DermHelpCentral

Why Are So Many People Popping Vitamin D?

By Gina Kolata, April 10, 2017

The frenzy for vitamin D began not in natural food stores but in medical journals. Millions of people are now popping supplements in the belief that vitamin D can help turn back depression, fatigue, muscle weakness, even heart disease or cancer. In fact, there has never been widely accepted evidence that vitamin D is helpful in preventing or treating any of those conditions.

“A lot of clinicians are acting like there is a pandemic” of vitamin D deficiency.” In point of fact, an institute of medicine committee concluded in 2010 that very few people were vitamin D deficient and noted that randomized trials had found no particular benefit for healthy people to have blood levels above 20 nanograms per milliliter.

Medical organizations have repeatedly found that there is no reason to assess vitamin D levels in healthy adults. Still, vitamin D has become “a religion,”

This is an important article that all sentient people should read.  Make sure your physician or care giver does not order a Vitamin D level without telling you why she is doing so.

The Barnyard Pen of Cancer

The species of cancers are turtles, rabbits and birds.

Turtles aren't going anywhere. They are indolent, nonlethal cancers.

The rabbits are ready to hop out at any time and cause trouble. They are potentially lethal cancers that might be stopped by early treatment.

Then there are the birds. Quite simply: they are already gone. They are the most aggressive cancers, the ones that have already spread by the time they are detected, the ones that are beyond cure.

The birds can't be helped.
The turtles create the problem of overdiagnosis,
Screening can only help with the rabbits.
The turtles don't need help; The birds can't be helped. The birds create the problem of limited benefit.

(This is an old idea that H. Gilbert Welch describes nicely in "Less is More."

 

How To Prevent Overdiagnosis

Overdiagnosis is the diagnosis of an abnormality that is not associated with a substantial health hazard and that patients have no benefit to be aware of. It mainly results from screening, use of increasingly sensitive diagnostic tests, incidental findings on routine examinations, and widening diagnostic criteria to define a condition requiring an intervention. The blurring boundaries between risk and disease, physicians’ fear of missing a diagnosis and patients’ need for reassurance are further causes of overdiagnosis.

Overdiagnosis often implies procedures to confirm or exclude the presence of the condition and is by definition associated with useless treatments and interventions, generating harm and costs without any benefit. Overdiagnosis also diverts healthcare professionals from caring about other health issues.

Preventing overdiagnosis requires increasing awareness of healthcare professionals and patients about its occurrence, the avoidance of unnecessary and untargeted diagnostic tests, and the avoidance of screening without demonstrated benefits. Furthermore, accounting systematically for the harms and benefits of screening and diagnostic tests and determining risk factor thresholds based on the expected absolute risk reduction would also help prevent overdiagnosis.

(This article was brought to my attention by Jessica Otte in her Less Is More blog.

Full Article: How To Prevent Overdiagnosis