Vitamin Wars

To take vitamin pills or not? American scientists led a life-and-death fight on this matter for a couple of months. And ordinary pill takers advise them to finally sort themselves out and give a clear answer.

American grocery stores look like the American dream’s fulfillment of somebody on a vitamin high. In that healthy alphabet I can choose from colorful powders, multivitamin mints, cola-flavored chewing gum, or even gummy supplements for kids and their parents. Against the $11 million that Americans spend on vitamins, Poland’s $3 million, even though it is a sizeable sum, looks rather scant.

A for Analphabetism

However, some American scientists now think that the colorful tablets industry needs to stop. In the famous publication Annals of Internal Medicine, scientists from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, one of the most prestigious medical schools in the world, wrote to us, the ordinary vitamin eaters, squarely: “Enough is enough. Stop wasting money.” They assume that the matter is forever closed. Enhancing an adult’s diet with vitamins and supplements does not bring any advantages and does not work preventively against any diseases. What’s worse, high doses of beta-carotene or vitamins E and A can be harmful to one’s health.

True or False: Antioxidants in Tablets Are More Important than Diet

Edgar Miller, professor of epidemiology and a co-author of this report, is very firm. “The belief that vitamins can cure us is a contemporary hooey and a scientific illiteracy,” he says. “A healthy diet is fundamental. I suggest spending the money saved on vitamins on vegetables, fruits, nuts or good quality diary. One can also buy a gym membership. Spending on vitamins is just throwing money down the drain,” says Miller.*

Some of the more aware consumers breathed a sigh of relief after this report, thinking that it finally silenced pharmaceutical companies that say normal food does not give us what the body needs. So there is a chance that the dispute over whether to eat pills covered with a whole bunch of letters or to let it go is over. But it was a break just for a moment; it quickly turned out that because of vitamins scientists start to behave as in a life-and-death worldview war. The scientists from Johns Hopkins were immediately attacked by a group of their zealous opponents, and by the even more obstinate fans of bettering health with pills.

“The anti-vitamin report is trash,” rages Professor Stampfer from Harvard University, who announced in the last edition of Nature that it is a scandal that such a specialized newspaper as Annals of Internal Medicine would publish on its pages such a pseudo- scribble.* There are more similar comments. For a couple of months, American doctors and scientists lived and breathed the vitamin matter.

Trouble Starts after D

Such a commotion in the vitamin sector is, however, nothing new. It also happened during the very first research on this subject, led by the Polish biochemist Kazimierz Funk. At the beginning of the 20th century at the Pasteura Institute in Paris, he tried to discover the cause of the nowadays almost unknown disease Beriberi, which manifests itself with nerve inflammation, paralysis, skin discolorations, mental disorders and muscle atrophy. Funk noted that the secret neurological syndrome occurs in patients who, when asked about diet, name mainly white hulled rice.

This seed became his obsession. Finally, during the cleaning process from the rejected rice bran, he educed a substance whose lack can cause Beriberi. In the first experiment he fed it to undernourished pigeons. After 12 hours they revived — all because of vitamin B1, an internal glucose burner that prevents the creation of pyruvic acid excess in our bodies that causes cells damage. Funk gave this vital substance a catchy name: “vitamin,” from the Latin combination of vita, which means life, and amina, a chemical compound containing an amino acid group. He later discovered that B1 is present in dough, milk and beef brain. This is how the world learned about vitamins.

He did not have to wait long for criticism. Researchers from the Lister Institute in London claimed that Funk’s thesis was a heresy, and tried to forbid using the name invented by the biochemist. American scientists, in a special edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, tried to warn about Funk’s new expression “lack of vitamins.” They warned that the word “starting with V” had little in common with science, and surely it would soon land on the scrap heap as another mistaken medical invention.*

Today, nobody doubts that B1 prevents Beriberi, or that vitamin C prevents scurvy, and that pregnant women should enrich their healthy diet with folic acid, from the vitamin B group. Its lack can cause fetus development defects. Vitamin D, which straightens bones, also has many advocates.

Vitamin D: Life-Giving, but Still a Secret Molecule

Unfortunately, on D the consensus regarding the healthy alphabet does not end. “It’s high time to face up and admit that science just did not do the job regarding vitamin studies. We ourselves don’t know what to say really to the patients, because until now we looked at vitamins through a dirty window pane and withdrawn curtains,” Susan Mayne, professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, admitted in Nature.*

This statement also caused turmoil in the U.S. because Mayne is a member of the medical institute responsible for setting the feeding standards and daily dose of various nutritional ingredients, including vitamins. So she admitted, in between the words, that everything what we think is a norm is nothing more than wandering in the fog. We are left to ourselves in that vitamin fog..

The Alphabet Overdose

So what do we know about vitamins? Studies from the recent years show that more than enough is too much, and can even be even deadly. And despite the fact that some of those experiments are not new, American doctors just recently started explaining this to their patients. In science, a couple of decades of similar results need to pass sometimes in order to start taking new research seriously — especially if the conclusions that come from it disrupt all that seemed to be clear.

