CHICAGO — Vitamins and supplements that countless people take to improve their health are just a waste of money, a new study contends. Researchers from Northwestern University say their health benefits are mainly in the mind and some may even do more harm than good.
According to the CDC, nearly six in 10 Americans regularly took dietary supplements in 2018. Last year, Americans spent nearly $50 billion on vitamins and supplements. However, the research team says there’s no “magic set of pills to keep you healthy.” Instead, diet and exercise are still the key to good health.
“Patients ask all the time, ‘What supplements should I be taking?’” says lead author Dr. Jeffrey Linder from Northwestern University in a media release. “They’re wasting money and focus thinking there has to be a magic set of pills that will keep them healthy when we should all be following the evidence-based practices of eating healthy and exercising,”
Certain supplements could cause cancer, not prevent it
Multivitamin tablets are particularly popular as they contain a mix of a dozen or so vital nutrients. The Health Food Manufacturers’ Association says more than a third of people feel they do not get all they need through their diet.
However, the systematic review of 84 studies found “insufficient evidence” that taking multivitamins, paired, or single supplements prevent cardiovascular disease and cancer. A team from the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), an independent panel of experts that makes evidence-based recommendations, carried out that review.
READ: 5 Studies That Suggest Multivitamins Are Not Improving Your Health
“The task force is not saying ‘don’t take multivitamins,’ but there’s this idea that if these were really good for you, we’d know by now,” Linder explains.
They specifically advise against taking beta-carotene supplements because of a possible increased risk of lung cancer.
“The harm is that talking with patients about supplements during the very limited time we get to see them, we’re missing out on counseling about how to really reduce cardiovascular risks, like through exercise or smoking cessation,” the study author continues.
Multivitamins don’t have everything found in your fruit and vegetables
Writing in JAMA, Dr. Linder and colleagues say more than half of American adults take vitamins and supplements, with their popularity projected to increase significantly over the next decade. Eating fruits and vegetables leads to decreased cardiovascular disease and cancer risk, according to the team.
READ: Taking These Supplements Can Lower Risk Of Developing Autoimmune Diseases
So, it is reasonable to think key vitamins and minerals could be extracted and packaged into a pill – saving trouble and expense of maintaining a balanced diet. Unfortunately, researchers explain that whole fruits and vegetables contain a mixture of vitamins, plant chemicals, fiber, and other nutrients that probably combine to boost your health.
Micronutrients in isolation may act differently in the body than when naturally packaged with a host of other dietary components. Dr. Linder notes individuals who have a vitamin deficiency can still benefit from taking dietary supplements such as calcium and vitamin D. Previous studies have shown that they can prevent fractures and falls in older adults.
The revised guidelines do not apply to women who are pregnant or planning to start a family.
“Pregnant individuals should keep in mind that these guidelines don’t apply to them,” says co-author Dr. Natalie Cameron, an instructor of general internal medicine at Northwestern.
READ: 6 Amazing Benefits From Taking Fish Oil Supplements
“Certain vitamins, such as folic acid, are essential for pregnant women to support healthy fetal development. The most common way to meet these needs is to take a prenatal vitamin. More data is needed to understand how specific vitamin supplementation may modify risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes and cardiovascular complications during pregnancy.”
Overcoming the cost of eating healthy
Recent research has found most women in the U.S. have poor heart health prior to becoming pregnant. Dr. Cameron says discussing vitamin supplementation and optimizing cardiovascular health prior to pregnancy is an important component of pre-natal care. However, healthy eating can be a challenge when U.S. food manufacturers focus on processed products packed with fat, sugar, and salt.
“To adopt a healthy diet and exercise more, that’s easier said than done, especially among lower-income Americans,” notes co-author Dr. Jenny Jia. “Healthy food is expensive, and people don’t always have the means to find environments to exercise—maybe it’s unsafe outdoors or they can’t afford a facility. So, what can we do to try to make it easier and help support healthier decisions?”
READ: Power Of Positivity: Health Benefits Of Multivitamins ‘May All Be In The Mind’
Dr. Jia has been working with charitable food pantries and banks that supply free groceries to help people pick healthier choices and encourage donors to provide healthier options or money.
South West News Service writer Mark Waghorn contributed to this report.
JimS, The type of supplement you use matters on how much the body gets the benefit from them, tablets are least absorbable followed by capsules, liquid form are most absorbable to the body, so it is the type of supplement that we choose to use and a better choice to avoid supplements and depend on diet and exercise with the use of supplements.
