This is why I'm very skeptical of the long-term health of food replacements like Soylent. We know vegetables are good for you. We're not really sure why. How can we possibly create a healthy food-replacement system if we don't fully understand what makes food healthy?
I'm really liking mealsquares http://www.mealsquares.com/, they're just expensive. They do rely on whole foods to take care of unknown unknowns in nutritional requirements.
Mealsquares are really small unfortunately. I found it hard to be full on them if I used for my full calorie intake.
Tasty things otherwise, it basically tastes like dense chocolate pastry.
If you want 'fast food', then a combo of prewashed veggies, frozen food like trader joes dumplings and things like mealsquares and soylent can work. I myself dont really like soylent.
All these "vitamin supplements aren't doing anything" articles I see are talking about general population people eating standard diets and then supplementing them with multi vitamins.
I'm interested in what happens when someone takes meal replacements that don't necessarily cover the micro nutrients and then takes multi vitamins.
I don't think we know this. We know that we can live complete, healthy lives on them, but we know that about meat and carbs, too. I'm happy that people are experimenting in an extreme way; that's the best way for me to learn from their experiences what works and what doesn't.
Indeed, the fibre content makes a big deal too. The more biochemistry and medicine you learn, the more you realize most of it hasn't even finished exploring "stamp collecting" mode. But what can you do? You have to keep pedaling and steering since you only get one life to work on.
We see these studies every few years. I think it's really just a publication bias issue. If a result of a study is that vitamins do what they're supposed to why would you publish that? Why would the media report on that?
Or maybe half the studies are funded by drug companies who enjoy profiteering? The 'average' person (no medical knowledge, no access to research journals, no background knowledge to interpret them) has no way to know. Society should welcome measured criticism, especially from the likes of BBC science journalists, as a counterbalance to constantly advertised commercial interests.
No drug company owns a patent on vitamin C. And this BBC article is barely above clickbait journalism. Don't pretend like this is some example of great high quality science reporting.
You would publish that because there's a vast industry that sells and advertises vitamins? The publication bias leans vastly in the opposite direction than you're intuiting here.
The publication bias would go in the other direction. A drug company showing the effectiveness of vitamin pills would publish that research to help them sell more vitamin pills; A drug company finding vitamin pills to be ineffective would be incentivised to not publish the research.
Further more, we're not talking about just one study here against a sea of studies in favour of vitamin supplements. Free radical theory has been shown to be effective in a petridish, but it has a neutral or negative effect in most large scale human studies.
Coincidentally, just yesterday I spoke with a friend of mine who's working in a shop selling dietary supplements and she claimed that pretty much the whole western world suffers from a severe vitamin D deficiency. A few hous later, I ordered bottles of vitamin D and K (on Amazon, because it's significantly cheaper than her quasi-eco shop).
I'll see how it goes, I'm giving her a three-month lasting benefit of a doubt, because according to my Google research, what she says is true, but I'm probably taking a blood test before and after to see what's up - and I'll consult with my doctor about it prior to taking the pills.
I think the NHS (UK Health System) just announced this week they are recommending people take Vitamin D supplements, particularly in winter. I can't find the link now but I definitely read it and it was in the major newspapers etc. AFAIK the problem is more 'multi vitamin' pills than specific ones.
Vitamin D pills definitely worked for me, I had what I can only describe as "brain fog" while mostly being inside during the winter. On a whim I bought some Vitamin D pills off amazon and within a few days the difference in how I felt was significant.
I no longer take them every day but I pop one periodically if I'm more tired/irritable/fuzzy than I would consider normal.
That doesn't appear to be one of the effects of vitamin D (and deficiency doesn't cause any neurological effects). I suspect the placebo effect is more likely (it will definitely have a large effect on brain fog).
Given that at the time it was Winter in the UK and I'd gotten into a sleep pattern of being awake at night and asleep during the day, I think a Vitamin D deficiency was pretty likely.
Given that there is no scientific evidence of those symptoms, I suspect that site pulled it out of their ass. If vitamin D deficiency did cause those symptoms, they would be symptoms of ricketts.
>Given that at the time it was Winter in the UK and I'd gotten into a sleep pattern of being awake at night and asleep during the day, I think a Vitamin D deficiency was pretty likely.
