Study: Vitamins Don't Thwart Heart Disease

Taking Vitamin E And C Supplements Don’t Help And May Actually Be Harmful, Research Shows

(AP)  Vitamins C and E - pills taken by millions of Americans - do nothing to prevent heart disease in men, one of the largest and longest studies of these supplements has found.

Vitamin E even appeared to raise the risk of bleeding strokes, a danger seen in at least one earlier study.

Besides questioning whether vitamins help, "we have to worry about potential harm," said Barbara Howard, a nutrition scientist at MedStar Research Institute of Hyattsville, Md.

She has no role in the research but reviewed and discussed it Sunday at an American Heart Association conference. Results also were published online by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

About 12 percent of Americans take supplements of C and E despite growing evidence that these antioxidants do not prevent heart disease and may even be harmful.

Male smokers taking vitamin E had a higher rate of bleeding strokes in a previous study, and several others found no benefit for heart health.

As for vitamin C, some research suggests it may aid cancer, not fight it. A previous study in women at high risk of heart problems found it did not prevent heart attacks.

Few long-term studies have been done. The new one is the Physicians Health Study, led by Drs. Howard Sesso and J. Michael Gaziano of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

It involved 14,641 male doctors, 50 or older, including 5 percent who had heart disease at the time the study started in 1997. They were put into four groups and given either vitamin E, vitamin C, both, or dummy pills. The dose of E was 400 international units every other day; C was 500 milligrams daily.

After an average of eight years, no difference was seen in the rates of heart attack, stroke or heart-related deaths among the groups.

However, 39 men taking E suffered bleeding strokes versus only 23 of the others, which works out to a 74 percent greater risk for vitamin-takers.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and several vitamin makers. Results were so clear that they would be unlikely to change if the study were done in women, minorities, or with different formulations of the vitamins, Howard said.

"In these hard economic times, maybe we can save some money by not buying these supplements," she said.

A second study found that vitamins B-12 and B-9 (folic acid) did not prevent heart disease either, supporting the results of previous trials. That study involved more than 12,000 heart attack survivors and was led by Dr. Jane Armitage of the University of Oxford in England.

[gop_will_win]

Heart disease can be thwarted by prayer.

[deweyhowe]

as;ldfjwqeopir120%*&^%

(I thought I''d add something on the same intellectual level of the previous two posts...)

[colionne1]

The previous commentor is correct. The people designing the referenced studies know almost nothing about the proper role of vitamins and antioxidants. They use synthetic Vitamin E instead of d(+) alpha tocopherol. They don''t combine C,E,Bs and others. Limited use of just a few vitamins can indeed be counterproductive!

[capester1]

More LIES from the corrupt medical mafia.

CBS is always presenting these sort of anti-vitamin stories as fact, when they are made-up by drug industry lawyers.

Keep taking your supplements and ignore the propaganda from CBS and the lying drug companies!

[colt8881]

Looks like Centrum needs to change their adds and lables on their packages.

[alphaa10000]

As with all studies, even the good ones, peer replication is vital to sorting out what is valid and what may not be.

And when most Americans would like to know why the vitamins they have been taking faithfully all these years are now thought to be of little value-- and even possible harm-- they naturally would like further studies to determine what value, if any, their vitamins have.

But such studies cost money, and none will be forthcoming for a long while because Bush asked taxpayers to bail out Wall Street. Wall Street deregulation began with a vengeance when Bush took office in 2001.

No, there is no medical research money, not even for a matter of life and death to most Americans. Which is also why the $10 billion spent on Iraq each *week* (to occupy a country which never should have been invaded in the first place) remains a lasting indictment of the Bush administration.

[freedomscry]

Hey, Alpha10000, the election''s over.

[andor3]

follow the money... follow the money... follow the money... too many of these studies are compromised because they are funded by a company that has a huge stake in the outcome--every big pharmaceutical company has been targeting supplements for decades so they can convince doctors and patients that the only way to health is to buy their pills. It is almost too convenient when past research is contradicted like this in a way that "confirms" what the drug merchants want.

[drinuk]

Yep ! the Big Pharma Mafia is at it again, having turned cancer into a very profitable industry they now want to control the supplements market. They will not succeed, their time is fast approaching, thanks to the internet the world is learning that their wicked influence must cease. More and more medical professionals are beginning to understand how they are impoverishing public health worldwide.

Sell Big Pharma stocks and get out before they go under.

[wizann]

Although the study refers to vitamin E and C specifically for heart disease, the headline on this piece caters to the Pharma Mafia. Pharm companies have been trying very hard for decades to eliminate the highly unregulated vitamin, herbals and supplement industry of this country. It''s becoming painfully apparent that an American cannot watch a single news show without having to endure 10 drug advertisements... but for the news station to start billing these advertisements as actual stories is reprehensible. Americans will be much better off if we are not on all the drugs being pushed at us. For one, we cannot afford them. Secondly, the only people who say they are good for us are the ones selling them. The only drug cartel in this country that needs to be stopped is the one that owns the government, media and insurance companies. Thanks alot CBS news. Why don''t you swallow a handful of those unnatural life altering pills and get back to us?

[wizann]

Although the study refers to vitamin E and C specifically for heart disease, the headline on this piece caters to the Pharma Mafia. Pharm companies have been trying very hard for decades to eliminate the highly unregulated vitamin, herbals and supplement industry of this country. It''s becoming painfully apparent that an American cannot watch a single news show without having to endure 10 drug advertisements... but for the news station to start billing these advertisements as actual stories is reprehensible. Americans will be much better off if we are not on all the drugs being pushed at us. For one, we cannot afford them. Secondly, the only people who say they are good for us are the ones selling them. The only drug cartel in this country that needs to be stopped is the one that owns the government, media and insurance companies. Thanks alot CBS news. Why don''t you swallow a handful of those unnatural life altering pills and get back to us?

[slim1h2o]

Posted by wizann at 01:29 AM : Nov 11, 2008

Good post, well said, and you''re exactly right.

If you listen to all of the potential side affects of these drugs they''re hawking, they''re worse than the actual problem, or symptoms.

[panhandlpete]

Anyone who falls for all these ''beat around the bush'' unsupported statements are not intellectual people. In case no one has noticed, there is a world wide campaign going on to get as many people taking statins and fast. Why? Pharmaceutical companies make money and guess who their biggest investors are....medical people. And, with the US leaders espousing total health care for all, they are just thinking ahead.

Go sit in your Dr''s waiting room,(I did last week) and watch the drug reps go in and out with their bulging sample bags.

The biggest scam going today is ''if you take this drug it can LOWER your risk for heart attack'', but they do NOT say they guarantee you will not have one. So if you fall into the percentage group that DOES have one, you have not benefited from their product, have you?

So the folks at Brigham Young don''t know that Vit E is supposed to thin the blood, and if you had a stroke while taking a blood thinner(Plavix), wouldn''t you just bleed more? But, taking the ''aspirin a day'' can do the same thing, can''t it? (But, you are not supposed to do this without your Doctor''s advice.)

Maybe taking vitamins and supplements would not be necessary if our foods were not overprocessed and depleted. Try watering your house plants with the water from canned vegetables and watch the results for yourself.

All test are done with synthetic C and E to keep it on a level playing field with all pharmaceuticals that are synthetic and laced with side effects. Great Job by a nutritionist scientist who is obviously in Big Pharma''s pocket.