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Windsor Firm Doesn't Like 'Doctors,' 'Medical Evidence' Saying Vitamins Are Useless

December 20, 2013, 10:12 AM

Once you reach that certain point in life where you recognize your own mortality, you probably start thinking about ways to delay the inevitable. But eating better and exercising are hard. Wouldn't it just be easier if there was some magic pill you could take that would ward off things like cancer? 

The multi-billion dollar vitamin industry has successfully sold their product as that magic pill for decades. Unfortunately, doctors are using their fancy medical science to say we've been fooling ourselves with those daily multivitamins and Flintstones chewables.

Windsor's Jamieson Laboratories -- the Windsor Star calls it "Canada’s leading manufacturer of natural health products and one of Windsor’s most high-profile success stories" -- cares not for a medical journal's science-based conclusion that vitamins are basically false hope in a bottle.

Windsor Star: The editorial cites three studies on multivitamins and 24 studies of individual vitamins or paired vitamins involving more than 400,000 participants, and made the conclusion that there’s no clear evidence that using vitamins and minerals has a beneficial effect when it comes to cardiovascular disease, mortality or cancer.

But Doherty said that to say taking multivitamins is a waste of money because they don’t lengthen your life is unfair and irrational. “The basic premise of multivitamins is not prevention of cardiac disease, it’s not prevention of death,” he said. “They just supplement the diet, fill in the nutrient gaps and improve quality of life, not necessarily treat chronic diseases.”

Of course, the Annals of Internal Medicine, a journal published by the American College of Physicians, said the whole "fill in the nutrient gaps" patter is also hokum.

Annals of Internal Medicine: Evidence is sufficient to advise against routine supplementation, and we should translate null and negative findings into action. The message is simple: Most supplements to 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 other countries. 

Don't cry, vitamin makers. Maybe you can retool your factories to produce homeopathic "medicine."


Read more:  Windsor Star


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