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I'm sick of this hand-wavey selective nonsense. Yes, healthy people with good diets probably shouldn't be taking any vitamins, but the people I know who are thi
by drzaiusapelord 15y ago
I'm sick of this hand-wavey selective nonsense. Yes, healthy people with good diets probably shouldn't be taking any vitamins, but the people I know who are this healthy are a small minority, including myself.
Lets look at these cases specfically. Should women over the age of 50 take iron? Probably not, but why are they taking iron? Because they've been told their whole lives they're low on iron by their doctors, who were right to tell them so, but now know not to recommend iron pills past a certain age. Were they wrong for doing so?
Look at how foods are enriched with vitamins. Folic acid is everywhere because it helps pregnant women, but in men it can cause cancer, but it also might fight a different cancer, yet we still take it in. Its nearly impossible to buy bread from the store that doesn't have folic acid. Hell, half the things in the grocery store are enriched with folic acid. How about we pull that stuff and just tell pregnant women to take supplements and stop feeding men a carcinogen? I prefer the freedom to make my own decisions than having the government dictate folic acid supplementation via food and the other hand having the NYTimes telling me not to take anything.
For the record I take fiber, fish oil, and vitamin D + tryptophan. The latter being more or less a cure for my SAD (after several failed SSRIs). This combination makes me feel like a million dollars. With a little supplementation as well as good sleep, etc I'm about 10x as creative and have more energy. Quitting these would be foolish. If anything, we should be encouraging responsible and informed supplementation and pulling government mandated supplementation for things that harm us, folic acid especially.
Heck, I'm a big government kind of guy, and even I have a problem with folic acid in our food. The government, even under the best of circumstances, is biased towards pregnant women and families (population growth/family is seen as important) but really not interested in helping you achieve longevity or be happy. You're going to have to work those out on your own, hence my recommendation to look into potential supplements and lifestyle changes, as well as avoiding government supplementation that might hurt you (folic acid) but help others (pregnant women).
This article is so against the hacker ethos its not even funny. Sorry NYTimes, this issue is a lot more complex than "Vitamins bad, mmm'kay?"
- ap22213 15y agoI don't want to discredit your experiences, because if they work, they work, but have you considered the possibility that you're achieving a placebo effect with your supplements? In some studies, iirc, placebos have been shown to be as effective or more effective than SSRIs.
- drzaiusapelord 15y agoOf course, its impossible for me to run a proper experiment on myself with the study and control group of the same guy, but you are free to research the mood changing qualities of both tryptophan and vitamin D as well as fish oil on your own. Legitimate studies have found effect.
- tokenadult 15y agoIn some studies, iirc, placebos have been shown to be as effective or more effective than SSRIs. You wrote, "if I remember correctly," so I'll mention here some sources I have checked recently for other Hacker News threads. In actual practice, placebos only look effective when the statistical tests in a study are poor, and most especially when the symptoms are self-reported by patients. Placebos are NOT effective in treating actual disease states or improving "hard endpoints" such as reduction of all-cause mortality or major morbidity from specific diseases with verifiable physiological signs. See http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/placebo-effect-for-pain/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/placebo-effect... http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/placebo-effects-revisited/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/placebo-effect... http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-placebo-effect/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-placebo-ef... http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/placebo-effects-without-deception-well-not-exactly/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/placebo-effect... http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/benedetti-on-placebos/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/benedetti-on-p... Placebo effects are strongest for patient self-reported subjective symptoms (classically, pain, but in more recent studies mood) and weakest for objective clinical signs measured by experienced observers. Hard endpoints to look at in the case of depression include preventing suicide and the patient returning to normal daily life function (such as full-time employment if that is appropriate for the patient's stage of life). Some hard endpoint studies indeed do not support some brands of SSRIs as well as they support cognitive-behavioral talk therapy for depression, but no properly designed study says that placebos are "effective" for any indication for SSRIs. Thanks for bringing up this issue, which is recurrent on HN, here.
- onemoreact 15y ago
- yread 15y agoWhy do you say that folic acid is carcinogenic? I've found this metastudy which says we don't know: http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/170/18/1622 http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/170/18/162...
- scott_s 15y agoThis article is so against the hacker ethos its not even funny. In what way? This is a summarization of scientific research.