The article at first seems to be talking abou "vitamins" in general but then goes into great detail about megadosing on vitamin C and trials with vitamin E.
Doesn't seem like that's quite the same thing.
Personally, I take omega 3, vitamin D (gelcaps, it's fat-soluble), and kelp (for iodine) daily. That article doesn't say much about those.
The article does in a way - you take those vitamins because someone, somewhere at some time was pushing them as an amazing cure. A couple studies were done, data was likely cherry picked, and now you pay money to some company to give it to you. That company makes very sure that beneficial studies are done as often as possible.
I doubt that those vitamins are doing you much harm, but I honestly doubt that you are getting much real benefit from them either (unless you have a real, medical deficiency). But hey, taking them probably makes you feel safer, so you'll likely keep taking them regardless.
Interestingly, the age of a person is usually the best indicator of which vitamins they will take - people often get snagged into some 'holy grail' vitamin (free radicals being the newest) and then continue to take them because accepting that what you've been paying for over years is a waste of money is very hard to take.
> I honestly doubt that you are getting much
> real benefit from them either (unless you have
> a real, medical deficiency)
For stuff like Vitamin D, it depends on where you live. For example, in Portland, OR[1], it's very sunny during the summer months, but there is very little sun during the fall, winter and spring. I remember reading that even if you spent all day out in the sun during the summer months, it would be impossible to store up enough Vitamin D to last the rest of the year.
And on the 'real, medical deficiency' front, there are many debates as to what optimum levels are for some vitamins and minerals. Nutrition is the one area where some things seem very unsettled (e.g. All fat is bad! No wait only some fat is bad! No wait eating fat doesn't necessarily make you fat! etc). [ And even then a real, medical deficiency may just mean that your body is degrading vs. operating efficiently. E.g. maybe taking Vitamin X will help your body digest and absorb food better, but you don't need it to keep living so there is no real, medical deficiency. ]
[1] Used Portland as an example, because I remember reading about this.
That's why milk companies in Sweden (total fucking darkness for 6 months every year) have to enrich milk with less than 1,5% fat with Vitamin D. It's actually a requirement by law.
Note: Sweden does not have total darkness for half of the year. Firstly, 85% of Sweden is below the arctic circle, and does get daylight every day. Secondly, the 15% that is above the arctic circle is the most remote and least populated part of Sweden. Thirdly, even above the arctic circle in wintertime, it seldom actually gets dark as you might imagine; the sun is just below the horizon much of the time, and you merely get a sort of twilight/early morning light.
Portlander here, my doctor recommends that all of his patients take a low-dose vitamin D supplement because a large percentage of them would show subclinical deficiency on blood work if tested, somewhere over 40 percent, with the rate increasing the darker your skin is.
That GP should be reported. They're not following NICE guidelines for CFS, and they are failing their patients. It's easy to mock people with chronic fatigue and laugh about sending them away with a placebo, but that's abuse and should be stopped. That GP clearly doesn't want to treat them, which isn't fine but understandable. But that's why we now have primary mental health teams to refer people onto.
Fatigue is a non-specific symptom and is not necessarily chronic (fatigue is only classed as chronic after 4 months -- according to the article you linked).
Nobody was laughing about it or mocking: we were discussing medical ethics quite seriously, and the medical value of placebo.
As I understood, the GP only applied this to situations where by-the-book they would have to send people away unmedicated and dissatisfied.
Although you might reasonably disagree with their methods, the GP felt quite strongly about it: believing that showing care in such a simple, non-harmful way early led to fewer chronic cases.
The supplements he listed (D3, Omega 3, Iodine) actually all have huge amounts of empirical data from a diversity of sources over a long period of time associating them with positive outcomes and improved health. These are not considered "miracle cures", in fact they have gained widespread acceptance amongst medical professionals including GPs as standard best practice to recommend to patients, even if they have no specific medical ailment. It would be unwise to not take these 3 supplements, period.
Conclusion Overall, omega-3 PUFA supplementation was not associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality, cardiac death, sudden death, myocardial infarction, or stroke based on relative and absolute measures of association.
I've been recommended to take these three (D3, Omega 3, Iodine) by my own GP, but I'd still be really interested in being able to read some of your mentioned sources. Any chance you could make a list?
> you take those vitamins because someone, somewhere at some time was pushing them as an amazing cure. A couple studies were done, data was likely cherry picked, and now you pay money to some company to give it to you. That company makes very sure that beneficial studies are done as often as possible.
I didn't state my reasons for taking them and you have no idea what they are. This is a strawman.
I read his comment's "you" as the indefinite pronoun, not as a personal attack.
> one takes those vitamins because someone, somewhere at some time was pushing them as an amazing cure. A couple studies were done, data was likely cherry picked, and now one pays money to some company to give it to them. That company makes very sure that beneficial studies are done as often as possible.
Speaking as someone who takes a few rather carefully chosen supplements, it's possible that some people take dietary supplements in that way, but I don't. So saying that "one" does those things doesn't ring true for me, either.
I take a multivitamin sometimes to be sure I still get various nutrients even if they're not in my food. This may or may not be true, but it's an entirely different thing from taking supplements as a cure for anything. The article did a poor job of arguing against my use case. It just showed how foolish cure-alls are.
you take those vitamins because someone, somewhere at some time was pushing them as an amazing cure.
