RoR: Forum

Post 0

Tuesday, January 8 - 9:58am

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For one thing, the US is the only country whose national nutrition policies are created by an organization (USDA) beholden to industry; as well as to its citizens (forfeiting a crucial "check & balance" on power). A telling example of the problem with this precise situation is ...

the US Food Guide Pyramid debacle.

Post 1

Tuesday, January 8 - 2:04pm

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And for another thing, there is an unexplained discordance between the totality of the available scientific literature -- and the pronouncements from what I have now come to know as a Fascist Deception Agency in our midst.

Check out these 2 scientific reviews from 2006 and economic analysis (below). While doing so, I beseech you to harken back to that time as a curious child wherein you attentively watched Sesame Street. The relevant skit -- performed by Big Bird or the Cookie Monster -- went something like this: "One of these things is not like the other ... which one could it be? ... Da, da ... da!"

Okay, let's play. Here's one thing:

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Diabetes Technol Ther. 2006 Dec;8(6):677-87.

Clinical studies on chromium picolinate supplementation in diabetes mellitus--a review.

Broadhurst CL, Domenico P.

Department of Technical Services and Scientific Affairs, Purchase, New York 10577, USA.

Chromium (Cr) picolinate (CrPic) is a widely used nutritional supplement for optimal insulin function. A relationship among Cr status, diabetes, and associated pathologies has been established. Virtually all trials using CrPic supplementation for subjects with diabetes have demonstrated beneficial effects. Thirteen of 15 clinical studies (including 11 randomized, controlled studies) involving a total of 1,690 subjects (1,505 in CrPic group) reported significant improvement in at least one outcome of glycemic control. All 15 studies showed salutary effects in at least one parameter of diabetes management, including dyslipidemia. Positive outcomes from CrPic supplementation included reduced blood glucose, insulin, cholesterol, and triglyceride levels and reduced requirements for hypoglycemic medication. The greater bioavailability of CrPic compared with other forms of Cr (e.g., niacin-bound Cr or CrCl(3)) may explain its comparatively superior efficacy in glycemic and lipidemic control. The pooled data from studies using CrPic supplementation for type 2 diabetes mellitus subjects show substantial reductions in hyperglycemia and hyperinsulinemia, which equate to a reduced risk for disease complications. Collectively, the data support the safety and therapeutic value of CrPic for the management of cholesterolemia and hyperglycemia in subjects with diabetes.

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Recap:

-about every trial using chromium picolinate supplements has demonstrated beneficial effects

-13 of 15 trials reported statistically-significant improvements in at least one relevant health parameter

-all 15 of 15 trials showed improvement in factors related to diabetes management

... Here's another thing:

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Dis Manag. 2005 Aug;8(4):265-75.

Use of chromium picolinate and biotin in the management of type 2 diabetes: an economic analysis.

Fuhr JP Jr, He H, Goldfarb N, Nash DB.

Department of Economics, Widener University, Chester, Pennsylvania, USA.

This paper addresses the potential economic benefits of chromium picolinate plus biotin (Diachrome) use in people with Type 2 diabetes (T2DM). The economic model was developed to estimate the impact on health care systems' costs by improved HbA1C levels with chromium picolinate plus biotin (Diachrome). Lifetimes cost savings were estimated by adjusting a benchmark from the literature, using a price index to adjust for inflation. The cost of diabetes is highly dependent on the HbA1C level with higher initial levels and higher annual increments increasing the cost. Improvement in glycemic control has proven to be cost-effective in delaying the onset and progression of T2DM, reducing the risk for diabetes-associated complications and lowering utilization and cost of care. Chromium picolinate plus biotin (Diachrome) showed greater improvement of glycemic control in poorly controlled T2DM patients (HbA(1C) > or = 10%) compared to their better controlled counterparts (HbA(1C) < 10%). This improvement was additive to that achieved by oral hypoglycemic medications and correlates to calculated levels of cost savings. Average 3-year cost savings for chromium picolinate plus biotin (Diachrome) use could range from 1,636 dollars for a poorly controlled patient with diabetes without heart diseases or hypertension, to 5,435 dollars for a poorly controlled patient with diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension. Average 3-year cost savings was estimated to be between 3.9 billion dollars and 52.9 billion dollars for the 16.3 million existing patients with diabetes. Chromium picolinate plus biotin (Diachrome) use among the 1.17 million newly diagnosed patients with T2DM each year could deliver lifetime cost savings of 42 billion dollars, or 36,000 dollars per T2DM patient. Affordable, safe, and convenient, chromium picolinate plus biotin (Diachrome) could prove to be a cost-effective complement to existing pharmacological therapies for controlling T2DM.

