More Evidence Against Vitamin Use

No explanation is given why any supplement is unhealthy. That's the first thing.

Secondly, the context in which this occurs is that various government agencies and professional guilds want to prohibit the sale of supplements, or impose ridiculous 'standards' on their manufacture and testing.

However, it's very important that people remain free to choose which non-prescription chemicals to put in their bodies. Medics and pharmacists don't always get it right, they are difficult to consult, and they are as subject to whim and fashion in their thinking as other professions.

Meanwhile, only a handful of people die annually from vitamin overdose, whereas hundreds of thousands people die who take prescription drugs (yet we don't say that there's no justification for prescription drugs).

Also important is that they are not describing the effects of high doses of all vitamins. Superfluous amounts of Vitamin E seem to be mainly what they are seeing negative results from, and you'd probably only be getting that much Vitamin E if you were taking Vitamin E-specific supplements on purpose.

I'm sick of this hand-wavey selective nonsense. Yes, healthy people with good diets probably shouldn't be taking any vitamins, but the people I know who are this healthy are a small minority, including myself.

Lets look at these cases specfically. Should women over the age of 50 take iron? Probably not, but why are they taking iron? Because they've been told their whole lives they're low on iron by their doctors, who were right to tell them so, but now know not to recommend iron pills past a certain age. Were they wrong for doing so?

Look at how foods are enriched with vitamins. Folic acid is everywhere because it helps pregnant women, but in men it can cause cancer, but it also might fight a different cancer, yet we still take it in. Its nearly impossible to buy bread from the store that doesn't have folic acid. Hell, half the things in the grocery store are enriched with folic acid. How about we pull that stuff and just tell pregnant women to take supplements and stop feeding men a carcinogen? I prefer the freedom to make my own decisions than having the government dictate folic acid supplementation via food and the other hand having the NYTimes telling me not to take anything.

For the record I take fiber, fish oil, and vitamin D + tryptophan. The latter being more or less a cure for my SAD (after several failed SSRIs). This combination makes me feel like a million dollars. With a little supplementation as well as good sleep, etc I'm about 10x as creative and have more energy. Quitting these would be foolish. If anything, we should be encouraging responsible and informed supplementation and pulling government mandated supplementation for things that harm us, folic acid especially.

Heck, I'm a big government kind of guy, and even I have a problem with folic acid in our food. The government, even under the best of circumstances, is biased towards pregnant women and families (population growth/family is seen as important) but really not interested in helping you achieve longevity or be happy. You're going to have to work those out on your own, hence my recommendation to look into potential supplements and lifestyle changes, as well as avoiding government supplementation that might hurt you (folic acid) but help others (pregnant women).

This article is so against the hacker ethos its not even funny. Sorry NYTimes, this issue is a lot more complex than "Vitamins bad, mmm'kay?"

I hope you're trolling but on the assumption that you're not:

> No explanation is given why any supplement is unhealthy. That's the first thing.

An extreme example to illustrate the point: if you eat a random plant and drop dead, I'm not going to look for an explanation, I'm going to avoid eating that plant until I can prove that your death was caused by another factor. Likewise, if taking vitamin supplements appears to result in a negative effect on overall health rather than the expected positive, the smart thing to do is stop taking them until you can demonstrate otherwise, is it not?

> Secondly, the context in which this occurs is that various government agencies and professional guilds want to prohibit the sale of supplements, or impose ridiculous 'standards' on their manufacture and testing.

Source for this?

> However, it's very important that people remain free to choose which non-prescription chemicals to put in their bodies.

Indeed, it's also important that people are well educated in the effects of those non-prescription chemicals and are in full possession of the known facts about their effects. Such is the aim of studies like this.

> Medics and pharmacists don't always get it right, they are difficult to consult, and they are as subject to whim and fashion in their thinking as other professions.

Maybe so, but they know a lot more about the human body than those who don't study it, since that is by definition their job. Besides, the great thing about science is that anyone can dive in and have a go at proving or disproving something so if you disagree with the conclusions in this article, run some research of your own and prove them wrong.

> Meanwhile, only a handful of people die annually from vitamin overdose, whereas hundreds of thousands people die who take prescription drugs (yet we don't say that there's no justification for prescription drugs).

Sources for either of those statements?

Your issue with prescription drug-taking is entirely separate; you might as well argue that thousands of people die driving yet we don't say there's no justification for driving.

I don't want to discredit your experiences, because if they work, they work, but have you considered the possibility that you're achieving a placebo effect with your supplements? In some studies, iirc, placebos have been shown to be as effective or more effective than SSRIs.