Pills that KILL

Whatever. So I guess there's a study that was published today in the Journal of American Medical Association that insinuates vitamin taking may be harmful to your health.

Whoa, whoa, whoa...slow down a minute. The one thing I hate about some of this health news is how most of it relies on our fears. A great deal of it propogates a "you need to read this or die" ideal which is simply the best tool to encourage consumerism.

Now, with that said, let's get some things straight.
1. Living on pills alone will kill you.
2. The study was done mostly on antioxidant suppliments.
3. The study was done on all kinds of things that cause death in general.
4. There were no specific diseases or causes of death studied to conclude that swallowing antioxidant supplements will kill a person in a year or two.

Here's a quote that sums it up nicely:

However the scientific community and the pharmaceutical industry received with reservation the conclusions of the new study, underlining the benefits humans get from ingesting vitamin-supplements.

Andrew Shao, vice president for science and regulatory affairs at the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade association representing the dietary supplement industry, said that "They included every trial under the sun," Shao said. "Some [studies] were a day long, some were several years long. The majority of trials involved very sick patients -- treatment trials that were very, very different from how antioxidant supplements are used by most consumers, which is to maintain health."

The antioxidants in the study have widely different modes of action, one other critic of the study noted. "It's like putting two very different drugs together and drawing one conclusion," he explained.

In addition, he said, "they do not mention anywhere in the report what people are dying of," which makes it is difficult to attribute the deaths to the supplements and not to some other causes.

"You don't see people dropping dead right and left from overdoses of antioxidant supplements," he added. "It is just not happening. You have to explain to me how some essential nutrients kill you in a couple of years."

Antioxidant supplements "have been shown in a number of studies to have no adverse effects," Blumberg said. "They are not toxic, but evidence that they prevent heart disease and cancer is equivocal."

So, try not to fear the killer vitamin. Headlines are some of the most deceitful statements a person will find in the "news." Question everything!

Still scared? Check out this short article:
in The Austrailian. Or go to the source, JAMA.

PS Google Imaged "vitamin kills" and image at top is what I found.