A great resource for examining supplements
 

I'm in no way associated to this website but i found it extremely useful. It's www.examine.com

You can find unbiased and objective information on just about any known supplement and also sort based on health goals like cerebral blood flow, inflammation etc. etc. I personally found it very useful.

Sorry if this post sounds like spam. Again, I'm in no way associated with this website.

I found the information at examine.com to be very incomplete and some is even inaccurate. It appears to be a start-up web site that will eventually try to monetize the information they provide with ads or some sort of product tie-ins.

Hi - I'm Sol from Examine.com

Can you please show us where we are incomplete or inaccurate?

Hello Sol, nice to see you again. For the posters here, for the record, I referenced Examine.com a short time ago, and Sol, came on that thread too. It was to correct a typo that I found there.

I think that site has great promise. But people who are not used to reading scientific studies need to realize that studies sometimes are all over the place, and not perfectly designed sometimes. It is the same (or maybe worse with drug studies, which can be deliberately skewed, or have ghost writers, etc).

The supplement field lacks the funds for doing many studies, so any that ARE done, are welcome as far as I am concerned.

I find that information is valuable on the net, and I welcome it in fact.

I did look carefully, but it was at 4am this morning, at Examine.com again, and I didn't see B12 studies. I just looked again.. :confused:

So Sol if you are receptive to my idea, I think B12 should be on there. This is a hot topic here at NeuroTalk BTW and has been for years. ;)

I'd like to send people to our about - both to see who we are that run it, and also our advisory board.

The reality is that the manpower we have is finite, and to do proper research takes time. It took us 6 months to fully do Vitamin D, and Vitamin C has been in-progress for a very long time.

We have a master list of supplements to hit, and we are slowly but surely chipping away at them. There are tons of supplements - in the past week we just finished MSM (popular for joints), krill oil, and chia seeds.

In regards to the scientific mumbo jumbo - I agree :) It can be overwhelming, and one of our big revamps this month is to our Human Trials Database. Instead of focusing on statistical significance, we have changed the focus on clinical significance. This will make it far easier to see what supplements have what effects. A preview for caffeine: **

We've also been expanding our meta-data on each study - we now include trial length, body type, and gender. In regards to funding, when the funding is suspect, we do note it (eg all of the pro-CLA research was funded by Kraft, the largest supplier for CLA).

Hope that clears away any concerns people have. We take what we've been building (for over two years) *very* seriously. If you want to know more, we were recently interviewed by SNI: ** (SNI is operated by ISSN, which has their own peer-review journal).

[I had to break up the URLs as I am a newbie poster]

Okay my URLs got eaten :)

To see a preview of the new Human Trials v2, just go to our Facebook Fanpage. A few screenshots there.

To read the interview, just google "sports nutrition insider sol orwell"

Mark, in your supplements thread you state your regimen was recommended to you in 1982. Have you considered that more research may have been done since then? I agree with SoloX, if you have specific examples based on recent scientific studies that would be more helpful than a blanket statement questioning the accuracy of information on this site.

I have reviewed my regimen of 1982 with current doctors and it has been well received. I have modified it in the past 30 years. Vit D3 was not a part of it nor was Fish Oil.

I am not dissing examine.com. I just suggest that it has a lack of information that is widely available in other online sources. It also has a tendency to repeat what I would call 'mainstream misinformation.'

I don't think NT is the place to promote or discuss examine.com in its current state. Just my opinion.

I am surprised that Sol came onto NT so fast to defend the site.

To be specific, the diet soda comments are incomplete and inaccurate. The HFCS also sounds like it is right from the Archer Daniels Midland propaganda. Why is there even a comment on Cannabis if so little is going to be said? It does not even differentiate between THC and Canabinoid. It does not require rocket science to understand the THC is the hallucinogenic compound and Canabinoid has shown to have the health values. Again, incomplete information.

An informational web site should be able to start with basic undisputed information and add to it as further information becomes known. There are a number of concussion web sites that are just as incomplete and misleading.

They state directly that examine.com is about fitness nutrition. The goals of fitness nutrition are quite different than PCS/brain nutrition.

btw, I have not looked at the FB side of examine.com.

Your original quote:

I still await one example of inaccuracy. Or us repeating "mainstream misinformation"

Okay so:

Diet soda - incomplete and inaccurate how? You can't just say that without any evidence. If there is any peer-reviewed study we have omitted, please point them out.

HFCS - likewise.

Marijuana - the page clearly says "This page on Marijuana is currently marked as in-progress. We are still compiling research."

Just because our findings don't agree with your gut feeling does not make them incorrect or propaganda :)

I am just going to step in here before things escalate into something that violates our guidelines.

Sol, we understand you wanting to defend your site, but please do note that this is a patient to patient discussion forum and so members can freely discuss the pros and cons of anything, including your site, and they do not have to provide any "peer reviewed scientific evidence" to back up their views.

When you have large groups of patients in a community like this, you learn quickly that sometimes the anecdotal evidence is way ahead of the "scientific" and often the science lags, and then follows the anecdotal reports.

Some who have neurological problems dont need a scientific study to tell them that the artificial sweeteners found in diet sodas and other foods mess with their system, just as many have found with HFCS, food dyes and a lot of other things.
For example, if someone with Tourette Syndrome suddenly experiences a massive flare of their tics every time they consume aspartame....well they don't really require a study to tell them this...they know it!

So, we don't need to have an argument here as to why a member feels your info on diet soda and HFCS is inaccurate. You want science.....some members just deal with their own body as the "lab" and they don't have to prove anything to anyone.

Asking for specific examples of "inaccuracies" is fine, but not then to negate when the other person states it is their opinion that finds your info inaccurate. Here on this patient forum, opinion matters. A "gut feeling" has often saved a life!

And as was pointed out, members who deal with a specific health issue frequently may have reactions to things that might not have any negative effect on someone else.

Anyway, I am just intervening here as we do have guidelines that need to be upheld and I don't want to see the discussion get derailed by any directly personal comments.

And again, the primary focus here is patients and their discussions with one another.

Thanking everyone in advance for their co-operation.

Oops, sorry i didn't knew that this discussion was going to blow up the way it did. Also i didn't knew that the website had already been discussed in the past. I just used it to search more info on ALCAR and fish oil which by the way have done wonders for me but i guess it's still to early to tell. I'll try to update on the near future.

No problemo Rob... don't feel that way. We are here for discussions.

The discussion of that site was done on the Peripheral Neuropathy forum, not this one.

No one is ever going to be 100% pleased with any informational source on the net. The idea is to be able to access information and decide for yourself what to keep and what to discard.

For example and new study just reported in the news this week suggests carnitine contributes to heart attacks!

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-...heart-disease/

This will be bandied about for quite a while, I suspect.

There is a whole forum here devoted to supplements:
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/forum49.html

Sometimes people posting on their home forum become rather provincial and don't look around our NeuroTalk platform at other boards and subjects.

We also discuss supplements every day on the Peripheral Neuropathy forum.
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/forum20.html

We covered the carnitine=cvd study on our blog post. Completely overblown by the media.

I think this thread has run it's course now, so I will be closing it.

Rob, you did nothing wrong in providing the info :) We just don't really want to see this thread used as a promotion by that site's owners, rather than just an informational resource for members here.

As mrsD pointed out, members should always carefully check out anything they read on any site, including here on NT ;) ....to be sure it is accurate info. There are a number of other websites that also provide detailed info on supplements, so always cross reference. And of course, as we always suggest, check things with your physician as well.