You might have already read the news last week about the disappointing results of a large clinical study that showed no protective benefits of taking Vitamin E and C on cancer rates. I almost wrote a short piece about it but decided not to. However, I can’t ignore the post written by Tara Parker-Pope on her health blog at the New York Times and if you take mega-doses of vitamins, you should read this too. She cites more than 10 studies done over the years that show either no benefit from taking certain vitamins or actually show an increased risk of the very things these vitamins are purported to help.

As a practitioner it becomes increasingly hard to recommend any specific vitamin regimen except for those we’ve studied and known about for years, like the effects of Vitamin D and calcium on bone growth. As a result of advances in technology in the 1930s scientists discovered ways to enrich existing food sources with calcium and Vit D in order to reverse the devasting effects these deficiencies had on the body. Just recently the recommended daily allowance for Vit D was doubled for that infants, children and teens.  In the same way, in the early 1920s, the practice of adding iodine to salt came about as a way of preventing goiter.

But it’s one thing to correct true vitamin deficiencies – it’s quite another to be taking mega-doses of vitamins and minerals in the hopes that they will prevent diseases like cancer that are clearly multi-factorial.

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Related posts:

1. Who Knew? Calcium and Vitamin D Deficiency Calcium and Vitamin D go hand-in-hand. Vitamin D is important...
2. Who Knew? The Role of Vitamin D Vitamin D (which acts like a hormone in our bodies) and...

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