I take Vitamin D personally because a blood test showed that I was Vitamin D deficient and my doctor recommended that I take 1000 I.U. of Vitamin D daily to bring myself up to a non-deficient state.
Particularly, it breaks each supplement down by effect, for example, it lists Antioxidants far negative for 'mortality' (per the article), but positively for 'infertility in men'. It also cites sources.
Perhaps, judging by the article, they should have a 'harmful' ranking as well.
By this chart, Vitamin D makes sense for 'general health' (I have gotten it recommended for immune system issues like allergies), and Omega 3 for 'heart disease' seem like winners. I didn't see Iodine on there.
The question of 'what supplement' seems incomplete without 'for what purpose'.
I remember reading that about half of people in Miami were deficient in vitamin D. It makes some intuitive sense if you consider that our bodies evolved in conditions that made us exposed to sun quite a bit more than even people living in sunny places, in good part because we spend so much time inside buildings (A/C helps) and with clothes on.
There's also a difference between not being deficient in vitamin D, and having the optimal amount of vitamin D available. People tend to confuse the two, as if as soon as you aren't deficient you can't possibly improve on that.
I agree. I got relatives living in Florida. They spend most of their time in air conditioned environments. Their idea of "going out" is taking a walk in a mall or mega-store (Wal-Mart, Sam's Club). I once gave an uncle some Vitamin D3 with some magnesium citrate. He got better sleep. Wasn't even interested in how that worked.
> I once gave an uncle some Vitamin D3 with some magnesium citrate. He got better sleep.
Assuming anything meaningful happened there, that was almost certainly the magnesium. Magnesium is linked with sleep improvements (actually, literally today a Google Alerts told me about such an experiment: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3703169/ ).
(Vitamin D, on the other hand, probably not so much since it sounds like you gave it to him in the evening, where, at least for me, vitamin D screws up my sleep http://www.gwern.net/Zeo#vitamin-d-at-night-hurts .)
When I first started taking vitamin D (I was deficient), I noticed sleeping better immediately, and I'm not normally the type to notice this kind of thing. After googling it, I've seen a lot of people reporting the same. That's interesting about magnesium though, I'll have to look into that.
Take magnesium citrate instead of the cheapo magnesium oxide. The magnesium oxide is useless. The magnesium citrate works. It's suppose to de-calcify the pineal gland and allow proper melatonin production. You can google all of this since I'm just a stranger on the Net.
It's always been a steroid hormone, has it not? I didn't realize there was any controversy about that. Personally, I don't care if it's a "black cat or white cat, as long as it catches rats".
Using some vitamin D calculators, I've found that the limiting factor is generally not amount of sunlight, but clothing. During summerish months, If you wear a tank top and shorts, a fair-skinned person can produce all the vitamin D you need in any of the lower forty-eight within thirty minutes.
Systemic inflammation stops vitamin D synthesis or utilization, and a large fraction of the US population is inflamed due to lousy diet. You could be taking tons of vitamin D and getting daily midday sun and still measure deficient if you're living on cola and potato chips.
multiple sclerosis is more prevalent in areas with less sun (basically in the north, since not many people live at low southern latitudes).
i have ms and vitamin d is suspected to be important in reducing the chance of suffering from that disease (it's an immunomodulator - has some connection with your immune system - and ms is basically your immune system attacking your own nerves). other risk factors include being a woman, and having had glandular fever or chickenpox (or both). i am prescribed quite high doses (about double what i see as recommended for supplements). i understand that, along with the medication i take, it helps reduce further outbreaks.
i found it kind of weird that this kind of knowledge is still ongoing research. seems like the kind of thing people would have worked out by now.
The epidemiology of MS is incredibly interesting. There's three groups of people with low rates of MS:
1) People born in northern latitude areas (europe, USA), who then move at a young age close to the equator.
2) People who live their whole lives in an area close to the equator
3) People who were born and raised in areas close to the equator then moved to northern latitudes in adulthood.
Compare to people who are more suspectible to MS:
1) People are born in areas close to the equator then move at an early age to northern latitudes
2) People who live their whole lives in northern latitudes
3) People who live their childhood in northern latitudes then move to the equator.
So there is a correlation between growing up, regardless of what happens in adulthood, near the equator (maybe from Vit D dosage) and having a lower risk for MS. Cool stuff.
I understood that dietary Vitamin D isn't well absorbed and is of limited benefit in high quantities -
It's far better to get daily sunlight, even in Northern climes.
Vitamin D is well absorbed if you take it in gelcap form, as it's fat soluble. Many people take it from "dry" tablets and that's why it's not well absorbed.
Somali women are dressed in all-over black covers, and as a consequence, there is even something called "the Swedish disease" among Somali immigrants to Scandinavia. It's autism and there is a suspected link with vitamin D deficiency.
Sunlight comes with increased cancer risks so even if it's more efficient and cheaper than D it's not nessisarily better. Also, studies have demonstrated that eskimos get significant quantities do D from there diet so diet can work.
I met a doctor recovering from a very bad breast cancer. Her opinion, for what it's worth, was "get lots of sun, and inspect for skin cancers - they are easy."
But less crucial than a normal diet. I mean a diet consisting of a little piece of meat with fat bought on the market, cooked at home with some fresh vegetables, etc. Etc.
