Do Supplemental Vitamins Actually Work?

Stuff from How Stuff Works. I'm Christian Seger and welcome to brain Stuff. If you're like me, you grew up being taught that taking your vitamins was an important part of a balanced healthy life. The alternative is to eat exactly the right amount of foods to supply your body with the recommended daily value of nutrients. And who wants to do all that work when you can just swallow a pill, or even better, chew on a block of sugar shaped like your favorite cartoon character. But our supplemental

vitamins actually helpful? Does a vitamin a day truly keep you healthy to play well? First, let's get a simple understanding of how vitamins work. They're really just small molecules that our bodies need to carry out certain reactions. Unfortunately, our bodies don't make vitamins themselves, so we need to eat food that contains these important molecules. There's two types

of vitamins. Water soluble vitamins need to be replenished every day, and fat soluble vitamins need to dissolve before they enter our bodies. Our bile acids do this for us, breaking the vitamins down and storing them in our livers or body fat. The downside is that these vitamins can build up in our systems, surpassing their necessary value. Sixty years ago, the first multi vitamin became available on the American market. Basically, this is a pill that contains at least ten vitamins

and ten minerals to supplement our diet. Now, millions of adults and children devour these pills every day, spending twelve billion dollars a year on them. If you don't have the time to gather fresh fruit, vegetables, and grains every day, then you're probably taking a multi vitamin. But several recent studies have shown that there are some negative effects to be aware of when taking multi vitamins. For instance, less than half the multi vitamins sold in the US and

Canada actually contain what their labels say. Sometimes they'll have too much of a supplement, like a children's vitamin that had two hundred and sixteen percent the amount of vitamin A listed. You think kids just p out all that extra vitamin A. No, it weakens their bones and potentially causes abnormalities and their livers. Other multi vitamins can contain substances that don't even belong in them, like lead, for instance, and unless you really need to foil Superman's X ray vision,

you probably shouldn't ingest that much lead. That, my friends, are just the multi vitamins that are mislabeled. Some experts believe that we don't always gain benefits from vitamins unless they are absorbed into our body along with the other compounds found in their natural form. So maybe vitamin C doesn't work unless you digest it with an orange. Also, supplement research is really difficult to gauge because each of us eats an incredibly broad variety of foods that could

help or hinder the absorption of vitamins. Not to mention that the Food and Drug Administration doesn't require these supplements to go through the same scrutiny for safety and efficacy that it does for say, medicine or drugs. The more we look into it, it seems that multi vitamins either have no substantial health benefits or their benefits are too small to make much of a difference. Let's look at a few examples of how this plays out, Starting with

folic acid. This is one of those supplements originally thought to protect the heart and prevent cancer. Based on a two thousand eight sty the out of Harvard, it turns out that too much folic acid may instead promote prostate and colorectal cancer, and because food companies add it to grain products, most of us are already getting our daily values worth What about vitamin C, the one we're supposed

to take when we get sick. Well, if you eat foods that are rich in vitamin C, it can lower your risk of heart disease and cancer, But if you simply take it in pillform, it seems to have no benefits. Also, vitamin C can enhance your iron absorption, so be careful if you have hemochromatosis or you'll end up with too much iron in your system. Another vitamin that supposedly prevented heart disease and cancer is vitamin E. But again that's only in its natural form in nuts, seeds, and vegetable oils,

where it can also strengthen the immune system. As a supplement, there's no evidence vitamin E provides any of its natural benefits. In fact, some research shows that doses over four hundred international units a day can actually increase your mortality. Let me spell that out for you. That means you'll die faster if you have too much vitamin E. Vitamin A is very similar in that it doesn't actually prevent lung cancer as it's advertised. In fact, large doses actually increase

the risk of lung cancer in smokers. Most of us are already getting plenty of vitamin A anyway, in eggs, whole milk, dark leafy veggies, and orange or yellow fruits. And remember those kids I mentioned who got too much vitamin A from their multi vitamin Both their bones and livers were weakened. But if you're pregnant adult, too much

vitamin A can lead to birth defects. B vitamins were originally thought to help people with Alzheimer's disease or even raise your energy levels, but the trial results have been disappointing, with no evidence that it does either. But B twelve is one of the vitamins that can help supplement an

unbalanced diet. It's good good for strict vegetarians who aren't getting everything they need from animal derived food, but otherwise you don't really need it unless you're pregnant or facing macular degeneration from old age, two things I'm not currently worried about. Finally, let's look at vitamin D, you know, the one we get from the sun. There's still hope that it can help with osteoporosis, but the data is

inconclusive since everyone gets different amounts of sun exposure. If you're already getting a decent amount of midday sun exposure and regularly consume foods like fatty fish, eggs, and fortified dairy products, you probably don't need a d supplement. Perhaps in the future will be able to just pop a pill personally tailored to our nutrition, but as it stands today, your best bet is to still eat a balanced diet

from good old fashioned hold foods. However, this doesn't mean you should run home and pour all your multi vitamins down the toilet. Just do a little research on what your body needs and whether the pill you're taking is actually necessary. Check out the brainstuff channel on YouTube, and for more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.