> For the study, researchers followed 41,058 adults in Sweden for an average of 18 years. None had Parkinson’s at the start of the study.
...
> A limitation of the study was that participants reported what they ate over the previous year based on memory, rather than their diets being closely monitored. Also, diets were assessed only once at the start of the study, so any changes in diet during the study were not recorded.
Unfortunately yes, that's the problem with a lot of the studies people are making life decisions on, psychology, dietary supplements... Between studies funded by companies and/or authors with conflict of interest, unreliable methods (in vitro antioxidants) or cohorts selection issues (grad students that need the money so they lie on selection interviews for experiments or trials)... In those cohort studies, what people eat is highly dependent on their wealth, education, localisation, jobs... And they rarely control for everything (mostly because it is impossible and if they asked people to remember instead of giving them devices they don't may not have the money to spend on a carefully designed experiment).
Don’t trust any recall study imo. I remember the stories where I used to work from a study on soy supplementation done on obese post-menopausal women. They would insist that all they ate that day was something like a half cup of green beans. The human mind is far too fallible and prone to deception for any meaningful thing to be gained from food memory.
I really only trust studies now where they supplement in a controlled environment and monitor all food intake. Not surprisingly these studies often show no benefit of the supplementation.
One of the failure modes I'm aware of is people staying up past midnight and thinking of that as 'yesterday'. You had a giant bowl of ice cream and a cup of green beans today.
As anyone who has ever had a morning surgery or even been friends or pet owner with someone who has had one, your body doesn't know 'yesterday', it only knows '12 hours ago'.
This is a correlational study. So there is no causal link, there is a correlational association. I think the term "link" needs to be banned in this context. "associated" would be much clearer. Maybe the Hacker News mods could change the headline posted here.
It's worth noting that Vitamin E supplementation is declining in the US, probably because several studies on its supplementation have not shown benefit (or shown harm). [1]
The primary understood role of Vitamin E is as a fat soluble anti-oxidant, and that is primarily to stop PUFA (polyunsaturated fatty acid) oxidation. Most sources of PUFA come with Vitamin E, so this often works itself out in the diet. But cooking at higher temperature can destroy vitamin E. The Institute of Medicine didn't express the RDA as a ratio between vitamin E and PUFA, but they wrote that "high PUFA intakes should certainly be accompanied by increased vitamin E intakes." [2]
A natural source of vitamin E that is low in PUFA is red palm oil. But another way of dealing with vitamin E status is to avoid most vegetable oils and thus lower PUFA intake.
Vitamin C seems a more straightforward supplement, but even for that I avoid Vitamin C supplementation after exercise due to its potential inhibition of mitohormesis. [3]
This simple suggestions "link --> associated" will greatly help clear the fog around supplementation and nutritional studies.
The other word that I would love to see is intervention study. Ultimately, intervention in a clinical context setup as a RCT (e.g. use of Vitamin D for Covid patients) is the best judge of clinical outcomes.
But that's already what "link" means. If you make everyone use "associated" in this context it will just acquire the same colloquial connotation as "link" and you've gotten nowhere.
Associational study also sometimes called observational studies are a term of art in the scientific literature. This is not semantic hair-splitting but calling what the scientists call it.
Link can mean multiple things but associated or even better "associational study" clarifies things immensely.
Vitamin E is a group of chemicals, tocopherols and tocotrienols Many past studies have been poor in specifying the form used; some even used the synthetic version.
Most Multivitamins / Supplements will just be the alpha tocopherol form. But the gamma tocopherol form might be the more important one. You can get low quantities of tocotrienols from rice, but its not too practical because it will come along with some arsenic ;) Also, they should all be gotten in balance, not just one out of proportion to the others. One supplement that does this is Jarrow Famil-e but there are others.
Vitamin C is also tricky, its much more bioactive when present with certain bioflavanoids. So it might be best to get a lower dosage from fruits (like kiwis, which are high in Vitamin C) rather than a high dosage from supplement w/o bioflavanoids.
With respect to mitohormesis, the study mentioned above does not seem to indicate the proximity of antioxidant supplementation to the exercise in its methods section, it simply says:
" Participants in the antioxidant treatment groups (n=20 each, out of which n=10 were untrained and n=10 were pretrained) received 500 mg vitamin C (ascorbic acid, Jenapharm) twice a day and 400 IU vitamin E (RRR-/D--tocopherol, Jenapharm) once a day"
In my mind, I would not take antioxidants "near" exercise, within an 8 hour window (4 hours before / after), but it would be nice to get some clarifications on this.
I agree though, things are not so simple. Recently there was a story "Antioxidant-rich foods like black tea, chocolate, and berries may increase risk for certain cancers, new study finds". The theme is similar, antioxiandts gotten thorough the diet may short circuit your body's abilities.
I saw a study a couple years ago that said you can reduce the arsenic load on rice by over half simply by rinsing it. Pushed me firmly into the 'always wash your rice' team.
Probably not sufficient if you're trying to concentrate an extract from bulk quantities of rice, but I believe there are also ways to chelate arsenic.
Is Parkinson's such a common disease that the average person would need to take action to specifically lower risk for it specifically?
If the output of the study was "Vitamin C and Vitamin E lower risk of Parkinson's and have no negative effects", that would be useful. But that is not the case, supplementation of various vitamins and minerals, specifically over supplementation have been shown to have risks. For example, Vitamin C is linked to increase iron absorption, and higher iron levels have been correlated with high risk of Alzheimer's. I'd much rather have Parkinson's than Alzheimer's.
I'd say this study may be useful for those who have a family history of Parkinsons or find out via genetic testing that have genetic markers that predispose them to it.
I wonder for those suffering from early stages of Parkinsons whether boosting C&E would impact onset.
Among creative workers, which there are a lot of here, MS, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's are all seen as living hells you would not wish on your worst enemy. Essentially, the consequences are infinity, so if probability > 0, prevention is justified.
You didn't seem to respond regarding the possible negative consequences of supplementing with C, which may increase the chances of developing Alzheimer's. Which makes it look like my point went right past you.
Fair. Avoiding things and avoiding running toward things are different risk classes for humans, and we aren't always rational in these cases (see also: Thinking Fast and Slow).
I've known a couple of people with anemia, and many of those conversations have lead to discussion of its opposite - hemochromatosis. The iron and vitamin C link is very temporal. If you're trying to increase your iron absorption from food, adding it to the dish is much more effective than taking a vitamin C pill in the morning. If you're trying to lower it, you try to avoid ever getting vitamin C with food.
A routine blood test can show elevated iron levels (mine came back elevated but not dangerous, which is why I stopped using cast iron for cooking).
Increasing or lowering iron absorption is easy. Increasing iron is also easy.
Lowering iron however, is not easy. Preston Estep, in his book, "The Mindspan Diet", made a convincing argument, in my opinion, for higher iron levels being extremely harmful in the long term, to the point where he considers high iron to be perhaps the largest Alzheimer/dementia risk, even with levels of iron that are considering "normal".
Many mega dose vitamin supplements are associated with higher cancer risks - folic acid and beta carotene. Paradoxically, the same vitamins are known to reduce cancer risk when obtained from food sources.
The reasons behind this are poorly understood, and it's possible that confounding factors are to blame. But either way, nutrient rich food is exceedingly easy to obtain for mid-to-high income people in developed nations. For this category of people, vitamin supplements are almost completely useless and potentially harmful.
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> A limitation of the study was that participants reported what they ate over the previous year based on memory, rather than their diets being closely monitored. Also, diets were assessed only once at the start of the study, so any changes in diet during the study were not recorded.
We really need a safe, unobtrusive device that can record body's micronutrient intake on a daily basis.
Impossible.
- Using a camera: can't detect micronutrients
- Using barcode/RFID in the packaging: you can't have this in all types of food.
- Using some kind of sensor: devices that can detect micronutrients are way too large to be "unobtrusive".
- Letting the user enter the data: will never work.
I really only trust studies now where they supplement in a controlled environment and monitor all food intake. Not surprisingly these studies often show no benefit of the supplementation.
Like someone would have a bunch of meal-sized snacks, and not consider that a meal
As anyone who has ever had a morning surgery or even been friends or pet owner with someone who has had one, your body doesn't know 'yesterday', it only knows '12 hours ago'.
It's worth noting that Vitamin E supplementation is declining in the US, probably because several studies on its supplementation have not shown benefit (or shown harm). [1]
The primary understood role of Vitamin E is as a fat soluble anti-oxidant, and that is primarily to stop PUFA (polyunsaturated fatty acid) oxidation. Most sources of PUFA come with Vitamin E, so this often works itself out in the diet. But cooking at higher temperature can destroy vitamin E. The Institute of Medicine didn't express the RDA as a ratio between vitamin E and PUFA, but they wrote that "high PUFA intakes should certainly be accompanied by increased vitamin E intakes." [2]
A natural source of vitamin E that is low in PUFA is red palm oil. But another way of dealing with vitamin E status is to avoid most vegetable oils and thus lower PUFA intake.