I recall just reading an article that omega3 supplements should only be taken if you never eat foods containing them, so if you eat tuna and continue to take omega3 you actually increase your risk of heart disease. But at this point with almost weekly medical studies released contradicting previous ones who knows.
The article treats the belief in supplements entirely as a case of well-nourished people pursuing quack fixes, ignoring scientifically credible practices such as food fortification using iodine and folic acid, the widely-known connection between vitamin C and scurvy, the use of iron supplements to treat anemia, and the historical experience with real malnutrition. The article makes it sound like a ludicrous idea that snuck into the public consciousness via the senility of Linus Pauling in the late 1960s, but vitamin supplementation makes much more sense as an attempt to continue applying a historically successful formula of improving human health by identifying previously unrecognized dietary deficiencies and correcting them.
Also, the ending of the article destroys its credibility. The author is no less an intellectual hack than the people he writes about.
Yes, but people mistake a threshold response for a dose-dependent response.
Maybe certain vitamins (and pseudo-vitamins like vitamin D3) have a threshold response, that is, you only need a certain amount of it in your body for it to function properly, and adding any more will not make you any healthier (overdosing on vitamins can be fatal, so you can't just up the dosage).
And also timing effects. To take the previously-mentioned iodine effect - while administering iodine in childhood or later will eliminate goiters due to iodine deficiency, as far as anyone can tell, post-natal iodine does little to nothing about the retardation or intelligence decreases caused by iodine deficiency, and even in pregnancy, the effect of supplementation seems to start decreasing from conception.
There are cases where science has proven that supplementation has value--adding Vitamin D to milk, for example. In specific cases of deficiency it has been proven to work.
That doesn't mean more is better. There is no evidence to indicate that the general population taking multi-vitamins helps anything.
In summary, many of the studies that have shown scary correlations like "multivitamins increase mortality" are (according to the author) based on inappropriate (but easy to apply) statistical models. Scientists are too-often not trained well enough in how to evaluate the model they are using to see if it is appropriate for the task, and peer review boards often do not include statisticians.
A simple summary of how this can apply to vitamin supplements: suppose you do a trial where you give different groups different doses of a vitamins and then monitor their health. Most vitamins are detrimental to have too little of, helpful to have the right amount of, and then increasingly detrimental to have too much of. The graph of their benefit/harm would be a curve starting at a low number, curving up to a high peak, and then dropping down to lower and lower numbers off to infinity. If you fit this graph to a line, you'll see a downward slope, giving an indication like "multivitamins increase mortality rates".
And this is why science sucks. And I mean that in a supportive way. It can tell us that the answer we want to believe is not the correct answer. Unfortunately it takes a very strong individual to accept that when what they want to believe is the belief that is wrong.
My personal experience is that older folks (>65) get stuck more firmly than younger folks. It is especially sad when someone you care about deeply believes so strongly in a reality that exists only for them.
It's not a problem that is seen only with old people, but it really does seem to me that old people are over-represented. Almost all of the truthers I know "in real life" are over 50.
Benefits or risks of vitamins is one of the most confusing medical topics to assess for an average consumer. After hearing about benefits of vitamin C, zinc, vitamin D, etc., only to later read that some doctors say it's going to kill you, I had decided to ditch them altogether.
But a year ago there was a large, randomized, double-blind study (not something most of these studies can claim) that measured a regular dose multivitamin, not huge megadose supplements that tend to focus on one or two compounds. The result showed 8% fewer cancers. The subjects were all men and were all doctors, so one could infer that they were much healthier than average. I've been taking a simple multivitamin since. I wouldn't be shocked to learn in ten years that I'm doing the wrong thing, but this is the most convincing study I've seen in any direction.
Focus on a healthy, balanced diet and make sure you include enough variety focusing on plenty of colorful vegetables, fruits and nuts. Exercise regularly and take good care of your body getting enough sleep and enough sunshine.
Farming nowadays produce crops with 2/3 of the vitamins you used to get, due to exhausted soil [1]. Wild salmon has 33% more Omega-3 than the ones grown in tanks [2].
Even if you manage a 100% fresh/unprocessed food (unlikely nowadays), you still ingest less vitamins than your parents did.
The farming techniques used today are different than the ones used in the 1800s and before. So the vegetables/fruits today are not as healthy as they were. Especially when you consider consumers use visual guidelines for health (ie are the fruits plump, juicy, and colorful) instead of nutritional content.
The demand for "good looking" food is higher than the demand for healthy food. The food grown in Cuba is probably healthier since the farmers can't afford the more expensive, modern farming techniques.
Diet and exercise/lifestyle go a long way, but individual variation is still large -- perfect example: my wife and i have identical diets and eating habits, and my vitals are all "normal" -- yet she is b12 and vitamin D deficient, because her lower intestine doesn't absorb those into her body as effectively as mine does.
I have this unsubstantiated belief that most people taking supplements live an unhealthy life otherwise. Many people want a magic solution to things, and taking lots of pills seems to be cure du jour.
This is made worse by the fact that there do exist people for whom supplements are required. Without justification, everyone thinks they fall in that group.
It's certainly "enough". Anyone who takes supplements beyond that is no longer "satisficing" they are "maximizing".
