Eurogene

Yesterday I ordered a book from Amazon called “Outsmart Your Genes” – this was prompted by a tweet from @genesherpas:   Just got my copy http://www.outsmartyourgenes.com/ my Friend Brandon Colby MD's great work. It is a must read for all. That means AnneW too. It wasn’t too expensive and it may be interesting – it also could be part of a slick marketing campaign, a few days previously a press release announced the launch of “Existence Genetics LLC, the world’s first predictive medicine company…”. With the website of the book linking to the Existence website , the twitter and facebook links, and so on, it does look like: @dgmacarthur The "Outsmart your genes" book that @ GeneSherpas is spruiking looks like extended ad for author's company: http://bit.ly/8Zanrd We’ll see, I’ll update when I read the book, meanwhile I learnt some Australian slang as well… First of all – there is nothing wrong with any of the above, it’s all fine and I have not much t...

This article in today’s Independent prompted me to finish off and post this – as far as good nutritional advice is concerned confusion reigns. 1. Sat fats are OK after all 2. Recently we were informed that the “5 a day” advice did not prevent cancer ( see previous post ) 3. We read that >400 IU / day vitamin E increases mortality thanks to a 2005 meta-analysis (Conclusion: “High-dosage (≥400 IU/d) vitamin E supplements may increase all-cause mortality and should be avoided”) 4. In 2007, a widely cited meta-analysis proved “the myth of antioxidant supplements” – they simply do no good and may even do harm 5. The subject of this post – 2 major studies show that vitamin E and Selenium, despite early promise, do not protect against prostate cancer ( SELECT and PHS ) 6. According to one author of the SELECT study –  “The prospects for cancer prevention through micronutrient supplementation have never looked worse” So how much of all this is true...