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Vitamin Pills 'Increase Risk Of Early Death'
The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 4-16-2008 | Kate Devlin

Posted on 04/15/2008 8:34:19 PM PDT by blam

Vitamin pills 'increase risk of early death'

By Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 16/04/2008

Popular vitamin supplements taken by millions of people in the hope of improving their health may do no good and could increase the risk of a premature death, researchers report today.

They warn healthy people who take antioxidant supplements, including vitamins A and E, to try to keep diseases such as cancer at bay that they are interfering with their natural body defences and may be increasing their risk of an early death by up to 16 per cent.

Antioxidants, including vitamins A, E, and C are said to mop up free radicals, which cause disease

Researchers at Copenhagen University carried out a review of 67 studies on 230,000 healthy people and found "no convincing evidence" that any of the antioxidants helped to prolong life expectancy. But some "increased mortality".

About 12 million Britons supplement their diets with vitamins and the industry is worth £330 million. But little research has been done on the long-term health implications.

The Department of Health said yesterday that people should try to get the vitamins they need by eating a balanced diet and advised care in taking large doses of supplements.

A spokesman said: "There is a need to exercise caution in the use of high doses of purified supplements of vitamins, including antioxidant vitamins, and minerals. Their impact on long-term health may not have been fully established and they cannot be assumed to be without risk.

"Anyone concerned about their diet should speak to their doctor or dietitian."

Antioxidants, including vitamins A, E, C and beta-carotene and selenium, are said to mop up compounds, called free radicals, which cause disease. It is this action that researchers believe may cause problems with the defence system.

The Danish research, released by the influential Cochrane Library, applied only to synthetic supplements and not to vitamins that occur naturally in vegetables and fruit.

It found that vitamin A supplements increased the risk of death in healthy people by 16 per cent. Taking beta-carotene was linked to a 7 per cent increased risk, while regular users of vitamin E supplements increased the risk of an early death by four per cent.

Although the review found no significant detrimental effect caused by vitamin C, it found no evidence that it helped ward off disease. Millions take it in the hope of avoiding a common cold.

Goran Bjelakovic, who led the review, said: "We could find no evidence to support taking antioxidant supplements to reduce the risk of dying earlier in healthy people or patients with various diseases.

"If anything, people in trial groups given the antioxidants beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E showed increased rates of mortality."

But Patrick Holford, a nutritionist who has formulated supplements for the company Biocare, said: "Antioxidants are not meant to be magic bullets and should not be expected to undo a lifetime of unhealthy habits.

"When used properly, in combination with a healthy diet full of fruit and vegetables, getting plenty of exercise and not smoking, antioxidant supplements can play an important role in maintaining and promoting overall health."

A spokesman for the Health Supplements Information Service said: "People should get all the vitamins and minerals they need from their diet, but for the millions who are not able to do that, vitamins can be a useful supplement and they should not stop taking them."

However, Catherine Collins, of the British Dietetic Association, said: "This study is deeply worrying and shows that there should be more regulation for vitamins and minerals.

"The public can buy vitamins as easily as sweets. They should be treated in the same way as paracetamol with maximum limits on the dosage."


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: antioxidants; codex; death; early; nutrition; pills; socializedmedicine; vitamin; vitamins
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To: AmericaUnited; Dr. Eckleburg; Gamecock; Forest Keeper; HarleyD

Oh, your poor weak god TRIES to influence you. How pathetic.

Either God is Master of everything, or he is weak and pathetic. Either he is Lord of Lords, or he hopes you might, possible, pretty please chose him. Either he is King of Kings, or YOU get to decide to obey him, making YOU in charge.

You are letting the child tell the father what you are going to do. No, that’s not even right, because at this point the non-believer is NOT a child of God.


181 posted on 04/18/2008 3:49:32 PM PDT by irishtenor (Check out my blog at http://boompa53.blogspot.com/)
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To: AmericaUnited

You gave a portion of a verse, I gave a whole chapter. I win :>)


182 posted on 04/18/2008 3:51:03 PM PDT by irishtenor (Check out my blog at http://boompa53.blogspot.com/)
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To: AmericaUnited

***Care to Answer any more of the questions,

Why, they are based on the same confused/faulty logic.***

Go ahead and answer then using your own faulty logic.

