Talk:Vitamin poisoning

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Recent news about possible ill effects of Vitamine E casts a doubt on the usefulness of Vitamine supplements. Information on risk versus benefit study of taking Vitamine supplements would be very useful. {—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 160.94.172.220 (talk • contribs).

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This study is contrary to many larger blue ribbon trials including the famous Cambridge Trial which show a strong correlation between vitamin E usage and and reduced instances of cardio-vascular disease.

One thing to look out for in the studies is the precise nature of the vitamin E used. Synthetic vitamin E is known as dl-tocopherol and is often used as a vitamin E source. Reports for synthetic vitamin have not been promising. The are dozens of quality trials supporting vitamin E usage. {—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.134.90.73 (talk • contribs).

There are two issues here. The first is media bias in trumpeting any negative reports on vitamins (hardly surprising given the pharma advertising budgets for the nearly bankrupt media), no matter how tenative, selectively applied, blatantly prejudiced or ill-founded they may be. Second is the difference of opinion on "adequate" vitamin levels, individualization requirements, and obsolete test design in conventional medical trials often using pathetic monomolecular approaches and the lowest quality commercial forms possible. Persons heavily supplemented with vitamin E (450-3200+ IU) are well advised to consider: broad spectrum, alcohol (natural) vitamin E forms (mixed tocopherols or high gamma tocopherols); additional oil soluble vitamins A, D3,K2, coQ10; water soluble vitamin C for those (e.g. elderly) with thinning, fracturing arteries (inadequate collagen formation); and professional advice based on an extremely knowledgeable background about "megavitamins" (I am thinking an orthomolecular MD or ND). And oh, yes - the negative JHU metastudy deleted some much larger, favorable studies for (ahem) not enough vitamin E related deaths.

The vitamin E trials usually use all-rac (all racemic) alpha tocopheryl acetate, generally considered the worst (and inappropriate) choice for a supplemented individual, see the Tocopherols article, supplying 1 natural equivalent molecule along with 7 alien enantiomers for only one of the eight natural vitamin E isomers. The spectrum of vitamin E isomers have several different functions favoring different isomers (optically active molecule configurations). Common synthetic "vitamin E" is further inactivated by its esterification with the acetate (requires enzymatic de-esterification, about 3 days in the organs of a healthy person). Actually orthomed pioneers, the Drs. Shute, loudly told everyone that synthetic vitamin E acetate sucked therapeutically over half a century ago, but regular medical doctors (and the media) seem to discover this several times a year now but forget to mention the synthetic (all-rac) and ester parts (or the Shute brothers either). --66.58.130.26 21:41, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] fatality statistics

I happened on this page while I was researching aspirin poisoning and thought the statistical data was just what I needed for my research but when I checked your source material "2003 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers Toxic Exposure Surveillance System" I couldn't worked out how you got '59' aspirin fatalities to compare with the vitamin poisonings. I counted the number of 'unintentional' or 'intention unknown' aspirin fatalities to be about 5! The majority of fatalities were intentional suicide which surely can't be compared with vitamin poisoning. Also I noted the number of vitamin fatalities was listed in their Table 22B as 4 (and the number of poisening exposures 57,801).

I would have thought for accuracy the wiki article should compare statistics from the same source.

Of course I might be misreading the page and/or the report and I'd be happy to be corrected (email ds413770@student.staffs.ac.uk) and the TESS report was a great help to my research so thanks for that.

86.141.73.245 14:14, 20 January 2007 (UTC)