Four Myths About Vitamins!
Americans buy about $9 BILLION worth of vitamins every year. But it turns out we might be wasting our money. Here are four myths about vitamins people still believe.
MYTH #1.) MULTIVITAMINS CAN MAKE UP FOR A BAD DIET. In 2008, people bought more multivitamins than all other vitamins combined.
--But according to a recent study of 160,000 women, multivitamins don't make a difference in terms of preventing things like cancer, heart disease, and strokes.
--And they don't even help if you have a bad diet. Women who ate unhealthy food were just as likely to develop a serious illness whether they took vitamins or not.
MYTH #2.) VITAMIN C WILL PREVENT A COLD. It's been a theory since the 1930s. But in 2007, researchers collected results from 30 different studies around the world, and they found that it doesn't make much of a difference for most of us.
--The only people it DID work for were under high amounts of stress. Marathon runners and soldiers in sub-arctic temperatures were 50 percent less likely to get a cold if they got enough vitamin C.
MYTH #3.) TAKING VITAMINS CAN'T HURT. Researchers were trying to find out if beta-carotene could prevent cancer, but they found the exact opposite. Male smokers who took beta-carotene supplements were MORE likely to get lung cancer.
--And other studies have suggested that high doses of folic acid increase your chances of developing colon cancer.
MYTH #4.) VITAMINS PREVENT CANCER. Not really. One study had 5,442 women take either a placebo or a combination of B vitamins. And after seven years, they all had similar rates of cancer and cancer-related death.
--And according to research done at Harvard Medical School, vitamin C, vitamin E, and beta-carotene don't lower your risk of cancer either.
BUT HERE'S A VITAMIN THAT *IS* WORTH TAKING . . . VITAMIN D. Your body makes it when sunlight hits your skin. But we don't get enough because we're indoors all day.
--Men who don't get enough vitamin D are twice as likely to have a heart attack. And researchers think it guards against at least six different types of cancer too.
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