By the way, I have never heard from you what YOU believe.


183 posted on 04/18/2008 3:54:00 PM PDT by irishtenor (Check out my blog at http://boompa53.blogspot.com/)
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To: irishtenor
Oh, your poor weak god TRIES to influence you. How pathetic.

If we don't have a free will to accept or reject God and His Son, the whole thing is MEANINGLESS!!! It just absolutely floors me that you could be an elder in a mainstream church and yet just have so little understanding in this! Wow!

You have one serious mental block here. It IS possible for God to be all sovereign, omnipotent, all powerful, etc., etc., and yet still give man a free will to accept or reject Him. Only to you, is that somehow beyond God's ability.

184 posted on 04/18/2008 4:07:47 PM PDT by AmericaUnited
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To: irishtenor
By the way, I have never heard from you what YOU believe.

Sure you have. Go back and read what I posted.

185 posted on 04/18/2008 4:08:51 PM PDT by AmericaUnited
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To: AmericaUnited; Dr. Eckleburg; Gamecock; Forest Keeper; HarleyD

The problem is that you think this is a mainstream idea. It used to be, but not since the liberals took over.

Check the website for PCA, OPC, RPC or other REFORMED churches and you will find that ALL of them agree with me. Anyone who accepts the Westminster Confession of Faith believes as I do. You should get out more.

I will give you a simple easy to understand example of “free will”.

When man is unregenerated, man has the will to sin, or not sin.
When man is regenerated, man has the will to sin, not sin, or to please God.
Unregenerated man cannot please God, therefore cannot seek God, and in fact avoids God.


186 posted on 04/18/2008 4:18:47 PM PDT by irishtenor (Check out my blog at http://boompa53.blogspot.com/)
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To: AmericaUnited

You gave a portion of a verse to bolster your distorted view of God. Shame on you.


187 posted on 04/18/2008 4:26:47 PM PDT by irishtenor (Check out my blog at http://boompa53.blogspot.com/)
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To: AmericaUnited

You believe in free will? So? All liberal believers believe that. Are you Catholic? Baptist? Lutheran? What?


188 posted on 04/18/2008 4:30:33 PM PDT by irishtenor (Check out my blog at http://boompa53.blogspot.com/)
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To: irishtenor
Do you believe that Adam and Eve actually sinned/fell in the garden, as told in Genesis? If so, then you are really in deep trouble, since that HOW ON EARTH did your all powerful God let them sin, UNLESS he gave them a free will to do so?
189 posted on 04/18/2008 4:39:57 PM PDT by AmericaUnited
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To: irishtenor
Either God is Master of everything, or he is weak and pathetic. Either he is Lord of Lords, or he hopes you might, possible, pretty please chose him. Either he is King of Kings, or YOU get to decide to obey him, making YOU in charge.

AMEN!

"I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me:

That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else.

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." -- Isaiah 45:5-7


190 posted on 04/18/2008 5:25:00 PM PDT by Dr. Eckleburg ("I don't think they want my respect; I think they want my submission." - Flemming Rose)
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To: martin_fierro

watch that right hand buster.


191 posted on 04/18/2008 5:27:42 PM PDT by steveo (Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.)
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To: AmericaUnited; irishtenor; Gamecock; HarleyD; Forest Keeper
If we don't have a free will to accept or reject God and His Son, the whole thing is MEANINGLESS!!!

Why? Did you make the rules? Did you create the world and everything therein?

Go back to the Bible and learn that no man can come to the Father who first hasn't been regenerated by the Holy Spirit. And that decision is ultimately God's call.

"Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee" -- Psalm 65:4

You have one serious mental block here. It IS possible for God to be all sovereign, omnipotent, all powerful, etc., etc., and yet still give man a free will to accept or reject Him. Only to you, is that somehow beyond God's ability.

No, that paradigm is ultimately jibberish. If man has the final say about his own salvation, then God spends time and eternity waiting for men to give Him a heads up so that He can save them. And that denies the very idea of who God is -- the sovereign Creator of all that exists.

"Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure" -- Isaiah 46:10

Greater minds than ours have pointed out the important fact that if men are responsible for their own salvation, then Christ really didn't save anyone on Calvary; He only made salvation possible.

