4 Myths About Vitamin Supplements

4 Myths About Vitamin Supplements
No one really knows whether taking large amounts of vitamins in tablet form is even the best way delivering them to the body. Shannon Kringen/Flickr, CC BY-SA

People take vitamin supplements for all kinds of reasons, from maintaining general health to preventing cancer. But there’s no convincing evidence that vitamin supplementation benefits people who don’t actually have a vitamin deficiency.

For starters, clinical trials of large numbers of people in multiple locations and contexts show vitamin supplements don’t prevent cancer. Rather, there’s emerging evidence (as yet only in mouse models) that some vitamin supplements may actually slightly increase the risk of some cancers.

Still, the appeal of vitamin supplementation in the community seems to be greater than ever. And in an era where conventional therapies are being subjected to increasingly more strenuous tests of efficacy, toxicity and cost effectiveness, the vitamin industry remains outside the mainstream of therapeutic evaluation.

One cause for this mismatch may be the political and financial influence of the vitamin supplements industry. But it’s also worth considering why western society has so enthusiastically embraced dietary supplements, nutriceuticals and complementary medicine.


 Get The Latest By Email

Weekly Magazine Daily Inspiration

Four vitamin myths

Vitamin supplements appeal to an ever-increasing number of people based on what may appear to be common-sense ideas. But most people completely misunderstand the nature of vitamins and how our bodies absorb them.

Here are some common myths about vitamins and why they’re wrong.

Myth one: If vitamin deficiency causes disease, supplements must therefore prevent disease.

Put simply, if less is bad, that doesn’t mean more is good. Take profound vitamin A deficiency, which can cause abnormal cell growth in the lining of the mouth and food pipe (oesophagus). There’s no evidence that vitamin A supplements prevent such abnormalities in those at risk, such as smokers and heavy drinkers.

Now consider people who have severe vitamin B12 deficiency due to a condition called pernicious anaemia. They are at increased risk of stomach cancer but this has nothing to do with the vitamin itself. These people have an autoimmune disorder that causes inflammation and cancer in the stomach at the same time as it blocks vitamin B12 uptake in the gut.

Myth two: Low vitamin “levels” indicate deficiency.

For starters, vitamin deficiency in someone who has a normal balanced diet is extremely rare.

The current trend towards vitamin D supplementation is largely based on the idea that blood levels of the vitamin are below the “normal” range. But whether blood levels accurately reflect total body vitamin D stores in body is still contentious.

The jury is still out on the benefits of supplementation in people with low vitamin D “levels”, and there’s no evidence that routine supplementation is useful in people with normal diets and levels of sun exposure.

4 Myths About Vitamin Supplements
There’s no evidence that routine vitamin D supplementation is useful in people with normal diets. Health Gauge/Flickr, CC BY-SA

Myth three: Vitamins are safe.

Actually, this one is correct on the whole. But there are always extreme cases where an excess of vitamins can cause harm, such as toxicity due to the excess intake of vitamin A, particularly in children.

And when vitamins harm, they can go to town. Manifestations of vitamin A toxicity include abnormal bone growth, swelling of the brain, increases in blood calcium concentrations, hair loss, and liver damage.

What happens is because fat-soluble vitamins, such as A,D,E and K, are more difficult to excrete, they can accumulate in the body with excessive intake. Water-soluble vitamins, such as vitamins C, are safer in this regard as people with normal kidney function usually pass excess amounts in urine rather than have it stored in their body.

Myth four: Vitamins are “natural” compounds, not drugs.

First of all, it’s important to remember that natural doesn’t mean good for you. Consider the taxane family of chemotherapeutics used for treating breast cancer. Taxanes are naturally-occurring molecules extracted from the bark of the pacific yew tree that are able to kill rapidly dividing cancer cells. But they also have potentially life-threatening side effects, such as bone marrow suppression. Nonetheless, taxanes are 100% natural.

Producing supplements requires a combination of purification from natural sources or chemical synthesis – or both – in the same way as many commonly used pharmaceuticals.

Penicillin, for instance, was initially purified from a fungus with natural antibacterial activity. With the exception of an allergy and rare cases of anaphylaxis, penicillin is an extremely safe natural compound, but it’s very much a drug.

Parting thoughts

We ingest vitamins from food, or get our gut bacteria to make them for us and then absorb them. In some cases, we make our own in the liver. Either way, we constantly replenish our vitamin stores without realising it.

No one really knows whether taking large amounts of vitamins in tablet form is even the best way delivering them to the body. And even if we choose accept that vitamin supplements largely are safe but have marginal benefit, they still have an economic cost.

If they were regulated as therapeutic products, vitamins would certainly not receive government subsidies since there’s no evidence they work, or that they are cost-effective.

Since people pay for supplements themselves, it’s important they re-evaluate whether the cost of vitamins is really worth it. Based on all the available evidence, a healthy diet and lots of exercise are a much better way to promote good health.The Conversation

About the Author

Neil Watkins, Petre Chair in Cancer Biology, Lab Head - Cancer Developmental Biology, Garvan Institute

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

books_health

AVAILABLE LANGUAGES

English Afrikaans Arabic Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Danish Dutch Filipino Finnish French German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Malay Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu Vietnamese

follow InnerSelf on

facebook icontwitter iconyoutube iconinstagram iconpintrest iconrss icon

 Get The Latest By Email

Weekly Magazine Daily Inspiration

Saturday, 08 May 2021 08:43

Humanity has always had a rocky relationship with wasps. They are one of those insects that we love to hate. We value bees (which also sting) because they pollinate our crops and make honey

Monday, 17 May 2021 08:55

Maybe you’re trying to eat healthier these days, aiming to get enough of the good stuff and limit the less-good stuff. You’re paying attention to things like fiber and fat and vitamins… and...

Sunday, 16 May 2021 14:24

The human body is an amazing thing, full of systems, organs, nerves, and vessels that work together in harmony. You’ve seen the body described as a machine, as a city, or even as a factory....

Thursday, 15 April 2021 07:13

As a species, humans are wired to collaborate. That’s why lockdowns and remote work have felt difficult for many of us during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wednesday, 26 July 2023 17:18

Do you know why junk food is so addictive? Are you craving sweets yet? If you've ever wondered why junk food can be so addictive, you're not alone.

Thursday, 20 May 2021 08:31

It’s recommended we do at least 30 minutes of exercise a day – or 150 minutes a week – to stay healthy. But 30 minutes accounts for just 2% of the day. And many of us spend most of the rest of the...

New Attitudes - New Possibilities

InnerSelf.comClimateImpactNews.com | InnerPower.net
MightyNatural.com | WholisticPolitics.com | InnerSelf Market
Copyright ©1985 - 2021 InnerSelf Publications. All Rights Reserved.