Vitamin supplements: good or bad? There has been an ongoing debate for a number of years regarding the effecti?

Some great answers from those who are in the know, Rhianna of course the best, closely followed by the good doctor, Dave and Gary, and of course many rubbish ones from people who have no idea what they are talking about.

My contribution short as it is, is that there is no ongoing debate in the western world, except in very rare cases and pregnancy perhaps, you get all the vitamins you need from a good healthy diet.

More than that in the form of supplements is not only a waste of money, but in many cases is positively harmful.

Vitamin Supplements Good Or Bad

In some ways I think he was a jerk. But I also think he may just have been a normal human being too. It's so easy to "not think" about what you do before you do it or think something is so funny that you don't think of the full scope of the situation. He obviously re-evaluated some of his behavior--in some way at least--because he eventually marries Lily...But it's really hard to really understand if he was a jerk considering how much he and Snape had a mutual hatred for each other. I think in the beginning it just started out as him being cocky having grown up in the wizarding world. As such, he would have had a poor opinion of what he perceived when he first met Snape. The real difference between him and his son was that his son, Harry, grows up to be able to appreciate everything he has, while James never realized what it was to lack. A lack of gratitude can spawn the cocky attitude and poor treatment of others and can also keep at bay a feeling of general compassion towards others. You notice that when Ron and Harry met Harry was so used to having nothing himself he had great understanding for Ron. Had James been able to appreciate what Harry could at that age the relationship between Snape and James may have been totally different.

For most fit people without food allergies, who eat a healthy varied diet, taking one multiviamin a MONTH should be more then enough to compensate for any dietary shortcomings.

If you're training to be a super-athlete, or have some sort of medical condition then maybe more supplements would help, but for the average person living in a first world country? Not at all.

Vitamin supplements are best avoided. In the UK at least deficiencies are rare and there is neither need nor therapeutic advantage in taking supplements. Recently there has been increasing concerns about what id effectively overdosing on synthetic vitamins. The fat soluble vitamins are the most potentially toxic, A to the eye, D to the kidney K to the blood clotting mechanism and E appears to increase all cause mortality. The most recent, and one of the most worrying papers concerns women taking multivitamins. There appears to be an associated 19% increase in the risk of breast cancer in women on multivitamin tablets, though further investigation is required to confirm that the risk is causal.

There's no debate. If you have a poor diet (we're talking VERY poor here) or have some kind of biological problem, then you may be prescribed vitamins by a doctor.

This aside, they're a complete waste of money. If you must use them, get the cheapest you can. Despite meatball's complete lack of chemistry knowledge, a vitamin is a vitamin. If it hasn't got the same molecular structure then it's something else altogether!

There have been numerous studies that prove taking extra vitamin supplements can be detrimental. the best source is food, fruits, veggies etc.

that said...i tend to take multi vit tabs on and off...as in never regular on daily basis

The US spends 23 Billion dollars a year on vitamin supplements.

From: http://www.curiosityaroused.com/post/425900705/02-...

"In 2008 there was a meta-analysis done on studies of vitamin supplements. 67 clinical studies were used, with a total of over 200,000 total participants. 21 of the trials studied vitamin effects on disease and the rest of the trials were performed on healthy individuals. The meta-analysis found that taking antioxidant supplements may actually have a detrimental effect on health. Vitamin C supplements were found to have no positive or negative effects on health.

In other studies, vitamin A supplementation has been linked to increased rate of hip fracture in post-menopausal women. High intake of vitamin A can also cause problems for fetal development."

"23 billion dollars a year on pills that probably don’t do anything and can possibly hurt you. It’s something to think about the next time you feel guilty about your diet and try to assuage your guilt by reaching for the multivitamins."

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EDIT: meatball - hair analysis is a 'professional' way to determine nutrient requirements or deficiencies? Are you kidding?

Please read: "Commercial Hair Analysis: A Cardinal Sign of Quackery" http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/...

"Study Questions The Reliability of Hair Analysis" http://altmedicine.about.com/cs/govtregulation/a/H...

From Wiki:

"The AMA opposes chemical analysis of the hair as a determinant of the need for medical therapy and supports informing the American public and appropriate governmental agencies of this unproven practice and its potential for health care fraud." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_analysis#cite_no...

