Posted on 06/12/2008 6:46:05 PM PDT by blam
Vitamin supplement little more than 'snake oil'
June 12,2008
A popular vitamin supplement is being advertised with claims that are demonstrably untrue, as revealed by research published in the open access journal BMC Pharmacology.
Benfotiamine is a synthetic derivative of thiamine (vitamin B1). It is marketed heavily as a dietary supplement using a selection of unsubstantiated, 'not-quite-medical' claims that tend to characterize this field. A large part of this campaign has been built around the belief that benfotiamine is lipid-soluble and, therefore, more physiologically active. Scientific research led by Dr Lucien Bettendorff of the Center for Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology at the University of Liège, Belgium, has entirely disproved these claims.
A severe deficiency of thiamine is known to cause weight loss, emotional disturbances, impaired sensory perception, weakness and pain in the limbs, and periods of irregular heart rate. Deficiencies can occur as a result of alcoholism or malnutrition. As thiamine itself is very poorly absorbed by the body, it must be taken in as various precursor forms. This research shows that benfotiamine may not be as effective in this regard as has been claimed, in particular concerning its ability to raise effective thiamine levels in the central nervous system.
According to Bettendorff, "We suspect that those companies selling benfotiamine have poisoned much of the recent literature in an attempt to bestow it with properties that it does not have". Benfotiamine has been previously shown to prevent several diabetic complications in experimental animal models. The researchers carried out experiments in mice in which benfotiamine was administered using several different techniques and the resulting levels of thiamine were measured in various parts of the body. Contrary to other claims about its solubility, the results show that benfotiamine is only sparingly soluble in water under physiological conditions and cannot be dissolved in octanol or oils.
As Bettendorff explains, "Benfotiamine is very often considered a 'lipid-soluble' thiamine precursor from the disulfide derivative family though it is neither lipid-soluble, nor a disulfide. Sometimes, it is considered to have more biological activity than thiamine disulfides, but our study shows that it does not even penetrate cell membranes, except in those cells containing an ecto-alkaline phosphatase. There is no evidence that benfotiamine would be more effective than other precursors as a therapeutic agent for complications of diabetes."
Due to the wide-reaching nature of the false claims about this supplement, it was important to the authors that their work be published in BMC Pharmacology as it is an open access journal that makes research freely available.
Source: BioMed Central
I’ve been watching the pharmaceutical industry make counter claims concerning pharmaceuticals for the last 33 years. It doesn’t surprise me anymore when folks claim two different things. It’s more the norm than the exception.
The one thing you can count on, is that the pharmaceutical industry wants control of dietary suppliments more than most people realize. If that were to take place, prices would skyrocket. So would profits.
I wold love to see vitamins under the same scrutiny as pharma.
Vitamin and supplement companies make the most outrageous claims, often the potency of their products is minimal as well.
Billion dollar industry and lots of snake oil. I’m not surprised, we have insurance companies paying for “alternative” quackery. Noted surgeon Mehmet Oz is married to a Reiki practitioner and buys all of this stuff hook, line, and sinker, gets him on Oprah all the time though.
He’s such a “believer” he wouldn’t even dismiss a “psychic” surgery, where charlatans pretend to pull cancerous organs out of patients using magic tricks and chicken livers.
Gazes placidly out the window...
I have become very suspicious about scientific claims either in support of, or opposed to supplements and pharmacology in general. In the vast majority of cases, human physiology is so complicated that only animal followed by human testing proves or disproves both safety and efficacy, and then only in the short term.
An excellent example of how imprecise this is can be found in the commonly used measurement of poisons call LD/50. It means “Lethal dose of whatever poison for 50% of those exposed to it.” Think about that.
Say for example (just guessing) that the lethal dose of cyanide for 50% of the gerbils in a box, is 200 parts per million in air. Importantly, at this concentration 50% of gerbils will die, and 50% will live.
And they don’t know why. That is, why half the gerbils die and half will live. They do know that cyanide is poisonous.
Now, let’s apply this logic to say, a vitamin. You won’t be getting anywhere *near* the precision of life and death, at least hopefully, or unless the gerbils are eating a heck of a lot of that vitamin. This is because you want to see if the vitamin is good for them, or not.
