[Gaaah it’s all too confusing I’m just never eating again. -egg]<\/p>\n
Nutrition experts argue that people need only the recommended daily allowance \u2014 the amount of vitamins found in a routine diet. Vitamin manufacturers argue that a regular diet doesn\u2019t contain enough vitamins, and that more is better. Most people assume that, at the very least, excess vitamins can\u2019t do any harm. It turns out, however, that scientists have known for years that large quantities of supplemental vitamins can be quite harmful indeed.<\/p>\n
In a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1994, 29,000 Finnish men, all smokers, had been given daily vitamin E, beta carotene, both or a placebo. The study found that those who had taken beta carotene for five to eight years were more likely to die from lung cancer or heart disease.<\/p>\n
Two years later the same journal published another study on vitamin supplements. In it, 18,000 people who were at an increased risk of lung cancer because of asbestos exposure or smoking received a combination of vitamin A and beta carotene, or a placebo. Investigators stopped the study when they found that the risk of death from lung cancer for those who took the vitamins was 46 percent higher.<\/p>\n
Then, in 2004, a review of 14 randomized trials for the Cochrane Database found that the supplemental vitamins A, C, E and beta carotene, and a mineral, selenium, taken to prevent intestinal cancers, actually increased mortality.<\/p>\n
Another review, published in 2005 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that in 19 trials of nearly 136,000 people, supplemental vitamin E increased mortality. Also that year, a study of people with vascular disease or diabetes found that vitamin E increased the risk of heart failure. And in 2011, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association tied vitamin E supplements to an increased risk of prostate cancer.<\/p>\n
Finally, last year, a Cochrane review found that \u201cbeta carotene and vitamin E seem to increase mortality, and so may higher doses of vitamin A.\u201d<\/p>\n
What explains this connection between supplemental vitamins and increased rates of cancer and mortality? The key word is antioxidants.<\/p>\n