Many vitamins useless, study says

C, E and beta-carotene: 'I'm going to have to change my story,' says vitamin advocate

Brad Evenson
National Post

Friday, July 05, 2002

One of the largest studies ever conducted on vitamins found no evidence the pills lessen heart attacks and strokes, cancers, diabetes or other diseases.

The British Heart Protection study, which tracked 20,500 adults for five years, adds to a growing consensus that people who take vitamins are healthier because of their lifestyle, not because they take vitamins.

The researchers conclude that supplementation with "anti-oxidants" -- vitamins E, C and beta-carotene -- is probably a waste of time.

"It did not produce any significant reductions in the five-year mortality from, or incidence of, any type of vascular disease, cancer or other major outcome," says the study published tomorrow in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

Anti-oxidants are among the biggest-selling vitamins.

The findings are deeply disappointing to academics who have called for more research into vitamins.

"You might have hoped that you'd see some benefit with such a huge study, so that's kind of sad, but if that's the way the research is, I'm going to have to change my story, too," says Dr. John Hoffer, a professor of medicine at McGill University and a leading proponent of vitamins.

Although five years is not enough time to properly assess the effects of vitamins on cancer, says Dr. Hoffer, it is adequate to measure their effects on cardiovascular disease.

However, some scientists believe such vitamins and minerals as selenium, vitamins B-6, B-12 and folic acid might still have potent health benefits, especially over longer times.

Vitamins are believed to improve heart health by preventing the oxidation of fat particles in the blood, which leads to hardening of the arteries. Lab tests, animal studies and a few small human studies seem to confirm this result, especially in the case of vitamin E.

"But the available results from much larger randomized trials of several years of vitamin E have been unpromising," the Lancet study says.

In fact, the British researchers instead found a small but worrying effect in this study: The vitamin regimen caused a 3% mean increase in LDL cholesterol, usually known as "bad" cholesterol.

Rather than take vitamins, the researchers suggest, people at risk of heart disease and stroke should take proven medications such as Aspirin, statins, ACE inhibitors, beta blockers and blood pressure drugs, as well as increase exercise and quit smoking.

The study followed 20,536 adults living in the United Kingdom who suffered from coronary disease, hardened arteries or diabetes. Half received a daily dose of 600 milligrams of vitamin E, 250 mg of vitamin C and 20 mg of beta-carotene. The rest took placebo pills.

The results show no difference in rates of heart attack, stroke, cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, asthma or memory loss.

However, vitamin advocates have argued such studies use dosages too low to offer any benefits. Some doctors believe taking doses of vitamin C as high as 10 grams a day -- 40 times as much as given in the U.K. study -- can prevent cancer and strengthen blood vessels.

The late Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling was a leading proponent of this theory. He said primitive humans lost the ability, held by most animals, to produce their own vitamin C, resulting in a chronic shortage. In speeches, Dr. Pauling would show audiences a vial containing the vitamin C a goat produces every day, which he said showed why the animals suffer less disease than humans.

"I would trust the biochemistry of a goat over the advice of a doctor," he would say.

Yet, while a few small studies have shown promising results for supplements, most have not. For example, after 12 years of taking beta-carotene supplements, no health benefits have emerged for the 22,000 participants in the Boston-based Physicians' Health Study.

"In the cardiovascular community, we've been pretty convinced by previous studies that the vitamins mentioned in this study are probably not of very much value to the prevention of vascular disease," says Dr. Lyall Higginson, chief of cardiology at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute.

Dr. Higginson said the situation mirrors that of hormone replacement therapy. Estrogen pills, first introduced in 1942, were believed to protect the heart because women who took them tended to have fewer heart attacks. But now doctors believe women who took estrogen pills really owed their health to a tendency to exercise more, smoke less and eat a balanced diet.

A comprehensive study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association confirms this belief.

"Not only was there no cardiovascular benefit, there were adverse affects, including blood clots and gallbladder disease," said Deborah Grady, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at the University of California in San Francisco.
© Copyright 2002 National Post


National Post

I wonder what Dr. R.C. Atkins would say about this. He uses large doses of many kinds of vitamins in his complementary practice. A number of his books describe the functions of different vitamins and promote the use of them. Might this be just one of those reports put out by someone who may be anti-alternative practitioner (or even possibly sponsored by an association that's trying to belittle alternative type practices)?

I think the study is limited to subset of vitamins, anti-oxidant, and their benefits in preventing vascular disease.

The title is too sensasional, and does not accuratly describe the contents, jusy like most titles.

I think every low-carber can testify to the effects of potassium and cal/meg, especially during the first few days of induction

Wa'il

This same anti-vitamin study interestingly enough showed that although they say vitamins do no good whatsoever, drugs should be used more often. This study generated a lot of excitement and requests for changing the guidelines to put a lot more people even with low cholesterol on statin drugs:

http://www.mrc.ac.uk/index/public_i..._protection.htm

This side of the pond there is definitely not the same enthusiasm for supplements, albeit it is a growing industry.

