So if you haven't heard yet, the Annals of Internal Medicine recently released a new report telling us "Enough is Enough:  Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements." Are we wasting our money on vitamin and mineral supplements?  Or an even more serious question, are vitamins dangerous?  Well, these are just about some of the broadest questions we could be asking ourselves.  Its kind of like asking "Does food help?"  Are we wasting our money on food? or "Is food dangerous?"  Well, anyone exercising the slightest bit of common sense should be able to realize that these questions completely depend on two big variables, 1.What kind of food? and 2. How much food?  So, lets ask again but more specifically.  Is McDonalds good for you?  Do nitrite-laced corndogs do your body good?  Does eating lots of green leafy and cruciferous vegetables help improve digestion?  Does High Fructose Corn Syrup help insulin sensitivity? Is Mercury Laden fish dangerous?  More specific context makes all the difference doesn't it?  We can actually answer these questions now can't we?   Applying these same specifics to the vitamin questions would probably make these studies a bit more credible wouldn't you think?  But of course, they are not interested in specifics, they just want to make as broad of a statement as possible.  But why?  Why would they say this to us?

If Vitamins do work, which they do, they are in direct competition to drug companies.   Where does the Annals of Internal Medicine receive most of its funding?  Well, they like the vast majority of medical journals receive the bulk of their funding from pharmaceutical companies and medical device manufacturers.  But wait a minute, doesn't this create a bit of a conflict of interest?  You bet it does.  In fact, a blog article written by Scientific American goes over this exact problem.  You can read that article here if you want.  But to sum up they say that

This shouldn't come as a surprise to us.  The fact of the matter remains that there is no money in cures.  The real money is in chronic illness, or in the marketing and sales world they call this what it really is, a "continuity program".  Why do you think it is in essence illegal to claim that any vitamin or supplement can "cure" something?  Funny, I thought vitamin C "cured" scurvy.  I thought vitamin D "cured" Rickets.  I thought there were a ton of things that vitamins and minerals "cured"?  Now granted this article in the Annals of Internal Medicine is not talking about whether vitamins help with deficiency induced illnesses such as these, the question they are asking in these journals is whether or not vitamins are helpful as preventatives for things like cancer and heart attacks.  Again, the inherent problem with their "studies" is the (dare I say intentional) vagueness in their methods.

So, if these journals receive most of their funding from drug companies, which not only want people to be sick, but from a financial model, need people to remain sick, what do you suppose they are going to say about vitamins and mineral supplements?  That's right, they are going to try and steer people clear of these pesky vitamins and minerals which get in the way of their profits.

In this recent declaration of "truth" by the Annals of Internal Medicine, I believe they have lost all credibility.  These statements of vitamins and minerals being not only ineffective but dangerous fly not only in the face of common sense but contradict other scientific research.

Funny story.  My wife was seeing a physician a few years back and during her visit she mentioned to the doctor that she was taking around 10,000 IUs of Vitamin D each day.  To which, the doctor immediately responded almost audibly gasping, "you need to be careful of vitamin D toxicity!"  To which my wife responded by asking "what is the safe upper limit?" The doctors response was priceless, "I don't know".  So let me get this straight, you are warning my wife about something you know nothing about, is that right?  Seriously?!  If this is representative of most physicians then a study like this shouldn't concern us much then.  I find it funny that people who have no training in nutrition in their medical schooling are counseling us about nutrition.  I wouldn't have a problem with their counsel if it wasn't so ignorant.

Funny, but I could have sworn a study published in 2000 in the journal Circulation titled "Oral Magnesium Therapy Improves Endothelial Function in Patients with Coronary Artery Disease" showed some of the health benefits of Magnesium, one of these "useless" vitamin and mineral therapies we have been told to stop wasting money on.  So which is it?  Does Magnesium help improve the function of the internal lining of our arteries (kind of important, especially in matters of heart disease wouldn't you think?) ?  Or is it useless?  After all this study was 13 years ago, that's ancient history.

Funny, but I thought there was a study published in Molecular Aspects of Medicine titled "Treatment of Essential Hypertension with Coenzyme Q10" that showed this supplement to be extremely effective for treating patients with high blood pressure.

Funny, but I seem to recall a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in 2000 which examined vitamin use and mortality rates of a million people living in the U.S.  According to this study, those taking specifically vitamins A, C, and E had significantly reduced risk of heart disease related deaths. Uh, Oh, this sort of contradicts EVERYTHING the folks at the Annals of Internal Medicine are saying.

So which study do we believe?  I could go on and on with study after study showing the effectiveness of vitamin and mineral supplement therapies for a wide range of problems but for sake of time, I will end with this: The one encouraging thing that was stated in this recent article was that the use of vitamins and minerals has increased over the years in spite of the mounting "research" showing all the evils and dangers of these supplements.  This should be a loud and clear message to the drug companies and their puppet journals that people don't really believe you. Why should they?  You have ZERO credibility!  Any doctor who supports this kind of garbage should be ashamed.

Bottom line, keep taking vitamin and mineral supplements, just make sure you are taking supplements that have been studied and shown to be effective, plain and simple.