I'm mostly vegan, and I tend to just try to focus on eating a good diet, but I do also try to supplement with things that are harder to find in my diet naturally: some kelp for iodine, B-12 since I don't eat much eggs (or meat for that matter).
I recently ordered some D3 spray, for reasons I can't really remember. Every now and then I go online and try to learn as much as I can about the research and make a judgement call.
A balanced diet is enough, but it's hard to know what "balanced" really means in this world where our food system has been so skewed towards processed foods and meat.
Nope, because even if you do all those things, at some point your body will start to slow down, you'll get aches and pains you didn't used to have, and some time you will suffer illness.
At that point many people are keen to see great benefits from placebos, and the door to quack medicine is open.
Maybe not entirely. By overdosing on artificial "vitamins", you drain your body out of the elements needed to process these. The rabbit hole goes a few miles deep. http://www.whale.to/a/shea1.html
Nothing is ever enough these days. People that exercise 5 to 7 times a week used to be considered healthy by all: now they are called "active couch potatoes" or something like that by some people if they also happen to have some sedentary hobbies when they are not working out. Recent studies have shown sitting a lot to be unhealthy in the long run: just sitting! Regardless of whether the person is active or not.
It feels like there is almost nothing that you're doing right, if you're living in the modern world. It's like we benefit from the actual services of a modern civilization greatly, but also suffer greatly from working and supporting that very same civilization (as opposed to a primitive one). I guess we ideally should all be working at standing workstations, rotated with a treadmill workstation because evidently standing too much also hurts you, and then in our leisure time we should spend it on some games/activities that boils down to jumping through the hoops that our ill-fitted-for-modern-civilization bodies and minds need to live a healthy life in a modern context.
Not directly about the article, but for anyone interested in finding out what actual research has to say about any supplement you might be interested in, http://examine.com/ is a great resource to explore for that.
I think a lot of people on this thread are guilty of cognitive laziness. Either all supplements are bad at any dose or they're all good at any dose. Nobody wants to talk about science because reading medical studies is hard.
Reading this article reminds me of trying to have technical bio-medical conversations with doctors. They blow me off and give me the same baby talk they give all their other patients. That's the way the author of this article writes, broad baby talk generalizations. It's the reaction I'd imagine I'd get if I tried to have a conversation about digital signal encoding with my cable TV installer. They don't care, it's not their job, it's not important and they just do their job the way they do it for everybody and get paid either way.
Yeah, that phenomenon plagues everything diet/nutrition/fitness these days.
Doctors themselves aren't necessarily scientists nor researchers, and in practicality it's hard to have that kind of wide depth of knowledge when you're supposed to be a 'general' physician anyway. The problem arises from our culture which turns everything doctors say into a holy tautology that dominates public discourse (without actually understanding the matter), to the point where it doesn't even matter what scientific research comes up with, because "those scientists never make up their minds anyway"... sigh.
It's when you realize that even a rudimentary understanding of the scientific process would avoid that kind of misunderstanding, that it puts into perspective how sad our situation is. This is largely thanks to the media and not individual people themselves, but it's still quite annoying to say the least.
But even without that, if people subsequently understood the role and limitations of doctors, such critical self-research wouldn't be so rare anymore anyway. A doctor's role is like that of a consulting company with you as the client: you're always going to be better suited to understand your problem domain, a doctor will just serve as a guide to make sure everything makes sense and will then help you implement a solution. Or well, that would be the ideal case anyway. I know I've had my fair share of poor doctors too.
OK, let's get one thing straight: vitamins and supplements ARE USEFUL.
The article seems to focus on them as cures - which they are not. Saying that a vitamin is a cure for anything is like saying a loaf of bread is a cure.
Vitamins are fuel - the more intense activities you do, the more you use them.
IF you have a good diet, you don't need multivitamins/supplements. But if you have a homogenous diet (eat the same thing every day and nothing else), then vitamins and supplements are much more useful than harmful.
Moreover, no matter what diet you have, if you do bodybuilding or intensive physical or mental exertion, vitamins and minerals from supplements are almost a must.
It's like using normal fuel vs jet fuel - no matter how good your bioreactor (stomach) is, it just cannot extract all the vitamins and minerals you need for that kind of exertion.
Most bodybuilders know that a dose of pure protein powder is much more effective for muscle building than any amount of meat or cheese. Same goes for glutamine and other supplements, and of course vitamins.
The article also focuses on megadoses - well, no s#@t, a megadose of anything is bad for you. 3 grams of vitamin C per day is batshit insane in my book - 500-1000mg is more than enough.
But don't just take what I said at face value. Like Einstein said, don't trust everything you read on the Internet - check with several different sources, read some research abstracts before making up your mind and storing ANY information as true in your brain.
> Vitamins are fuel - the more intense activities you do, the more you use them.
Vitamins aren't an energy source. They're not burned up.
> if you do bodybuilding or intensive physical or mental exertion, vitamins and minerals from supplements are almost a must.
No they're not. You've been listening to too many bros.
> Most bodybuilders know that a dose of pure protein powder is much more effective for muscle building than any amount of meat or cheese
Most bodybuilders are clueless bros that don't actually read scientific research. Yes, the bioavailability of whey protein powder may be higher than other protein sources but there is very little evidence to suggest it's "much" more effective for building muscle. Possibly more effective before and after a workout, not at other times. There isn't much research into it outside of the workout window either.
