About 60,000 instances of vitamin toxicity are reported annually to US poison control centers.
You may counter that vitamins are needed for the human body to function. Yes, that is true. That’s why you eat spinach and apples. The mistake is believing that artificially isolating those chemicals and then taking massive quantities of them is safe, healthy and effective. It is not.
Contrary to drug manufacturers’ claims, vitamins act like any other chemical or drug put into your body. Vitamins have drug interactions, create unintended side-effects, tax your kidneys and liver and therefore need to be treated like any other chemical you ingest. That is to say that vitamins should be considered only on the recommendation of your physician.
What’s more — vitamins are completely unregulated by any health or safety board (i.e. may contain arsenic, lead, mercury or other substances) and many vitamins have been proven to be hazardous in large doses. Indeed, one recent twenty year long megastudy of 40,000 women showed that vitamin supplements may actually increase the risk of premature death.
So regardless of what the drug manufacturer or a health product marketer may tell you – there are very, very little beneficial things you may do to supplement healthy eating and regular exercise. Instead of reaching for that $25 bottle of "magic" pills or gummy juju Flintstones candy, eat a damn carrot.
Edit: Link fix.
You may counter that vitamins are needed for the human body to function. Yes, that is true. That’s why you eat spinach and apples. The mistake is believing that artificially isolating those chemicals and then taking massive quantities of them is safe, healthy and effective. It is not.
Contrary to drug manufacturers’ claims, vitamins act like any other chemical or drug put into your body. Vitamins have drug interactions, create unintended side-effects, tax your kidneys and liver and therefore need to be treated like any other chemical you ingest. That is to say that vitamins should be considered only on the recommendation of your physician.
What’s more — vitamins are completely unregulated by any health or safety board (i.e. may contain arsenic, lead, mercury or other substances) and many vitamins have been proven to be hazardous in large doses. Indeed, one recent twenty year long megastudy of 40,000 women showed that vitamin supplements may actually increase the risk of premature death.
So regardless of what the drug manufacturer or a health product marketer may tell you – there are very, very little beneficial things you may do to supplement healthy eating and regular exercise. Instead of reaching for that $25 bottle of "magic" pills or gummy juju Flintstones candy, eat a damn carrot.
Edit: Link fix.