Dangerous deception about vitamin safety

Have you seen the headlines in the media saying that vitamin use can be dangerous for older women?
Have you actually read the study that the headlines are based on?
The fact of the matter is that media outlets get much more money from pharmaceutical companies than from vitamin companies.
The fact of the matter is that whereas the minimum required vitamin doses that prevent deficiency-related diseases are well understood, the optimal, or or orthonormal quantities are not as well understood.
It seems to me unlikely that the amounts that you receive in your diet are the optimal amounts.
The vitamins in your food are whats best for your food.
Your food does not care about you.
In fact if anything it does not like you.
Why should what ever you get from your food be the optimal amount of vitamins?
Here is a news video that discusses how those news headlines distorted the findings of the study that they are quoting, and that this study they are quoting does not have much statistical relevance in the first place.

So what do these numbers really say?

Vitamin B complex was associated with a 7% reduction in mortality

Vitamin C was associated with a 4% reduction in mortality

Vitamin D was associated with an 8% reduction in mortality

Magnesium was associated with a 3% reduction in mortality

Selenium was associated with a 3% reduction in mortality

Zinc was associated with a 3% reduction in mortality

I bet you didn't read that in the mainstream media, huh? That's because they never reported these numbers! Once again, they just cherry picked whatever scary data they wanted to show you while ignoring the rest.

On the negative side of the findings:

Folic acid was associated with a 9% increase in mortality

Copper was associated with a 31% increase in mortality

Infowars News

Here is the link to the homepage of the medical doctor who was quoted in the newscast.

drbrownstein.com

Vitamin C good for Alzheimers

http://www.news-medical.net/news/20110818/Vitamin-C-shows-promise-against-Alzheimers-disease.aspx

(article in progress).

The book featured here is, I believe one of the most cited resources for many brain conditions, such as stroke, Alzheimers, Parkinson's multiple sclorosis, Lou Gehrig's disease and more, using vitamins and other nutritional methods.

How much Vitamin C should you take?

Yeah, that's the question!

Humans are not able to make their own vitamin C, but most other mammals can.  We can use the amount they manufacture for themselves as a guide for what we should be eating.
Here are some data points:


  (1) 70 kilograms (140 lb) of house flies manufacture 10 grams of vitamin C per day. In general, animals manufacture about 10 grams per day according to Linus Pauling. (see here)

(2) An adult goat makes approximately 10grams of vitamin C per day (see here)
(3) Linus Pauling took 18  grams of vitamin C a day, and he lived to be 93.  At least that proves that vitamin C is not detremental to your health.

Each of these must have a compelling reason for making this amount of Vitamin C or they would not do so.  Vitamin C is essentitally made from sugar molecules and every gram of vitamin C costs at least a gram of sugar.

Vitamin C boosts male fertility

Well, I did not know this.  I stumbled on this information through this article, which says that vitamin C enhances sperm quality, while a lack of vitamin C can cause burned to clump together so they don't do their job.
There is  a lot of really good information on the web about the connection between vitamin C and fertility, and if you are in this condition I would strongly encourage you to do your research.

Vitamin B3 good for brain.

Since Martha Ann Miller mentions (previous post) that she takes a super - B vitamin supplement, I would like to take the opportunity to point out that this may be one reason why she is still so mentally sharp.
In this podcast on Science Friday, a researcher from the University of California, Irvine talks about how vitamin B3 supplements keep Alzheimer's from developing in mice that are programmed to develop it with that gene, and how it makes normal mice smarter.
The researcher says that these mice are taking the extremely high with doses of vitamin B3, and implies that these doses are not necessarily safe for humans.

At the same vitamin B3 is water soluble (which means that levels don't build up--unlike fat soluble vitamins)
and complications from too much vitamin B3 are very rare.
This is very exciting because brain conditions are very hard to treat (unlike a broken arm or a missing tooth that can be repaired surigcally without much patient intervention).
Vitamin B3 is also suppoesed to be good for after a stroke.

I talked to a pharmacist and he said the extended release (flush-free) Niacin is safest. It's probably safe anyway.

Want to live long and stay healthy? Try vitamin C

Martha Ann Miller is a physically active and mentally sharp lady.
She also happens to be 100 years old. She credits her longevity in part to her taking

• Super Vitamin B complex
• Vitamin C
• folic acid

She says she stopped taking your vitamins about 40 years ago, but soon felt miserable, so she started taking them again.
See the Washigton Post
 My own sense is that Martha's longevity is in part attributable to good genes (her mother lived to be 96).

I am a bit surprised that she felt worse after she stopped taking your vitamins.
It is my sense that taking vitamins causes stress on your digestive system, so not taking them is usually pretty easy and does not make you feel bad.  But that's just my experience.

Hard work and stress cause stiff arteries, inspite of Vitamin C

Firefighters performing heavy activity, that is typical for firefighters
for three hours were found to have acute increases in arterial stiffness and impaired cardiac functioning in young, apparently healthy male firefighters.This phenomenon has also been observed in people performing other heavy physical activities.

About one hour before the pre-firefighting data collection, the participants consumed a standardized meal and a 2-gram Vitamin C capsule or a placebo so researchers could investigate whether the supplement improved arterial function, mitigating the risk of cardiovascular events, as prior studies suggested. The Vitamin C supplements did not appear to affect any of the outcomes, however.
see Fire Engineering.

I would like to point out that 2 g of vitamin C over a 5 hour period is a tiny amount,
especially considering the firefighters were under lot of stress and firefighters are big people.
In contrast Linus Pauling took 18 g of vitamin C a day, and he was a medium sized guy and not doing a lot of physical activity.
So to me this study does not prove much about the effect of vitamin C on the cardiovascular system.