Reasonable Rascal
11-10-02, 21:26
By Gailon Totheroh
CBN News Health & Science Reporter
November 8, 2002
Medical doctors have been reluctant to recommend multivitamins because they are not as familiar with nutrients as with drugs.
CBN.com - Vitamin manufacturers are busy putting out a variety of products and consumers are busy eating them up. Over 40 percent of adults take vitamins or mineral supplements at least occasionally. Many of those are multivitamin-multimineral products - about $3 billion worth annually. But are multivitamin consumers getting their money's worth?
Medical doctors have been reluctant to recommend multivitamins because they are not as familiar with nutrients as with drugs.
The most recent available figures indicate less than one percent of doctor's prescriptions are for vitamins. That may change as the American Medical Association now recommends multivitamins as of May 2002.
Still, medical writer Bill Sardi says the AMA recommendation falls short. "'Just buy the economical BRands and that's all you need.' What we're finding is the science shows us we need a little bit more and we can get a lot more health benefits," Sardi said.
Indeed, the public will find the most common brands of multivitamins deficient. Take Vitamin E for instance. Brand A and Brand B multivitamins have 30 units (IU) of Vitamin E. Brand C does have 60 units, but the optimal dosage range starts at 100 units and goes up to 800 units.
Sardi is the author of What's Best, a guide for analyzing multiple vitamins. "It is one of the most confusing things. The most used vitamin pill is the least studied. We don't have a lot of books on it," he said.
Nutritional supplement expert Luke Bucci says there is a shorthand way to evaluate multis - look for chromium and selenium in triple digits. That is, look for about 200 (mcg) micrograms of both chromium and selenium.
Bucci says companies that include these two usually provide the complete arsenal of nutrients. Sardi adds that the selenium should be the organic variety to be effective. He says you have to evaluate any multi you are considering by looking for B vitamins, antioxidants, crucial minerals and additional nutrients such as lutein.
Lutein helps prevent the elderly from suffering a common form of blindness called macular degeneration. Six milligrams (mg) of lutein are required daily for health benefits.
Both Sardi and Bucci recommend an additional nutrient called Coenzyme Q10, or CoQ10. High dosages of Coenzyme Q10 slowed the neurological symptoms of Parkinson's disease in a recent study.
The body makes less and less of this energy enhancer as people age, and Bucci explained, "So that if you don't have enough, you can't do anything. Your heart doesn't beat as strong, your immune system doesn't work as well, your brain doesn't function as well."
Sardi says you not only have to have plenty of many nutrients, but they have to be balanced. For instance, magnesium should be about equal or exceed calcium content. Calcium by itself can foster calcium buildup in the bloodstream. That could mean circulatory problems. Magnesium helps reduce that risk.
And there are nutrients that can cause problems. Vitamin B2, riboflavin, can cause cataracts or retinal damage at doses over 10 milligrams (mg). Iron should not be widely used except for children and women of childbearing age. That's because excess iron causes biological rusting, that is oxidation, in the body.
"All men essentially go into iron overload. And men have twice the iron levels of women by the age of 40 and thus twice the disease rates - heart disease, cancer, diabetes and rates of infection," Sardi said.
Most research on vitamins focuses on individual nutrients, but a recent study actually used a multivitamin in a six-month study.
The Cooper Institute in Dallas found positive indicators for multivitamin study participants. Here are the benefits:
- Reduction of homocysteine, an amino acid in the blood known as a risk factor for Alzheimer's and cardiovascular diseases.
- Reduction of oxidized LDL, an especially bad type of cholesterol implicated in heart and circulatory afflictions.
- Reduction of C-reacted protein, an indicator of inflammation. Inflammation is involved in diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer.
Since multivitamins potentially offer such great benefits, famed scientist Bruce Ames at U.C. Berkeley believes giving multivitamins to low income families would be good public policy. He said, "I'm convinced that if we got a multivitamin-mineral pill into the poor we'd have an enormous increase in health."
Some experts still say a good diet is enough.
But Sardi said, "Well those days are over, the results are in, the studies are here, it is showing tremendous health benefits to all of us if we just get into a good multivitamin."
Bucci says the best approach is to go for both. "So if you eat well and take supplements, that's like having two coats of armor instead of just one," he said.
While the public has voted for multivitamins by purchasing them in large numbers, they have not yet acquired the knowledge to select ones that would provide optimum health.