> Same goes for glutamine and other supplements, and of course vitamins.
Nope, nope, and nope. There's absolutely no scientific evidence that glutamine is helpful to bodybuilders.
> IF you have a good diet, you don't need multivitamins/supplements. But if you have a homogenous diet (eat the same thing every day and nothing else), then vitamins and supplements are much more useful than harmful.
This is exactly what the article is contesting, but I think the confusion is mostly a semantic one. If "vitamin" means "molecules necessary for good health" then you are right. If "vitamin" means the typical molecules found in multivitamins then the science supports the article's claim.
I've been taking similar quantities in years and my WellnessFX labs and annual physicals are perfect. Even if supplements are not help me (much), they are not hurting me (much) either although it's hard to tell as often damage accumulates over years and labs only expose a few pixels of the whole picture.
I remember seing a study on the WWW about how vitamin fanatics are healhier than regular multi-vitamin users: http://www.landmarkstudy.com/
I wouldn't trust a doctor compared to a bunch of eggheads who studied vitamin fanatics. Doctors are constantly misinterpreting studies. (Not to say I don't either.)
"Nearly nine in ten multi-supplement users consumed 20 or more different kinds of supplements throughout the year... The results of the study are startling. Instead of anticipated side effects and overdosage, researchers found the following:"
* Vitamin E levels among multi-supplement users were more than double that of non-users and multivitamin users.
* Risk for diabetes was 73% less,
coronary heart disease 52% less..
* Blood serum levels of carotenoids (beta carotene, lycopene, lutein) were three higher among multi-supplement users than non-users, and double that of multivitamin users.
Except for the blood serum levels, I concede most of this does not counter your argument of correlation vs. causation.
That's not really proof of anything since your headache could be purely psychological especially since you already suspect that the multivitamins are causing your headaches which means you are not an independent observer, but a biased (if well meaning) participant.
The correct way to prove it would be a double blind test using placebos. ie not something you could prove on your own.
They could have a friend prepare supplements that are real and placebo. Take them and record the results. It would go further to prove the effect within the sample population of themselves which is likely all they care about.
My gut feel, based on a BS Chem and then casual reading, has been that the occasional vitamin is best. Keep a bottle in the cupboard, take a one when you feel like it (no more than once a week). Replace the bottle when it expires.
Chances are you don't need it, and I think the body is really good at snatching up things it needs when that pill rolls by.
(I worried about the kidney/etc burden of daily excess, but the idea that daily excess could spur excess in the form of cancer does not surprise.)
It's amazing that vitamin supplement market is not regulated at all thanks to Orrin Hatch. So many unsupportable claims out there among the products for sale that it makes me dizzy.
The imbalance makes sense (too many antioxidants, or too much of a vitamin, etc). I also always wondered if people who took vitamins were less likely to eat healthy as well. Or perhaps even if they do eat healthy then by eating healthy they're creating an imbalance. I wonder if you could take very small doses and eat poor;y and do okay? It seems not.
Yeah, also wondering if there are other correlations they didn't consider. That's the problem with these articles---all the evidence points to one answer, but is that causation or correlation?
> Yeah, also wondering if there are other correlations they didn't consider. That's the problem with these articles---all the evidence points to one answer, but is that causation or correlation?
My stats professor refused to read any pop-sci articles of this kind. His thesis was that bad statistics permeates the "lower sciences" (his words, not mine) and that just devolves into gibberish when it hits the mainstream.
You didn't actually read the article did you? They weren't talking just about retrospective studies, seeing who gets cancer and whether they took vitamins or not. The article talked about multiple randomized double blind placebo trials.
If you get a bunch of random people, give some these high doses of vitamins and give some a placebo, the ones getting the vitamins did worse.
I'm amazed at the confusion in regards to what's deduced from the consumption of vegetables and similarly healthy foods (and using that to push vitamins).
It's every bit as important, in my opinion, to not eat killer foods, as it is to eat vegetables. That is, a neutral effect alone would be enough to show dramatic health improvements. This is where the pro vitamin arguments went wrong from day one.
Water isn't a miracle elixir that cures cancer. Strip out all high fructose corn syrup and sugar from all American beverages, and the equivalent conclusion would be to suggest that water cures obesity, diabetes and cancer (when in fact the absence of sugar and HFCS is what's doing the trick).
Also, telling me that people took vitamins without showing me their specific day to day diets and exercise routines, is absurdity to put it very mildly. Dietary input and exercise is radically more important than the vitamins in the health outcomes.
Is that really true, though? It seems like you'd be healthier eating healthy salads and a donut, rather than never eating a donut, but never eating a salad, either.
Two years later the same journal published another study on vitamin supplements. In it, 18,000 people who were at an increased risk of lung cancer because of asbestos exposure or smoking received a combination of vitamin A and beta carotene, or a placebo. Investigators stopped the study when they found that the risk of death from lung cancer for those who took the vitamins was 46 percent higher.
I doubt even a committed frugivore gets close to the doses discussed in that article. Oranges, for instance, are quite rich in vitamin C, but you'd still have to eat about 30 to get the 3000mg dose described. And as ValentineC says, the sugar in all that fruit is probably more significant.
