My Vitamins Are Killing Me

Dear Reader,
I have been asked many times recently for my opinion on recent publicity that taking a multivitamin decreases life expectancy. I have responded; but the inquiries continue.
For your information I have reproduced this article from Dr Dach. For the references and much more from the Good Dr click on the title above to go to his highly informative website.
Gary moller
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I received this email this morning from my son:

Hey Dad,
How are you? What do you make of this CNN.com article ( 1 ) ?
It says that taking vitamins increases risk of mortality.
Does this make any sense?

Love, Benjamin
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My reply to Benjamin (see below):

Dear Benjamin,

This CNN news article is based on medical research which is nonsense. In fact, the original study published in the February JAMA is s! eriously flawed as fully explained here.

There are tons of studies showing health benefits of various vitamins and nutritional supplements. (see below).

Negative vitamin stories are frequently run in the mass media. These are usually studies which are funded by drug companies, and the researchers are paid to come up with negative findings in order to discredit vitamins so people will take more drugs.
Its a simple matter of follow the money trail.

When the studies are done by a neutral party such as the Chinese government, the results are closer to reality, such as the following study which showed a 9 per cent reduction in mortality from only three vitamins: E, A and selenium. They also has a 13% reduction in cancer mortality, and a 21% reduction in gastric cancer mortality.

Vitamin supplementation studies in Li! nxian, China: ( 2 )

Nutrition intervention trials in Linxian, China: supplementation with specific vitamin/mineral combinations, cancer incidence, and disease-specific mortality in the general population: ( 2 )

Beta-carotene, selenium, and vitamin E had a significant beneficial effect on mortality, especially from cancer.

When subjects took these three supplements, they had:

9% reduction in overall mortality

13% reduction in cancer mortality

21% reduction in stomach cancer mortality

Here is another study showing selenium supplementation preventing esophageal and gastric cancer, heart disease, stroke, and total death: (! 3 )

Here are articles on Folate preventing Birth Defects (Neural Tube defects) in the developing fetus. ( 4 ) ( 5 )

Here are articles on Vitamin C preventig coronary artery disease and a variety of chronic diseases: ( 6 ) ( 7 )

Vitamin B-12 supplementation is now recomended by the federal government for everyone past 50.
Here's why: ( 8 )

Here is a large collection of clinical studies of vitamins, minerals and nutritional supplements for various disease with considerable benefits demonstrated: ( 9 )

Bottom line, son, is tha! t you can't believe the newspapers or media when it comes to vitamin, mineral or nutritional supplement stories, because the most important thing to the media is their advertising dollar which comes from the drug companies. The media will therefore tend to run stories which are negative for vitamins and supplements. These news media stories should not be taken at face value, and are about as true as paid Direct-to-Consumer drug advertising which also tends to be false and deceptive.

Love from Dad