Forums >Health and Nutrition>Vitamin supplementation and mortality
not bad for mile 25
We're like the doting grandmother, saying to our cells, "Have a little more B12 Dearie, you're looking a bit peaked. Here, I'll give you a little D with that."
You could - but as with many things too much can be harmful as too little (which is partly the point of the original post). I would say do your audit and then get a test (or improve your diet) before you start popping pills.
"Popping pills"? It's just vitamins and minerals here -- he's not Judy Garland.
I tend to think people who take vitamin/mineral supplements either are sick more frequently, worried about being sick more frequently, and/or feel their diet is less robust than it could be (through food choices, busy life, etc.). Other than the few compounds that both bioaccumulate and are toxic in quantity, I'm not aware of any serious negative consequences to ingesting "too much" nutrients (whether via diet or supplementation).
(FWIW, I don't take a daily multi-vitamin or any other supplement.)
"I want you to pray as if everything depends on it, but I want you to prepare yourself as if everything depends on you."
-- Dick LeBeau
Other than the few compounds that both bioaccumulate and are toxic in quantity, I'm not aware of any serious negative consequences to ingesting "too much" nutrients (whether via diet or supplementation).
That's exactly what the linked article in the first post is about!
Kindof like beer
You could - but as with many things too much can be harmful as too little
Long dead ... But my stench lingers !
I meant data that parsed things out a little better than the linked study. I don't have access to the full article, but I'd like to know whether, for any one compound, it distinguished between a subject taking a multi-nutrient supplement containing that compound v. one taking a supplement containing only that compound. Especially for minerals for which absorption is known to be enhanced/perturbed by other compounds.
Judy Garland.
Heh.
Judy Garland. Heh.
$2-3M for a pair of shoes you once wore, now that's fame.
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steph
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Egad, there's more. We're all gonna die!
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Queen of 3rd Place
Yes, but who knows if they have a deficiency? I don't think my blood has ever been checked for any vitamin. Now, if my bathroom scale provided a vitamin readout in addition to weight, I could supplement much more intelligently.
I was checked for vit D and was below the recommended levels. However, the recommended levels have changed (in the upward direction) recently. A year or so ago I would not have been considered deficient. Hm....
Ex runner
There are some problems with this study, science based medicine points them out:
The strength of this study is that it is large with a long term follow up. There are many weaknesses, however. Vitamin use was self-reported. Further, this is a correlational study only. Therefore possible confounding factors could not be controlled for. For example, it is possible that women who have an underlying health issue that increases their mortality were more likely to take vitamins or to report taking vitamins.In fact, other studies suggest there is such a “sick-user effect” with vitamins.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/vitamins-and-mortality/
Good Bad & The Monkey
There are problems with every study.
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Poor baby
Double post. I need ice cream.
Feeling the growl again
While I don't believe the posted study is the end all, be all of the issue and has some significant flaws, I'm a little baffled by the multiple "I can't believe there's such a thing as too much of these" comments. Why? Based on what evidence?
Water is the most basic of needs for our body. Guess what happens if you drink too much...hyponautremia.
It is a medical fact that iron is not excreted easily and can build up to toxic levels. This is why it is so dangerous for kids to get ahold of adult dosage strengths of it.
If you look at the body of these vitamin studies, much of the concern seems to be with the fat-solube vitamins -- those that the body has a harder time eliminating extra quantities of. Water soluble vitamins are easy to excrete via urine. Is it so hard to believe that building up unnatural quantities of these, beyond which is normally possible via even a reasonably balanced diet, could lead to negative consequences?
Before diagnosis of my throid condition I was trying about anything that could be a cause of my fatigue -- including B vitamins. After only a few weeks of moderate supplementation I had my blood work run, and my B12 level was somewhere in excess of 1000% the upper limit of normal. If someone were to do that for years on end, is it so unreasonable to think that this could mess you up somehow?
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