Possibly (assuming you didn't eat much milk or fish). However your symptoms probably had more to do with your sleep pattern than vitamin D.
Thanks for clarifying. I know it definitely hit the major newspapers/sites this week, who somehow screwed up the advice slightly, which the NHS then had to clarify.
Fish oil for many years was one of the most well substantiated supplements. Then it came out that only people with the right genetics benefit from it, particularly the Inuit who participated in the fish oil studies. So now I've thrown my hands up and am trying to eat what I think is a reasonable, "balanced" diet while hoping for the best.
That would be a very interesting experiment, please do blog about it and post it to HN. Some real world data on what this stuff does with you, even with sample size = 1, is very valuable if you go through stuff like blood tests.
I'd like to join the mailing list for the blog entry if you decide to make one!
How about just going on scholar.google.com and seeing what that dredges up instead?
It exists and it's not only painful to know how many people don't know about, but the people who trust anecdotal evidence, a small sample size (ding!) a random person with goods to sell (ding!) or healthwayfoodblogvitamins.biz.co
Not saying that the claim isn't true, but scholar.google.com exists and so do .edu, .edu.country, .gov and .gov.country
As a point of data, I have been taking Vitamin D supplements for a couple of years now. My blood levels have gone up from below the normal range to within the normal range; but they're still in the lower part of the normal range so I've upped the dose since I would like to get it up to the high end of normal. I'll see what the blood work at my next annual physical shows.
Hey me too. Same convo with a health nut friend. Only, I bought a Tespo (mainly because it'll easily fit into my daily routine without cause to remember multiple pills a day). I'm gonna keep a daily log and see how it effects my energy levels over the course of the next few weeks.
I was told by my parents (GPs) that you have to try pretty damn hard to truly OD on vitamin D though - basically chronically overdose; a one-time peak-intake doesn't do much, since the amount of vitamin D we produce on a sunny day is orders of magnitudes more than the maximum amounts advised the boxes.
Does your wife agree? I'm always open to a second opinion.
> ...since the amount of vitamin D we produce on a sunny day is orders of magnitudes more than the maximum amounts advised the boxes.
In general I agree with your attitude but in the case of D, some of us don't make as much where we live as we would if we lived where our parents or grandparents are from. I.e. my skin is darker than the people who have historically lived at the latitude where I live; my Indian grandparents got a lot more sun than I do. My measured D levels are "low"
The reason I put the quotes around "low" is: my levels are low for the stated levels in the USA. But who were the study group? How wide a variation is reasonable? Nobody has determined that. It's like the height and growth charts we were shown for our baby -- they were determined in the mid 1900s by doctors who looked at WASPy New England kids. Hmm..
To be fair, these longitudinal studies are almost impossible to do.
As an adult, yes. But for kids it's much easier. They can OD on one of the little glass Orbas Oil sized bottles of it.
On the subject of drugs and kids: you have to be crazy careful with pills of any kind if you have kids. Both Paracetamol and Aspirin are deadly to kids in adult doses.
Depending on where you live, those can probably easily be fixed by just spending some time in the sun in the mornings and eating more greens. If you love avocado then it should be easy.
Supposedly you shouldnt wear long sleeve clothing and not take a shower frequently either too, since washing away your body surface oil reduces the effect.
Reasonable things to do in our tribal days, not so much nowadays. Much easier to spend $15 a year and take a vitamin d after your first meal.
I'm a huge fan of taking pharmaceutical shortcuts, but a small amount of daily sunlight gives you much more than a vitamin D tablet. There are benefits in mood, sleep, and eyesight. Plus the many fun things that can be done outside alone or with friends.
I used to think that going outside (and exercise in general) was something I had to "make time for" and spend energy on. These days I realise that going outside actually boosts energy. I work to live, not live to work.
Whatever did we do? One possibility is that "we" got skin cancer at higher rates than we do now. Or at least we would have had we lived much past the age of thirty. And that's just one possibility that sprang immediately to mind, I'm sure there are others that are more sound were one to give it more than the brief milliseconds of thought that you and I obviously did.
You do know that thirty was limited mainly from infant mortality, war, and complications in childbirths, right? In particular, men could live a very long time. Often did.
Not necessarily; see radiation hormesis [1]. Small amounts can be beneficial even if large amounts are harmful.
