A world-renowned expert on dietary supplements was among the featured speakers at the Southeast Enviro and Safety Seminar held last week at the Saskatchewan Energy Training Institute.
Dr. Mark Moyad spoke about the dangers of taking supplements and the benefits or drawbacks of various products that claim to improve one's health.
Moyad is the Jenkins/Pokempner Director of Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical Center's department of urology.
During a 90-minute address on March 19, Moyad said seeing people have their retirement taken away due to health problems motivates him to educate people on what's healthy and what isn't.
"The biggest tragedy I see is I watch people pump money into a system they believe in for 25-30 years and then something strikes them," he said.
Moyad, who has authored or co-authored 10 books, said too many people have become reliant on supplements for nutritional value.
"My generation became the pill generation. The self-medicating generation the problem is, if you don't educate yourself today, you can be in trouble later," he said.
"To me, supplements are drugs. We just feel better calling them supplements."
To that end, unintentional overdose on prescription drugs has become a significant issue in North America, with Moyad stating it kills 70 people per day.
Moyad stressed early in his lecture that cardiovascular disease has been the No. 1 source of death for 114 of the last 115 years, so the most important thing a person can do for their health is to reduce their risk of cardiac arrest.
The main portion of Moyad's seminar consisted of advice regarding various health products and issues people often ask him about.
On the topic of weight loss, he said the way to shed pounds is to cut 100 calories per day out of one's diet, regardless of how they do it.
Moyad noted that major weight loss programs "all revolve around, 'What do I gotta do to get this person to pay me to cut calories?'"
The author of more than 130 published medical journal articles pointed to a major Harvard study of four different diets, with all of them resulting in the same amount of weight lost.
Moyad said people can do whatever diet they want as long as it's working and reducing heart disease indicators such as cholesterol and blood pressure.
He added that the best weight loss pill in his experience is Metformin, which is actually used to treat diabetes.
Moyad, who in 2009 was named one of the most influential doctors in the United States in a USA Today survey, pointed out that exercise is better than any supplement, as it reduces the risk of many diseases, including heart disease, types of cancer, strokes, high blood pressure, depression and Type 2 diabetes.
He also cast some doubt on the effectiveness of multivitamins, noting that no clinical trials have ever been done. He explained that a multivitamin study costs about $250 million and takes 20 to 30 years to complete. The only study done to date, Moyad said, used Centrum Silver and found that it reduces the risk of cancer. However, he added, the dosage used then was similar to the dosage children take now, so the only study ever done on the effects of multivitamins on adults used dosages for children.
Finally, Moyad noted that the only so-called anti-aging miracle that exists gives people a 70 per cent chance of living to age 85 without disability, but only two per cent of the population is eligible, as it requires normal blood pressure, cholesterol, blood glucose and waist circumference, with a moderate diet score, no tobacco, and exercise.
Moyad said that information "will never resonate or be sexy" because people are too often distracted by inconsequential matters.
