Approximately half of American adults take a vitamin or mineral supplements. There’s so much hype about dietary supplements now days, and very often the benefits are not there. Asking your Health Care Providers (Doctor, Nutritionist) to help you figure out which vitamins will be best for you is the best policy.
A new study published in JAMA concluded It is always better to get vitamins and minerals from the diet, from foods. However, a small percentage of the population may benefit from vitamins such as pregnant women, infants, or older adults either because they have a medical condition that could interfere with absorption or metabolism of a vitamin or mineral, or are taking medications that may have that adverse effect.
Dr. Manson’s take away points:
1. Healthy food is better than pills.
2. For certain people there’s enough evidence to support taking vitamins and minerals, but for the generally healthy population with good diets, there is no evidence.
The overview was based on several professional society guidelines, and from randomized clinical trials. Dr. Manson also reported that they’ve done many of the trials themselves, testing the role of higher doses of some of these vitamins and minerals — vitamin C, vitamin E, beta-carotene, folic acid. They’re testing vitamin D and Omega-3s now, as well as multi-vitamins.
For healthy general population, there is no additional benefit from supplementation. And there are advantages of getting the vitamins and minerals from foods because they’re better absorbed that way.
For the population who can benefit from vitamins and supplements are as follow:
· Pregnancy: folic acid, prenatal vitamins
· Infants and children: for breastfed infants, vitamin D until weaning, and iron from age 4-6 months
· Midlife and older adults: Some may benefit from supplemental vitamin B12, vitamin D and/or calcium
· Other high-risk groups: Medical conditions that interfere with nutrient absorption or metabolism, osteoporosis, selected medication use, and others.
Then why is it that so many doctors routinely recommend multivitamins even to healthy younger folks?
There is one large-scale randomized trial that suggests there may be a modest reduction in the risk of cancer, and we are trying to see if those findings can be replicated. Dr. Manson is doing a large randomized trial of multivitamins right now, a second trial, looking at the effects in reducing risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease. There is no clear evidence that people who have a healthy, well-balanced diet will get benefits from multivitamins or other dietary supplements.
It’s important to know that you’re taking a high-quality supplement in terms of getting the amount of vitamin or mineral that it says it has on the label and also that there isn’t contamination by microbes, heavy metals or toxins. One way to ensure that you’re getting a product that has undergone independent quality control testing and independent audit is to look for labels such as U.S. Pharmacopeia, NSF International or UL, or other information on the label suggesting it’s undergone an independent quality control test.
Generally, patients are overwhelmed by all of the promotions of vitamins and minerals and other dietary supplements. Some of the individual supplements are more than 10 times the recommended amount. The single supplements that people most often take in high doses that we should be most concerned about are vitamin E and beta carotene, which have been linked to some risks when taken in very high doses. In order to avoid risks and get the recommended amounts if vitamins and minerals the best thing you can do is to have well balanced diet.
