Posted on 05/17/2007 6:13:44 PM PDT by Graybeard58
WASHINGTON -- There's more worrisome news about vitamins:
Taking too many may increase men's risk of dying from prostate cancer.
The study, published Wednesday, doesn't settle the issue.
But it is the biggest yet to suggest high-dose multivitamins may harm the prostate, and the latest chapter in the confusing quest to tell whether taking various vitamins really helps a variety of conditions -- or is a waste of money, or worse.
Government scientists turned to a study tracking the diet and health of almost 300,000 men.
About a third reported taking a daily multivitamin, and 5 percent were heavy users, swallowing the pills more than seven times a week.
Within five years of the study's start, 10,241 men had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Some 1,476 had advanced cancer; 179 died.
Heavy multivitamin users were almost twice as likely to get fatal prostate cancer as men who never took the pills, concludes the study in Wednesday's Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Here's the twist:
Overall, the researchers found no link between multivitamin use and early-stage prostate cancer.
The researchers speculate that perhaps high-dose vitamins had little effect until a tumor appeared, and then could spur its growth.
While similar but smaller studies have suggested a link, too, more rigorous research is needed, caution the National Cancer Institute scientists.
This newest study involves men who voluntarily took vitamins, and those most at risk -- perhaps because they had a family history of the disease -- may have been more likely to take the pills in hopes of avoiding their fate.
Still, "the findings lend further credence to the possibility of harm associated with increased use of supplements," Dr. Christian Gluud of Copenhagen University Hospital and Dr. Goran Bjelakovic of Serbia's University of Nis wrote in an accompanying editorial.
I noticed now they have a “Pepsi Plus” that has vitamins in it! As fat as a lot of Americans are, I don’t think they are getting any shortages of vitamins. A lot of people think if a little bit of a vitamin is good for you - then a lot of it must be even better!
WRONG!
Real scientific reporting there...
More than seven times a week is heavy?
How much more?
Once or twice?
Four times?
Ten times?
What?
This is just the MSM setting up the public for the “new, improved” FDA taking over regulation of all nutritional supplements. If you want to take a vitamin pill, you’ll have to get the government’s OK, via the AMA, to do so.
It started a long time ago. I watched local news footage of DEA JBT’s in body armor, helmets and “assault weapons” raid a local Doctor’s office because he prescribed too large a dosage of vitamin B to patients... that and that he was a bit heretical about the AMA and its “cut and burn” methodology.
Just wait. You’re gonna need a prescription from the doctor before taking an aspirin before long. Watch for more articles pointing out how bad all kinds of supplements are and how the government should be “regulating” them... it’s for the chilrun ya know.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. What is it?
Maybe it’s a good thing that I’m so lackadaisical and undisciplined about taking care of my self. So far, I’ve outlived more than 6 friends and relatives that have died younger than me. I’ve never been sick a day in my life (except for some colds and flu, etc.)
It must be the wine and cheese and trashy women that’s keeping me alive. (knock on wood)
OTOH, did those people somehow sense that there was something wrong, veryearly in the progress of the problem? Then they instinctively turned to vitamins? Could this be a chicken and egg thing?
It’s probably things that unavoidably contaminatethe product during the synthetic preparation of the vitamin(that 0.99% trace impurities mentioned on the labels of most chemicals) themselves. The cancers could probably be a cumulative effect of the impurities adding up in the body.
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