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Recap:

-glycated hemoglobin (HbA1C) is the best overall predictor of glycemic control -- and the "cost" of diabetes

-evidence suggests that chromium picolinate is additive to diabetes drugs in reducing HBA1C (it works whether you are "on meds" or "not")

-if the 16 million folks with diagnosed diabetes took chromium for 3 years -- we'd save at least $4 billion in health care costs

-if, each year, the million new people -- people who are going to get diabetes that year -- took it; we'd save $42 billion ($36K per patient) over their lifetimes

... And here's another thing:

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Nutr Rev. 2006 Aug;64(8):357-63.

Chromium picolinate intake and risk of type 2 diabetes: an evidence-based review by the United States Food and Drug Administration.

Trumbo PR, Ellwood KC.

Division of Nutrition Programs and Labeling, US Food and Drug Administration, College Park, Maryland, USA. Paula.Trumbo@FDA.gov

The labeling of both health claims that meet significant scientific agreement (SSA) and qualified health claims on conventional foods and dietary supplements requires pre-market approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Approval by the FDA involves, in part, a thorough review of the scientific evidence to support an SSA or a qualified health claim. This article discusses FDA's evidence-based review of the scientific evidence on the role of chromium picolinate supplements in reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes. Based on this evidence-based review, FDA issued a letter of enforcement discretion for one qualified health claim on chromium picolinate and risk of insulin resistance, a surrogate endpoint for type 2 diabetes. The agency concluded that the relationship between chromium picolinate intake and insulin resistance is highly uncertain.

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Recap:

-based on the evidence, we can't tell if chromium picolinate would be helpful for type 2 diabetics

Now kids, one of these things is not like the other! Can you guess which one it is??

;-)

[NOTE: this one also qualifies for my recent "Real Conspiracy? You decide." thread]

Post 2

Tuesday, January 8 - 2:34pm

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I should say, regarding my post 1 above, that it is relevant because there is so much money to be had in diabetes therapy ...

Diabetes is big business. And that's not a bad thing. There's nothing wrong with business. Business is good. Most values stem from business. But if ever there were to be found a relationship wherein business and government teamed-up in order to control the flow of scientific information, censoring evidence-based health claims for inexpensive, ingestible substances -- then there might be a problem.

One potential issue here is that extra people would die from the mitigated dissemination of these evidence-based claims. An argument like this has been made for low-dose aspirin in preventing 2nd heart attacks. It was (scientifically) known for decades that low-dose aspirin prevented 2nd heart attacks -- but advertisement of that fact was blocked ... for decades. An unnecessary death-toll has been estimated from this kind of "market censorship" -- and it is estimated to be several million premature, avoidable deaths (over 100 "Vietnam Wars" worth of avoidable US citizen deaths).

That's one issue.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/08, 2:39pm)

Post 3

Tuesday, January 8 - 6:39pm

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You might want to check out www.lef.org, the site of the Life Extension Foundation.

In the '80's, they got slammed - literally, via swat teams - by the FDA for their practice of both publicizing the benefits of various nutritional supplements and also selling them, which was verbotten. Remember when your vitamin store personnel couldn't say anything about the products they sold, and there were no indications of dose or benefits or side-effects on the bottles?

The Life Extension Foundation is directly and solely responsible for the fact that none of those apply today. When the FDA goons swarmed into their facilities in Hollywood, Florida, arresting everyone and siezing both company and personal computers, and then turning off the air-conditioning to allow hundreds of thousands of dollars in precious supplements to be destroyed by the Florida heat, things must have seemed hopeless. Their own attorneys advised them to plea bargain and NOONE had ever beaten the FDA in court, and the charges against them would have left them in prison for several lifetimes.