My own experience is that I went through a phase when the food I was eating just did not nourish me. I seemed to be forever run down. Either just beginning a cold, right in the middle of one or getting over one. Life was prettttty miserable

It was supplements that saved the day.

I am not crazy about them and certainly would not spend a fortune on them but know that most people need some sort of extra boost to help them along. Finding what works for me personally is the trick.

Balance and moderation in all things.
Take care,

Good advice, Fiona. Good nutrition should come from food primarily, but vitamins can be taken on an as needed basis. But as regards to the anti-vitamin articles from Great Britain, I posted this on the research forum:

Those who read the July 6, 2002 news articles against vitamins should take a closer look at the study. What the study said was that taking Vitamin E, C, and beta carotene did not reduce mortality rates in patients who already had heart disease and diabetes. Does this mean the vitamins had no effects? The study didn't say this. Does Vitamin C still boost the immune system? There is no proof against this. They just can't prove that it prolongs your life if you already have heart disease and diabetes as did the people in the study. This study did not look at and did not show whether these vitamins could prevent heart disease and diabetes.

Dr. Eades in PPLP stated that in the CARET study the same antioxidant vitamins did not prevent smokers from having lung cancer. That didn't mean these vitamins weren't working. It's just that the people hadn't stopped smoking. In the Heart Study below that showed people had no improvement from supplements, how much do you want to bet that they were on a low-fat/high-carbohydrate diet? They were undoing what the vitamins were doing for them. Dr. Eades points out that, yes, it is better to get your vitamins from fruits and vegetables because they contain a combination of antioxidants and phytochemicals by the thousands that can't possibly be put into a pill. But on the other hand, antioxidant vitamin supplements do augment us when we didn't eat enough fruits and vegetables. The new study below showed that blood vitamin concentrations are increased by taking pill supplements. Therefore, the antioxidant properties of these vitamins were available to the body to disable free radicals. However, as Dr. Eades pointed out in the lung cancer study, in advanced disease states or where the body is trying to fight constant daily exposure to tobacco smoke, the body may use the normally bad free radicals to a good purpose.

The point is that this study did not prove that vitamin pills had no effect. This study only proved that in disease states where other forces were working against the vitamin pills, the vitamin pills alone were not enough to overcome the disease. But then again who of us ever said that vitamins cure heart disease and diabetes? The only thing that can do that effectively is a low-carb diet. Vitamins are just a help along the way. They are not a miracle that works against the low-fat/high-carb diets that these doctors put their patients on.

And that's the bottom line conclusion of this study: Vitamins do not cure heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Duuuhhhh!


STUDY:
Lancet 2002 Jul 6;360(9326):23-33

MRC/BHF Heart Protection Study of antioxidant vitamin supplementation in 20,536 high-risk individuals: a randomised placebo-controlled trial.

Heart Protection Study Collaborative Group.

BACKGROUND: It has been suggested that increased intake of various antioxidant vitamins reduces the incidence rates of vascular disease, cancer, and other adverse outcomes. METHODS: 20,536 UK adults (aged 40-80) with coronary disease, other occlusive arterial disease, or diabetes were randomly allocated to receive antioxidant vitamin supplementation (600 mg vitamin E, 250 mg vitamin C, and 20 mg beta-carotene daily) or matching placebo. Intention-to-treat comparisons of outcome were conducted between all vitamin-allocated and all placebo-allocated participants. An average of 83% of participants in each treatment group remained compliant during the scheduled 5-year treatment period. Allocation to this vitamin regimen approximately doubled the plasma concentration of alpha-tocopherol, increased that of vitamin C by one-third, and quadrupled that of beta-carotene. Primary outcomes were major coronary events (for overall analyses) and fatal or non-fatal vascular events (for subcategory analyses), with subsidiary assessments of cancer and of other major morbidity. FINDINGS: There were no significant differences in all-cause mortality (1446 [14.1%] vitamin-allocated vs 1389 [13.5%] placebo-allocated), or in deaths due to vascular (878 [8.6%] vs 840 [8.2%]) or non-vascular (568 [5.5%] vs 549 [5.3%]) causes. Nor were there any significant differences in the numbers of participants having non-fatal myocardial infarction or coronary death (1063 [10.4%] vs 1047 [10.2%]), non-fatal or fatal stroke (511 [5.0%] vs 518 [5.0%]), or coronary or non-coronary revascularisation (1058 [10.3%] vs 1086 [10.6%]). For the first occurrence of any of these "major vascular events", there were no material differences either overall (2306 [22.5%] vs 2312 [22.5%]; event rate ratio 1.00 [95% CI 0.94-1.06]) or in any of the various subcategories considered. There were no significant effects on cancer incidence or on hospitalisation for any other non-vascular cause. INTERPRETATION: Among the high-risk individuals that were studied, these antioxidant vitamins appeared to be safe. But, although this regimen increased blood vitamin concentrations substantially, it did not produce any significant reductions in the 5-year mortality from, or incidence of, any type of vascular disease, cancer, or other major outcome.