Hello everyone, and happy Week 8.
I hope everyone survived midterms last week; I cruised through
the 3 we had. It's a good feeling leaving an exam knowing you were
prepared and did well, and to reward myself, my pals and I went to
Epcot in Orlando for the weekend for the Food and Wine Festival.
This was my first time hitting this festival that Epcot puts on
every year. There were 29 countries represented, with native food
and drinks from each, and we tried all of them (at least the drinks
anyway). If you are on the fence between our Florida campus and the
campus in Lombard, maybe the 45-min. drive to Orlando from Tampa
might sway you.
Multivitamins
Today's blog is somewhat at the advice of Dr. David Seaman, our
Clinical Nutrition professor. Last week, as we were preparing for
his midterm, we had a discussion about a recent article that was
published earlier this month regarding the use of multivitamins and
a higher risk of mortality in older women. The researchers followed
up with about 42,000 women with an average age of 62 from 1986 to
2008, half of which supplemented with multivitamins and half who
did not. The researchers charted the participant's deaths,
excluding deaths from accidents, injury and suicide. Their
conclusion was that most dietary supplements were unrelated to
total mortality rate; however, several commonly used dietary
vitamin and mineral supplements were associated with increased
total mortality rate, including iron.
When assessing the researcher's data, before all the crazy
modifications to the numbers that researcher's often do, we found a
1:1 ratio of women who passed away who supplemented to women who
did not supplement. This tells me that it seems like supplementing
with a multivitamin has no bearing on prolonging someone's
life.
One has to take into consideration, though, the lifestyle that
these women lead. It is ridiculous to think that a lifetime of poor
dietary habits can be somehow erased away with one magic pill. Just
as an example, vitamins C & E found in multivitamins have
excellent antioxidant properties, but without an adequate diet
fortified with Magnesium or vitamin D, those very antioxidants can
be converted to free radicals themselves. So, I guess the
lesson from this article is two-fold: 1) never take what you read
for granted (because this is the stuff that your patients will be
reading); and 2) lead a healthy life.
Condolences
I'd like to conclude this week by sending our condolences from
Florida to the family of Frank Strehl, DC, DABCI, who passed away
this weekend. Though we did not have the privilege of meeting or
learning directly from Dr. Strehl, we benefited from his knowledge
through notes, and through some of our professors who were taught
by Dr. Strehl while at National. Dr. Strehl was a model for our
profession, appearing as an expert witness on several occasions, in
addition to his service to National. So if you have a moment today,
please take a minute to remember Dr. Strehl, he will be
missed.