How the heck can you tell? Maybe three of the gerbils feel good, 10 of them feel a little queasy, and the rest cannot tell. But then again you can’t tell that the three feel good, or ten feel queasy, either.
And gerbils might react completely differently to that vitamin than do people. And gerbils might not eat or take other stuff that reacts with the vitamins as well.
Pretty soon you are at the bottom of the ocean of doubt.
Butter Pecan
They just found out Vitamin B is a cure-all.
We know a chiropractor who is a good one and gets results, has some innovative alternative spinal corrective machines (stretching the spine) that help people . . but, she has evidently been scammed by the salesmen who sold her one of those “foot baths” that are supposed to wash out toxins from the body. It’s just a little wash tub and they put a bit of salt in the water, then it bubbles and finally corrodes the metals in a mechanism in the tub. All sorts of different colors come boiling out into the water, rust color, brown, red, putrid green (rust and corrosion). I really think that she is genuine in her belief in this silly thing and is very invested in it. I’ve wanted to tell her what I found on the net about it, but the only thing is that she was perfectly capable of researching it on the internet before she got so heavily invested in it and had been selling “footbaths” to her patients for so long. Every time she mentions this thing to me and how much I need it, it’s almost all I can do to keep from laughing in her face.
She initially helped me a lot when I started going to her over ten years ago, but after several years and diminishing returns (a sore back and numbness from too many rough “adjustments”) and I quit having the adjustments done any more several months ago. She works on my husband’s feet and keeps the gout crystals dissolved through adjusting the joints. It is VERY painful with the sharp uric acid crystals sticking into the joints when they are broken up. . anyway, I go with him and wait for him there, but she keeps at me to let her start back romping and stomping on my spine. No dice any more and I mean it.
Yes big Pharma and the FDA are quite a hoax. The vitamin companies DO NOT do “psychic” surgery, they generally work with known variables and facts. Oprah probably has interest’s in a chicken farm.
They are the competition to big Pharma and the FDA keeping them honest. Withdraw competition and you see what you get. Some politicians law based on very little fact and chicken guts.
Just eat half a gerbil and go to bed early.
I take vitamins because I like what they do to the color of my pee.
I have noticed lately that some of the local PBS affilliates have been extended infomercials for the idiot crackpots that promote stuff like this—Guys like “Dr.” Daniel Amen are excoriated on www.quackwatch.org, but get trotted out and interviewed for pledge breaks. Amen sells a very questionable “brain-mapping system” and “treatment” for about four grand, and no evidence of effectiveness whatsoever.
So nice to know that our public funds are now actively promoting 21st century snake oil on “public” television.
How in the world did you read my post and decipher that I said that vitamin companies engage in psychic surgery???
That and your comment that big Pharma and the FDA are quite a hoax shows me where you’re coming from.
Also where did I say “withdraw competition”, I don’t feel like I’m on FR replying to your post, I feel I’m somewhere much....dumber.
If chiropractors stuck to what they can legitimately do the would be nothing more than an adjunct to a Physical Therapist, along the lines of a massage therapist.
I know a whole family of chiro’s some are whackier than others, a LOT of chiro’s buy into all forms of quackery and believe they can cure just about anything, “naturally”.
The vitamins I take do meet pharmacology standards.
Gotta guess which ones now, don’t you?
LOL!
http://healthcare-economist.com/2006/04/29/802m/
Cost to bring a drug to market in 2006 — 800 MILLION. 800 million before you see a penny of profit.
I believe it’s up to 900 million now.
Somehow I don’t think vitamins, supplements, herbs, etc. are operating under the same guidelines as their “competition” in the pharma industry.
Homeopathy, now there’s a scam for you.
“Head On” and all the related placebos.
Would it be the same without Benfo? I don't know. I do know that the drs told me 5 years ago that he'd be having trouble about now due to unstable blood glucose. I do know that his eyes were starting to go before Benfo and now are 20/20.
I also know that there are many folks who I've spoken with who have had relief from their neuropathy after taking Benfo.
I'll take my chances with the vitamin. Can't hurt, seems to help.
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