Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

The truth is that healthy people on a balanced diet do not need multivitamins to stay healthy. The stress of daily living, athletic activity and even minor illnesses do not require an automatic vitamin prescription.

A selling point of vitamin pills is that they contain antioxidants which may help prevent cancer and atherosclerosis. Linus Pauling, the Nobel laureate for Chemistry and for Peace, proposed that doses of Vitamin C could prevent the common cold and cancer. Pauling took 10 gram of Vitamin C every day, and he lived to be 93. There is no doubt that a diet rich in fresh fruit and vegetables reduces the risk of cancer and atherosclerosis, but can nutrient pills do the same thing?

Not really. Mega supplements are not risk free. Excess of Vitamin E, for example, interferes with clotting mechanisms and increases risk of death.

Of course, some otherwise healthy people need specific supplements to prevent certain conditions. For example, women in childbearing years need 400-800 microgram of folic acid supplements daily to prevent neural tube defects in offspring.

The role of calcium and Vitamin D supplements in elderly and women is well established. People with malabsorption, a history of gastric bypass surgery, alcoholism, some inborn errors of metabolism, and those on haemodialysis or parenteral nutrition, require daily multivitamin supplements.

Vitamins are essential for life, but they are not magic pills. Linus Pauling, after all, died of prostate cancer.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail