"...there are no benefits to taking multivitamins or supplements, at least if the hope is to prolong life or prevent disease or cancer." (Jaakko Mursu, nutritional epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota)
In recent years, studies have shown that vitamins such as A, C and E, which were supposed to lower risk of chronic illnesses like heart disease and cancer, didn't provide much benefit. But many patients kept taking them anyway, and few doctors in medical scrubs actively discouraged it, since the studies didn't show that taking vitamins did much harm either. Now, Jaakko Mursu, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, reports with his colleagues in the Archives of Internal Medicine that women who took multivitamins were 6% more likely to die over a 19-year period, compared with women not taking them.
Mursu and his team wearing lab coats or medical scrubs found that using multivitamins, which nearly half of all American adults do, was linked to a higher risk of death among a group of 38,000 women, average age 62, who were studied for nearly two decades. "Most supplements contain high amounts of specific compounds, and high doses could be toxic," says Mursu. "If you combine several supplements, or a multivitamin with supplements, then you reach even higher potentially toxic doses."
The researchers also looked at a variety of other supplements and found higher odds of death associated with six of them: Vitamin B 10% higher risk of death, compared with nonusers, Folic acid: 15%, Iron: 10%, Magnesium: 8%, Zinc: 8% and Copper: 45%
Thus, Mursu finally advise women to reconsider whether they need to use supplements, and if they really not in need of it, improving their diet is a better choice for it is more practical and safer.
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