Visual Chart on Supplement effectiveness

Snake oil vs. scientific evidence balloon chart (pretty cool):

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/snake-oil-supplements/

I like the idea but the execution leaves something to be desired. Vitamin C, for one, should be at the top with some of the others.

Good find though!

My thoughts exactly hapyman, great looking chart but not sure about the content. The big balloons in the upper left recommend folic acid which many people have probs converting to folate, green tea for cholesterol when cholesterol is not unhealthy, and, oh yeah, would you like some rancid fish oil with that?

Amazed that vit C doesn't even make it past the Worth It line. Down there with krill oil which should replace fish oil. Love the graphic though.

I think the problem with this idea, although it sounds reasonable is that there is a lot of misnomers about the effectiveness of some of these agents.

For example, many studies are designed for set up for failure, whereby low dosages are used, ineffective forms, synthetics, poor qualities herbs or the correct parts being used, etc.

It would be easy to imagine that if ten different organizations designed it, they would all be different on some extremes.

Posted this chart several months ago. It didn't seem to get much credit from anyone for several reasons.

HealthyFixx is an organization Brian, maybe we should do one! (I can hear you cringing from here, hehe)

sdguy wrote:HealthyFixx is an organization Brian, maybe we should do one! (I can hear you cringing from here, hehe)

Well, we got this so far

http://healthyfixx.com/this-not-that-supplements

There's a lot of supplements out there that have simply suffered from a lack of research. So, it's really hard to condemn
some products, because usually there is a time and a place for many of them or for special needs.

I believe quality is usually the missing link in many products.

I figured that there would be dispute over the contents, but I like the idea of the website. They have different visual charts for all different things. Good point CS about dosage and study design. Some of it looked accurate to me. For example resveratrol is pretty low ("conflicting" I think) and I believe there are human studies lacking on it. I did like the orange colored bubbles indicating potential or promise. Some of the supplements were low on the list but were orange. Astaxanthin is one. They do give vit D due credit and include it for cancer.

Paradox wrote:I figured that there would be dispute over the contents, but I like the idea of the website. They have different visual charts for all different things. Good point CS about dosage and study design. Some of it looked accurate to me. For example resveratrol is pretty low ("conflicting" I think) and I believe there are human studies lacking on it. I did like the orange colored bubbles indicating potential or promise. Some of the supplements were low on the list but were orange. Astaxanthin is one. They do give vit D due credit and include it for cancer.

I just looked at that list again and I can see some pretty bad flaws on it, the information is also dated, new research comes out everyday.

The underlying message is that the "conflicting" or slight evidence sections simply need more research.

Astaxanthin is an outstanding supplement.

Here's a clear indication of benefit with Astaxanthin for example:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21480416

CausticSymmetry wrote:

Paradox wrote:I figured that there would be dispute over the contents, but I like the idea of the website. They have different visual charts for all different things. Good point CS about dosage and study design. Some of it looked accurate to me. For example resveratrol is pretty low ("conflicting" I think) and I believe there are human studies lacking on it. I did like the orange colored bubbles indicating potential or promise. Some of the supplements were low on the list but were orange. Astaxanthin is one. They do give vit D due credit and include it for cancer.

I just looked at that list again and I can see some pretty bad flaws on it, the information is also dated, new research comes out everyday.

The underlying message is that the "conflicting" or slight evidence sections simply need more research.

Astaxanthin is an outstanding supplement.

Here's a clear indication of benefit with Astaxanthin for example:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21480416

CS,

Yep, I think the way they formulate it is based on volume or number of studies. So there could be positive studies on something, but not enough of them to place it higher up. Just a guess. They make charts on all different things, so I wouldn't expect them to have specific knowledge on supplements. They probably just do a search and see how many they find and then tally up the positive, negative, and inconclusive results. I've noticed that many positive studies state something like "more research is recommended" in the conclusions.