What surprises me is my fairly recent discovery that larger-than-life people like Pauling could be "gullible." (Though I'm sure there's a better word for it.) As I'm reading about Pauling and the common cold and cancer and then "every disease known to man", I realized that intelligence alone does not make one immune to self-delusion. I started reading Walter Isaacson's biography on Jobs a few days ago and it's the same realization.
I guess I myself was deluded to think that these "titans" are some how superior in every way to "the rest of us."
I realize that a personal testament is anecdotal, but about 10 years ago I stopped taking vitamins and instead just focused on a balanced diet. I feel better and it costs less. There are legitimate reasons for some people to take vitamins, but if you can do it with a better diet, I think you are better off. If you are taking vitamins, try not taking them and instead work on your diet and see what you think. I think somethings are difficult to prove scientifically and instead you have to do what works for you.
Most people buy crappy vitamins and supplements at Target, Costco, etc. There are many forms of Vitamin E, for example, and 99.9% of people just take one of the 8. This is just an example. It's a similar situation with Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Folic Acid vs Folate, etc. I usually ignore those as it's similar to read studies about beef when those are done with antibiotic and hormone rich meats and if you eat pasture-raised, organic beef - it has a different quality and nutritional profile. All these studies aim to scare people away from preventive medicine and send you back into the drug-dispensing MDs. Yes, you don't need supplements if you eat a healthy, traditional diet, but even organic foods don't have the same quality and properties as those freshly grown, picked, etc. Supplements are an insurance and people need to very, very carefully select theirs as there are tons of scammers in the field! Just got a mailer from Walmart and it's 2/3rds ads of supplements! Same with Costco!
Your claim, as I understand it, is that Target, Costco, and Walmart stock substandard vitamins compared to those you can find if you are "very very careful". This is an extraordinary claim: and you are asked to provide extraordinary proof. Do you have any?
It's not an especially extraordinary claim. There are multiple ways to formulate a lot of supplements (e.g. α-tocopherol vs. γ-tocopherol, or any of the zillion ways to put a mineral like calcium or iron into edible form). Some of these are more effective than others. Some of these are cheaper to manufacture than others. All he's claiming is that in cases where the cheapest formulation is not the most effective one, you'll often not find the more effective form unless you know what to look for and go out of your way to find it.
Well, magnesium oxide and calcium carbonate (worst form possible) without vitamin K and D3 (at least!) to direct your calcium to your bones and not arteries is pure crap, sorry!
Let me give you one simple example: you can find magnesium oxide at those stores, which is the worst form of magnesium on the market. For similar amount of money though you can buy magnesium glycinate, orotate, malate, taurate, and other chelated forms of magnesium that absorb better, have additional benefits, and save you the digestive system discomfort. Of course, the best prices and convenience (autoship) is available online, of course, plus, most stores offer additional 5-20% discounts. I can add a lot more examples of the various forms of vitamin E, B vitamins, vitamin D, vitamin K, folate/folic acid, vitamin A, etc. The formulation of the mass market brands are not only worse in terms of absorption, but are often harmful like folic acid and vitamin A. Even basic supplements like calcium not taken with vitamin K and D3 and dangerous, but anyway. There was a recent study that omega-3 EFAs increase prostate cancer risks, which was so poorly conducted that it's not even funny! There are many people with hidden agendas in "science" and especially when it comes to nutrition, it's not hard to engineer a study that will give you the desired outcome. It's been done many times in the past, Big Pharma is on a war against supplements, so, take all these with a grain (or chunk) of salt!
Well, I can't post a bunch of links. You can google yourself about the 8 forms of vitamin E (4 tocopherols and 4 tocotrienols) and why taking only one is harmful. Also, many supplements mix tocopherols and tocotrienols, which nulls the effect. Same with taking resveratrol with quercetin, which is the most common formulation.
Sales of unnecessary products is simply a consequence of capitalism working properly. People create needs that didn't exist previously through marketing which is all most "health" advice on television (eg Dr Oz) or other media is. Legitimate nutritional deficiencies and cherry picked studies help fuel the marketing strategy. They get fantastic viral social media support from all the hypochondriacs, paranoid conspiracists and other health nuts who can't think critically and lack the scientific education to assess the marketing.
Some vitamins and vitamin analoques do have legitimate benefits as medication but best leave the dosing to a qualified health professional. Much better to eat a balanced diet with lots of vegetables, fruit and some whole protein. And get some sun in moderation if the climate supports it.
Misleading title. Sometimes it would do you really good to take certain kind of vitamin(s). However, the 'supplement' class doesn't include just vitamins. It seems articles that attempt to debunk 'myths' are getting quite popular, in disfavor of real science/research. This one is mostly one-sided and doesn't show much effort at all in at least gathering some counter-arguments. Also, metastudies such as the ones enumerated in this piece can sometimes be flawed by the very methodology they were constructed. Journalistic sensationalism.
If supplementation did nothing, we wouldn't be dosing up with tons of anti-depressants (neuro-transmitter modulation supplements). I agree about isolates, or what people traditionally call vitamins. But for genetic deficiencies for neurological problems, supplements can be awesome. Personally, I take 5-HTP, GABA and NAC daily and really feel the difference. See for yourself. Keep in mind therapeutic doses of supplements can be rather large. You need Dr. supervision to make sure you aren't damaging your liver/kidneys.
