Who enjoys being condescended to by their doctor's staff? Nobody, of course. And that includes an HSI member named Jen who sent an e-mail with this story about a visit to the doctor. "Yesterday I went in for my annual physical exam. After the nurse took my vitals, she looked over my chart, which noted that I took Vitamin E supplements along with a variety of other supplements. She turned to me and said, 'You know, there are now THREE studies showing that Vitamin E supplementation leads to heart disease.' I told her I would find studies like that hard to believe, but she tisked-tisked me, sighed condescendingly and closed my chart. 'Well,' she said, 'if you want to take the risk…' This was going nowhere, so I thanked her sincerely for her concern and for reporting those findings to me, then told her I was most certainly willing to 'take the risk.' "Yikes! BTW, what might these studies be? Do they include that flawed one that showed a compilation of the studies over the last thirty years of people with advanced heart disease?" That question is hard to answer because it's impossible to guess exactly what studies the nurse was referring to. But her opinion of vitamin E isn't a surprise. Vitamin E just might be the most unfairly maligned supplement out there. And it certainly doesn't deserve the reputation for CAUSING heart disease. That's pure nonsense. So here's my suggestion for Jen and anyone else who receives patronizing "advice" about vitamin E from a health care professional: Just ask three questions: - Several high profile vitamin E studies have been conducted on subjects who are already at high risk of heart disease. So obviously it's easy to misrepresent the results when those subjects develop the disease. What was the baseline health of the subjects who took supplements in those studies?
- Assuming these were intervention studies, were the subjects given mixed tocopherols or just d-alpha tocopherol? (The former is more effective than the latter. Typically, researchers tend NOT to use mixed tocopherols.)
- Could you give me the citations for these studies so I can read them myself?
High marks to the vitamin E naysayer who can accurately answer those questions. I've got a hunch, though, that the nurse who put Jen in her place might respond with little more than a blank stare. The real shame is that she's probably convincing unwary patients every day that their vitamin E supplements are going to stop their hearts. | 
