Medical Study: Antioxidant Supplements Don’t Extend Life
Posted on February 27, 2007 Comments (2)
Antioxidant Supplements Don’t Extend Life Span, Study Finds
“There’s a large body of data that shows that antioxidant supplementation is beneficial,” said Andrew Shao of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, an industry group. “The message to the average consumer is: Don’t pay attention to this. This doesn’t apply to you. You can go ahead and continue taking your antioxidant supplements in addition to the other things you do in your life to stay healthy.”
But Gluud and his colleagues defended the findings, saying that the study used careful methods developed by the internationally respected Cochrane Collaboration, an independent nonprofit effort to methodically assess medical claims. The analysis included many large studies involving healthy people, and the increased risk was clear after accounting for factors that could confuse the findings, Gluud said.
2 Responses to “Medical Study: Antioxidant Supplements Don’t Extend Life”
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May 14th, 2008 @ 3:34 am
There will always be studies that dispute the benefits that antioxidant supplements claim to provide, and those that support them. In medicine, there are so many factors that can lead to different results, so if the person taking the supplements actually feel better or improve in their condition, are they the exception to the rule, or the majority?
February 3rd, 2010 @ 3:15 pm
I totally agree with Ken, there will always be a study somewhere that says one product will be beneficial and another one from somewhere else that says that it is not beneficial or even dangerous. A couple of questions that should always be asked about these studies is “Who’s paying for it and what do they have to gain from the results?” I’ve heard that for prescription medications to be approved, the drug company needs two clinical trials showing benefit. It doesn’t say how many trials can be performed. In one instance that I heard of, the drug company ran eight clinical trials before achieving two that showed benefit. That doesn’t sound safe to me but that’s the way the world works. What are your thoughts?