Vitamins supplements increase death risk

A Danish-led study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that vitamin supplements may cause more harm than good.

For as long as I can remember, nutritionists have told us to increase our intake of the major antioxidants — beta carotene, vitamin A, vitamin E, vitamin C and selenium.

The theory was that these antioxidants would help eliminate “free radicals” that are thought to cause all sorts of problems in our bodies.

Vitamin companies adopted this theory years ago and used it to heavily market their products as substances that would improve health, guard against diseases such as cancer and heart disease, and slow down the aging process.

Well, this was a nice theory and it made all kinds of sense — but the actual research on real people demonstrates it probably isn’t valid.

In fact, it seems like just the opposite is true — through some mechanism these products actually increase mortality levels.

The authors of this 2007 paper reviewed 815 clinical trials (all studies prior to October 2005 testing the health outcomes from taking these vitamins) and sifted through the data to identify those studies having the least amount of bias.

When they reviewed this subset of data they discovered the following:

* Taking vitamin A increased death risk by 16%
* Taking beta carotene increased death risk by 7%
* Taking vitamin E increased death risk by 4%
* Taking vitamin C increased death risk by 6% (with less clear results)

Only taking selenium showed a decreased death risk but this decrease was not shown to be statistically significant (meaning, the death risk difference could have happened by chance).

The overall conclusion of the study was that on balance, the best quality research shows that beta caroten, vitamin A and vitamin E may increase mortality risk, but vitamin C and selenium need further study.

Yikes! 10 to 20% of the US population take dietary supplements (beyond just a multivitamin which is taken by about half the population). This seems like a bit of a problem to me!

Allen Oelschlaeger
Author of Finally, the Straight Scoop About Weight, Nutrition, and Fitness