Science: Observations and Research/ Medical Journals

[Guest guest]

Shaunna:

You say “DIM has proven” to reduce fibroids and that we should be looking in

medical journals. Can you give citations to articles in medical journals

which support your position that DIM has been proven to reduce fibroids in

many women ? -- Name of journal, date, title of article, authors . . .

????????

Carla says she did look for them; I know she does a darn good job on medical

reserach -- and she IS referring to research of serious medical journals.

The U.S. National Medical Library IS on-line at:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/

and that site includes PubMed to which Carla refers & in which she was

searching:

MEDLINE/PubMed

References and abstracts from 4600 biomedical journals

There IS a lot of trash on the net – that’s why it’s important to sort out

the real stuff from the hype. Going to known reliable sources is one way.

PubMed is a reliable source of what’s been published in medical journals.

I think we are open to hearing ALL sides here – but the people who are doing

research in serious medical publications don’t seem to be finding what you

claim. If you can provide citations to research published in such journals,

I wish you would do that. I think we’d all be interested to look those

articles over.

I’m not opposed to whatever helps a given women. Symptom relief is a big

part of the fibroid game. If you think it helps YOU, and you want to go for

it – and you’re willing to take unknown chances, go ahead & more power to

you. – But without something a LOT stronger than a few observational tales

to tell – I don’t think that we can conclude that something is generally

effective, or is without potentially damaging side-effects. I certainly

don’t think we can be “recommending” it to others on that basis – though we

might mention what our personal experience seems to be.

I worry about 2 things with respect to the “experiences” of LOL’s.

1. Correlation is not Causation (Statistics #101). A lot of things happen

in sequence without being related to each other. Let’s say a friend of

mine had this watch she really hated, but it worked so she kept using it.

One day, she made a really strong curry dish and hours later the watch

stopped. She says that the smell of curry breaks unwanted timepieces. So,

I’ve got this kitchen clock I really hate, but I keep it because it works

well – though I wish it’d break. Hearing my friend’s story, I decide to

make a really strong curry dish and see whether or not the clock breaks.

Sure enough, the next morning, the kitchen clock has stopped. So – are we

supposed to believe that cooking strong curry dishes really breaks un-wanted

timepieces??? -- or maybe was it just coincidence that 2 timepieces finally

stopped after their owners happened to cook strong curry dishes ????? (or

maybe, the batteries wore out??)

Without a strong relationship shown in a carefully controlled scientific

study, who knows???. Personally, I don’t think curry would kill a clock –

but maybe I’m wrong.

2. The placebo effect. There appears to be some sort of mind-body

connection which no one fully understands. In nearly every controlled drug

study, some portion of people who take placebos show “improvement.” They are

taking a substance which they BELIEVE might help them, and therefore it

seems it does help them – even though they are actually taking no drug at

all. Likely, this can also happen with non-regulated substances. Possibly

it can also happen with timepieces. But, again, without a carefully

controlled scientific study – who knows?

I also worry about the unknown side-effects. Anything powerful enough to

have some effect on our systems, is likely to have more effects than just

the one we’re after. It’s the old “be careful what you ask for” thing. At

what cost are we willing to resolve fibroids? Sometimes those other

effects can be things even worse than what we’re trying to treat. Unstudied

substances can have unknown side-effects. For instance, many women have

found a lot of relief from symptoms of menopause by taking Black Cohosh.

However, it recently became known that Black Cohosh may accelerate the

growth of breast cancer. A risk some women may be willing to take – others

not. Or, take the DHEA example. Personally, I’d rather have hot flashes

than a heart attack !!

Anyway, I hope you’ll post citations to medical journals which support your

claim.

Pat

_________________________________________________________________

One-click access to Hotmail from any Web page – download MSN Toolbar now!

http://clk.atdmt.com/AVE/go/onm00200413ave/direct/01/