We also know there's a link between more sunlight and less incidence of other types of cancer. It's still unknown whether this is mediated by Vitamin D or other mechanisms.
I agree sunlight in general is important and I try to seek it out a lot. Being in an office with a good amount of sunlight is important for me. It's just when I heard that what is really needed for "good" vitamin D production made me realize that it would be too much of a relative sacrifice. It made me accept just using vitamin D pills.
Being outside a lot in your coat (because its cold) during the day will give you a lot of the benefits of sunshine, but it won't give you good vitamin D production despite all of the other benefits unfortunately.
Hard to believe. We have fortified foods and it should be rather hard to catch a nutrition deficiency, even if your diet solely consists of cheeseburgers (This probably differs from country to country).
Vitamin D can be found in Fish, Egg and it's even added to Milk.
Our skin stops producing Vitamin D once it's synthesized about 10,000 IU.
The RDA is only 400 IU.
There's mounting evidence that a regular intake in the thousands of IU (or synthesis from sun bathing, depending on your skin tone, latitude, and cloud cover) has health benefits beyond keeping you out of the hospital.
I got it right away. People not getting these jokes is just another confirmation that we have a critical pirate shortage these days, raising our global temperature.
We already know vitamin supplements work. When people present with vitamin deficiencies, they are prescribed supplements, and the deficiency symptoms go away. The anti-supplement agenda is trivially undermined by well-known facts.
So now we're just talking about dose, symptoms, and lifestyle. Whether it's an orange or a supplement, the vitamin C still works.
Some studies indicate that a fairly high proportion of the population has "sub-clinical" vitamin deficiency, e.g., in C. I used to get nosebleeds pretty often. I have a diet that's very low in fruits and vegetables. When I started taking C, my nosebleeds went away immediately. I'd rather take the supplement than incorporate fruits and vegetables into my diet.
You are conflating having a deficiency with supplementation despite having no deficiency.
If you have a deficiency, yes, you need to take more of that particular vitamin. But the evidence is against people without a deficiency taking a general purpose vitamin. A good pointer to recent studies: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/more-evidence-that-routine-...
> Doesn't your body produce vitamin D from sun exposure?
Yes, but (a) your body's ability to do this decreases as you age, and (b) sun exposure has other downsides such as increased risk of skin cancer, so there's a tradeoff involved.
> You're not going to get skin cancer in the 10-30 minutes of sun exposure required for daily vitamin D.
Different people's skins have different sensitivities. Also, skin cancer doesn't happen in one exposure; the risk builds up over time.
> Stop clinging to that as a reason to shelter indoors and replace life with vitamins and manufactured meals.
Stop making assumptions. I personally have dark enough skin that a reasonable amount of sun exposure doesn't bother me. But that apparently didn't stop my vitamin D from being low (see my post elsewhere in this thread), so evidently I am dealing with the other thing I mentioned, the fact that your body's ability to make vitamin D from sun exposure decreases with age. So I started taking a supplement. Would you rather I just let my vitamin D be too low no matter how much sun I got?
There's always the possibility he would have lived to 100 without taking vitamin supplements, but that's probably not the way to bet. In 1980 only 2.8% of the population lived to be 90, and longevity numbers skew female.
Anybody know of issues with taking D3 supplements? I take 1000 IUs per day. I can't drink milk or eat anything with lactose or milk protein, and am a sun-avoiding ginger
As always, the devil is in the details. Different vitamins have different effects, they aren't just "antioxidants". Showing that one vitamin supplement is harmful doesn't remotely prove that others aren't beneficial because antioxidants.
This article makes sweeping generalizations that vitamin supplements "don't work" based on a couple of studies on beta-carotene. Many of us already thought beta-carotene supplementation would be worthless. And I bet once they do a study of vitamin E supplementation, it will also be worthless or harmful. On the other hand, you're not going to find a study proving vitamin C supplmentation is harmful. And I very much doubt if they did an isolated study on non-beta-carotene vitamin A, they'd find harmful effects.
"A study published in 2007 from the US National Cancer Institute, for instance, found that men that took multivitamins were twice as likely to die from prostate cancer compared to those who didn’t. And in 2011, a similar study on 35,533 healthy men found that vitamin E and selenium supplementation increased prostate cancer by 17%."
