How nutritional supplement companies misuse clinical studies

I have talked before about the primary ways that supplement companies sell their products to you:

• Traditional/historical use: A group of people has historically used a particular herb or nutrient for a specific reason. The ancient Indian tradition of Ayurveda is a great example of this.
• Para-normal: An ingredient has mystical powers that cannot be explained by humans. Some homeopathic products (such as the ones made with the dilution process) fall into this category.
• Sizzle: Beautiful marketing and an exotic story. When you look under the hood, you realize that the product has nothing much going on at all. I will not mention names, but these products are everywhere.
• Science: Product development based on modern science. These products rely on research from the holy grail of modern medicine: clinical studies.
  Many companies use a variety of these four methods in their product development and marketing. Nature’s Sunshine for example develops and sells products primarily with science but also has products that are inspired by traditional/historical use (such as the Ayurvedic line). In fact, modern science often backs up the historical use of certain herbs for specific conditions.

I unequivocally lean toward science. I like products that are developed with science and marketed that way. The alternatives are pretty bleak with the exception of historical use, and even then, historical use claims should be validated with science. Just because someone used an herb to treat a headache a few thousand years ago does not mean that it worked very well. There were all kinds of crazy remedies used a few thousand years ago.

But, even in the world of science, you have to be careful. There is plenty of science to draw on. In fact, there are numerous studies being done on every ingredient you can imagine. But, companies are very quick to misuse the data.

Let’s take a study that was just released last month. To summarize, a group of older people was given Centrum Silver (an inexpensive multivitamin) for two years and another group was given a placebo. The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effects of a multivitamin on the brain.

Now, here were the conclusions:

• There was an improvement in cognitive (language-oriented) ability. However, this improvement was statistically insignificant.
• There was no improvement in brain function or attention (ability to focus).
• There was a statistically-significant improvement in memory.

So, what can we take away from this clinical? I know what many multivitamin companies will say: a new study proves that using our multivitamin will keep you smart as you age!

Realistically though, the results of this study are far more narrow and come down to this: a new study suggests that Centrum Silver may help older people improve their memory.

Now, it may be entirely reasonable to extrapolate that if Centrum Silver improves memory, many other multivitamins would improve memory too. After all, Centrum Silver is a very low-grade multivitamin. But, truthfully, the study does not prove that.

Also, no claim regarding cognitive improvement is appropriate because the improvement noted in the study was not statistically significant.

Clinical studies tend to be narrow in what they evaluate and they tend to come to narrow conclusions. Unfortunately, supplement companies very often overstate clinical study results to sell products to you. Be wary of that.

You may wonder what you can do to protect yourself from false science claims. I would just say that before buying an expensive supplement, it might be worth your while to do a bit of research on the claims. Typically, you can find easy-to-understand summaries of most clinical studies online. Then, just compare the actual study conclusion to what the supplement company is telling you.

If you have specific questions about the products you take, please reach out to us. We will do our best to help.