--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "sparaig" wrote: > > > Moral of the story: pre-vitamins are not > drugs. If they had taken the supplements > along with a bit of naturally occurring beta-carotene as found in fruits or carrots > or whatever, I wonder what would have happened? > Its entirely possible that the > body can't process the substance properly as > a pure chemical and needs other > chemicals for it to be beneficial.
This is my problem with most research on natural healthcare. The studies are poorly designed. I recall research on echinacea some years back which concluded that echinacea was ineffective in treating or preventing colds. But it turns out there are three varieties of echinacea, and the researchers chose the one strain that the natural healing community already knows is ineffective. The real point of this article was to tout longitudinal studies with large populations. When I used to teach TM, I was instructed to present the preliminary TM research as just that - indicative that larger studies would be worthwhile.
