I am tired of seeing these ridiculous claims given such respect when they come from people who’ve read a few books and call themselves experts like Patrick Holford.

It’s good to see some people are making a fight back against the tide of codswallop that is engulfing the health service.

Making middle of the road claims that are backed up with strong evidence just isn’t showy enough to command the sort of sums that keep him in the lifestyle he is accustomed to. Real life simply isn’t that interesting. Far better to publicise wild and unconventional theories to a gullible public under the guise of learning and experience. Suddenly, the worried well, the perpetually nervous and the idealistic want to listen, and they will pay for the privilege. Quite a nice little earner.

You’ll see me next in an article entitled ‘Why oxygen is making you fat’. I can already smell the warm Caribbean sea.

Are you ready to acknowledge that the Hcy test is inappropriate for the general population and that the recommendations for supplementation to reduce what may be an epiphenomenon is premature at best and potentially and theoretically harmful? What about the mis-information about SAM and Hcy? You don’t care about the basic science there?

Are you ready to acknowledge the serious point about the excessive recommendation for B6 supplementation?

By the by, the latter article you reference without having read (?)- “Findings of this study suggest that vitamin B6 may play a role in the prevention of colorectal cancer, particularly among women who drink alcohol”, so, not necessarily applicable in general plus they seem to have looked at dietary levels, not necessarily supplementation and it may not have been at the levels that Holford is recommending. Albanes recently made some useful observations about Vitamin supplements and cancer prevention: where do randomized controlled trials stand? Likewise, B6 supplementation may be either protective or potentially harmful for a variety of reasons, sometimes for the same disease, sometimes for very different diseases.

Yes, these matters are complex – so, before suggesting people take supplements at excessive levels, or spend money on regular tests, it might worth establishing if there is any value to it or any verfied corpus of work that indicates that Hcy is more than an interesting epiphenomenon. Or, can you not acknowledge that?

Looking at the paucity of evidence to support Holford’s entrepreneurial promotion of regular Hcy testing and supplementation to lower it is obviously challenging to you – and it might be interesting to know why you think it is appropriate to make such recommendations in default of appropriate evidence.

Wei, E.K., et al., Plasma vitamin B6 and the risk of colorectal cancer and adenoma in women. J Natl Cancer Inst, 2005. 97(9): p. 684-92.
Larsson, S.C., E. Giovannucci, and A. Wolk, Vitamin B6 intake, alcohol consumption, and colorectal cancer: a longitudinal population-based cohort of women. Gastroenterology, 2005. 128(7): p. 1830-7.

Open up your minds and your hearts. Embrace this new reality for metabolic pathways. Allow them to have their own standards of evidence and “truth” that allow them to amass real-life wealth from those whom they succeed in duping. [/leave of senses]

The goal is to achieve an H score of 6 or below. Mine is 4.5. Your H score is probably the best objective measure of whether you are achieving optimum nutrition.

That pathway and its explanation is from Patrick Holford and James Braly’s book on Hcy.

Pp. 171-2 of Bad Science:

This proximity to real academic scientific work summons up sufficient paradoxes that it is reasonable to wonder what might happen in Teesside when Professor Holford begins to help shape young minds. In one room, we can only imagine, a full-time academic will teach that you should look at the totality of evidence rather than cherry-pick, that you cannot overextrapolate from preliminary lab data, that referencing should be accurate, and should reflect the content of the paper you are citing, and everything else that an academic department might teach about science and health. In another room, will there be Patrick Holford, exhibiting the scholarship we have already witnessed?

One can only wonder what IONistas are taught – yet Hcy and the paraphenalia of tests and supplements seem to be one of the major platforms for their income generation.