They do cite quite a few articles that show negative effects of specific vitamins.
That study used 400UI of vit E, which is more than 10x the RDA. Mega-dosing is what's dangerous. Good multivitamins use a fraction of that dose.
The BBC article is merely clickbait.. People love to jump on the 'vitamins are actually dangerous' bandwagon. if you do a bit of digging into the studies they're quoting you'll find that their claims are unjustified.
"Mega-dosing is what's dangerous. Good multivitamins use a fraction of that dose."
The problem is that a lot of multivitamins (and supplements in general) have doses which are all over the place, and megadoses are quite common. You'll also find many reviews and testimonials that swear to the efficacy of any given dose of these supplements. On top of that, many doctors recommend that people take "a multivitamin", without any further guidance as to the ingredients or their dosage. Finally, a lot of people don't trust doctors and believe in alternative medicine, naturopathy, or what have you, from which they'll often hear recommendations to megadose because allegedly, the RDA's are set way too low (for a variety of reasons, depending on the supplement).
There's a lot of conflicting medical advice out there, and for the average consumer (who may have a host of medical issues, or suspected issues) it's not always as clear as "just take the RDA".
> On the other hand, you're not going to find a study proving vitamin C supplmentation is harmful.
But I don't think that you'll find a good study that says that it's beneficial, either, unless you had a deficiency.
-----
edit: and megadoses could certainly turn out to be harmful...
"[...] Take vitamin C, Pauling’s preferred supplement. At the correct dose, vitamin C neutralises highly charged free radicals by accepting their free electron. It’s a molecular martyr, taking the hit upon itself to protect the cellular neighbourhood.
"But by accepting an electron, the vitamin C becomes a free radical itself, able to damage cell membranes, proteins and DNA. As the food chemist William Porter wrote in 1993, '[vitamin C] is truly a two-headed Janus, a Dr Jekyll-Mr Hyde, an oxymoron of antioxidants.'
"Thankfully, in normal circumstances, the enzyme vitamin C reductase can return vitamin C’s antioxidant persona. But what if there’s so much vitamin C that it simply can’t keep up with supply? Although such simplifying of complex biochemistry is in itself problematic, the clinical trials above provide some possible outcomes."
My doctor told me to take Vit E due to some bad liver numbers. Two months later the numbers were significantly closer to normal, so it seems like Vit E supplements are doing something for me...
What I dread is that how many books like those written by Pauling - who was a Nobel prize winner - do we consider true and follow its advice because says so? How many placebos might be laying around?
What would be a practical way for folks that don't have anything to do with X field to test if what scientists say is actually true? - at least in such important field as what we consume -
Last year, I was sick all the time, just for a joke a co-worker offered a box of vitamins (1 month of pills). I took them just to try.
My big surprise was that when taking them I wasn't feeling any "better"... but when I stopped, I clearly felt that I wasn't sleeping as well as few days before.
I tried again several months later, and to my amazement, it worked exactly as the first time.
I'm very skeptical about the studies around vitamins and I prefer taking some in the winter since it's the period of the year I feel the most stressed and sleepy.
I already spoke with other people having the same experience and none of them has more insights of how healthy this is or not...
I heard a doctor say that North Americans have the most expensive urine on the planet. Most vitamins are flushed out of your system and then flushed away.
Pretty much everything that can have a positive impact on the body can have a negative one if you overdo it (e.g. water, salt). If someone is claiming something can have a positive impact on the body, it doesn't make sense to me to assume it's harmless as well without evidence.
Eat real food. Mushrooms have vitamin D, kale has vitamin K.
All of these things have varying degrees of volatility, so cooking can making them more or less bioavailable, and in pill form they oxidize and have a wide range of potency. Cheap supplements almost certainly have no potency so you're just throwing your money away. Most people should just eat real food and not so much of it. (And pizza is not a real food sorry.)
I cured my anxiety and depression with vitamin B supplements. It turned out I had a B12 deficiency, and the lack of B12 was having a compound worsening effect on my nervous system, probably depleting the other nutrients and causing me constant stress. (A bad habit of negative thinking also was the problem.)
