Not all of them, but most:
The unscrupulous sales people keep saying, "a study says it makes significant improvements.". Well they know full well that the word significant has more than one meaning. In the contest of every abstract you read, it means statistically significant. The actual difference could be 0.5%, but as long as one group actually had an improvement that is not just a random fluke, they may use the word "significant", and shorten the phrase by dropping the word "statistically".
Many of the sites that sell this stuff will not provide links to the studies. Even the company selling it, which paid for the study, will not disclose the full study, so you don't know what was actually done.
For example, they say some carotenoid protects you from sunburn. I'd like to see if they used beta carotene as the control or not. Why would I buy the product if plain old beta carotene can do the same thing? And does the carotenoid actually protect against sunburned DNA, or does it just reduce and prevent inflammation so you don't know you are being damaged? You'll find out in 20 years. But it is only spf 2 - 7.
That or they study the effects of high doses of a vitamin. What they don't say in the abstract is that both the control and the test group are highly deficient in the vitamin, so of course the mega dose group does better. If I'm going to buy something, I want to know how it affects healthy people like me.
Or the resveratrol sellers, failing to ever mention that the liver metabolizes almost all the resveratrol before it ever reaches your blood, and that the remaining levels are 1% the concentration found effective in their studies.
Or doctor mercola selling krill oil because it has a carotenoid in it (which is 1/1000 the dose needed to reduce sunburns), and he says krill oil is not rancid like fish oi (but fish oil has vitamin E added which keeps it from going rancid. Just bit one open and see.)
I'll stick to the vitamines C and E for now. 200mg of C, and 100 mg of a mixture of natural E isomers. And borageseed oil and fish oil. The liver does not destroy those.
And some studies say, "maybe resveratrol metabolites work". OK, then make them and test them in vitro. Why hasn't anyone ever tested the metabolites in vitro?
And there is Hyarulonic acid, way to big to be absorbed by the skin or the gut, yet sold in creams and pills. The Okanowans synthesize it because they are youthful. They don't get it from their diet. They are 5 years more youthful than us because they don't over eat. And they are not as hungry because they eat fiber.
Then there is a study saying if you take 750 miligrams of properly processed cat claw extract, it protects your DNA. Only problem is the company that sells it sells it in doses of 3 drops per day, for $30 a month. They need to read their own study and see that is not enough to do anything.
The unscrupulous sales people keep saying, "a study says it makes significant improvements.". Well they know full well that the word significant has more than one meaning. In the contest of every abstract you read, it means statistically significant. The actual difference could be 0.5%, but as long as one group actually had an improvement that is not just a random fluke, they may use the word "significant", and shorten the phrase by dropping the word "statistically".
Many of the sites that sell this stuff will not provide links to the studies. Even the company selling it, which paid for the study, will not disclose the full study, so you don't know what was actually done.
For example, they say some carotenoid protects you from sunburn. I'd like to see if they used beta carotene as the control or not. Why would I buy the product if plain old beta carotene can do the same thing? And does the carotenoid actually protect against sunburned DNA, or does it just reduce and prevent inflammation so you don't know you are being damaged? You'll find out in 20 years. But it is only spf 2 - 7.
That or they study the effects of high doses of a vitamin. What they don't say in the abstract is that both the control and the test group are highly deficient in the vitamin, so of course the mega dose group does better. If I'm going to buy something, I want to know how it affects healthy people like me.
Or the resveratrol sellers, failing to ever mention that the liver metabolizes almost all the resveratrol before it ever reaches your blood, and that the remaining levels are 1% the concentration found effective in their studies.
Or doctor mercola selling krill oil because it has a carotenoid in it (which is 1/1000 the dose needed to reduce sunburns), and he says krill oil is not rancid like fish oi (but fish oil has vitamin E added which keeps it from going rancid. Just bit one open and see.)
I'll stick to the vitamines C and E for now. 200mg of C, and 100 mg of a mixture of natural E isomers. And borageseed oil and fish oil. The liver does not destroy those.
And some studies say, "maybe resveratrol metabolites work". OK, then make them and test them in vitro. Why hasn't anyone ever tested the metabolites in vitro?
And there is Hyarulonic acid, way to big to be absorbed by the skin or the gut, yet sold in creams and pills. The Okanowans synthesize it because they are youthful. They don't get it from their diet. They are 5 years more youthful than us because they don't over eat. And they are not as hungry because they eat fiber.
Then there is a study saying if you take 750 miligrams of properly processed cat claw extract, it protects your DNA. Only problem is the company that sells it sells it in doses of 3 drops per day, for $30 a month. They need to read their own study and see that is not enough to do anything.