NAC could be a problem. Some suggest it should be taken together with high doses of vitamin C and there are some studies that it increases oxidative stress if you exercise much. I've also read that NAC doesn't really increase Glutathione levels, but concentrates it into the liver helping the detox, but reducing levels outside of the liver can't be a good thing. Just eat avocados, garlic, and take Milk Thistle and you won't need NAC.
5-HTP daily? I hope you have a spare heart on hand!
From my understanding, you can take ECCG with 5-HTP to help prevent some of the heart damage serotonin in your blood causes, but even then. There is no reason to take 5-HTP daily, a small dose every 3 or 4 days should suffice!
No mention yet of Nick Lane and his (wonderful) books:
- Oxygen
- Power, Sex, Suicide
If you want a fascinating, very readable, well laid out argument against the entire notion of antioxidant supplementation (as well as a fascinating, technical but not too technical, pop-sci read) these are it.
tl;dr: Ingested antioxidants have no way to target the specific area in mitochondria where the damage would take place, and even if they did, it would probably be negative because free radicals are an essential cell signaling mechanism that aids in weeding out damaged cells.
the only supplement which has been shown to have a net positive impact on health in long term studies is vitamin D3 - and its not even a 'vitamin' but a secosteroidal hormone
If you take any kind of daily drug for anything then you will probably need some sort of supplement to counteract the deficiencies the drug is creating. If you have electronic devices , like a smartphone, then a melatonin deficiency is created and supplementation of melatonin can be a great benefit.
I remember reading somewhere that due to how the vitamins are compressed into tablet form, you actually absorb very little of them anyway. But I can't verify this, because I can't find a citation right now...
Could the higher incidence of cancers be that the supplements were actually helping the cancer cells grow and be healthier than they otherwise would be?
Some really are and that's why supplements should be taken carefully and along with frequent labs, but I doubt increasing cancer rates is due to supplements as not that many people take them regularly... yet!
The cited article contains phrasing that is designed to be misleading. It says for example, "Seven previous studies had already shown that vitamins increased the risk of cancer and heart disease and shortened lives. Still, in 2012, more than half of all Americans took some form of vitamin supplements. " This makes a direct comparison between people taking any vitamins at all to studies showing that very specific vitamins, under very specific and unusual circumstances such as megadosing and certain preexisting conditions, can cause problems. Well even water can cause problems when megadosed, and yet the fact that most people drink water daily is not relevant to that.
Also, the author of this article, Paul Offit, is has serious credibility and corruption problems beyond writing articles designed to mislead people.
He has previously claimed that it is perfectly safe for children to take "10,000 vaccines at once" (and originally he claimed 100,000 but reduced it when it was questioned). Even understanding the benefits of vaccines, there are trade offs with them and it is certainly not safe to take 10,000 at once. Offit holds a $1.5 million dollar research chair which is funded by Merck. He also sold the right to his future royalties of a vaccine he developed for $182 million, of which he received around $46 million for a rotavirus vaccine. This was interesting since he had previously pushed this vaccine during his job at the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which was a serious conflict of interest that ended up making him quite rich.
Here is an interesting investigative report into Offit's conflicts of interest and hiding of financial relationships.
The source you've just cited is a 2008 antivax piece, one of several for which Sharyl Attkisson was excoriated by science journalists and medical experts.
Offit left out information on why he started to advocate vitamins in the first place. He was diagnosed with Bright's Disease. One cause of Bright's disease is a lack of Vitamin D. Taking vitamins was the right course of action in his specific case. He most likely wanted to share his success with others, which is probably why he started advocating vitamins. It's unfortunate that he pushed vitamins as a cure as far as he did. It would be interesting to learn why he took the stance he did from people who knew him personally.
p.s. I do agree with the author in that I do believe taking Vitamins is largely unnecessary if you are eating a healthy diet w/lots of vegetables, legumes and fruit. :)
Just to clarify, (1) Bright's disease is a historical catch-all for essentially all renal diseases, and (2) the causal arrow points from kidney disease to hypovitaminosis D, not the other way around. Low vitamin D is a common consequence, not cause, of kidney disease.
It is safe to take many vaccines at once; in fact, this is the standard of care. Offit does not have credibility issues. His work on vaccines has probably saved millions of lives.
In Australia the immunisation schedule includes (at the age of 2,4 and 6 months) 8 vaccines, one of which includes 13 valencies (13v pneumococcal pneumoniae). This is effectively 20 vaccines at the same time due to the 13 bacterial components included in pneumovax.
You are right in that not only is it standard of care (ie, not dangerous) but it is less traumatic to have them all at once (8 vaccines is 5 needles and a syrup for rotavirus, the addition of which decreased paediatric hospital admissions in Australia by 100,000 pa).
Above all else, it is actually more effective to deliver multiple vaccines at once. More antigens seem to generate a stronger immune response, not in 'severity', as in, possibility of severe reaction, but in seroconversion and decreased need for additional later vaccines.
I'm pretty sure if you injected 10,000 vaccines into someone all at once, their body would explode. But please, do keep defending the guy's ridiculous hyperbole.
