Vitamins: Good for You or Do They Just Give You Expensive Pee?
From rd:
“While some vitamin supplements can boost your health, others may actually harm.
Wild Claims
Google “vitamins” and you get 50 million results and the wildest claims you can imagine. That’s almost six times more than what you get for “Brad Pitt,” but the descriptions are just as breathless. As you navigate the maze of sites, you see phrases claiming vitamin supplements can “increase energy,” “stimulate brain function” and “improve sex drive.” There are promises of “reversing cancer” and “removing plaque” from your arteries. It all helps explain why Americans shell out $7.5 billion a year on vitamins, hoping to prolong life, slow aging and protect against a bevy of illnesses.
But new research not only refutes many of these claims, it also shows that some of these vitamins may in fact be harmful.
A February report in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that taking antioxidant vitamins actually increased a person’s risk of dying by up to 16 percent.
A study by researchers at the University of Washington last May found that high doses of vitamin E taken over ten years slightly elevated lung cancer risk in smokers.
Researchers at the National Cancer Institute found that men who took more than one multivitamin daily had a higher risk of prostate cancer.
Antioxidant Paradox
The antioxidant study, in particular, surprised a lot of people and has prompted a heated debate. Antioxidants such as vitamins A, beta carotene (another form of vitamin A), E and C have long enjoyed a reputation as disease fighters because they’re thought to protect against free radicals that can damage….”
April 18th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Do you know which antioxidants are specifically good for liver health?
August 18th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Thanks to the article, well thought out. I searched for a while to find the right answer to my questions!