Supplements Proving To Be A Double-edged Sword!

In America, half the population is consuming vitamin supplements. In unregulated India, this market is growing by leaps and bounds. Is any governmental body in these countries pro-actively monitoring this increase with alarm?

The recently published findings on multivitamin use and risk of developing cancer and cardiovascular disease in the participants of the Women's Health Initiative Study drove another nail into the theory that vitamin supplements protect against disease or improve an individual's quality of life. The Women's Health Initiative Study (WHI) is a large, long term study in which 161,808 healthy, postmenopausal women were studied to examine the effects of hormone therapy, diet modification, calcium and vitamin D supplementation on cardiovascular disease, cancer and osteoporosis in women.

Marian L. Neuhouser, Ph.D., of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, and other WHI colleagues analyzed the data collected on all the participants in the WHI study, and analyzed it for multivitamin use and risk of developing cancer and cardiovascular disease. Of the women studied, nearly half (41.5%) reported using vitamin supplements on a regular basis. The study data surprisingly did not find any difference in the risk of heart disease, cancer and even mortality among multi-vitamin users and non-multivitamin users.

If we stop to think, this need not really be a surprise though. Historically, multi-vitamins and mineral supplements have been recommended to treat nutrient deficiencies in affected individuals. Their use in such instances is warranted even today. However, in non deficiency states, do supplements protect against disease or not and can they in fact increase the risk of developing a disease?  

In an earlier observational study done by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) Diet and Health Study, data was collected for five years for the 295,344 men who participated in the study. It was found that while multi-vitamin use did not increase risk of developing prostate cancer, high dosing with multivitamin supplements was associated with increased risk of fatalities due to prostate cancer. The authors of the study concluded that "Overall, the available data suggest that multivitamin use may protect against the initiation of prostate cancer but may be associated with its more rapid progression,"

In another study- "SELECT," the effect of taking vitamin E and selenium supplements on risk of prostate cancer is being studied in the over 35,000 men participating in the trial. The men took the pills for over five years, after which they were asked to discontinue use, when it was discovered that vitamin E users had a higher incidence of prostate cancer. Though this could be due to chance, the concern was high enough to warrant discontinuation of the vitamin.

Still another study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the long-term use of supplemental multivitamins, vitamin C, vitamin E, and folate was found to NOT reduce the risk of Lung Cancer in the almost 78,000 participants studied. Further, vitamin E usage was found to slightly increase the risk of lung cancer especially among smokers.

In the race for finding a cure for lifestyle diseases and for defying aging, supplements have assumed a primary place. The public is bombarded with conflicting study results, outlandish advertising claims regarding the miracles that supplements can create and of course with anecdotal evidence where supplements in fact have been useful in improving a person's health maybe due to an underlying deficiency.

Today, we all want a magic pill to cure our ills away. Scientists have tended to focus on individual nutrients in a food or individual foods rather than the whole diet in an effort to find a solution to lifestyle diseases and for aging. But is that really the answer?

The takeaway lesson here maybe to focus on an overall diet that is associated with better health, not individual foods and definitely not individual nutrients to improve quality of life and to keep disease at bay.

The search for definitive answers must go on.

By, The Dietetic Team @ NutritionVista.com

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Reference:

• Multivitamin Use and Risk of Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease in the Women's Health Initiative Cohorts, Arch Intern Med. 2009;169(3):294-304.
• Long-Term Use of Supplemental Multivitamins, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, and Folate Does Not Reduce the Risk of Lung Cancer, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine Vol 177. pp. 524-530, (2008)
• No Effect of Regular Multivitamin Use on Prostate Cancer, but High Intake Increases Risk, http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/556711
• Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial (SELECT), http://www.cancer.gov/newscenter/pressreleases/SELECTQandA