Vitamins: They can make you healthier (and grass may be green in a double-blind placebo study)

The understanding of nutrition plays a tiny part in a doctor’s education – in fact, it’s around one day out of a five-year programme – and so any study that discovers vitamin supplements can actually keep you well is usually met with astonished wonder.

The latest startling piece of evidence is that elderly patients who are given supplements “rich in protein and vitamins” while in hospital are far less likely to be re-admitted within the next six months.

Researchers tested the theory on 445 patients with an acute condition.  Half were given a nutritional drink, while the rest had a ‘placebo’ drink, which was presumably poor in protein and vitamins.

Those who drank the real thing were far less likely to be re-admitted to hospital, the researchers discovered.
Some of the elderly died during the six-month follow-up period, but researchers said it was nothing to do with the nutritional drink.  No, probably not.

(Source:  American Journal of Medicine, 2006; 119: 693-9).


E-news broadcast 12 October 2006 No.300 [Subscribe]