I'm interested to see the experimental evidence that you have to back up that statement. If you read my comment, you will see that I comment on taking simultaneous vaccines. For many vaccines, antigens for eliciting an antibody response to several diseases are combined into one formulation.
10,000 is probably 2-3 orders of magnitude greater than the number of different vaccines available on any market, so attacking or defending that number has no utility. And commenting as if that were my point detracts from the conversation.
It's much more interesting to think about how his work likely saves hundreds of lives each day, and to contemplate what we can do in our own lives to have such a great impact at such a large scale.
The useful part of the vaccine is on the order of micrograms. 10,000 * a single vaccine would be on the order of milligrams. The goal of a vaccine is to introduce molecular geometries that cause your body to react and form antibodies - you don't need a lot of liquid volume to accomplish that objective.
I honestly don't know enough to know if 10,000 vaccines is hyperbole, but on the face of it it doesn't seem particularly implausible.
I'm like 99% sure that like 99% of what's injected into you when you get a vaccine is some sort of filler like a saline solution, or a preservative like that good old mercury based one that everyone used to bitch about. So it's quite likely in my mind that you could formulate some sort of "everything vaccine" with a sufficient quantity of dead viruses or virus parts from 10,000 different viruses, and fit it into a single, normal-sized syringe.
Speaking of ridiculous hyperbole, are you sure you haven't confused vaccines with something else? Vaccine's active ingredients are made of very teeny tiny things such as deactivated viruses, and are not generally noted for their explodyness.
Using Paul Graham's disagreement hierarchy (http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html), your first paragraph is DH2 (responding to tone), and the rest is DH1 (ad hominem). Do you have any arguments relating to the points being made?
The first paragraph correctly points out that the "seven previous studies" are not applicable to the general public, despite the fact that the article attempts to do so. That is not responding to tone, that is responding to content.
The second paragraph rightfully questions the integrity of the author based on past deceptive statements made in a similar capacity. It also points out a legitimate conflict of interest. Neither of these are ad hominem.
If a police officer is found to commit perjury or otherwise tamper with evidence on one case, We the people find just cause with all of their cases.
The same goes for powerful people whom sit on drug panels in a company whilst holding a federal position requiring drugs. Because he held a dire conflict of interest, I do not see how we can trust him.
Not seeing the tonal disagreement in P1 - that looks like a fairly legit dissection of the assumptions in an argument to me. What phrasing made you feel it was tonal?
Justification: a typical vaccine volume is 0.5mL. Injecting 5L of any liquid into a child intramuscularly would cause severe health problems, to say the least.
First, with the irrelevant aside: vaccines aren't made of pure viruses. They're mostly filler.
Second, here is what I recall about Dr Offit's chain of reasoning.
1. You need some amount of virus particles to provoke the
immune reaction, call it 1 million. (I'm too lazy to
try to google the numbers myself.)
2. You need some amount of immune cells of the various
types to carry out the immune reaction which results in
immunity, call it 10 million.
3. You have a total of 1 trillion of these immune cells in
your body. (Once again, I'm making up the exact
numbers.)
4. So therefore, the capacity of the immune system is
sufficient to deal with
1 trillion / 10 million = 100,000 vaccines at once.
Third, and most importantly, of course 10,000 vaccines at once is hyperbole, but it's making a very important point. The question wasn't "Should we give our childrens 1 vaccine or 10,000 vaccines?", it was a debate about whether a three-vaccine (or was it seven?) combo "stressed" the immune system too much.
Dr Offit's point wasn't "Nah, let's give them 10,000 vaccines!" It was that when you go from 1 vaccine to 7 vaccines, you're increasing the load on your immune system from 0.01% to 0.07% and we've all got better things to worry about than that.
The burden of proof in this case lies with anyone making the "10,000" claim the first place. You don't get to make wild and outlandish statements and expect them to be taken at face value until specifically debunked.
The person who made the original claim does not post on HN, but the person who thinks that it is "certainly" unsafe does post here. Use of the word "certainly" implies that the answer is so obvious that we should all know the reasons why. Well, I don't. So I asked.
Fair. After doing a little more research I now believe the 10,000 claim is not as outlandish as I once had thought, so your request for validation is justified.
The only place that Dr. Offit has a credibility problem is with those who choose to ignore the mountain of scientific evidence supporting the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
Magnesium and iodine deficiencies are probably widespread and it's not really possible to address these through modern food. Well over half the population is measurably magnesium deficient. The problem is soil depletion and modern water purification. The case for a lot of vitamins is weak, but I think it's pretty strong for various minerals. I add mineral drops to my drinking water, just in case.
Where do you get the drops? I'd add potassium to your list too. The rda for potassium is huge like 10 bananas worth a day. I don't know how anyone can be getting enough potassium.
Buy potassium gluconate. It's nasty, but better than overloading yourself with carbs from bananas. I'm not sure if you're aware, but bananas are radioactive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose) and, BTW, brazil nuts are more, but as a nice benefit, bananas increase your serotonin levels. :)
You're right. Besides soil depletion and not having access to mineral water, a big source of Magnesium and Iodine deficiencies are the lack of access to seafood.
Doesn't seem like that's quite the same thing.
Personally, I take omega 3, vitamin D (gelcaps, it's fat-soluble), and kelp (for iodine) daily. That article doesn't say much about those.