Vitamin Killers
January 9, 2010 7:57 PM Subscribe
How does Vitamin C and E cause your life expectancy to decrease?
I read numerous articles stating that supplementing with Vitamin C and E will reduce your life expectancy. Does anyone know how or why?
I read numerous articles stating that supplementing with Vitamin C and E will reduce your life expectancy. Does anyone know how or why?
Moderate intake of Vitamin C does not reduce your life expectancy. It is in fact necessary to your health. Are you talking about extreme cases?
posted by hermitosis at 8:15 PM on January 9, 2010
posted by hermitosis at 8:15 PM on January 9, 2010
Well, while we're waiting for that, we can peruse these two opposing summaries of the documentary evidence:
Vitamin C, Linus Pauling was right all along: A doctor's opinion, by Dr. Hilary Roberts
The Dark Side of Linus Pauling's Legacy, by Stephen Barrett, M.D.
The thrust of those, as you might be able to tell from the titles, is this: Linus Pauling, Nobel-prize-winning chemist, had the notion that Vitamin C was a wondrous thing capable of curing world hunger and many diseases. He popularized the stuff. People have been arguing about it ever since.
posted by koeselitz at 8:15 PM on January 9, 2010
Vitamin C, Linus Pauling was right all along: A doctor's opinion, by Dr. Hilary Roberts
The Dark Side of Linus Pauling's Legacy, by Stephen Barrett, M.D.
The thrust of those, as you might be able to tell from the titles, is this: Linus Pauling, Nobel-prize-winning chemist, had the notion that Vitamin C was a wondrous thing capable of curing world hunger and many diseases. He popularized the stuff. People have been arguing about it ever since.
posted by koeselitz at 8:15 PM on January 9, 2010
Here is a very interesting introduction and paper by Arthur Robinson from ten years ago which doesn't say directly that Vitamin C can reduce life expectancy, but only that, in moderate doses, it can stimulate the growth of cancer:
The research paper reproduced in pdf format below summarizes work carried out by my coworkers and me when I was President and Research Director of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine. The results of these experiments caused an argument between Linus and me, which ended our 16-year period of work together. He was not willing to accept the experimentally proved fact that vitamin C in ordinary doses accelerated the growth rate of squamous cell carcinoma in these mice.posted by koeselitz at 8:26 PM on January 9, 2010
Also, Linus was a little nuts about Vitamin C - he took around 10,000 mg daily, and more when he was ill. That's an incredibly large amount.
Remember, when people call something a "Vitamin," it's really just a chemical that our body needs. In the case of Vitamin C, it's really just ascorbic acid - and doesn't it stand to reason that, at some dosage, ingesting an acid regularly might be bad for you?
posted by koeselitz at 8:32 PM on January 9, 2010
Remember, when people call something a "Vitamin," it's really just a chemical that our body needs. In the case of Vitamin C, it's really just ascorbic acid - and doesn't it stand to reason that, at some dosage, ingesting an acid regularly might be bad for you?
posted by koeselitz at 8:32 PM on January 9, 2010
As has been pointed out seeing the articles would help. However one hypothesis is both compounds are antioxidants that can act as prooxidants at high concentrations.
posted by Fiery Jack at 8:35 PM on January 9, 2010
posted by Fiery Jack at 8:35 PM on January 9, 2010
Oh, and regarding Vitamin E, this is just Wikipedia, but:
It'd be nice to have a better idea of what you have in mind, here. Were you thinking of binging on Vitamin C and E? Where did you hear this stuff?
posted by koeselitz at 8:39 PM on January 9, 2010
A case control study done in the Netherlands using food frequency questionnaires found that high maternal Vitamin E by diet and supplements is associated with an increased risk of CHD (congenital heart defects) offspring, especially when the supplements are taken in the periconception period... The National Health Service in the United Kingdom concludes that pregnant women should: "consider avoiding taking supplemental Vitamin E tablets."...Not a lot, but there's something there.
A Finnish study found that Vitamin E supplementation increased the risk of hemorrhagic stroke... Vitamin E supplementation was shown to increase the risk of heart failure in a 2005 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Lonn, et al., which studied 7,000 people...
It'd be nice to have a better idea of what you have in mind, here. Were you thinking of binging on Vitamin C and E? Where did you hear this stuff?
posted by koeselitz at 8:39 PM on January 9, 2010
I think the theory was this: the body uses free oxygen radicals in some places to perform essential functions. Vitamin C and E are antioxidants and in sufficient quantity will seriously degrade the body's ability to use oxygen radicals in that way. Therefore huge doses of C and E are bad.
(I am not contending that, myself. I'm attempting to rationalize what "they" are saying.)
I agree with some of the commenters above: there's a whole lot of bullshit flying around about vitamins.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:31 PM on January 9, 2010
(I am not contending that, myself. I'm attempting to rationalize what "they" are saying.)
