Discussion Board

Common supplements and multivitamin pills under fire in new data. Oct. 10 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine:

http://consumer.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=657725

The data keeps piling up about supplements.

f1jim

Jim -

CBS news did a follow up on this study too. Once again Dr. McDougall was ahead of the pack. And we're all healthier for it .

donna

They died from what? What else were they eating? The study looked at the women over a period of 19 years from the age of 62 and half of them died. That would make at least some of those who died at least
81 years old. This is a few years longer than the average age of death for women which is around 77. So half of the women who did not die lived at least beyond the age of 81. This was one study.

The study does not say what their diets were. It does not say if they ate lots of processed foods that were fortified with vitamins so in addition to their vitamins they may have been eating whole bunches of manufactured vitamins in their food. (This is especially important for parents of small children to be aware of if they are feeding their kids processed foods like cereals and energy bars and breads and other things with manufactured vitamins added.)

Didi

It's true about their age. No one is claiming if you take vitamins that means you will die early. The study, like others before, show a trend for a shorter life with supplementation. Nothing more or less. Also no explanations as that wasn't the focus of the study. The problem with studies are they sometimes create more questions than answers.
Yes, few of us realize the level of supplementation out there till they actively take an inventory of their eating habits. It takes place im much of processed foods.
f1jim

I am 63 and a newbie to the program. I can definately attest to one thing and that is Omega fish oils sent me into a heck of a state. I started taking them again for about the 5th time, about 3 weeks ago. They cause rapid and irregular heart beats, headache, panicky chest feeling, not to mention the stomach upset. I got off of them 3 days ago and now feel back to normal again. I will be giving them away and not looking back. For me.... the are dangerous.

I don't feel like I can make any conclusions from that article. Too much isn't explained. Thoughts I have:

Possibly people who rely on supplements don't eat healthily in other ways and that is why they die early.

Possibly the quality of the vitamins is at issue. A lot of commercial multivitamin preparations use synthetic vitamins. Are these really as wholesome as the real thing?

Possibly many of these multivitamins had megadoses. Reading vitamin labels I often see water soluble vitamins like the B vitamins jacked up to the point that you are getting significantly more than the RDA.

I do take a whole food supplement based vitamin that is supposed to have no synthetic vitamins in it. The amounts of the vitamins top out somewhere near 100% of the RDA. Also no added iron.

I plan on taking my supplement for the time being. Even on the McDougall plan I find myself not getting enough of the right vegetables sometimes. Also my digestion never seems stellar so I wonder how much I'm really absorbing.

I may change my tune someday and quit the multi but for now I'm keeping it. I used to love megadoses of vitamins and thought I was protecting myself from all sorts of harm by taking 8 grams of vitamin C a day, lots of B vitamins... I've changed that thinking and feel that anything much higher than what we should be able to get from diet is probably harmful. However, I still like using the low potency whole food multi to cover the bases.

Most studies seem to support the opposite conclusion...That is, those who supplement tend to eat BETTER than those that do not. Multiple studies have born this out.
What does seem consistent is the inconsistencies the various manufacturers have regarding dosage and purity. Their record in these areas is dismal. Even without those issues, Dr. McDougall and others believe that taking concentrated nutrients, outside of the package nature provides, can cause nutrient imbalances and issues with blocking other related nutrients. He believes taking these nutrients outside of their whole package should be done with a trained health professional.
It is interesting how many of these studies say the same thing. I wonder just how "natural" it is to strip some components from their native state and compound them in a lab, then expect them to work the way they do when consumed within food. It seems we are regularly getting studies that not only show the lack of efficacy of these products but in many cases show their danger.

Here is more info from the same study. It involved 39,000 women so it wasn't a small study:

http://news.yahoo.com/dietary-supplemen ... 00686.html

Also here is the actual publication abstract. I have no access to the full report.
http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/conten ... 71/18/1625

f1jim