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Wha...? Wait a second. The title for the link submitted is: Vitamin D slashes risk of cancers by 77 percent (2007) If what you're saying is true, that calciu

Wha...? Wait a second. The title for the link submitted is: Vitamin D slashes risk of cancers by 77 percent (2007) If what you're saying is true, that calcium + vitamin D confers the greatest benefit, then the link title is still wrong. But what in the study says that calcium + vitamin D conveys the greatest benefit? (ie Vitamin D alone wouldn't convey as great a benefit) It may be true, but it's not obvious from the article that was linked, and it's still not obvious from the original paper that you linked to. The article and you are assuming that what is having the anti-cancer effect is the calcium, and the vitamin D helps you absorb the calcium, thus enhancing that effect. First, I don't assume what you do, which is that supplementing calcium is always a positive. Second, what if vitamin D has some action other than help you absorb calcium. Even if I'm not an expert in this, I find it hard to believe that medical researchers have completely precluded vitamin D from having any action other than help your body absorb calcium, and if it alone helped prevent cancer, it may be really nice to know, especially if you don't want to be increasing your calcium. I don't get the attitude. I was talking about the information was provided by the article. There may very well be a study about men 20-40 years old, of varying ethnic backgrounds, who take just vitamin D (no calcium) and it's found to decrease cancer versus control, but that's not the information provided here by the article or the original study. Your point about actual vitamin D supplements on the market mostly coming with calcium suffers from the same logical problem. The article headline (original or on HN) should tell me what exactly is decreasing the cancer risk, not some assumption about what consumers will end up buying and what they'll likely also end up supplementing with additionally. If the conclusion had been vitamin D alone decreases the risk of cancer, do you think there wouldn't be manufacturers churning out pure vitamin D, without the calcium? EDIT: Okay, parent has updated post. I appreciate that you softened your tone. Sure, I know it says that they aren't sure of the generality of the study in the article. I think it's worth pointing out because again, there's that disconnect between the title and the content. Title says "TAKE VITAMIN D" without qualification. Article says different. Responding to your new point about the generality of the study--if the requirements for men and women really are the same (I don't buy it), then why study post-menopausal white women in Nebraska? I can see age for the cancer risk, but why not men, and why not of different ethnicities? If you're going to tell me that post-menopausal white women 55 and older are more likely to be deficient in calcium and vitamin D, then well, maybe the effects are exaggerated and other groups don't need the supplementation. PS Computational biology is cool, I did programming work in a bio lab trying to identify splicing sites back in undergrad.

calambrac 17y ago
And now you've learned a valuable lesson, which is that titles given by a third party to pop summaries of studies somehow (amazingly, I know) don't invalidate or replace the information actually contained in the study. Not being able to live life based on the information present in headlines is kind of tragic, huh?
- jimmybot 17y ago
  What the heck? I didn't misunderstand the study by only looking at the headline. The full paper confirms what I said in my comments. My criticism of the study as possibly being of limited applicability (older, white women) still stands whether you only looked at the summary article or the original paper. That the PI agrees means that she knows her study is flawed (or let's say limited). Read the other comments; people are taking it as if it applies to them. Some of the people voting this link up also may have thought something similar. There was a suggestion made that it doesn't matter whether it's vitamin D by itself or vitamin D + calcium because you could just take both. My criticism was calcium isn't necessarily good, especially for men, because too much calcium is associated with basically bad nerves and prostate cancer. What about what I said is a misunderstanding of the study or "failure" to lookup the original paper?
  - calambrac 17y ago
    I didn't say you misunderstood the study. I said you learned that headlines can be misleading, which I assumed was new information to you given how much of a whiny little rant you felt you needed to give us about this instance of that fact.
timr 17y ago
Yes, sorry about the initial tone of the comment. It was late, and I tend to refine long posts through iteration. To answer your question, I did search for the authors' other research, and found a long list of publications on the relationship of calcium supplementation to cancer. So I knew that was their general focus of research. But my answer was based solely on the content of the abstract: "CONCLUSIONS: Improving calcium and vitamin D nutritional status substantially reduces all-cancer risk in postmenopausal women." That's a limited statement. Regardless of the title of the press release, what they showed was that there's evidence that Vitamin D supplementation -- when combined with supplemental calcium up to the US RDA -- significantly reduces cancer in post-menopausal women. The study was limited to post-menopausal women because they were trying to research osteoporosis (again, see abstract), and that's probably what they got funding to do. But because the mechanism is general, and since they weren't doing anything extraordinary with the calcium supplementation, there's no a priori reason to believe that the results are specific to older women. That's the only additional assumption I'm making.

calambrac 17y ago

And now you've learned a valuable lesson, which is that titles given by a third party to pop summaries of studies somehow (amazingly, I know) don't invalidate or replace the information actually contained in the study. Not being able to live life based on the information present in headlines is kind of tragic, huh?

jimmybot 17y ago
What the heck? I didn't misunderstand the study by only looking at the headline. The full paper confirms what I said in my comments. My criticism of the study as possibly being of limited applicability (older, white women) still stands whether you only looked at the summary article or the original paper. That the PI agrees means that she knows her study is flawed (or let's say limited). Read the other comments; people are taking it as if it applies to them. Some of the people voting this link up also may have thought something similar. There was a suggestion made that it doesn't matter whether it's vitamin D by itself or vitamin D + calcium because you could just take both. My criticism was calcium isn't necessarily good, especially for men, because too much calcium is associated with basically bad nerves and prostate cancer. What about what I said is a misunderstanding of the study or "failure" to lookup the original paper?
- calambrac 17y ago
  I didn't say you misunderstood the study. I said you learned that headlines can be misleading, which I assumed was new information to you given how much of a whiny little rant you felt you needed to give us about this instance of that fact.

timr 17y ago

Yes, sorry about the initial tone of the comment. It was late, and I tend to refine long posts through iteration. To answer your question, I did search for the authors' other research, and found a long list of publications on the relationship of calcium supplementation to cancer. So I knew that was their general focus of research. But my answer was based solely on the content of the abstract: "CONCLUSIONS: Improving calcium and vitamin D nutritional status substantially reduces all-cancer risk in postmenopausal women." That's a limited statement. Regardless of the title of the press release, what they showed was that there's evidence that Vitamin D supplementation -- when combined with supplemental calcium up to the US RDA -- significantly reduces cancer in post-menopausal women. The study was limited to post-menopausal women because they were trying to research osteoporosis (again, see abstract), and that's probably what they got funding to do. But because the mechanism is general, and since they weren't doing anything extraordinary with the calcium supplementation, there's no a priori reason to believe that the results are specific to older women. That's the only additional assumption I'm making.