“Dear Ann,
Have you heard on the news about Vitamins taken in older women causes early death, or something like this? Was wondering your input on it.”
That was the email I received from a client yesterday. She and her husband have begun taking the JDI Stem Cell Multi, of which I am a proud distributor. They are thrilled with the results they are experiencing – but the story concerned her and she asked for my take on it.
Here was my immediate response to her:
Periodically these types of stories come out. It amazes me that all the drugs with horrendous side effects are not credited with early death, but vitamins, natural substances God created from our foods are blamed. That being said, we have to use wisdom and not overdo anything. Some people take mega doses of certain vitamins and herbs and that is not wise. Taking a good multi and certain targeted nutritional substances should never be a problem.
It’s always best to get your vitamins from food because God created them in their purest form in food – but unfortunately our soils are so depleted that our food doesn’t contain the nutrition it once did. I hope that responds to your concern.
Upon further research, I found out an article published in the October 10th issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine titled Dietary Supplements and Mortality Rate in Older Women was the source. The researchers concluded that using multivitamins, and particularly vitamin B6, folic acid, iron, magnesium, zinc, and copper, increases the risk of dying at an earlier age. Of course, those findings are being used for the purpose of placing greater restrictions on nutritional supplements.
Whenever I hear about a study like this, or any study – my first thought is to follow the money. Who sponsors it and for what purpose? Many of these journals receive funding from pharmaceutical companies and routinely run articles that support their agenda.
In this case there are larger issues: Actual supplement usage by the women in this study were self-reported so there is no way to confirm whether they used multivitamins consistently or just one time; they did not all use the same supplement so there was a wide discrepancy in quality; the health condition of the participants was not considered so if they began the study with an illness, it wasn’t factored into the results; the researchers never explained how the vitamins caused death.
This study is worthless and actually extremely dangerous since it might confuse and frighten someone needlessly, causing them to stop taking supplements that are beneficial to their overall health and well-being.
3-D Vitality 