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I made one error in this article, using the word prostate improperly. I have re-submitted the corrected letter to the Wall Street Journal, apologizing for my typo. In the following sentence, the word "prostate" should be deleted. A corrected version follows.
The St. John's wort study reference is particularly unfair when a commonly used prostate drug proved equally ineffective against major depression.
* NEIL
Neil Levin
From: Neil Levin
Sent: Monday, February 13, 2006 11:41 AM
To: Neil Levin
Subject: saw palmetto article sent to Wall Street Journal
Prostate Herb Study Overreaches
A new clinical trial in the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that the herb saw palmetto is not effective for enlargement of the prostate gland.
However, the patients chosen to participate in this study were significantly more advanced in their prostate enlargement condition than patients in previous trials that have showed success using the herb.
Therefore, the headline in the WSJ article should not have read "Popular Herb Shows No Benefit for Prostate". Your headline writer misrepresented the facts by not qualifying that saw palmetto only showed 'no benefit' for Moderate-to-Severe Prostate Enlargement, since it clearly has shown benefits for Mild-to-Moderate Prostate Enlargement with few side effects.
The danger is that men, seeing your misleading headline, will avoid the herb during the early stages of prostate enlargement when it is most effective, encouraging them instead to use drugs that have more side effects without actually nourishing the gland.
In fact, this is almost exactly the same misleading situation that occurred with the herb St. John's wort, commonly used against mild depression, which the same WSJ article claims was "ineffective at the doses people commonly use". Hogwash! That study also had given a commonly effective dose of an herb to patients with a much more serious form of the condition (in this case, depression) than it had previously been shown to be effective against.
It is unfair to claim that an herb is ineffective without mentioning that the studies were going into uncharted territory, not truly proving or disproving the current documented use of that herb for milder conditions. Yet the WSJ did this twice, to two herbs, in the same article.
The St. John's wort study reference is particularly unfair when a commonly used drug proved equally ineffective against major depression. This drug is tested, approved and labeled for depression; St. John's wort is not. Why wasn't the ineffectiveness of the drug the big story, not an herb used inappropriately (not in conformance with the dose and condition that was previously successful in studies)?
When a study uses doses that are effective against mild conditions but predictably too low to be effective against far more serious pre-existing conditions, that study does not render the earlier studies obsolete. But it does make me question why the study's designers strayed so far from what the herb has already been shown to do if their stated purpose was to confirm the earlier results with a superior study design. It seems that they, not the herb, have failed the test.
Neil E. Levin, CCN, DANLA
Certified Clinical Nutritionist
Diplomate in Advanced Nutritional Laboratory Assessment
Nutrition Education Manager
NOW Foods
395 S. Glen Ellyn Road
Bloomingdale, IL 60108
Phone: (630) 545-9098 ext. 217
FAX: (630) 858-8656
Cell: (630) 235-3014
neil.levin@nowfoods.com
www.nowfoods.com
"to provide value in products and services that will empower people to lead healthier lives"
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