Which is not what the Bible says. Hebrews 10 tells us that the one-time sacrifice for all the sins of the flock of the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" has been offered and accepted by God, marked "Paid-in-Full."

"But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God;

From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.

For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.

Whereof the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that he had said before,

This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them;

And their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.

Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin." -- Hebrews 10:12-18

Romans 8 and 9 tell us that all men are fallen and none is capable of pleasing God unless and until God gives them a new heart and new ears and new eyes and a renewed mind in order for them to know their salvation has been won for them by Christ on the cross.

"For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth" -- Romans 9:11

Ephesians 1 tells us that God has determined this, and not men, and did so from before the foundation of the world. We are saved by unmerited grace, and grace alone.

"According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,

To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved." -- Ephesians 1:4-6

Most of us once thought exactly like you do. And then we understood better. All glory to God alone.

192 posted on 04/18/2008 6:01:13 PM PDT by Dr. Eckleburg ("I don't think they want my respect; I think they want my submission." - Flemming Rose)
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To: Dr. Eckleburg
If man has the final say about his own salvation, then God spends time and eternity waiting for men to give Him a heads up so that He can save them.

Yes, only if God is JUST LIKE YOU, i.e. He doesn't know the future and has to wait to see what happens. No wonder you just don't get this...

193 posted on 04/18/2008 6:20:08 PM PDT by AmericaUnited
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To: AmericaUnited; Dr. Eckleburg; HarleyD; Gamecock; Forest Keeper

Adam and Eve could NOT have sinned unless God himself provided not ONLY the means, but the PENALTY for eating the forbidden fruit. God planted the tree in the garden in order that they would eat, so that his PLAN FOR SALVATION would go forth. That is, of course, unless God didn’t know what he planted, and didn’t know that they would eat, and that God then had to scramble around trying to find a way to fix the mess that Adam did all by himself. I could just imagine THAT conversation... “Well, Son, looks like I’ve got to kill you, they did something I didn’t expect, that’s for sure.”


194 posted on 04/18/2008 8:03:56 PM PDT by irishtenor (Check out my blog at http://boompa53.blogspot.com/)
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To: Dr. Eckleburg; AmericaUnited; Gamecock; HarleyD; Forest Keeper

Well guys, it’s been fun, but I am a half hour away from flying off to Disneyworld. See ya at the end of the month. God bless all of you. Yes, even you AU :>)


195 posted on 04/18/2008 8:08:49 PM PDT by irishtenor (Check out my blog at http://boompa53.blogspot.com/)
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To: AmericaUnited; irishtenor; Gamecock; HarleyD; Forest Keeper
only if God is JUST LIKE YOU, i.e. He doesn't know the future and has to wait to see what happens. No wonder you just don't get this...

I get what Scripture tells us -- that God not only knows the past, present and future, He has "declared" all of them.

Read the Bible verses I offered and tell us why you understand them differently. They seem pretty clear to me.

196 posted on 04/18/2008 11:58:31 PM PDT by Dr. Eckleburg ("I don't think they want my respect; I think they want my submission." - Flemming Rose)
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To: irishtenor

Have a safe trip and enjoy every minute of your vacation.


197 posted on 04/18/2008 11:59:35 PM PDT by Dr. Eckleburg ("I don't think they want my respect; I think they want my submission." - Flemming Rose)
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To: irishtenor
God planted the tree in the garden in order that they would eat, so that his PLAN FOR SALVATION would go forth.

Well, that certainly turns this scripture on it head, doesn't it?

"Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:"

198 posted on 04/19/2008 2:25:59 AM PDT by AmericaUnited
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To: AmericaUnited; Dr. Eckleburg; irishtenor
He doesn't know the future and has to wait to see what happens.

Whoa! That's quite a statement. It's almost like God watching us on TV and not knowing what will happen to the Brady Bunch.

199 posted on 04/19/2008 2:45:56 AM PDT by HarleyD
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To: HarleyD
I just want to make sure you didn't miss the “only if you” part and don't think I believe that silliness.
200 posted on 04/19/2008 2:56:38 AM PDT by AmericaUnited
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