This is akin to the fox insisting that a full, locking gate on the henhouse has no effect on the health of hens, lol.
It is *precisely* because many supplements are cheap, effective and readily available that these “study authors” (aka stakeholders) dismiss them. You can thank Big Pharma. These same docs are the first ones to not spend *five minutes* with you talking about diet and exercise, but are happy to quickly write you prescriptions instead. And, of course, the first to screech about the “proven” effectiveness of a “vaccine” that we now know doesn’t work as a vaccine at all. Give me a damn break.
Take this with the skepticism it deserves. Who funded the study? I for one had a D deficiency and started taking 10K IU. That resolved my issues. Some vitamins are beneficial.
JimS – Correcting a misquote, in my reply, I meant better choice not to avoid supplements. ????
The author of the article seems to suggest that all people who take supplements are looking for an easy health fix. Taking supplements is not inconsistent with good diet and exercise. The author seems to suggest they are mutually exclusive. I am suspect because it seems the author has an underlying agenda. It is not clear to me what that is. I don’t think the study is worthless, but I am not yet ready to give up my multi vitamin. I don’t think this article really speaks to all specific supplements as a group.
The article clearly states that those with deficiencies should be taking supplements.
Who takes multivitamins to prevent heart disease or cancer? Dumb article.
So the same Government funded research that wants to inject an untested MRNA Covid vaccine into babies that has proven to have killed or injured thousands and still doesn’t prevent Covid infections or death now tells you that vitamins and supplements are worthless? Riiight, STFU!!!
Your silly
@Danny
You’re uneducated!
@DidleySquat
Absolutely correct!
This was a meta-analysis of 84 studies done by an independent panel of experts, who you can read about on the USPSTF website. They are careful to disclose conflicts of interest.
The panel did not say that vitamins and supplements are worthless. They specifically said: “The task force is not saying ‘don’t take multivitamins'”.
They also acknowledged the value in taking supplements for cases like deficiencies and pregnancies.
None of this has anything to do with vaccines. But in case you were curious, the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines were tested, and Covid kills and injures far more people than vaccines do.
Please check VAERS and the Eiropean VAERS. There are more incidents for this vaccine than all vaccines combined for the past 25 years. The VAERS system usually reflects one percent of the actual cases so there could be millions of adverse events from a COVID vaccine which neither prevents you from getting or transmitting COVID.
1) Who paid for the study?
2) Which of the scientists have taken, are taking or are under contract to take money from a pharmaceutical company?
3) Who provided the placebo?
4) What does the cohort look like (did they use a group of healthy 28 year old males that would be irrelevant to most of us)?
Without those questions being asked/answered up front, you do not have an efficacious study (merely an incompetent reporter/investigator)
Those are great questions! For anyone interested:
1) This was a meta-analysis, not a single study. It was not funded – it was done by volunteer experts (a task force abbreviated USPSTF), peer-reviewed, and published in JAMA.
2) The USPSTF discloses conflicts of interest on their website.
3 and 4) 84 studies were reviewed as part of this meta-analysis. If you’re interested in looking more closely at their methodologies, the title of the publication is “Multivitamins and Supplements—Benign Prevention or Potentially Harmful Distraction?”
The supplement you should be using is called exercise. A sedentary lifestyle is the primary risk factor for most major disease and premature death. A typical western diet easily provides required intake of necessary nutrients. Since further health benefits are not accrued by consuming vitamins and minerals above adequate intake levels, a multi-vitamin on top of the typical western diet offers no benefit for most people.
Yes let’s trust the CDC.Wake up,they paid by big pharma.Supplements saved my life and cured many things for me.
Total propaganda.
I’ve been saying for years that the “dietary supplement” loophole seriously needs to be closed. We have developed a system where countless things can claim to do some pretty magical things just as long as they don’t directly state they cure or treat a disease (and now I’m seeing some sneak past even that like the nasal flush things that claim they cure viruses.) “Dietary supplements” don’t have to prove in any sort of independent or verified studies or anything that they actually do what they claim to do — or, for that matter, anything at all. Some (namely homeopathic stuff) are literally selling you supposed magic (and let’s be clear, believing that water magically remembers what was in it if you bump it enough times and that the memory of something that causes similar symptoms somehow cures you of things is magical thinking.) None have to prove they even do anything whatsoever and there is absolutely no regulation whatsoever. They don’t even have to give you what they say they give you. Most multi-vitamins have been found to have *significantly* less than they claim to actually have. Rarely a bad batch poisons people with too much instead though. (The irony being homeopathic has succeeded in actually having something when they forgot to dilute the water enough and gave babies nightshade for example. Turns out nightshade doesn’t actually cure colic or whatever. It just makes them sick.) There is absolutely no regulation on the “dietary supplement” industry, allowing companies to rake in literally billions in selling overpriced placebos. Because of the lack of actual regulation the only recourse one has if they want something that provides what it claims to or to do anything about it if they get something that causes harm is to actually sue the company (and guess which one has teams of expert lawyers on the payroll ready for such things any time and which one can’t afford to miss months of work for a long, drawn out trial?)