Now I don't believe that vitamins are some kind of cure-all either. Vitamins, by their design, are supplements. Meaning they augment an existing healthy diet. From what I read in the article, the people in the study were overloading on vitamins, which I wouldn't be surprised can cause health problems. It's no different that say, overloading on sodium. I often wonder if the synthesizing process and the "filler" material used in vitamins can be generally bad for you.
My wife bought me a book about anxiety. It talked about vitamin deficiencies contributing to low serotonin levels being linked to depleted B12 in the blood stream, so I gave vitamin B-complex a shot. In like a week I stopped having bizarre, end-of-the-world thoughts and feeling stress over every little thing. In two weeks I felt like a normal person. I haven't looked back since.
As a kid I used to idolise scientists, and Linus Pauling was one of them - having been one of only two people to ever get two Nobel prizes - the other one a Peace prize.
Now I count him as a delusional and deluding self-promoter.
On the other hand, I'm sure that it is good to take small doses of many different vitamins in addition to well-balanced diet.
I was going to add a note similar to others here, that many people have a vitamin deficiency. It would help for those particular deficiencies and have a very little chance of harm for the other vitamins.
> Now I count him as a delusional and deluding self-promoter.
I think there is probably a context to Linus Pauling's making an end-run around the medical-industrial complex of his day. My understanding is that the physiologists were making progress in figuring out how biological systems work, while the pharmaceutical industry was coming up with new patent medicines to sell. Medicine has always been a more practical science than a theoretical one, so the doctors understandably tended to listen to the drug companies more than the physiologists.
Linus Pauling singlehandedly did more to make the public at large appreciate the importance of nutrients than anyone else.
Three articles in this issue address the role of vitamin and mineral supplements for preventing the occurrence or progression of chronic diseases. First, Fortmann and colleagues systematically reviewed trial evidence to update the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendation on the efficacy of vitamin supplements for primary prevention in community-dwelling adults with no nutritional deficiencies. After reviewing 3 trials of multivitamin supplements and 24 trials of single or paired vitamins that randomly assigned more than 400 000 participants, the authors concluded that there was no clear evidence of a beneficial effect of supplements on all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, or cancer.
Second, Grodstein and coworkers evaluated the efficacy of a daily multivitamin to prevent cognitive decline among 5947 men aged 65 years or older participating in the Physicians’ Health Study II. After 12 years of follow-up, there were no differences between the multivitamin and placebo groups in overall cognitive performance or verbal memory. Adherence to the intervention was high, and the large sample size resulted in precise estimates showing that use of a multivitamin supplement in a well-nourished elderly population did not prevent cognitive decline. Grodstein and coworkers’ findings are compatible with a recent review (3) of 12 fair- to good-quality trials that evaluated dietary supplements, including multivitamins, B vitamins, vitamins E and C, and omega-3 fatty acids, in persons with mild cognitive impairment or mild to moderate dementia. None of the supplements improved cognitive function.
Third, Lamas and associates assessed the potential benefits of a high-dose, 28-component multivitamin supplement in 1708 men and women with a previous myocardial infarction participating in TACT (Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy). After a median follow-up of 4.6 years, there was no significant difference in recurrent cardiovascular events with multivitamins compared with placebo (hazard ratio, 0.89 [95% CI, 0.75 to 1.07]). The trial was limited by high rates of nonadherence and dropouts.
The large body of accumulated evidence has important public health and clinical implications. Evidence is sufficient to advise against routine supplementation, and we should translate null and negative findings into action. The message is simple: Most supplements do not prevent chronic disease or death, their use is not justified, and they should be avoided. This message is especially true for the general population with no clear evidence of micronutrient deficiencies, who represent most supplement users in the United States and in other countries.
Vitamin B12 supplements are ESSENTIALS for vegans, and recommended to vegetarians. Vitamin D are also recommended. Others vitamin supplements are quite useless.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 212 ms ] threadTasty things otherwise, it basically tastes like dense chocolate pastry.
If you want 'fast food', then a combo of prewashed veggies, frozen food like trader joes dumplings and things like mealsquares and soylent can work. I myself dont really like soylent.
Well, in order to finally achieve that understanding, what are we going to need to do?
Basically, attempt something like Soylent and see if it works, adjusting it as we learn... which is what they seem to be doing.
