Why medical research keeps changing its mind

Did you ever wonder why medical research seems to flip-flop so often? Eggs used to be terrible for your health; now they’re not so bad. Stomach ulcers were thought to be due to stress and a “type A personality” but that’s been disproven. I was taught that every postmenopausal woman should take hormone replacement therapy to prevent heart disease and bone loss; now it’s considered way too risky. It can make you question every bit of medical news you hear. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Questioning what you read or hear is reasonable. And maybe medical reversals — when new research leads to a complete turnaround regarding a widespread medical practice or treatment — are not as common as they seem. Perhaps they get more attention than they deserve and drown out the consistent and “non-reversed” medical research that’s out there. For example, it seems unlikely that the health benefits of regular exercise, smoking cessation, or maintaining a healthy weight will ever be reversed. A new study examines medical reversals A remarkable new study explored the phenomenon of medical reversals to determine how common they are, and to identify what types of conditions were most involved. Researchers collected more than 3,000 randomized controlled trials; these are considered the most reliable types of research because they randomly assign otherwise similar study subjects to different treatment groups and try to account (control) for factors other than the treatm...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Health Medical Research Prevention Tests and procedures Source Type: blogs