The LEF guys told their attorneys that they were not going to plea bargain. In fact, they were going to fight every single charge and WIN, no matter what the cost or how long it took. It took about ten years and went to the Supreme Court and they won on EVERY SINGLE COUNT.

LEF was telling people in the mid-'80's about the benefits of low-dosage aspirin and being threatened repeatedly for doing so.

Under the current protocols and financial structures of the U.S. pharmaceautical industry and the FDA, of course, aspirin would never have even made it to market, given all the known potential side-effects. The result would have been hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions - of man-years lost due to pre-mature death and disability. On the other side of the spectrum, the FDA causes tens of thousands of deaths among men due to the mandatory boosting of iron content in any food labeled "enriched."

Iron deficiency anemia was a problem in Appalachia, in the 1920's, due do very poor diet, so this justified putting iron into everything, right? Actually, there were many medical researchers even then who pointed out that iron toxicity was very well known. Women lose iron from menstruation and sometimes need extra iron in the diet. Men, on the other hand, showed a marked rise in the very diseases that are induced in lab animals who are fed extra iron, right from the onset of the supplementation.

However, those diseases - such as heart disease, in particular - are slow in progression and can be attributed to all kind of complex interactions of genetics, diet, exercise, stress, other toxins, etc. So the evidence was there, but not the smoking gun. Note that recently the FDA INCREASED the iron supplementation, in spite of protests by nutritional experts, and at the same time that the Red Cross was advertising that men could lower their risk of heart disease by 50% simply by donating blood twice a year.

The pharmaceautical industry makes its money from intellectual property, not from curing illness, and especially not from preventing it. Drugs such as isoprinosine, which probably saved my life, are nearly impossible to find once the patents run out.

I am reminded of a similar situation regarding motorcycles. In spite of the unreal waste and bad decision making endemic to the old Soviet bloc countries, somehow they managed - especially Chekoslovakia and Yugoslavia - to make some very nice motorcycles with all kinds of neat innovations and sell them cheap in the West. How? By NOT having patents to worry about, they were able to cherry pick all the best ideas and use them freely.

Today, similarly, the Chinese are entering the international motorcycle market by means of building bikes using only technology that is out of patent. They are able to sell 250CC street bikes here in the U.S. at about 20% of the cost of a similar bike from Japan. My Honda 650 Nighthawk should just fall into that category, so I'm hoping...

I'm not against innovators being rewarded - hugely and handsomely - but there is definitely something wrong with the ways we are going about this. Every day when I use COREL Draw at work, I see all the basic stuff that is missing - like preserving layers in a copy and paste, or a simple keystroke screen drag, just to name two - because Adobe or someone else has a patent on that function. This is obvious stuff that should never have gotten a patent to begin with, but the current policy - soon to be enshrined into law as "first applicant" patenting - is to just issue and wait for opposition. And if the opposition doesn't materialize within a couple years, the patent holder is home free to terrorize that market.

Post 4

Tuesday, January 8 - 8:24pm

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Phil, I agree that the LEF is the primary trail-blazer and that -- in health & healing -- our current market dynamics reward pull-peddling rather than entrepreneurship.

p.s. I had a 650cc once ... a Yamaha Seca Turbo. It was too heavy to take off very fast from a stand-still but, when the tach- hit about 4 or 5 grand ... boy, oh boy, you had better be holding on tight to those handle-bars! If you were going just the right speed, the front tire would come off the ground -- from a roll-on WITHOUT popping the clutch -- even in SECOND gear! Of course, that kind of power is standard on bikes nowadays, e.g., the Suzuki GSXR 750 front tire comes off in at least the first 2 gears [!] (without popping the clutch) -- but for a heavy sport-touring bike from the 80's ... I was pretty impressed; and just a little scared of the raw power of the thing.

;-)

Ed

Post 5

Wednesday, January 9 - 10:42am

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A couple of other potentially-relevant stories ...

We're apparently losing our world "rank" in life expectancy:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/12/AR2007081200113.html

... and in height:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/12/AR2007081200809.html

A common factor in these 3 issues (preventable deaths from chronic disease, average life-span, and average height) is nutrition.

Ed