I'm interested in what happens when someone takes meal replacements that don't necessarily cover the micro nutrients and then takes multi vitamins.
I don't think we know this. We know that we can live complete, healthy lives on them, but we know that about meat and carbs, too. I'm happy that people are experimenting in an extreme way; that's the best way for me to learn from their experiences what works and what doesn't.
Further more, we're not talking about just one study here against a sea of studies in favour of vitamin supplements. Free radical theory has been shown to be effective in a petridish, but it has a neutral or negative effect in most large scale human studies.
I'll see how it goes, I'm giving her a three-month lasting benefit of a doubt, because according to my Google research, what she says is true, but I'm probably taking a blood test before and after to see what's up - and I'll consult with my doctor about it prior to taking the pills.
I no longer take them every day but I pop one periodically if I'm more tired/irritable/fuzzy than I would consider normal.
Given that at the time it was Winter in the UK and I'd gotten into a sleep pattern of being awake at night and asleep during the day, I think a Vitamin D deficiency was pretty likely.
>Given that at the time it was Winter in the UK and I'd gotten into a sleep pattern of being awake at night and asleep during the day, I think a Vitamin D deficiency was pretty likely.
Possibly (assuming you didn't eat much milk or fish). However your symptoms probably had more to do with your sleep pattern than vitamin D.
They've been hinting at it for a while now, and the new advice came out in July.
I'd like to join the mailing list for the blog entry if you decide to make one!
Vitamin D has a pretty strong position for "general health, all-cause mortality."
It exists and it's not only painful to know how many people don't know about, but the people who trust anecdotal evidence, a small sample size (ding!) a random person with goods to sell (ding!) or healthwayfoodblogvitamins.biz.co
Not saying that the claim isn't true, but scholar.google.com exists and so do .edu, .edu.country, .gov and .gov.country
You can OD on it so always read a label + take medical advise from a professional, not some random HN post :)
Source: my wife, pharmacist (a proper one, she has a doctorate).
Does your wife agree? I'm always open to a second opinion.
In general I agree with your attitude but in the case of D, some of us don't make as much where we live as we would if we lived where our parents or grandparents are from. I.e. my skin is darker than the people who have historically lived at the latitude where I live; my Indian grandparents got a lot more sun than I do. My measured D levels are "low"
The reason I put the quotes around "low" is: my levels are low for the stated levels in the USA. But who were the study group? How wide a variation is reasonable? Nobody has determined that. It's like the height and growth charts we were shown for our baby -- they were determined in the mid 1900s by doctors who looked at WASPy New England kids. Hmm..
To be fair, these longitudinal studies are almost impossible to do.
On the subject of drugs and kids: you have to be crazy careful with pills of any kind if you have kids. Both Paracetamol and Aspirin are deadly to kids in adult doses.
http://chrismasterjohnphd.com/2016/12/09/the-ultimate-vitami...
Steve Gibson has documented his research: https://www.grc.com/health/vitamin-d.htm
Vitamins are a label we give, not on structure, but on function and our own ability to synthesize them.
Vitamin D likely wouldn't be a vitamin were we all still running naked in Africa, but that's mostly not the case.
Reasonable things to do in our tribal days, not so much nowadays. Much easier to spend $15 a year and take a vitamin d after your first meal.
I used to think that going outside (and exercise in general) was something I had to "make time for" and spend energy on. These days I realise that going outside actually boosts energy. I work to live, not live to work.
We also know there's a link between more sunlight and less incidence of other types of cancer. It's still unknown whether this is mediated by Vitamin D or other mechanisms.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
Being outside a lot in your coat (because its cold) during the day will give you a lot of the benefits of sunshine, but it won't give you good vitamin D production despite all of the other benefits unfortunately.
Vitamin D can be found in Fish, Egg and it's even added to Milk.
The RDA is only 400 IU.
There's mounting evidence that a regular intake in the thousands of IU (or synthesis from sun bathing, depending on your skin tone, latitude, and cloud cover) has health benefits beyond keeping you out of the hospital.
Examine.com has a comprehensive summary of the current research: https://examine.com/supplements/Vitamin+D/
If you actually look at the RDA and Compare to your typical diet you'll find you're way under. At least I was and I eat reasonably well.
