Vitamin C

April 19th, 2013

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The Good Outnumber You and We Always Will

Patton Oswalt posted this message to his Facebook page and it instantly went viral. It is reprinted in full here.

Boston. F(***)ing horrible.

I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity."

But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem -- one human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.

But here's what I DO know. If it's (two people) or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in a while, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness.

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evildoers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will."

Follow Patton Oswalt on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pattonoswalt

*Found in Huffington Post

Vitamin C

The Lowdown

We see Vitamin C show up on a lot of medicine lists and I want to share this doctor's opinion.

For preventing the Common Cold - inconsistent results.

A 5 year randomized trial in Japan showed that 500 mg vs. 50 mg significantly reduced cold frequency but had no effect on duration or severity of the common cold.

Another study - meta-analysis where they looked at 29 studies with 11,000 people assigned to minimum of 200 mg Vitamin C vs placebo - showed no statistically significant benefit for prevention of upper respiratory tract infections. However, there was a small subset of patients that exposed to vigorous activity in freezing weather (e.g. soldiers in sub-arctic exercise) had a 50% decrease in the incidence of colds.

At best, Vitamin C has a very minor role in preventing the common cold. Its benefit may be greatest in people doing high-intensity activity in arctic conditions.

For preventing or treating heart disease - Randomized trials have shown no benefit of Vitamin C for preventing coronary heart disease in those of who have not had the disease or those of us who have had the disease.

For cancer reduction - Large, randomized trials have shown no reduction in cancer in patients given Vitamin C supplementation.

Cataracts and macular degeneration: Yup. Same. No benefit.

Take away message: The overwhelming majority of physicians practicing evidence-based medicine do not recommend taking Vitamin C supplements for prevention of disease.
At reasonable doses, Vitamin C is definitely safe - it just doesn't do anything.
Now if you walk 15 minutes before you take your pill and 15 minutes after? That's a different story.

Thanks Dr. Sunshine, what's your point?

We have a lot of patients that are getting swindled by these supplement companies. These have long lists of pills and we want to shorten that list as much as possible.
I'm also concerned that some people may not be staying as active as they would otherwise because they are taking Vitamin C.

By the way, this ends in good news. We do have a way to fight the common cold (and heart disease, and cancer) here it is.