Vitamin Pills Don’t Prevent Cancer
Posted November 17, 2008 
Comments(846)
Comments(846) 
Posted Nov. 17, 2008 – Posted Nov. 17, 2008 – If you’re stuffing down mega doses of Vitamin C or E in an effort to prevent cancer, don’t bother. While you’ve probably heard over the years that taking high doses of these nutrients help ward off cancer, there’s new evidence that that’s not the case; they simply don’t work that way. Vitamin C and E pills did not help prevent cancer in men who participated in a large Harvard-affiliated study, which has implications for the rest of us. Nor, did they work to fight heart disease, the researchers said. However, the good news is that when vitamin C and E were absorbed as part of your diet, there were some positive benefits.
liver and causes a number of side effects such as fatigue, muscle aches and dehydration. It’s not uncommon, health experts say, for the disease to cause problems years after the initial exposure. And doctors like Cole’s illness to her past drug use. As you know, the Grammy-award winning singer battled addiction drug addiction decades ago and may have contracted the disease then. Other ways of being exposed to the infection include blood transfusion, organ transplant, kidney dialysis and sex. The infection often shows no symptoms, but once established, a chronic infection can cause liver scaring or cancer. The African American Council on Liver Awareness has been concerned over the increase in the number of Black folks with Hep C. The seriousness of hepatitis C is compounded by the fact that African Americans tend to get the most resistant strain of the virus, and treatment is not always effective. The group is attempting to get more Black people into trials, and educate people about the disease. If you want more information, call the AACLA at 1.888.436.HEP C (4372) or go 
and Clinical Practice’s Atlas of Health Care project found that Blacks were less likely than Whites to receive recommended care within various regions of the country, particularly the south. The report released Thursday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the New York Times also found a seven percent difference in the amount of mammograms among older Black and White women on Medicare. What’s even more disturbing is that Black diabetics were found to be more likely to get their legs amputated, and less likely to have their blood tested for sugar. “These findings underscore the importance of the local health care system as the focus for efforts to improve care,” Elliott Fisher, director of Dartmouth’s Center for Health Policy Research, said in a statement “In some regions of the country, African-Americans receive care equal to that of Whites, but the care for everyone is well below the national average.” If Blacks on Medicare, who are supposed to be getting the same care because they’re insured, aren’t getting the care should have, what does that say for healthcare for the rest of us? Other studies this year have also pointed out disparities in health care coverage, particularly for people who are uninsured – and African Americans are more likely to lack health insurance than Whites. In fact, Only 13 percent of non-Hispanic White Americans is uninsured, compared with 36 percent of Hispanics, 33 percent of Native Americans and 22 percent of Blacks. An underlying current in all of these studies, though, is that even if at some point universal healthcare becomes the law of the land and everyone gets covered, more still will need to be done to make the coverage we have equal. Universal coverage is not going to improve Black health unless it’s the same treatment across the board and is accomanied by a large dose of health education and follow-up. There is some good news about the Dartmouth study. Many of the areas with unequal care will be getting some of the $300 million the Roberts Woods Johnson Foundation put up to stamp out healthcare inequities.