I've actually noticed a lot of health benefits since I start taking higher doses of vitamin c.
[1] http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/...
[2] http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/...
[3] http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/...
So now we're just talking about dose, symptoms, and lifestyle. Whether it's an orange or a supplement, the vitamin C still works.
Some studies indicate that a fairly high proportion of the population has "sub-clinical" vitamin deficiency, e.g., in C. I used to get nosebleeds pretty often. I have a diet that's very low in fruits and vegetables. When I started taking C, my nosebleeds went away immediately. I'd rather take the supplement than incorporate fruits and vegetables into my diet.
If you have a deficiency, yes, you need to take more of that particular vitamin. But the evidence is against people without a deficiency taking a general purpose vitamin. A good pointer to recent studies: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/more-evidence-that-routine-...
Yes, but (a) your body's ability to do this decreases as you age, and (b) sun exposure has other downsides such as increased risk of skin cancer, so there's a tradeoff involved.
Stop clinging to that as a reason to shelter indoors and replace life with vitamins and manufactured meals.
Different people's skins have different sensitivities. Also, skin cancer doesn't happen in one exposure; the risk builds up over time.
> Stop clinging to that as a reason to shelter indoors and replace life with vitamins and manufactured meals.
Stop making assumptions. I personally have dark enough skin that a reasonable amount of sun exposure doesn't bother me. But that apparently didn't stop my vitamin D from being low (see my post elsewhere in this thread), so evidently I am dealing with the other thing I mentioned, the fact that your body's ability to make vitamin D from sun exposure decreases with age. So I started taking a supplement. Would you rather I just let my vitamin D be too low no matter how much sun I got?
Linus Pauling lived to be 93. That probably contributed to people believing in megadosing vitamin C.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#/media/File%...
Considering his intelligence and age, I'm sure that it was convincing at the time.
These days more people are living into their second century:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/there-are-more-amer...
http://www.npr.org/2016/03/30/472442367/in-one-italian-villa...
This article makes sweeping generalizations that vitamin supplements "don't work" based on a couple of studies on beta-carotene. Many of us already thought beta-carotene supplementation would be worthless. And I bet once they do a study of vitamin E supplementation, it will also be worthless or harmful. On the other hand, you're not going to find a study proving vitamin C supplmentation is harmful. And I very much doubt if they did an isolated study on non-beta-carotene vitamin A, they'd find harmful effects.
They do cite quite a few articles that show negative effects of specific vitamins.
The BBC article is merely clickbait.. People love to jump on the 'vitamins are actually dangerous' bandwagon. if you do a bit of digging into the studies they're quoting you'll find that their claims are unjustified.
The problem is that a lot of multivitamins (and supplements in general) have doses which are all over the place, and megadoses are quite common. You'll also find many reviews and testimonials that swear to the efficacy of any given dose of these supplements. On top of that, many doctors recommend that people take "a multivitamin", without any further guidance as to the ingredients or their dosage. Finally, a lot of people don't trust doctors and believe in alternative medicine, naturopathy, or what have you, from which they'll often hear recommendations to megadose because allegedly, the RDA's are set way too low (for a variety of reasons, depending on the supplement).
There's a lot of conflicting medical advice out there, and for the average consumer (who may have a host of medical issues, or suspected issues) it's not always as clear as "just take the RDA".
It's not a stretch that there are other correlations at play here. People who feel sick or lethargic try vitamins.
But I don't think that you'll find a good study that says that it's beneficial, either, unless you had a deficiency.
-----
edit: and megadoses could certainly turn out to be harmful...
"[...] Take vitamin C, Pauling’s preferred supplement. At the correct dose, vitamin C neutralises highly charged free radicals by accepting their free electron. It’s a molecular martyr, taking the hit upon itself to protect the cellular neighbourhood.
"But by accepting an electron, the vitamin C becomes a free radical itself, able to damage cell membranes, proteins and DNA. As the food chemist William Porter wrote in 1993, '[vitamin C] is truly a two-headed Janus, a Dr Jekyll-Mr Hyde, an oxymoron of antioxidants.'
"Thankfully, in normal circumstances, the enzyme vitamin C reductase can return vitamin C’s antioxidant persona. But what if there’s so much vitamin C that it simply can’t keep up with supply? Although such simplifying of complex biochemistry is in itself problematic, the clinical trials above provide some possible outcomes."
