paywalled: Dietary Supplements and Cancer Prevention: Balancing Potential Benefits Against Proven Harms

Dietary Supplements and Cancer Prevention: Balancing Potential Benefits Against Proven Harms

• Accepted March 12, 2012.

Abstract

Nutritional supplementation is now a multibillion-dollar industry, and about half of all US adults take supplements. Supplement use is fueled in part by the belief that nutritional supplements can ward off chronic disease, including cancer, although several expert committees and organizations have concluded that there is little to no scientific evidence that supplements reduce cancer risk. To the contrary, there is now evidence that high doses of some supplements increase cancer risk. Despite this evidence, marketing claims by the supplement industry continue to imply anticancer benefits. Insufficient government regulation of the marketing of dietary supplement products may continue to result in unsound advice to consumers. Both the scientific community and government regulators need to provide clear guidance to the public about the use of dietary supplements to lower cancer risk.

blog: Supplements: Not mystical anticancer magic [Respectful Insolence]

Supplements: Not mystical anticancer magic [Respectful Insolence]:

It's no secret that over the years I've been very critical of a law passed nearly 20 years ago, commonly referred to as the DSHEA of 1994. The abbreviation DSHEA stands for about as Orwellian a name for a law as I can imagine: the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. Of course, as we've pointed out time and time again, the DSHEA is not about health, and it's certainly not about education. Indeed, perhaps my favorite description of this law comes from blog bud and all around awesome internist Dr. Peter Lipson, who refers to it as a "travesty of a mockery of a sham." Rather, it's about allowing supplement manufacturers and promoters of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM, with or without a preceding "s," depending on your taste) who do not want pesky things like government laws and regulations to interfere with their selling of pseudoscience to market various compounds as "dietary supplements" with near-impunity. As Harriet Hall once put it so accurately, the DSHEA is "a stealth weapon that allows the sale of unproven medicines just as long as you pretend they are not medicines."
The DSHEA accomplishes this by making a seemingly reasonable distinction between food and medicine and twisting it in such a way that allows manufacturers to label all sorts of botanicals and various other compounds, many of which have substances in them with pharmacological activity, and sell them as "supplements" without prior approval by the FDA before marketing.

abstract: Involvement in decision-making about treatment and ovarian cancer survivor quality of life

Highlights

► Involvement in decision-making about ovarian cancer treatment is associated with better mental and emotional health related quality of life.
► Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) use is associated with age, education, and stage of disease.
► Involvement in decision-making about (CAM) use is also associated with better quality of life.

NCCAM’s Advisory Council welcomes six new members, February 2, 2012 News Release - National Institutes of Health (NIH)

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM)

Cancer Causes and Control - Dietary calcium and magnesium intake in relation to cancer incidence and mortality in a German prospective cohort

"This prospective cohort study provides no strong evidence to support that high dietary calcium and magnesium intake in the intake range observed in a German population may reduce cancer incidence or mortality."

Cochrane CAM Reviews Commentary: Is There More to Quality Than the Research Method Itself?