Health

Almost any magazine or newspaper has something about vitamins or supplements to add to your diet to keep you healthy or ward off disease. How on earth can you tell if you need these vitamins or if someone is about to make money on your efforts to stay healthy? It’s not an easy answer and the answers keep changing over the years. Here is some basic information that can help you make better decisions.

What is a vitamin? The name itself means “vital amine” (protein) and these have been found to be essential to life and an absence (or excess) are dangerous to a healthy life. The vitamins were named in order of their discovery (A, B, C, D, etc). Vitamin K is the name exception as it was found to be associated with “k”oagulation and thus the K.

Our bodies are amazing self-perpetuating machines and can identify the fuels that they need and operate independently for many years. Often you will crave something that is missing in your diet and make up for it without any significant awareness on your part.

Most vitamins are water-soluble – which means that when they are taken by mouth, the body absorbs what it needs and then washes out the excess vitamins via the kidneys. This is not all bad because the body makes sure that you get an adequate amount of vitamin and the rest is sent out of your body and not dangerous to you. The water soluble vitamins are the eight B vitamins and vitamin C.

There are some vitamins, however, that are fat soluble and attach to fat cells. They are not expelled from the body if there is an excess, but stay in the body for a long time. These are the vitamins that you can seriously overdose on and become quite ill from if you take more than you need. The fat soluble vitamins are Vitamin A, D, E and K. Excesses of these can have harmful effects. Excess vitamin A leads to liver problems, low bone density and vision loss. Excess vitamin E can lead to anemia and actually increase heart disease (we used to recommend vitamin E to prevent heart disease and stroke). Excess vitamin D does not prevent cancer and may actually increase the risk of pancreatic cancer. Doses of over 10,000 international units (IU) per day can cause kidney damage.

So, how do you know what you need and if you are taking too much?

Most physicians recommend a multivitamin to make sure there are adequate vitamins to function and stay healthy. Now those recommendations may be unwise. The AMA (American Medical Association) has recommended one multivitamin per day for all adults since 2002. Today, many experts are re-looking at that advice. Miriam Nelson, PhD, director of John Hancock Research Center on Physical Activity, Nutrition and Obesity at Tufts University said, “The multivitamin as insurance policy is an old wives’ tale, and we need to debunk it.” This comes from recent studies showing that multivitamins did nothing to prevent heart disease or cancer in developed countries. This may not be true in developing countries where nutritional deficiencies are widespread.

Some people just use a multivitamin to boost their energy and immunity, but recent studies have shown this is not true. British studies showed no reduction in infections for people taking multivitamins. Inner city children taking multivitamins were not more alert in class and did not miss any less days of school. Even more concerning is a study from Sweden that showed that women who took multivitamins were 19 percent more likely to get breast cancer than those who didn’t take any vitamin supplements. The Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that men who took multivitamins had more cases of prostate cancer than men on no supplements. Colon cancer risk was even found to be higher in people taking folic acid supplements.

What does this mean for those of us trying to be conscientious about our diets and longevity? It may be “hidden” in life itself. Studies of iron supplements and absorption indicate that our supplements are nowhere near as efficient as the absorption of iron in a mother’s milk. The iron levels are quite low in mother’s milk, but the absorption is almost 100 percent. The same is true of vitamin C. We add large doses of vitamin C to ward off infections when the amount of vitamin C absorbed from a piece of citrus is exponential compared to the supplements we use. How can this be? It has to do with the vitamin C in a piece of citrus fruit is surrounded by fiber and flavinoids in the fruit that increase the absorption of vitamin C. In other words, “everything works together for good.”

On November 30, 2010 another research study was reported showing that “most North Americans receive enough calcium and vitamin D.” This is from a committee of 14 experts assigned by the Institute of Medicine to assess health outcomes with calcium and vitamin D. The only group they found that did not meet standards for dietary intake were girls aged 9-18.

Some advice for now would be: Don’t spend your life’s savings on vitamin supplements and be careful with fat soluble vitamins in particular. Eat well and listen to your body.

References:

Should You Kick the Multivitamin Habit? Sarah

Mahoney. Prevention, November 2010.

Supplements at Risk of Disappearing. Sylvia

Booth Hubbard. Newsmax Maxlife, July 2009.

Daily Vitamins: Don’t Overload Your System.

Women’s Health. September 2006.

IOM Report: Most North Americans Receive

Enough Calcium, Vitamin D. November 30, 2010.