The loophole needs to be closed. No more dietary supplements. If a company wants to claim its product benefits people in some way, it should be required to prove that it actually does. If it causes harm it should be forcibly pulled off the shelves, not voluntarily under the hopes that it won’t ever occur to people to actually group together and form class action lawsuits when they actually cause harm to many (which, luckily for them, is rare.) But, then again, would it even be ‘Murika without people being taught to spend lots of money on magical thinking from early childhood?
Oh brother. What useless, drama queen BS….
If the supplements are good, then they are good for you as they have the same vitamins as fruits & vegetables. Your body doesn’t care if the vitamin is in a fruit or vitamin gummy. Most “peer reviewed” studies cannot be replicated.
I find that regular exercise, at 52, three times a week and watching what I consume seems to get expected results. I take a multi vitamin, fish oil, joint supplement ( cheap brands from Kroger). Are they helping? Hard to say at low quality. The study listed probably needs more data but finding real nutrients in todays world of processing, good luck!
The studies they cite are NOT using complete vitamin and mineral (VM) supplementation for a lifetime, meaning they are useless. Studies – specifically randomized controlled Trials (RCTs) using incomplete VM supplementation – testing the seemingly intuitive act of adding back what we recognize as missing in daily essential nutrition, are futile exercises. Despite being the gold standard for synthetic singularly acting drugs, RCTs are impractical for evaluating miscellaneous combinations of VMs because VMs work synergistically over a lifetime and often deliver misleading or confusing conclusions. Testing daily VM supplementation from fetal development to death using a defined formula containing most major VMs (including known under consumed), documenting compliance as opposed to recall, while comparing this to non-supplemented cohorts throughout life would be virtually impossible with the latter bordering unethical. Further, the non-recommendation of appropriate multiple vitamin and mineral supplementation, i.e., one that contains a population’s known under consumed nutrients including unidentifiable/unknown lapses of any essential VMs (thus ~20-22 VMs), not only defies logic but would be a careless position for health, medical and fitness professionals
Back in the day, canned vegetables used to contain all the necessary vitamins and minerals, but today they remove the nutrients and make you pay extra to buy them back.
This one of the dumbest things I have ever read.
Once again, StudyFinds shows exactly what a poor source of accurate information they are. In fact, it’s just shocking how they regurgitate an editorial from an institution that is funded by Big Pharma. Shame on you, StudyFinds! These reports cause harm to those that can’t see through the falsehoods spread by media. Another example of Cancerous Capitalism in today’s media. Stop selling out!
I’ve lived here in tje U.S. since I was 5. The moment I sat outside in my building’s yard I thought, Wow! These people live like prisoners!!” I thought the huge brick buildings (1972) were the ugliest things I have ever seen, lol. Americans did not like us as Mt family and I were Greeks who just moved in a building with no other Europeans. That must have been a culture shock for them, lol.
My point being, America is poisoning our foods, clothing (China specials), medicine and prescriptions are at their highest numbers!!
Maybe a few vitamins do help as I have been in a multivitamin for a couple of years and have been feeling great. I also never really make trips to hospitals and doctors.
Maybe it’s NOT a good thing to be healthy due to the fact the American pharmaceutical companies will fall apart living a couple of dollars, lol.
This country has no clue about family values, health, culture….etc. It is all about greed and corruption. Yes. I know corruption is everywhere bit America takes the cake, eats it, digests it and keeps puking its guts out!!
Of course they’re going to say they don’t have any benefits because they want you sick all the time so they can line they’re pockets.
Studies are done on naturals, but notice they ALWAYS say more studies are needed?
The only reason colleges and research facilities study naturals is to see how they work. Then, they can make a synthetic they can patent and sell.
Basically, we pay colleges to do government funded studies and then, they team with big pharma to sell us what they learned.