Save money and ditch your multi-vitamin

Oh, boy did I ever used to be a ‘true believer’ about the power of the vitamin pill. Back in the 1970’s I read Adele Davis, and got on the bandwagon with mega-doses of this, that and the other thing. But over the last couple decades I’ve been getting rid of them one by one.

This has happened as the scientific research simply failed to document what those hawking the vitamins claimed.

Today, I take 3,000 to 4,000 I.U. daily of Vitamin D3 (that much because I’ve had cancer) and a couple of fish oil/Omega 3 capsules. That’s all I take in the way of supplements.

Vitamin D3 can’t be gotten from food sources, only coming from sunlight. It has also been shown, in study after study to reduce the risk of initial cancers, in addition to reducing the recurrence of cancer. It also strengthens bones. We don’t get as much as we used to historically, since we live most of our lives indoors, and we use suncreen.

The vitamin industry is a multi-billion dollar business, that I believe, exists largely to get into the wallets of Americans afraid of getting sick.

It seems that I’m not alone in this belief:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Save your money on multi-vitamins

From the Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter ( The Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy ) the final word is save your money on those expensive multi-vitamins. This isn’t exactly breaking news, as I’ve been seeing small mentions of this before now, and already quit taking them. Tufts, however, is reporting that “the largest study ever of multimitamin use among older women has found that the pills made no significant difference in the risk of cancer, heart disease or overall mortality.”

The Tufts data is from research in the Archives of Internal Medicine, by Marian L. Neuhouser, Ph.D, of the Fred Hutchinson Research Center and colleagues. They noted that although the reasons and motivations of those who take multivitamins are wide ranging and vary greatly, fueled by product claims from the vitamin and supplement industry, yet “scientific data supporting the benefits of most supplements are lacking.”

Click to read more ...

Tips and resources for vitamin and supplement smarts

There are hundreds of regulatory loopholes that allow makers of thousands of supplements to make outrageous claims and empty the wallets of the gullible. Here are some guidelines as well as some resources you can use to educate yourself, stay healthier and a bit richer:

Check with your health care provider: Don’t ever assume that supplements are always benign under all circumstances. Supplements can interfere with medications, but also interact causing harm. This is true of both prescription and over-the-counter medications. Also, supplements can have very different effects depending on the age of the user

Click to read more ...

Nutrition Action from CSPI

That’s the Center for Science in the Public Interest, one of my enduringly favorite sources of reliable information. Really, if you want the straight scoop about food, nutrition and other health and wellness issues, this is one of the best places you can go to.

In this months’ newsletter there is a large article on how to keep your brain young - which all of us seem to be interested in these days. It seems that the bottom line is as follows:

Click to read more ...

Do you get enough Vitamin D?

I’ve been beating this Vitamin D drum for several years now, since the Unviersity of San Diego came out with their ground breaking research on the importance of the vitamin in so far as keeping strong, healthy bones - in addition to perhaps keeping cancer at bay.

Click to read more ...