As with the information published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the authors gave 18,000 smokers either a mixture of vitamin A and beta-carotene or a placebo for more than five years. The experiment was stopped when it came out that the risk of developing lung cancer in those who took those vitamins rose by more than 40 percent. Another study that in 2004 analyzed the results of 14 clinical tests showed that adding vitamin A and E, beta-carotene and selenium to one’s diet to prevent bowel cancer, instead of helping, raises that risk. One year later, Annals of Internal Medicine described another 19 clinical tests on 136,000 people. It turned out that those who took vitamin E died earlier. And three years ago, research from the Journal of the American Medical Association connected an excess of vitamin E with higher risk of prostate cancer.

Why do our bodies not produce vitamins, although they are essential for us to live?

The matter does not end with clinical tests, because it is very easy to overdose vitamins and it has probably happened to everyone. One thousand milligrams of vitamin C, which is 10 times more than the daily requirement, is a couple of tablets and a pack of enriched candies. But to eat so much in nature, we would have to tuck in 15 oranges and that would rather cause the body to rebel. How is it possible that multivitamins lie on shelves next to herbs and candies and nobody controls their sale? According to Dr. Paula Offit, one of the better-known opponents of vitamins, diet supplements are the biggest shame for the American Food and Drug Administration employees. Offit explains that Americans already tried to introduce regulations in the ‘70s, but the vitamin industry lobby employed such an efficient lobbying of senators that the bill never passed the Senate. Even now, the vitamin lobby is doing very well.

It does not mean, however, that at the first chance we should throw vitamins in the bin and forget about them once and for all. Apart from the fact that overdose is harmful, scientists know that their insufficiency is also not beneficial to us. During a study carried out at Harvard between three and six years, folic acid was given to people that had earlier recovered from bowel cancer. When the results were first analyzed, it appeared that folic acid did not change anything; it had neither positive nor negative influence. But when the scientists surveyed the group that had the lowest level of the substance, it turned out that the tablets lowered their risk of cancer relapse.

K for Trouble

It is hard to believe that scientists from the best universities discovered something so obvious just now. But it is because for years, hardly any tests measured the output level of vitamins in the people being tested. And when it comes to diet, very often patients’ declarations were believed, so it was hard to calculate how many milligrams they took. In the end, we lie to ourselves about how many cookies we munched on before lunch. Today research is more reliable because its participants need to photograph each meal with a mobile application; scientists can only believe that no candy bars were omitted and that one apple is the same as another apple, even if one person eats only organic fruits and somebody else those from an industrial crop. Hardly anyone also factored in our genetic differences, which can be crucial in understanding how vitamins affect our bodies.

Vitamins and Supplements: Is It Worth Taking Them?

Maybe, in a couple of years’ time, we will know a bit more. Prickly comments from patients and consumers, which flooded American portals and newspapers, and, in the form of emails, inboxes of scientific gurus of vitamins, will do their part. Their message was clear: Get to work and give us firm answers. In the end, the grants for research come from our taxes. Ashamed scientists rolled up their sleeves and recently published tips on how to appropriately approach the subject, taking into consideration not only tablets but also what we get from food, what vitamins are in that food, and how the body absorbs them.

And right now, as Professor Edgar Miller says, we need to remember that our stomachs, apart from rolls, kebabs and pizza, need to get a sound quantity of tomatoes, broccoli, apples, cherries and other natural vitamins. Otherwise it will be not possible to go without those in the form of gummies.

After all, American pediatricians have said for some time now, with consternation, that they see 5-year-olds with scurvy. Everyone thought that this 19th-century disease of sailors, who suffered during long journeys because of the lack of vitamin C and other nutritional ingredients, could only be read in books. Meanwhile, to get a similar effect in our times — with bad teeth included — one needs to eat fast food for a longer time.

Vitamin-Taking ABCs

1. Vitamin C can raise your iron absorption level. Don’t take them together.

2. Too much vitamin A intake can harm the bones and liver.

3. Vitamins dissolving in fat (A, D, E and K) are better absorbed when you take them with a meal containing fat.

4. Try to get vitamins from foods in which they appear naturally.

5. Vitamin D is better absorbed when taken during dinner, not breakfast.

6. People taking anti-thrombotic medicine should avoid vitamin K. People taking diuretic medicines should avoid vitamin D, and those taking heart medicines vitamin B3.

7. Long-term zinc intake can lower the copper level in the body. Consult a doctor.

8. Some minerals compete with each other. For example, if you take calcium, take other minerals, like iron, at a different time of day.

9. Older men and women after menopause should limit iron supplements. Taken in high dosage, these can lead to heart problems and harm various organs.

10. If you take multivitamins, check if the nutritional products that you buy are not enriched with vitamins and calculate daily intake to avoid overdose.

*This quote, accurately translated, cannot be verified.