No Point to Pill Popping

“There is something called the ‘healthy user effect.’ Healthy people take supplements; supplements don’t make people healthy. Causality runs in the reverse direction.”—By Sanford Rose

Dolors & Sense

By Sanford Rose

KISSIMMEE Florida—(Weekly Hubris)—3/10/2014—Vitamin pills come in two varieties: 1) Those that are useless; 2) Those that are both useless and harmful.

Shocked?

Most of the more than half of the public that regularly takes supplements would be.

But these statements are supported by the latest studies available to the medical community.

To be sure, there are studies showing that people with high levels of the antioxidant Vitamins A, E, and C in the blood are healthier than those with lower levels.

And those who take supplemental A, E, and C unquestionably end up with higher blood levels of these vitamins.

Does it not follow that taking the supplements improves one’s health?

No.

There is something called the “healthy user effect.”

Healthy people take supplements; supplements don’t make people healthy.

Causality runs in the reverse direction.

How do we know?

Not by relying on results from observational, or correlative, studies, but rather by the use of the gold standard of medical evidence, dubbed a double-blind randomized trial.

Take a bunch of people, give half the supplement and the other half a placebo, without revealing to either group, or even to those who are conducting the tests, who is taking what.

Then follow the participants for a number of years to ascertain health outcomes.

Finally, do a meta-analysis, an analysis of all the available high-quality randomized trials.

Results for the antioxidants A, E, and C:

Mortality from all causes was 16 percent higher in the groups taking A than in the groups taking the placebos.

It was 7 percent higher in those taking beta-carotene, a precursor of Vitamin A.

It was 4 percent higher in those taking Vitamin E.

All these results were what the researchers called statistically significant—i.e., there was less than a 5 percent probability that the results occurred through chance.

As for Vitamin C, there was a 6 percent increase in overall mortality, but because there were not enough trials, this result was not judged statistically significant.

There is some evidence that Vitamin C prevents colds, but only in those subject to extraordinary physical stress—e.g., marathoners and cross-country skiers.

For the rest of us, no such luck.

So if you’re healthy, it is likely that you are so despite—not because of—taking antioxidants. Until different evidence surfaces, the better part of valor is just to deep-six all of them.