How Safe Are Vitamins? – “Extraordinarily” Safe
If you’ve been told vitamins are not safe, this is a must-read:
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, August 4, 2008
Gazette’s Scaremongering About Vitamins
“Can a vitamin kill you?” asks the Montreal Gazette.
According
to Evra Taylor Levy and Eddy Lang’s article (May 12, 2008), vitamins
are murderous little molecules. “Stop taking supplements of vitamins A,
E and beta-carotene, plain and simple,” they say. Quoting an
interpretation of data by researchers with the Cochrane collaboration
(1), they would have you believe that vitamins are somehow harmful, and
quite possibly deadly.
So
where are the bodies? The authors’ single, much quoted, much-touted
“study” was merely a meta-analysis. A meta-analysis is not a clinical
study, but rather a statistical look at a collection of studies. The
key to “convenient” statistics is exactly which studies you choose to
look at . . . or refuse to look at. If you analyze enough failed
studies, you will get a negative meta-analysis. It’s a no-brainer. If
you exclude enough successful studies, you preordain the conclusion.
When you select a mere 67 studies, out of thousands and thousands of
existing, positive vitamin supplements studies, something is wrong. Yet
that is exactly what the Cochrane review did.
A
very large amount of research showing that vitamins are safe and
effective was systematically excluded. For example, the study authors
never even looked at over 600 scientific studies and papers from the
Toronto-based Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, a peer-reviewed
medical journal that specifically publishes vitamin therapy research,
and has done so for over forty years. They also failed to consider the
wealth of reports by experienced doctors, such as distinguished
Vancouver physician Abram Hoffer, MD. Dr. Hoffer, who also has a PhD in
nutritional biochemistry, said, “Vitamin supplements are
extraordinarily safe and effective. This is based on fifty years of
clinical experience without seeing any life-threatening side effects
and no deaths. It is pharmaceutical drugs that are dangerous. Perhaps
the drug industry is getting tired of all the bad news about drugs, so
instead they are going after nutritional supplements.”
Another
British Columbia physician, Erik Paterson, MD, said: “For 33 years I
have aggressively prescribed and advocated vitamins in doses vastly
higher than the usual government recommendations for my family and my
patients. I have never seen any adverse reactions, even though I have
been on the alert for them all this time.”
71%
of Canadians use natural health products. If they are so dangerous,
where are all the bodies? Perhaps there aren’t any simply because
vitamin supplements are indeed safe. Health Canada, under the 2004 Natural Health Products Regulations
(4), requires that vitamins and other supplements “must be safe for
consideration as over-the-counter products. . . Health Canada ensures
that all Canadians have ready access to natural health products that
are safe, effective and of high quality.” (2)
A
23-year review of US poison control center annual reports (3) confirms
the true and largely ignored story: vitamins are extraordinarily safe.
The American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC), which
maintains the USA’s national database of information from 61 poison
control centers, provides data showing that even including intentional
and accidental misuse, the number of alleged vitamin fatalities is
strikingly low, averaging less than one death per year for more than
two decades. In 16 of those 23 years, AAPCC reports that there was not
one single death due to vitamins. (3) These statistics specifically
include vitamin A, niacin (B-3), pyridoxine (B-6), other B-complex, C,
D, E, and “other” vitamin(s), such as vitamin K. Michael Janson, MD,
said, “In decades of people taking a wide variety of dietary
supplements, few adverse effects have been noted, and zero deaths as a
result of the dietary supplements. There is far more risk to public
health from people stopping their vitamin supplements than from people
taking them.”
Supplements
are an easy, practical entry-level better-nutrition solution for the
public, who are more likely to take convenient vitamin tablets than to
willingly eat organ meats, wheat germ, and ample vegetables.
Scare-stories notwithstanding, taking supplements is not the problem;
it is a solution. Malnutrition is the problem.
It
is indeed curious that, while theorizing many “potential” dangers of
vitamins, critics fail to point out how economical supplements are. The
uncomfortable truth is that it is often less expensive to supplement
than to buy nutritious food, especially out-of-season fresh produce.
For low-income households, taking vitamin supplements, readily
obtainable from any discount store, is vastly cheaper than getting
those vitamins by eating right.
The
Gazette should know better. Public supplementation should be
encouraged, not discouraged. Vitamin supplements have been repeatedly
proven to be a cost-effective means of preventing and ameliorating
illness.
Where
are the bodies? There aren’t any. There is not one death per year from
any vitamin in the alphabet. Not from A, B’s, C, D or E. Vitamin safety
has been, and remains, extraordinarily high.
References:
(1)
Bjelakovic G et al: Antioxidant supplements for prevention of mortality
in healthy participants and patients with various diseases. Cochrane
Database Systematic Reviews. 2008 April 16; (2):CD007176.
(3)
Annual Reports of the American Association of Poison Control Centers’
National Poisoning and Exposure Database (formerly known as the Toxic
Exposure Surveillance System). AAPCC, 3201 New Mexico Avenue, Ste. 330,
Washington, DC 20016.
Download any report from1983-2006 at http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/NPDS/AnnualReports/tabid/125/Default.aspx free of charge. The “Vitamin” category is usually near the end of the report.
For additional information:
Evidence of Vitamin Safety: Testimony to Canadian Parliament http://www.doctoryourself.com/testimony.htm
Vitamin Safety and Effectiveness http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/index.shtml
Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine free archive of papers, 1967-2007 http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/index.shtml
Nutritional Medicine is Orthomolecular Medicine
Orthomolecular medicine uses safe, effective nutritional therapy to fight illness. For more information: http://www.orthomolecular.org
The peer-reviewed OrthomolecularMedicine News Service is a non-profit and non-commercial informational resource.
Editorial Review Board:
Carolyn Dean, M.D., N.D.
Damien Downing, M.D.
Harold D. Foster, Ph.D.
Steve Hickey, Ph.D.
Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.
Bo H. Jonsson, MD, PhD
Thomas Levy, M.D., J.D.
Erik Paterson, M.D.
Andrew W. Saul, Ph.D., Editor and contact person.
Email: omns [at] orthomolecular.org (replace [at] with @)
To Subscribe at no charge: http://www.orthomolecular.org/subscribe.html
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