CBN News Health & Science Reporter
November 8, 2002
Medical doctors have been reluctant to recommend multivitamins because they are not as familiar with nutrients as with drugs.
CBN.com - Vitamin manufacturers are busy putting out a variety of products and consumers are busy eating them up. Over 40 percent of adults take vitamins or mineral supplements at least occasionally. Many of those are multivitamin-multimineral products - about $3 billion worth annually. But are multivitamin consumers getting their money's worth?
Medical doctors have been reluctant to recommend multivitamins because they are not as familiar with nutrients as with drugs.
The most recent available figures indicate less than one percent of doctor's prescriptions are for vitamins. That may change as the American Medical Association now recommends multivitamins as of May 2002.
Still, medical writer Bill Sardi says the AMA recommendation falls short. "'Just buy the economical BRands and that's all you need.' What we're finding is the science shows us we need a little bit more and we can get a lot more health benefits," Sardi said.
Indeed, the public will find the most common brands of multivitamins deficient. Take Vitamin E for instance. Brand A and Brand B multivitamins have 30 units (IU) of Vitamin E. Brand C does have 60 units, but the optimal dosage range starts at 100 units and goes up to 800 units.
Sardi is the author of What's Best, a guide for analyzing multiple vitamins. "It is one of the most confusing things. The most used vitamin pill is the least studied. We don't have a lot of books on it," he said.
Nutritional supplement expert Luke Bucci says there is a shorthand way to evaluate multis - look for chromium and selenium in triple digits. That is, look for about 200 (mcg) micrograms of both chromium and selenium.
Bucci says companies that include these two usually provide the complete arsenal of nutrients. Sardi adds that the selenium should be the organic variety to be effective. He says you have to evaluate any multi you are considering by looking for B vitamins, antioxidants, crucial minerals and additional nutrients such as lutein.
Lutein helps prevent the elderly from suffering a common form of blindness called macular degeneration. Six milligrams (mg) of lutein are required daily for health benefits.
Both Sardi and Bucci recommend an additional nutrient called Coenzyme Q10, or CoQ10. High dosages of Coenzyme Q10 slowed the neurological symptoms of Parkinson's disease in a recent study.
The body makes less and less of this energy enhancer as people age, and Bucci explained, "So that if you don't have enough, you can't do anything. Your heart doesn't beat as strong, your immune system doesn't work as well, your brain doesn't function as well."
Sardi says you not only have to have plenty of many nutrients, but they have to be balanced. For instance, magnesium should be about equal or exceed calcium content. Calcium by itself can foster calcium buildup in the bloodstream. That could mean circulatory problems. Magnesium helps reduce that risk.
And there are nutrients that can cause problems. Vitamin B2, riboflavin, can cause cataracts or retinal damage at doses over 10 milligrams (mg). Iron should not be widely used except for children and women of childbearing age. That's because excess iron causes biological rusting, that is oxidation, in the body.
"All men essentially go into iron overload. And men have twice the iron levels of women by the age of 40 and thus twice the disease rates - heart disease, cancer, diabetes and rates of infection," Sardi said.
Most research on vitamins focuses on individual nutrients, but a recent study actually used a multivitamin in a six-month study.
The Cooper Institute in Dallas found positive indicators for multivitamin study participants. Here are the benefits:
- Reduction of homocysteine, an amino acid in the blood known as a risk factor for Alzheimer's and cardiovascular diseases.
- Reduction of oxidized LDL, an especially bad type of cholesterol implicated in heart and circulatory afflictions.
- Reduction of C-reacted protein, an indicator of inflammation. Inflammation is involved in diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer.
Since multivitamins potentially offer such great benefits, famed scientist Bruce Ames at U.C. Berkeley believes giving multivitamins to low income families would be good public policy. He said, "I'm convinced that if we got a multivitamin-mineral pill into the poor we'd have an enormous increase in health."
Some experts still say a good diet is enough.
But Sardi said, "Well those days are over, the results are in, the studies are here, it is showing tremendous health benefits to all of us if we just get into a good multivitamin."
Bucci says the best approach is to go for both. "So if you eat well and take supplements, that's like having two coats of armor instead of just one," he said.
While the public has voted for multivitamins by purchasing them in large numbers, they have not yet acquired the knowledge to select ones that would provide optimum health.