-isher
this was in the paper not long back

do you agree with it?

http://s3.amazonaws.com/infobeautiful2/ ... ts_956.png

Re: snake oil?

Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2012 6:41 am
by The Riff-Raff Element
It's certainly interesting, and, although I've not gone through it thoroughly, it looks about fair in terms of being rigorous in weighting supplements for which there is compelling evidence.

That said, quite a lot of stuff is down in the "conflicting" section for which very little proper work has been done, and for a couple I've dipped into via their website (which is excellent), some studies from which benefits were found (milk thistle for alcoholic hepatitis and lycopene for prevention of prostate cancer) appear not to have been referenced. And this is a summary of the evidence for benefits from supplements rather than dietary sources, which are not the same thing. I admit to being very suspicious of supplements.

Re: snake oil?

Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2012 10:49 am
by Zech
This information is based on a Cochrane report, the best available summary of scientific evidence. My 'agreement' or not is entirely irrelevant.

If studies have been excluded, it's probably because they were of poor quality (I haven't actually read this one, but Cochrane reports usually apply fairly strict quality criteria for inclusion of studies).

Very interesting, thanks for sharing.