Healthy holidays

By The Tampa Tribune
Published: November 19, 2009

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Ah, the holiday season is upon us, with good family times and plenty of excuses to over-indulge in rich food eating.

This heavy season will be accompanied by "medical weight loss" clinics claiming to boost energy and produce weight loss results with high-dose vitamins.

Just in time to counter these misleading claims, the American Medical Association published this week (JAMA 2009, 302:2119-26) a study showing high-dose B-12 may increase the risk of cancer.

In a published review of the article, Tim Byers of the University of Colorado stated, "This (B-12 cancer link) is yet another study showing there may be harms in taking high doses of nutritional supplements."

Careful eating and continuing exercise during the holidays is a far safer strategy.

WILLIAM DUDNEY

Tampa

The writer is a physician.