2024-03-20 23:13:00
[NTD News, Beijing time, March 20, 2024]In recent years, the global vitamin and dietary supplement (VDS) industry has developed rapidly, and the market size has continued to expand. Most American adults take dietary supplements and believe they are essential to maintaining good health. Experts say there are six supplements people don’t need to take.
The expected annual survey of U.S. adults by Ipsos released by the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) in 2023 shows that 74% of U.S. adults take dietary supplements, 55% of which are “regular” users”. 92% of users believe dietary supplements are important for maintaining health.
American biologist and Forbes columnist Steven Salzberg has previously said that if you are not severely deficient in vitamins, almost all studies have pointed out that taking vitamin supplements will not bring any benefits. Even more surprising, taking large amounts of vitamins regularly can be harmful.
Here are five vitamin supplements you should not take (unless recommended by your doctor):
Vitamin C
Vitamin A and beta carotene
Vitamin E
Vitamin B6
A multivitamin containing at least three vitamins or vitamins and minerals (and sometimes other ingredients)
On March 18, Salzberg added vitamin D and calcium supplements to the list.
A large new study just published in the Annals of Internal Medicine followed more than 36,000 older women to see how well they took a combination of vitamin D and calcium for 22 years. Participants took vitamins for seven years, and then researchers followed them for an additional 15 years.
About half of the participants in the study were assigned to take daily vitamin D and calcium supplements, and the other half took a placebo pill, but neither group knew whether their pill was a placebo.
The study found that participants in both groups had exactly the same risk of hip fracture. It doesn’t matter how much vitamin D they take, it doesn’t help if they take calcium at the same time, either way, taking vitamin D has no effect.
So, do vitamin D and calcium have an impact on mortality? Over a 22-year period, 1,817 women in the supplement group died of cancer, compared with 1,943 women in the placebo group. 2,621 women who took the supplement died from heart disease, compared with 2,420 in the placebo group.
Combining these two causes of death, 75 more people in the supplement group died from cancer or heart disease than those in the placebo group. So overall, there doesn’t seem to be any benefit at all from taking supplements, and it doesn’t reduce the risk of death.
The study also reported data on all causes of death, and there were still slightly more deaths in the supplement group. Although the difference was small, the annual mortality rate was higher in the supplement group (2.15%) than in the placebo group (2.14%).
Why might vitamin D and calcium supplementation increase the incidence of heart disease or reduce the incidence of cancer? It’s entirely possible, Zalzberg said, that the supplements had no effect at all and that the differences in mortality could simply be random changes.
Several studies have hypothesized that vitamin D may help prevent cancer, but the effect, if any, is minimal. As for heart disease, perhaps, as the authors of the new study speculate, long-term calcium supplementation can lead to coronary artery calcification, which is currently just a hypothesis.
If you’re not severely deficient, there’s no reason to take any vitamin supplements at all, and you can just buy some fresh fruit and eat it and be healthier for it, suggests Salzberg.
(Comprehensive reporting by reporter Li Zhaoxi/Editor: Lin Qing)
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