Thursday, May 27, 2010

Dietary Supplements

The presentation by Dr. Tiersona Low Dog MD of Arizona State University in Tucson was interesting and informative. She is the director of their integrative medicine fellowship. She presented once with a round table at Trinity around noon yesterday and last night at the UND North West Campus meeting. A lot of nurses and other people were there. Dr. Low Dog is a dynamic and fun lecturer to listen to. Her talk last night at Holiday Inn Riverside as "Dietary Supplements: What Clinicians Need to Know". She reviewed the literature on Vitamin D, calcium, fish oils, CoQ10, B12 and a little bit on ginger. She made some useful points not getting into really controversial subjects like acupuncture. Although at the noon on she did mention it and said it had something to do about depth and number of needle punctures. She wasn't sure about the meridian concept. It is probably a good thing she did not go in to that. She brought up and was apparently part of the NIHCAM board. Some things she talked about made it sound as if there is good science about most supplements, which is not true. There is about Vitamin D, Calcium, fish oils, B 12, but not about ginger and couple other ones she mentioned. So I think it was a fun and informative talk, but bordered on the side of misinformation as to the quality of most CAM and supplements. This last winter the NIHCAM report came out showing that most if not almost all supplements have no effect what so ever. She did agree that more regulation of supplements need to be done as it is too unregulated and a lot of people have gotten hurt, if not just took by these products.

Peace
Skeptical DoDo

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