Vita-Mania is an obsession Americans have with vitamin and mineral supplements. Current estimates in a National Health Survey conducted by the CDC (Center of Disease Control and Prevention), more than 70 percent of Americans now regularly take vitamin and mineral supplements. Believe me, our waterways are not only being polluted with prescription drugs. And these Americans, according to the Nutrition Business Journal, spend around $24 billion annually on these supplements. Most of these supplements are manufactured in China with little, if any, quality control and, thanks to the Dietary Supplement Act passed in the 1990s, supplements are not regulated. Supplements may be contaminated with lead or heavy metals as in calcium from oyster shell.
Are they doing any good? A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that daily vitamin and mineral supplements taken by Americans could be increasing their risk of death: Vitamin A by 16 percent, Vitamin E by 4 percent, Beta carotene by 7 percent. Beta carotene supplements may actually increase your risk of lung cancer, even if you don’t smoke. In a study in the Annuals of Internal Medicine, researchers suggested “sellers should consider removing vitamin preparations that contain 400 IU or more of Vitamin E from stores.”
Vitamin C, the most important antioxidant of them all, is not always safe as a supplement. According to researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, large doses of Vitamin C, like in supplements, also protect the cancer cells inside our cells. Vitamin C taken in food sources does not.
Synthetic vitamins are not the only supplements that are causing concern in the scientific community. The British Journal of Nutrition published new research that synthetic folic acid is metabolized differently than the natural form in food. Natural folate is broken down in the stomach while synthetic folic acid is broken down in the liver. The problem is that the already overtaxed liver may release undigested folic acid into the blood stream causing excessive levels in the blood. Excessive folic acid levels have been linked to breast cancer and brain decline. Natural folate in food does not cause this potential problem.
