vitamin D3

Joe Mercola warned by FDA about quack COVID-19 treatments

by Michael Simpson
2021-03-08
Alternative medicine, COVID-19, Joe Mercola

One of our favorite alternative medicine quacks, Dr. Joe Mercola, DO, has been warned by the FDA to cease promoting useless COVID-19 treatments. This is not the first time that Dr. Mercola has run afoul of the FDA, and given his past activities, I doubt it’s his last.

The FDA told Joe Mercola that three products he markets with COVID-19 treatment claims are are “unapproved new drugs” and “misbranded drugs” being sold in violation of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The three products are – Liposomal Vitamin C, Liposomal Vitamin D3, and Quercetin and Pterostilbene Advanced.

In case you don’t feel like reading what Joe Mercola has done this time, I’ll save you a bit of time. There is no evidence that any of these products do anything to treat COVID-19. But let’s take a look at Mercola and his quack treatments.

Vitamin D and high blood pressure–probably ineffective

Vitamin D is a group of fat-soluble steroid-like biochemicals that have one known responsibility in human health–enhancing intestinal absorption of calcium and phosphate, minerals which are necessary for bone development and bone health. In humans, the most important D vitamins are vitamin D3 and vitamin D2, both of which can be ingested from dietary sources, including fishes, milk products, and many other foods. However, the body can synthesize vitamin D’s in the skin when exposure to sunlight is adequate. Because humans can produce their own vitamin D, it is not strictly considered an essential dietary vitamin, which are vitamins that cannot be synthesized in sufficient quantities by an organism, and must be obtained from its diet.

Even though supplementation is necessary for people who aren’t receiving adequate levels of vitamin D through either sun exposure or diet, excessive intake of the vitamin causes a condition called hypervitaminosis D. Excessive vitamin D can lead to acute problems, like excess thirst or increased urination, but over a long-term can lead to heart disease and other chronic conditions.

Despite the understanding that vitamin D has only one real function, regulation of calcium and phosphate uptake, that hasn’t stopped the junk medicine pushers from making all sorts of claims about its usefulness in human health. In fact, recent studies have shown that vitamin D doesn’t reduce the risk of breast cancer, one of the more popular myths about the vitamin.Read More »Vitamin D and high blood pressure–probably ineffective

More evidence Vitamin D supplementation does not reduce breast cancer risk

Potential causes for cancer are numerous. Infections. Radon gas. Cigarette smoking. Sun exposure. Obesity. With over 200 types of cancer, each with a different pathophysiology, there may be an equal (and probably greater) number of causes.

Although some cancers can be easily prevented, such as never smoking, which reduces your risk of lung cancer, one of the most prevalent cancers in the USA, by over 85%. Or getting the HPV vaccine (Gardasil or Silgard) which blocks HPV infections that are associated with several types of cancer, including cervical, anal, and penile cancers. Unfortunately, the sheer complexity and number of types of cancer means that there is probably not going to be any simple panacea to preventing (or even curing) cancer. In fact, some hereditary cancers, such as those individuals who carry genes that are implicated in breast and ovarian cancers, may not be preventable at all.

Other than eliminating direct risks, are there things that can be done to actually prevent “cancer”? Once again, with over 200 types of cancer, this may be an impossibility, but the three most popular cancer prevention ideas are diet, vitamins and other types of nutritional supplements. Vitamins and other supplements are a $61 billion industry in the US. They generate these sales with minimal regulation, minimal quality control over the quality and dosage, and no requirement to actually provide evidence that the supplements do what is claimed by the supplement industry, aka Big Herbal. The FDA only gets involved with the industry if there’s some dangerous side effect, or when the claims of the industry are so outrageous that the FDA has no choice but to get involved.

Not too astonishingly, there just hasn’t been much evidence that cancer can prevented with supplements. Prostate cancer and fish oil? May actually increase risk, but generally no effect. Prostate cancer and soy? Nothing there either. Folic acid and cancer? May actually increase risk. Read More »More evidence Vitamin D supplementation does not reduce breast cancer risk