Reports of selenium’s link to diabetes are wildly exaggerated

Two Billion Dominos

The mainstream media never fails to completely exasperate!

Prescription drugs? A gift from above! Dietary supplements? Dangerously untested!

Let’s take, for instance, the type 2 diabetes drug Avandia. Go to the Avandia website and you’ll find this on page one: “AVANDIA can cause or worsen heart failure.” But that’s just fine because Avandia is FDA approved.

And then let’s take, for instance, selenium – a mineral with proven cancer-fighting and heart health benefits. But if a study finds a thread-thin “link” between selenium and type 2 diabetes, then the experts come out in force warning against any supplementation with selenium – any AT ALL!

The bias is laughable.

But I’m not laughing today. An HSI member named Tibor sent an e-mail asking me to review and comment on a Scientific American article titled “Are Selenium Levels Linked to Diabetes?”

None of my exasperation is directed at Tibor, of course. In fact, he’s done us a favor because I’m more than happy to reveal the mind-boggling absurdity of the study that prompted the SA article.

Never say never

First of all, the article in question was reprinted in Scientific American. It originally ran in a May 2009 issue of Environmental Health News (EHN). And the study in question was conducted by Johns Hopkins researchers who examined fasting blood tests for 917 people over the age of 40.

Analysis showed that subjects with diabetes tended to have higher levels of selenium in their blood. So the authors wrote: “Our findings suggest that selenium supplements should not be used in the U.S. until there is a better understanding of their potential risks and benefits.”

Okay…now let’s sample one of the “experts.”

Judith Stern, professor of nutrition at the University of California, told EHN that although the study didn’t show that selenium causes diabetes, “I would never, ever, ever take supplements with selenium in it.”

Never, ever, ever? I think just “never” would make the point, but, okay, we get it. Not even if someone double dog dared her would she ever, EVER take selenium supplements.

But in addition to absolutely no evidence that selenium supplements cause diabetes, the study didn’t even show that higher selenium levels were prompted by selenium supplement intake.

But that’s not the kicker…

Line ’em up!

Here’s the kicker…

Find a road that’s several hundred miles long. Line up one billion dominos. Then line up another billion dominos right beside the first line. Okay, now remove 144 dominos from the first line, and 136 from the second line.

Now stand back and look at the two lines. See the difference? Yeah…probably not. In relation to a billion dominos in each line, there’s virtually no difference.

Which brings us to this note from EHN: “In the selenium study, diabetics had an average of nearly 144 parts per billion of selenium in their blood, compared with about 136 ppb for the non-diabetics.”

That’s right – we’re talking about the difference of eight parts in one billion parts.

And based on THAT, the selenium sky is falling and we should avoid the mineral as if it were lethal?

They’re going to have to come up with some scarier numbers if they want to get me to never, ever, ever take my selenium supplement again.

Source:
“Are Selenium Levels Linked to Diabetes?” Marla Cone for Environmental Health News, Scientific American, 5/20/09, scientificamerican.com