5:09pm Tuesday 24th February 2009
By Doctor Tom Smith
Is it true that extra vitamins, through supplements and so forth, can shorten people’s lives?
Studies to see if vitamin supplements would reduce deaths from cancer and heart attacks were stopped after a few years because more people in the groups taking the supplements (in particular beta-carotene) were dying than in the groups taking placebo. I’m surprised that companies can still market beta-carotene as a supplement to the general public. If a prescription medicine had had similar trial results, it would have been taken off the market. I see the vitamin makers call the trials ‘fatally flawed’. I don’t see the flaw in the published papers, and would be grateful if someone could point it out to me. In the meantime I’m sceptical about the claims for ‘anti-oxidants’. We get plenty of vitamins from normal food without needing to pop pills.
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