E-drug: Injectable vitamins used for self-treatment? (cont)
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Re injectable vitamins: my late mother-in-law always believed
strongly in the ability of an injection of vitamin B-12 by her doctor
to enhance her sense of well-being and "energy", to use her term.
Her doc always obliged her when she asked for a B-12 injection.
There is no recognizable mechanism for such an effect, but for her it
was definitely a "limp-in, leap-out" experience.
I have never searched for credible evidence for this maneuver, and
doubt that there is any. My mother-in-law was far from being alone
among her generation in finding subjective benefit from an occasional
injection of B-12. She would be 95 today, had she not died about 20
years ago from lobar pneumonia, which mercifully carried her off
before her inoperable carcinoma of the lung was able to. She was a
several pack-a-day smoker from her 20's on to her last days.
John Urquhart, MD, FRCP(Edin)
Professor of Pharmaco-epidemiology,
Maastricht University, Maastricht, NL
Professor of Biopharmaceutical Sciences, UCSF, San Francisco
home office: 975 Hamilton Ave, Palo Alto, CA 94301 USA
tel: +1-650-321-3961l fax: +1-650-324-9739
John Urquhart <urquhart@ix.netcom.com>
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