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EDIT: fretochose - tell us which part of the quackwatch article is wrong and why. Its no good trying to bash the site as a whole or the author. That doesn't mean the article is wrong. Are you up to it??

In short, vitamin supplements are only beneficial if your body is lacking that particular chemical. Now, in the western developed world, vitamin deficiencies are rare, although there may be an argument that we are not getting enough Vitamin D. However, providing you are eating a healthy balanced diet, there is no evidence that routine vitamin supplementation (except for folic acid in pregnancy, etc) is of any therapeutic value.

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@ Meatball: Without wishing to sound like a broken record, the problem with blue green algae and many similar supplements is that there is lttle or no clinical data to support it. Most evidence is based on studies in animals and In vitro research, you are confusing basic science research with clinical research, which I will get to in a minute.

Spirulina does contain negligible amounts of nutrients, in particular the B vitamins but it contains no nutrients that cannot be found in other foods, probably at a much cheaper cost. Spirulina has a lot of woo-woo roots. It comes from a pre-scientific era which believes that illness and disease is due to something being out of balance and that restoring this balance will rectify the illness. As we've discussed before, this simplistic concept of energy force and balance being related to healthcare has become the foundation of nutritional quackery and is an implausible, backward way of thinking.

The main problem is the idea that once nutritional balance is restored, the body will be able to heal itself of whatever disease it has. There are two reasons why the quacks like to use this concept: 1. By claiming that the product promotes the bodies' natural ability to heal itself, it avoids the need for FDA approval which would require products to have demonstrated evidence of efficacy to scientifically show that something works. 2. The appeal to emotion, by convincing the consumer that the body has the ability to heal itself without the need for any medical intervention is emotionally satisfying. It is philosophical, and not based on modern science. Now our body can fight infection and disease without help in some instances, but our bodies become less efficient as we get older. Diseases are very complex, only a minority of diseases are of nutritional origin. Certain nutritional deficiencies may exacerbated symptoms, but to suggest all disease can be cured by nutrition alone is a composition fallacy.

Spirulina claims to be able to detox the body, which is yet another example of nutritional quackery. The quacks claim that our body needs to heal itself due to all the toxins our body is exposed to in our environment, or by the drugs that we take. They claim that these "toxins" are stored in our cells, which then build up in the body, leading to disease. Now toxins can cause specific diseases. However, what the quacks fail to realise is that "dose is poison" and the amount that we are exposed to in the environment is seldom enough to cause harm and is eliminated from the body. Also, notice how the nutritional quacks are very vague about what toxins these detoxes actually remove and how. Detoxification has no scientific basis, but it's another way to avoid the problem with the FDA.

With regards to the supposed scientific research supporting spirulina, Here again, this represents a common problem within alternative medicine industry. They confuse basic science research with clinical research. Basic biological research involves working with petri dishs or test tubes and performing research on animals. It does not involve humans, which is clinical research. One of the main studies that the quacks use to support spirulina is one that claims it can, "boost the immune system" While this is a base for future research, this cannot be the basis of any clinical claims! Basic research alone is a poor predictor of the actual health effects of a substance on the human body. Human physiology is very complex, you cannot extrapolate data like that.

Now, the immune system is a complex series of cells and interactions, it can fight infection but it does so at risk to the host itself. Take inflammation for example, it is caused by the immune system in response to an infection, but this inflammation can often cause more damage than the infection itself in some cases. The bodies ability to interpret something as a threat can cause life threatening allergic reactions in some people...

So..the immune system is a double-edged sword and any attempt to change anything with the immune system is always risky. In short, even if the nutritional claims were true and it was demonstrated to increase immune activity, this is not necessarily a claim for health benefit, it could swing the other way and cause harm.

Bottom line, there is no evidence of efficacy and safety and this problem needs to be addressed.

J has a good answer for you.

Unless you grow your own food in uncontaminated and fertile soil food rarely supplies you with all the necessary nutrients.

meta-analysis is not research. it is reviewing published studies and compiling data to support a preconcieved notion.

quackwatch is a site run by an unlicensed psychiarist, successfully sued numerous times by supplement manufacturers for his outlandish statements