Long-term Supplement Use Could Be Bad
December 3, 2011 at 11:49 am 1 comment
Merry Holidays – you can give up buying multi-vitamins and put that extra money toward Christmas gifts. Okay, I know a lot of you are going to cry foul, so let me just give you the facts as reported: A recent news article cited a new study: “…women who took multivitamins were 6 percent more likely to die than others.” You can read the rest of the article at this link: http://www.denverpost.com/fitness/ci_19167099.
That said, calcium was the one supplement in the study that appeared to be beneficial. They don’t specify every supplement they were tracking in the study, but I’m guessing they did not study the use of supplements designed to help chronic conditions such as joint issues. My experience has been that if you have a specific condition, supplements can be very helpful to get you through it until your diet and body can handle itself again.
All this is to say that everything should be applied in moderation and with solid reasoning. “We think the paradigm ‘the more the better’ is wrong,” wrote Dr. Goran Bjelakovic and Dr. Christian Gluud, two European physicians. Too few vitamins may result in vitamin deficiency, they wrote, but too many may “increase the risk of toxic effects and disease.”
Know why you are taking supplements and, as with everything, it’s good to take some time off. I usually take summers off when the sun is shining and a wide variety of fresh food is plentiful and picked at the peak of its nutritional value.
Cultivate Health LLC 
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Amy | December 7, 2011 at 8:31 am
I agree about the multi-vitamins. It’s an industry that has varying ideas on what is the “standard” amount someone needs. What works for me, probably wouldn’t work on someone younger, taller or fatter than me.
My MD says “if your urine is yellow because of your vitamins, that’s pretty expensive pee.” In other words, the vitamins aren’t working.
It’s an easy test if they are working.