The Deadliest Vitamins

If you haven't realized it yet the mainstream media is one of the worst places you can go to get accurate information when it comes to nutrition. 

The mainstream media is known for taking a sliver of information from a study and twisting it like a pretzel.
 
 

They do things like take a study done with elderly overweight mice that had kidney disease and present it as if you take this supplement you are at a higher risk for cancer. 

What?

How does that even relate?

The sad thing is I am not exaggerating with that scenario.  I see it all the time where the media will take a small bit of information, or even one line from a research study, and present it as valid and credible across the board for all people; young or old, men or women. 

This leaves you more confused than ever.

Here is an example: 

There was a study conducted by researchers at the University of Washington that states that vitamins C, E and folate offer no protection against lung cancer.
 
 

The problem with this study is that the results were based on a survey of 77,721 Western Washington men and women. A survey is a subjective form of information gathering and hardly an objectionable way to prove something valid since everyone's opinions can vary greatly without any concrete data. 
 
 

Some other questions to ask:
 
 

Was this study truly random, or was it primarily female participants? 
 
 

What was the health status of these participants? 
 
 

Do they have diseases or other illnesses? 
 
 

What type of Vitamin E were they using for this study?

I could go on and on with questions that would break apart this story. 
 
 

Yet mainstream media presents it as you shouldn't take Vitamin E supplements because it increases your risk of lung cancer. 

That is not what the study says.  It says it offers no protection against lung cancer. 

What I can tell you is the facts as we know them right now.

Vitamins and minerals are safe to take when consumed in normal doses.  You don't need to mega dose with any one supplement, but depending on certain health issues it may be smart to increase the dosage of certain supplements above the standard RDA levels.

We also know that natural vitamins and minerals are more readily absorbed and utilized by the body than the common synthetic forms.  Many of the vitamins today are of the synthetic form. 

When choosing a multivitamin look for ones that are made from natural sources like fruits and vegetables.

I recommend the Whole Foods based 'VGF25+' from http://professionalgradenutrition.com/vgf. 

In other words, it is made from actual vegetables, fruits and greens.
 
 

It is NOT a synthetic vitamin created by some mad scientist in a lab somewhere. These are EXACTLY the kind most people buy from their grocery store aisle.
 
 

Something else I can tell you is that according to the Journal of American Medicine, everyone should be taking a good multi-vitamin.
 
 

Where does that leave you?
 
Yours in health,

Jayson Hunter RD, CSCS
Dress Size Reduction Diet
PS:   Here's what one of the top Nutrition PhD candidates in the country thinks about Whole Foods based vitamins.
 

"I've been taking the VGF+ (1-2 tabs) each day. To be completely honest – I think that Prograde makes the best multivitamin in the country.  Seriously. I'm very critical about vitamin and mineral supplementation because the data on synthetic vitamins is very mixed (and some bad). But because they use all whole food sources and not synthetics those concerns are out the window. "
 

Mike Roussell
Nutrition PhD doctoral student