Title: Dietary supplements, integrative medicine, and health: What has the research taught us?
Presenter: Howard Sesso, ScD, MPH
Director of Nutrition and Supplements Research, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) & Harvard Medical School
Associate Director of the Division of Preventative Medicine, BWH
Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Description: Dietary supplements, including vitamins, minerals, and bioactives, are commonly used for a wide variety of health outcomes, yet evidence for their purported health benefits is often sparse. Well-designed, large, simple randomized trials can definitively elucidate the potential causal role of dietary supplements on either intermediate or hard clinical outcomes. We will review the research on commonly used dietary supplements to evaluate the strength of evidence for their effects on various health outcomes, and highlight promising dietary supplements for which additional research is needed. Finally, we will place the research in the context of recent updated guidelines for selected dietary supplements and consider how to improve evidence-based decisions to consider and incorporate dietary supplements into integrative medicine and preventive care.