Will taking multivitamins shorten your life????

You may have read the recent article about shortened life span in women taking multiple vitamins and are perhaps wondering what to do. It is always a good idea to apply the scientific principle to find out if supplements we are taking to improve our health really work. Good scientific studies are prospective, meaning the question is asked and then the data is collected with a treatment group and a control group.

The recent multivitamin study was retrospective, meaning information collected after the fact, about the lifestyle and the supplements women in the study had taken over the past several years. Some of the women in the study had just started taking a multi while others had been taking them for years. The control group had not taken any multi vitamins.

Overall they found lower blood pressure, less diabetes and a better BMI in the supplement taking group. However, they also found a correlation between taking a multi and dying earlier. The questions they didn’t ask are “have you started taking vitamins because you have an illness?” (Perhaps a serious illness which could cause early death), “are you taking a vitamin with high copper or iron when you don’t need it?” (These minerals can be damaging in high amounts when you don’t need them) “are you taking vitamins potentially contaminated with heavy metals and other toxic substances?” (%80 of raw materials for vitamins and minerals come from China).

What happens when studies are retrospective and poorly designed is the results they produce often support what the researchers want to find. And that is just not good science.