What your Mother made you Eat
This is aimed at all of you – more than 50% of the
population – who apparently rely on dietary supplements to keep you at the peak
of your game. You know who you are:
affluent, well educated, liberal, probably Democrats. You take expensive pills to ensure that your
body and brain have the raw materials necessary to sustain maximum-efficiency
performance. To that same end you eat a
healthy diet, get lots of proper exercise, never smoke, and drink alcohol in
careful moderation. And guess what! You live longer than the rest of us. Congratulations.
But maybe wait a sec.
Inevitably statisticians get called in for comment, and from their work
it appears that dietary supplements don’t
help at all; in fact, in some instances they hurt. For instance, taking lots of calcium seems to
increase the chance of getting cancer.
So save some money; lay off the pills.
If you need to feel like you are doing something nurturing for your
body, eat more cauliflower (ugh!).
This cheerful news is brought to you curtesy of Dr. Fang
Fang Zhang, of Tufts University, and passed along by Dr. Francis
Collins, Director of the NIH:
https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2019/04/16/study-finds-no-benefit-for-dietary-supplements/
If you are foolhardy enough to scoff at the work of a guy
named Fang, remember who is behind him.
Also remember that Winston Churchill went through a half-dozen cigars a day, was never wholly sober, got no exercise to speak of after 40 - and lived to be almost 90, managing to save the world in the process. It mostly depends on what God sticks in you, I'm afraid.
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