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High doses of antioxidant nutritional supplements, such as vitamins C and E, can increase genetic abnormalities in cells, which may predispose supplement-takers to developing cancer, according to a new study from the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute.
The study, led by Eduardo Marbán, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, was published online in the medical journal Stem Cells. The study also will appear in the journal's July printed edition.
Marbán and his team accidentally discovered the danger of excessive antioxidant doses while seeking a way to reduce the genetic abnormalities that occurred naturally when the scientists sought to multiply human cardiac stem cells.
Marbán stressed that the study's finding applies only to excessive nutritional supplements and not to foods that are rich in antioxidants, such as milk, oranges, blueberries and peanuts. In recent years, multiple studies have touted the benefits of foods rich in antioxidants.
"Taking one multivitamin daily is fine, but a lot of people take way too much because they think if a little is good, a lot must be better," said Marbán, who is also the Mark Siegel Family Professor at Cedars-Sinai. "That is just not the case. If you are taking 10 or 100 times the amount in a daily multivitamin, you may be predisposing your cells to developing cancer, therefore doing yourself more harm than good."
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Hi my husband and I are both vegetarians and regular readers of your blog.
This article highlights a very important point and one that as individuals interested in the health of our bodies we need to be very aware of. Namely the booming market that natural health and multivitamin products represent. This naturally (pardon the pun) leads to manufacturers that are more interested in the dollars, pounds, euro than health and leads me to ask whether the health problems caused by excessive nutritional supplementation are due to the vitamins / minerals or to the cheap and nasty fillers and non-bio available and cheaper forms that some manufacturers routinely use?
Dr Henry Osiecki published a book called the Nutrient Bible. This goes through all the major nutrients covering the actual active forms of the nutrient and the therapeutic dosage. Invariably we find that supermarket variety multivitamins are next to useless both in terms of form used and dosage. As these represent the majority of the multivitamins consumed it would be somewhat hard for people to obtain "too" much of the vitamin / mineral but very easy for them to obtain "too" much artificial filler, preservative, anti caking agent etc. etc.
For an alternative view, that is not based on theories but on actual results, google the Gerson Institute. In addition to juicing, colonics etc. the Gerson program recommends high dosages of Vitamin C, one of the ones this research alleges may pre-dispose to cancer. The Gerson program talks about using 1 to 1.5grams daily with megadoses of 30-50 grams daily being used intravenously. The thing they stress is the CORRECT form of vitamin C.
High dose Vitamin C and other antioxidant vitamins are spoken about regularly in the literature as being an effective option. It constantly comes back to using the right bio-available forms without the synthetic fillers etc.
Great resource! Keep up the good work!
Marianne. (http://www.passion4health.com.au)