I would not generalize this to the average person, however, due to evidence of harm (such as hemorrhagic stroke [2] and increased mortality [3] )
1 = https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2928471/
2 = https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2586922/
3 = https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15537682
What would be a practical way for folks that don't have anything to do with X field to test if what scientists say is actually true? - at least in such important field as what we consume -
I'm very skeptical about the studies around vitamins and I prefer taking some in the winter since it's the period of the year I feel the most stressed and sleepy.
I already spoke with other people having the same experience and none of them has more insights of how healthy this is or not...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/supplements-and-safet...
All of these things have varying degrees of volatility, so cooking can making them more or less bioavailable, and in pill form they oxidize and have a wide range of potency. Cheap supplements almost certainly have no potency so you're just throwing your money away. Most people should just eat real food and not so much of it. (And pizza is not a real food sorry.)
Now I don't believe that vitamins are some kind of cure-all either. Vitamins, by their design, are supplements. Meaning they augment an existing healthy diet. From what I read in the article, the people in the study were overloading on vitamins, which I wouldn't be surprised can cause health problems. It's no different that say, overloading on sodium. I often wonder if the synthesizing process and the "filler" material used in vitamins can be generally bad for you.
Now I count him as a delusional and deluding self-promoter.
On the other hand, I'm sure that it is good to take small doses of many different vitamins in addition to well-balanced diet.
The evidence seems to say otherwise. There have been many studies over the past decade of general vitamin supplementation, and it does not hold up: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/more-evidence-that-routine-...
As for most things, it's all about the dosage.
But thanks for the link, I'll read that too.
The Dark Side of Linus Pauling's Legacy
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pauling.ht...
I think there is probably a context to Linus Pauling's making an end-run around the medical-industrial complex of his day. My understanding is that the physiologists were making progress in figuring out how biological systems work, while the pharmaceutical industry was coming up with new patent medicines to sell. Medicine has always been a more practical science than a theoretical one, so the doctors understandably tended to listen to the drug companies more than the physiologists.
Linus Pauling singlehandedly did more to make the public at large appreciate the importance of nutrients than anyone else.
Three articles in this issue address the role of vitamin and mineral supplements for preventing the occurrence or progression of chronic diseases. First, Fortmann and colleagues systematically reviewed trial evidence to update the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendation on the efficacy of vitamin supplements for primary prevention in community-dwelling adults with no nutritional deficiencies. After reviewing 3 trials of multivitamin supplements and 24 trials of single or paired vitamins that randomly assigned more than 400 000 participants, the authors concluded that there was no clear evidence of a beneficial effect of supplements on all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, or cancer.
Second, Grodstein and coworkers evaluated the efficacy of a daily multivitamin to prevent cognitive decline among 5947 men aged 65 years or older participating in the Physicians’ Health Study II. After 12 years of follow-up, there were no differences between the multivitamin and placebo groups in overall cognitive performance or verbal memory. Adherence to the intervention was high, and the large sample size resulted in precise estimates showing that use of a multivitamin supplement in a well-nourished elderly population did not prevent cognitive decline. Grodstein and coworkers’ findings are compatible with a recent review (3) of 12 fair- to good-quality trials that evaluated dietary supplements, including multivitamins, B vitamins, vitamins E and C, and omega-3 fatty acids, in persons with mild cognitive impairment or mild to moderate dementia. None of the supplements improved cognitive function.
Third, Lamas and associates assessed the potential benefits of a high-dose, 28-component multivitamin supplement in 1708 men and women with a previous myocardial infarction participating in TACT (Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy). After a median follow-up of 4.6 years, there was no significant difference in recurrent cardiovascular events with multivitamins compared with placebo (hazard ratio, 0.89 [95% CI, 0.75 to 1.07]). The trial was limited by high rates of nonadherence and dropouts.
The large body of accumulated evidence has important public health and clinical implications. Evidence is sufficient to advise against routine supplementation, and we should translate null and negative findings into action. The message is simple: Most supplements do not prevent chronic disease or death, their use is not justified, and they should be avoided. This message is especially true for the general population with no clear evidence of micronutrient deficiencies, who represent most supplement users in the United States and in other countries.