More than half the adults in this country take dietary supplements. We spend $50 billion a year on them. But according to new recommendations from the US Preventive Services Task Force released last month, there is “insufficient evidence” these supplements will extend your life.
“For most healthy adults, using vitamins doesn’t reduce your risk of getting or dying from cancer or getting or dying from cardiovascular disease or dying overall,” said Dr. Jeffrey Linder, chief of general internal medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, co-authored an editorial that accompanied the recommendations released on the Journal of the American Medical Association website.
Dr. Linder says many people don’t realize that you can over-do it with supplements and that can cause health problems.
“A classic example is vitamin D, which gets bandied about as the cure for everything. But even taking too much vitamin D is clearly associated with elevated blood, calcium levels, and kidney stones,” he told me.
The US Preventive Services Task Force specifically recommended against taking beta carotene supplements to prevent cancer and cardiovascular disease. Based on the evidence, the task force said, this could increase the risk of lung cancer and dying from heart disease. And it suggested against taking vitamin E because it “probably has no net benefit in reducing mortality, cardiovascular disease, or cancer.”
Rather than putting your hope in supplements, Dr. Linder recommends eating a good diet, exercising, maintaining a healthy weight, and avoiding smoking.
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