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Vitamins "may shorten life"

No reason to worry. If you are an older woman taking lots of vitamins, then maybe yes. But you should be fine. Yes it's true that you can overdose on certain vitamins, (Vitamin A comes to mind, I know there are others as well) but as long as you're eating healthy you shouldn't even really need to take a multivitamin. I think the article is just pointing out the fact that too much of anything, even 'good' things like vitamins, is not healthy.
 
there are no short cuts

the path to optimal health is a daily, lifelong endeavor. it is not hard, but it is not easy.

one must govern one's life from a perspective of optimal health. then everything becomes a reflex. vitamins are useless unless one is in an extremely nutrient poor state. one should consume every meal with wellness in mind.

you are your best doctor.
 
Recall that correlation is not causation. It may very well be the case that those who take vitamins have a tendency to be unhealthy to begin with and/or believe that supplementation makes up for a poor diet and eat unhealthy as a result. This could make it appear as if vitamins are unhealthy when in actuality people on vitamins are dying earlier because they're otherwise unhealthy.

An example is that it appears that left-handed people in the United States die earlier than right-handed people. This is not true. In fact, until the more recent decades, lefty children were forced into right-handedness. This means that there are not many old left-handed people and that lefties on average are younger than righties. This makes it appear that, on average, left-handed people die younger when in truth they are just younger on average as an entire population.

Statistics are only as good as the assumptions that back them.
 
Yeah it is pretty difficult to derive any actual conclusion from a single study. News articles are even worse since it adds one more extra layer of interpretation.

I've tried so many supplements and there is maybe one that I've returned to several times feeling that it has done me good. I do think it is possible that those who take large amounts of vitamins do so with the fearful belief that their body constantly at risk of various deficiencies and unable to take care of itself without supplementation. That could probably contribute to having a body that is less healthy.
 
It seems like every time a new health study comes out, it's just a further reinforcement of the idea that a natural lifestyle is a healthy lifestyle. Vitamins are an artificial source of nutrition, so frankly, I'm not surprised.
 
Would that suggest that drinking nourishment milk drinks for example, would not be beneficial? Maybe even the opposite? I only ask as I find myself drinking them daily, not as a substitute but as well as daily meals and was always under the impression that it was good for my body?
 
One issue is that they add things to the vitamins, as well, like stearates which are fatty lubricants they use for whatever reasons as well as for the machines to easily encapsulate the formulations. Stearates are waxy large fat molecules that are hard for the body to break down and apparently sometimes get stuck in transit, and might cause other issues. Much of what they add your body has problems processing... We already do poorly with cellulose, and most supplements are loaded with it in various forms, from capsule itself to filler to meet pill volume requirements. Sometimes a product is mostly cellulose.

I'd love to be able to not take supplements. Unfortunately, I'm allergic to fucking everything, so I have to at least try. Or so says survival instinct.
 
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I've seen a few papers concluding that vitamin A supplementation is correlated to cancer.

Of course, epigenetics is a crucial piece of the puzzle that we're just starting to look into. I personally take ZMA, B12, fish oil and a few other supplements here and there. Might be a waste of money but I'm not too worried about any of them shortening my life.
 
Article said:
They say dietary supplementation has shifted from preventing deficiency to trying to promote wellness and prevent diseases, and caution: "We believe that for all micronutrients, risks are associated with insufficient and too-large intake."
Click to expand...
That's about all you gotta take away from that article.
Too much Vit.A, iron, etc is bad - too much Vit.C is fine. An 'ok' rule of thumb is to look for whether something is water- or fat- soluble.
Vitamins are best considered as a dietary 'insurance', not 'enhancement'. If you're trying to use them to take MORE than recommended values, you'd better know what you're doing because it's not always going to work out for ya ;).

Frasier- I'll leave the b12 alone for the moment, but the fish oil is great so long as it's a reputable source. The ZMA is also very solid, depending upon your reasons for taking it. I personally use both. Aannalien mentions <steroid subforum> that he's had demonstratable <via blood work> test gains from his ZMA.
 
let me just say these are correlations. just because the number of chip shop correlate with train station locations does not mean opening a chip shop will createe a train station. my point is simple. in healthy, you supplement what is lacking. if you over supplement you can have problems. that's what a gp is for - advising. most heath reporting is nonesense. remember this.
 
Honestly, if you're under 25 and in good health, you really shouldn't be taking vitamins. Overtime, they reduce your body's ability to process its own vitamins which can take years to reverse.

There's no reason most of us can't get what we need from food. Just learn to enjoy veggies! %)
 
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