Vitamin C seems a more straightforward supplement, but even for that I avoid Vitamin C supplementation after exercise due to its potential inhibition of mitohormesis. [3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_E#Declining_supplement...
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK225461/
[3] https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/106/21/8665.full.pdf
The other word that I would love to see is intervention study. Ultimately, intervention in a clinical context setup as a RCT (e.g. use of Vitamin D for Covid patients) is the best judge of clinical outcomes.
"linked" has a stronger connotation then "associated" for me, and some dictionary definitions show this stronger connotation as well.
Link can mean multiple things but associated or even better "associational study" clarifies things immensely.
Lipid peroxidation can also be handled with more vitamin A and 1g+ vitamin C (to recycle the oxidized vitamin A).
Most Multivitamins / Supplements will just be the alpha tocopherol form. But the gamma tocopherol form might be the more important one. You can get low quantities of tocotrienols from rice, but its not too practical because it will come along with some arsenic ;) Also, they should all be gotten in balance, not just one out of proportion to the others. One supplement that does this is Jarrow Famil-e but there are others.
Vitamin C is also tricky, its much more bioactive when present with certain bioflavanoids. So it might be best to get a lower dosage from fruits (like kiwis, which are high in Vitamin C) rather than a high dosage from supplement w/o bioflavanoids.
With respect to mitohormesis, the study mentioned above does not seem to indicate the proximity of antioxidant supplementation to the exercise in its methods section, it simply says:
" Participants in the antioxidant treatment groups (n=20 each, out of which n=10 were untrained and n=10 were pretrained) received 500 mg vitamin C (ascorbic acid, Jenapharm) twice a day and 400 IU vitamin E (RRR-/D--tocopherol, Jenapharm) once a day"
In my mind, I would not take antioxidants "near" exercise, within an 8 hour window (4 hours before / after), but it would be nice to get some clarifications on this.
I agree though, things are not so simple. Recently there was a story "Antioxidant-rich foods like black tea, chocolate, and berries may increase risk for certain cancers, new study finds". The theme is similar, antioxiandts gotten thorough the diet may short circuit your body's abilities.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-07-antioxidant-rich-food...
I saw a study a couple years ago that said you can reduce the arsenic load on rice by over half simply by rinsing it. Pushed me firmly into the 'always wash your rice' team.
Probably not sufficient if you're trying to concentrate an extract from bulk quantities of rice, but I believe there are also ways to chelate arsenic.
If the output of the study was "Vitamin C and Vitamin E lower risk of Parkinson's and have no negative effects", that would be useful. But that is not the case, supplementation of various vitamins and minerals, specifically over supplementation have been shown to have risks. For example, Vitamin C is linked to increase iron absorption, and higher iron levels have been correlated with high risk of Alzheimer's. I'd much rather have Parkinson's than Alzheimer's.
I wonder for those suffering from early stages of Parkinsons whether boosting C&E would impact onset.
Among creative workers, which there are a lot of here, MS, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's are all seen as living hells you would not wish on your worst enemy. Essentially, the consequences are infinity, so if probability > 0, prevention is justified.
(And in some circles, assisted suicide).
I've known a couple of people with anemia, and many of those conversations have lead to discussion of its opposite - hemochromatosis. The iron and vitamin C link is very temporal. If you're trying to increase your iron absorption from food, adding it to the dish is much more effective than taking a vitamin C pill in the morning. If you're trying to lower it, you try to avoid ever getting vitamin C with food.
A routine blood test can show elevated iron levels (mine came back elevated but not dangerous, which is why I stopped using cast iron for cooking).
Lowering iron however, is not easy. Preston Estep, in his book, "The Mindspan Diet", made a convincing argument, in my opinion, for higher iron levels being extremely harmful in the long term, to the point where he considers high iron to be perhaps the largest Alzheimer/dementia risk, even with levels of iron that are considering "normal".
The reasons behind this are poorly understood, and it's possible that confounding factors are to blame. But either way, nutrient rich food is exceedingly easy to obtain for mid-to-high income people in developed nations. For this category of people, vitamin supplements are almost completely useless and potentially harmful.