I often tell my patients to take what they read online with a grain of salt, and I found another excellent example of this. On April 28, 2010, the Los Angeles Times printed this article titled, “Diabetics Should Not Take High Doses of B Vitamins, Researchers Say.” Scary, huh? If I was diabetic, I would devour this article in a second. It goes on to partially quote a recent study published in Canada that followed over 200 diabetics, some taking high doses of B vitamins and some taking placebo. Those taking the B vitamins had higher incidents of heart attack and stroke than the placebo group due to the toxic buildup of the vitamin in the kidneys. Again…scary.
What they absolutely FAIL to mention in this article, but is clear in the original study for those who actually take the time to find and read it, is that the diabetics in this study already had kidney failure! Of course you wouldn’t want someone to take high doses of something water-soluble like a B vitamin, if their kidneys were not working properly.
This just makes me very very angry. I realize there is a lot of information on the web. And at times, that is extremely useful. However, to those without research training and not knowing the reputable sites, it can be very dangerous and scary. I constantly have to remind people that I went to medical school and I do in fact know what’s best for them, even though WebMD’s symptom checker may disagree. I’ve had so many people worsen their health by taking it into their own hands with the internet, so please…come to me FIRST! That’s what I’m here for! If you read something scary, talk to me about it and don’t take anything to heart without knowing where the initial study came from, who funded it and how many people it involved.
