New research led by Dr. Saverio Stranges of Warwick Medical School in Britain, showed that people who took 200 mcgs of selenium daily, had a 50% increased risk for developing type-II diabetes over a 7 year period than those taking placebo. Published in the Journal Annals of Internal Medicine, the Dr. Stranges group said 58 of 600 people taking selenium and 39 of 602 taking placebos developed type-II diabetes over the 7.7 years. The study was well constructed although quite small in my opinion.

Here are my thoughts about the study. First off, if you take another 1202 people and tried it again, it may show up differently. Secondly, they measured the levels of blood selenium for their patients and the higher the level, the higher the risk of developing diabetes. Well, duh! My work over the years has clearly shown that excessive amounts of nutrients, especially trace minerals have a double-edged sword to them. If deficient, they need to be repleaded. If in excess, they need to be eliminated. It has to do with this quirky idea called biochemical individuality. If they were monitoring peoples selenium levels as has been indicated, did they stop the people from taking the selenium supplement?  If not, then a serious breech of ethics was committed. Excessive selenium is known to be toxic. This is a major problem and should cause serious review of the researchers protocols.

There are other problems with the study. They studied people with skin cancer. Could it be that having skin cancer and taking selenium together may increase the risk of developing the disease but not with healthy people? No healthy cohorts is a bad error in their study design.

Now get this, the researchers relied on participants’ reports that they developed diabetes and did not confirm those reports with measures of blood sugar. Huh?  You didn’t confirm the reports? Terrible research error again.

Next, did they measure other nutrient co-factors like vitamin C, E, amino acids, and dietary intake of foods? Of course not. They blindly rely on one-to-one analysis which is hideously poor. They also only looked at elderly white people yet they make the sweeping statement that selenium supplementation causes people to have an increased risk of developing diabetes.

Another example of poor research and equally poor reporting.