No use of taking vitamins, food supplements: study

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No use of taking vitamins, food supplements: study

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Studies in Finland and US have revealed that taking vitamins and food supplements are of no use.

19 March,2012 04:39 am

People taking vitamins or supplements are more likely to die over a given period than people not taking them, a new study from Finland says, adding weight to recent findings from the U.S. along those lines.In the new study, researchers gathered data on nearly 1,800 people between the ages of 62 and 74 who were participating in a prospective, population health study of the residents of one town in Finland.Over a 10-year period, 59 of the 221 people (26.6 percent) taking a vitamin or supplement died, whereas 281 of the 1,553 people (18.1 percent) of the nonusers died.After the researchers took into account other factors that can affect a persons risk of dying — such as age, gender and smoking — they found that people taking vitamins or supplements were 50 to 70 percent more likely to die over the course of the study than those not taking them, said study researcher Dr. Tomi-Pekka Tuomainen, of the University of Eastern Finland.The findings are in line with a recent study from University of Minnesota researchers, who looked at 38,000 women who were around age 62 at the studys start, and found a slight increase in mortality among those taking vitamins or supplements. They found, for example, that 40.8 percent of 13,000 women taking a daily multivitamin died over the 19-year study, whereas 39.8 percent of the 10,000 women who hadnt taken a daily multivitamin had died.Both studies showed an association, not a cause-and-effect link.