Faulty logic

“Early is better!”

Earlier detection of ‘disease’ is not necessarily better.

People often assume that early detection of disease and providing nutrition interventions to people who are at risk of disease leads to better outcomes. However, screening (testing) people to detect disease or providing nutrition interventions to people at risk of disease is only helpful if two conditions are met. First, there must be an effective intervention for the disease. Second, people who receive the nutrition intervention before the disease becomes apparent must do better than people who receive the intervention after the disease becomes apparent.

Screening and providing nutrition interventions to people at risk of a disease can lead to over-diagnosis and over-treatment. Screening tests can be inaccurate (e.g. wrongly indicating that people have a disease when they do not, or vice versa). Screening or using nutrition interventions for a risk factor as if it is a ‘disease’ can also cause harm by labelling healthy people as being sick. Screening can also be harmful because of side effects of the tests (for example, when they require painful or intrusive procedures) and because of side effects of the interventions that follow testing.

BEWARE of claims that early detection of ‘disease’ and early intervention is better than providing nutrition interventions to people after the disease becomes apparent.

REMEMBER: Early is not necessarily better.