Al-Marsad newspaper: Prostate cancer expert, clinical professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Mark Garnick, revealed the danger of dietary supplements containing selenium or vitamin E, stressing the need to avoid them.
And according to the British newspaper “Express”, Garnick explained that these supplements can cause real and tangible harm.
Studies conducted in the 1980s and 1990s suggested that vitamin E and selenium somehow provide protection against prostate cancer. Selenium is a type of mineral and antioxidant that the body needs.
And the trial of the study of cancer prevention with selenium and vitamin E began in 2001, in which the 36 thousand volunteers were divided into four groups.
Each man took two pills a day, and the first group included a vitamin E pill and a selenium pill. The second group included vitamin E and a placebo, the third selenium and a placebo, and the fourth included two placebos. Neither the men nor their doctors knew who was taking what.
Although the study was supposed to run until 2011, it was stopped three years before that because no benefit was shown for vitamin E or selenium, but there were vague warning signs indicating the possibility of some harm.
A 2014 report, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, provided further explanation, as a team of researchers from across the United States looked at the data of about 5,000 of those volunteers, who sent clippings of their toenails when they joined the experiment.
Toenail clippings are an accurate way to measure the amount of selenium in the human body.
The study showed that taking vitamin E alone increased the risk of prostate cancer, but only in men who started the study with low levels of selenium.