I agree with some of the commenters above: there's a whole lot of bullshit flying around about vitamins.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:31 PM on January 9, 2010
Mercola talks about Vit E causing "reductive stress" in relation to heart disease, and he surmises (with regards to an increase in lung cancer) that for some it can increase oxidation.
He goes into both sides of the argument here:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/04/10/vitamin-e-linked-to-lung-cancer.aspx
Just before the page finishes loading, I hit my browser's "Stop" to avoid the forced registration screen.
posted by Feisty at 11:53 PM on January 9, 2010
He goes into both sides of the argument here:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/04/10/vitamin-e-linked-to-lung-cancer.aspx
Just before the page finishes loading, I hit my browser's "Stop" to avoid the forced registration screen.
posted by Feisty at 11:53 PM on January 9, 2010
Best answer: One relevant study is here. To quote the conclusion:
These kind of reviews don't look at causes, but the idea that anti-oxidants should reduce mortality by limiting oxidative damage in the body has never been all that well established, but it has been aggressively promoted by its proponents. (There's a good summary of the theory and the problems with it here.) It's not all that surprising that these kinds of supplements either a) do nothing or b) are slightly bad for you. The idea that they're good for you has never been much more than an article of faith and a useful way to sell vitamin pills and 'healthy' foods.
posted by xchmp at 3:39 AM on January 10, 2010
We found no evidence to support antioxidant supplements for primary or secondary prevention. Vitamin A, beta-carotene, and vitamin E may increase mortality. Future randomised trials could evaluate the potential effects of vitamin C and selenium for primary and secondary prevention. Such trials should be closely monitored for potential harmful effects. Antioxidant supplements need to be considered medicinal products and should undergo sufficient evaluation before marketing.It's a Cochrane review. These are high-quality systematic reviews of all the available evidence. So the authors have taken all the relevant studies they could find, rated their usefulness based on factors like study size and methodology (according to well-established, pre-set criteria) and added up the figures. They're one of the founding blocks of evidence based medicine.
These kind of reviews don't look at causes, but the idea that anti-oxidants should reduce mortality by limiting oxidative damage in the body has never been all that well established, but it has been aggressively promoted by its proponents. (There's a good summary of the theory and the problems with it here.) It's not all that surprising that these kinds of supplements either a) do nothing or b) are slightly bad for you. The idea that they're good for you has never been much more than an article of faith and a useful way to sell vitamin pills and 'healthy' foods.
posted by xchmp at 3:39 AM on January 10, 2010
Best answer: [slate.com] The Vita Myth: Do supplements really do any good?
The news on antioxidants, the darlings of the vitamin menagerie, is even more troubling. These compounds, which include vitamins A, C, and E, selenium, beta carotene, and folate, fight free radicals, unstable compounds thought to damage cells and contribute to aging. But not only do antioxidant supplements fail to protect against heart disease, stroke, and cancer; they actually increase the risk of death, according to a 2007 analysis of research on more than 232,000 people, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, as well as other studies.posted by andoatnp at 5:34 AM on January 10, 2010
Exactly why they might increase mortality is unclear, but doctors at prominent research institutions—including New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center—have highlighted some unsettling connections between supplemental antioxidants and an increased risk of a variety of cancers. Popping certain kinds of antioxidant pills can feed latent cancers growing in the body, for instance, and reduce the effectiveness of chemotherapy. These observations make a certain intuitive sense, since vitamins and minerals play an important role in the replication of healthy cells—why shouldn't they be doing the same for cancerous cells? (Feeding mice a diet poor in antioxidants, on the other hand, can actually help shrink their brain tumors.) Scientists are also beginning to suspect that the body may actually need free radicals—which help kill cancer cells, ensure optimal immune function, and regulate blood sugar, among other things—so we shouldn't necessarily be mopping them all up.
Response by poster: andoatnp found a plausible explanation in the hypothesis that vitamins and minerals assist the good cells and bad cells indiscriminately. This makes intuitive sense but I am sure there are contentious wrinkles I am not detecting; it does appear that most professionals agree that solid supportable data concerning this matter is still over the next horizon.
Anyway. I will continue to pop my 500mg C and 400IU E right before bed. I will hope I am not making myself a contender for a future Darwin Award.
"Moron reads, and studies, the detriments of vitamins but continues to take them... To The Grave!"
posted by bkeene12 at 9:10 AM on January 10, 2010
Anyway. I will continue to pop my 500mg C and 400IU E right before bed. I will hope I am not making myself a contender for a future Darwin Award.
"Moron reads, and studies, the detriments of vitamins but continues to take them... To The Grave!"
posted by bkeene12 at 9:10 AM on January 10, 2010
It turns out that free radicals are actually good for you.
posted by Arthur Dent at 10:45 AM on January 12, 2010
posted by Arthur Dent at 10:45 AM on January 12, 2010
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posted by Loto at 8:01 PM on January 9, 2010