Many people take vitamins, minerals and supplements on a daily basis, believing that by taking a simple pill they can help to protect their wellness and wellbeing.
Now a new book is throwing everything that you’ve ever thought about vitamin supplements into doubt. The research seems to indicate that high doses of vitamins can increase your chances of getting cancer and heart disease.
Researchers from the National Cancer Institute studied 11,000 men and found that those who took multivitamins on a daily basis were twice as likely to die from complications of advanced prostate cancer than those who did not take a daily multivitamin.
The word vitamin itself comes from the Latin ‘vita’, which means ‘life’ and millions of people take them on a daily basis in an attempt to extend their life, so this news will come as a devastating blow.
Of course, taking too few vitamins can also be bad for your health, as deficiencies of vitamins such as B1, B3, C and D can lead to unpleasant diseases such as pellagra, beriberi, scurvy and rickets. People genuinely do need vitamins in order to survive, and most vitamins are not made inside the body so have to be taken in from supplements or taken in via the food that we eat on a daily basis.
Experts in the field of nutrition argue that people do not need to take vitamins in supplemental form, and can get in all the vitamins they need in their daily diet and should avoid the supplements, which, they now believe, could lead to forms of cancer. The men who developed prostate cancer in the study were thought to be dealing with an excess of Vitamin E, so that is one vitamin that men are now being advised to avoid consuming in excess.
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