• April 20, 2024

If you are one of those who believe that taking vitamin supplements, it makes you healthier ... waters! Paul Offit, professor and American pediatrician, says in his most recent book The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine, The question is not whether people need vitamins, but in what quantity and whether or not they can be obtained in food.
 

And while nutrition experts argue that what people need is a healthy diet, the industry insists that food does not contain enough vitamins and larger quantities are needed.

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According to a study of Nielsen of 2009, It is estimated that Americans are at the forefront in the consumption of vitamins: 56% of those consulted said taking vitamins or supplements to achieve a balanced diet. In Europe, 30% of the population ingests them. In Spain, one of the countries where consumption is lowest, it does 13%.

Beware of falling into excess

Recent studies suggest that high doses of vitamins may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer. In 2011 the researchers of the University of Minnesota They evaluated the cases of 39,000 older women, and discovered a higher mortality rate among those taking multivitamin supplements.

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So many vitamins have a negative side

Julia Álvarez, coordinator of the nutrition area of ​​the Spanish Society of Endocrinology and Nutrition, notes that experimental research with antioxidant vitamins, in the late 1980s, augured a protective role against cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Many people ended up believing it, which "lavished the indiscriminate use of vitamins in patients who did not have any degree of deficiency or insufficiency," he adds.

Thus, says Dr. Alvarez, individuals who were unaware of their nutritional or vitamin status indiscriminately took vitamins, especially those with antioxidant activity (A and C for example).

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Some are saved

Of the thousands of supplements on the market, Offit rescues these four: omega-3 to prevent heart disease; calcium and vitamin D for post-menopausal women; and folic acid during pregnancy to prevent birth defects.

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An excess of vitamin can produce a rebound effect: the organism destroys it, resulting in a lack of it, "says Moreno. An excess of certain vitamins, such as those of group B, increases the needs of others, and adds that "this excess can also interfere in the functions of others; so an excess of vitamin A can interfere with the beneficial effects of vitamin D. "
 

So, before a lack of vitamins and before running to buy vitamin complexes, it would be interesting to ask some questions: What is missing from my diet? What am I taking that facilitates the loss of vitamins? What's in my lifestyle that needs to be corrected?