Fish Oil Supplements May Increase Cancer Risk by 70% - Are You in the Health Niche?

The point seems to have gone over most everyone's head. Keeps my office busy.

I liked the statement "do you usually take for granted what a gossip newspaper publishes to gain more readership?" At the time I posted, the UK paper had the best article for what was then breaking news. You can now get reports on Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and so on.

And kudos to whoever claimed the study was taken out of context without providing any facts whatsoever for their drive by post. Aside from the fact the post is not about fish oil, this is apparently the third study to have these results. It was a follow-up to a 2011 study and is similar to a study in Europe.

Ironically, since posting this morning my office settled an advertising case. Just your average marketer who didn't think a "bet your company" legal claim would arrive in the mail. One day it did.

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Nope. I got the point. It just seemed like a natural tangent to go off on. (Again, who PAID for that study?)

That said, Kindsvater's post reveals the reason why I very rarely write sales copy for supplements or any product that makes specific health claims.

It's dangerous to swim in the shark-infested waters of the FDA.

John

Those are some good arguments, but....

...and...




So it doesn't matter if the study is flawed or if the conclusions derived from it are false, what matters is that if it becomes accepted by the scientific/medical community that fish oils cause cancer, then anybody making contradictory statements to that could get their asses in some legal trouble.

Thanks, Brian, for the excellent reminder regarding the importance of disclaimers. In reality, we all must exercise caution because new research is always enlightening us and may disprove things in the future that we believe to be true today.

Dan, you make some decent arguments, but unfortunately, the statement above is simply not true. First, it's virtually impossible to account for all the potential confounding variables in these types of studies. Many of them (if not the vast majority) rely at least in part on self-reporting (i.e. patients keep track of what they ate or what supplements they took or symptoms they experience), and self-reporting, by it's very nature, is highly unreliable.

Second, two examples of research that is very flawed yet continues to come out are the many studies on the dangers of red meat and the whole dairy issue. Red meat studies rarely, if ever, take into consideration that there's a HUGE difference in beef from 100% grass-fed cows and beef from CAFO cows fed grains (including GMO soy and corn) their entire life. The nutritional profile is very different between the two, and thus the impact on those who consume them can be significantly different.

With dairy, studies almost always use pasteurized and homogenized milk as opposed to raw milk - again, two foods that are drastically different in their nutritional profile. For example, many people who think they are lactose intolerant find they tolerate raw milk (and dairy products made from raw milk) quite well.

And then there's all the studies about eggs and cholesterol from years past.... :rolleyes: Not to mention that people with "egg allergies" may in fact be reacting to the soy that's fed to most commercially raised chickens. So, again, subtle confounding variables that get overlooked lead to inaccurate conclusions from these types of studies.

My point isn't about whether or not red meat, milk, or eggs are good for you; rather just citing these as three foods on which a plethora of very flawed (yet peer-reviewed and accepted by most of the medical community) research has been done over the years. But flawed research leads to inaccurate conclusions. And then "experts" make unfortunate blanket statements - e.g. high red meat consumption significantly increases cancer risk - often because these ostensibly subtle but extremely important confounding variables are overlooked or ignored.

The conventional "healthy" diet endorsed by the USDA is actually quite unhealthy. Soy is one of the most unhealthy foods you can eat, yet it's in almost everything and over 80% grown in the U.S. is GMO. But soy is BIG business, as are corn and wheat, so you bet biased (and subtly flawed) studies are done to support the industry (Monsanto, anyone?).

I don't, however, think there's a conspiracy behind everything. Human error and ignorance (scientists don't know everything) also play a big role in why so many studies are flawed and lead to inaccurate conclusions. Not to mention, as we make progress in technology, new things come to light - that may contradict prior research - due to the use of more advanced research tools and techniques.

Part of my graduate training involved courses in statistics, research methodology, and experimental design. It takes only slight errors (in design) to create a very flawed study, and it's very easy to skew (intentionally or unintentionally) the results by manipulating the statistical analysis (e.g. by choosing the wrong statistical tests to obtain your results). I'm not suggesting that all or most research is done with hidden agendas (in which the flaws are intentional), but no doubt that occurs in more cases than most of us realize or want to believe. Personally, I would never put all my trust in a study just because it was "peer-reviewed" or done by a large government agency like the NIH.