Snake oil, going cheap..

I went to a talk given by Professor Puri last night, I was actually thinking at the time of several PC salesmen I knew who like to blind you with science, Polly in particular - bloody great guy, you can have a laugh and a joke with him but you couldn't rely on him for anything resembling the truth..
Prof Puri reminded me of Polly. Great bloke seemingly, but has a tendancy to wander off topic, not fully answer questions and rely a lot on the scientific names and explanations of cell structure and brain chemistry to assure us that ONLY this product will do..

I am of course talking about VegEPA.

I've been taking it myself for about a month now, to be honest, I've noticed no real change from my previous brand of Omega 3 fish oil supplement - other than price.

I'll admit that taking some form of Omega 3 supplement seems to definitely have an effect on the CFS symptoms - I know if I forget or go a few days without them I have a full on recurrence of the aches and the brain fog - but does this necessarily mean the VegEPA is as good as he's touting?

You may wonder why I'm now questioning this, it's because I had a chat with my specialist at Hope today. It seems that he has heard of the work Prof. Puri has been putting in regarding the whole fatty acids thing, his department contacted the Hammersmith (where Prof. Puri works) in order to request more detailed information, so that they could send some samples of their own to him - the Hammersmith apparantly denied all knowledge of any such trials or experiments.

I find it hard to believe that such a thing could be published without some form of validation, but it does raise a couple of questions about why this product is being pushed so hard at us, it's unavailable on prescription and only commercially available from the one source - and as one reviewer on amazon stated:

There are no controlled medical trials quoted to back up anecdotal evidence.

It does make you wonder, Is Prof. Puri another polly? (albeit with better credentials) After sitting through his entertaining talk last night I'd hate to think so, he certainly sounded knowledgable and up front on the subject - but then don't all good salesmen?

In other news, I'm still having to undergo the arse packing procedure. Seems the healing is going well, but not as swiftly as I'd desire (so no change on the health front there then) it means even were I not at the hospital on monday I'd still have to forego the visit to the In-laws because I've got the nurse coming round to re-dress the wound all weekend.
*sigh* Hope this doesn't mean I miss out on the jazz festival too, I'll be gutted if that happens.