Dear Subscriber,
I had dinner with another physician the other day, who told me “There is no evidence that anyone needs to take any supplements whatsoever.” Just in case you’re faced with the same ignorance, I want to arm you with some facts. It may be important to your health or at least you’ll have a retort should this position surface as dinner conversation.
Your food doesn’t have the nutrients it used to. Commercial farming and processing strips your food of the nutritional value it had even a decade ago. And, the processed foods with the lowest nutrient content are the fastest growing portion of our diet.
Taken together, these facts tell a concerning story:
•A USDA study showed that only 4% of Americans are getting even the minimum recommended dietary allowance, (RDA) of all of their essential vitamins.
•A US government survey found that out of the 21,000 people surveyed, not one of them managed to eat the recommended dietary allowances, (RDA) of the ten basic nutrients studied.
•On any given day, 91% of Americans do not consume the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables.
•Because of modern agriculture, your food doesn’t have the nutritional value it did in even the recent past. For example, you’d have to eat 60 servings of spinach to get the same amount of iron you would get from just one serving in 1948. And, you’d have to eat 25 cups of spinach to get one day’s recommended allowance of Vitamin E.
•65% of Americans don’t get even the minimum daily requirement of zinc. Zinc is essential for your immune system and for strong sexual performance.
Researchers studied 45 to 64 year-olds for their intake of dairy, fruits, and vegetables. The researchers measured their range of mobility over a 9-year period. They found a direct correlation between low nutrient intake and lost mobility in their legs. Poor nutrition caused some of them to become disabled even though none had been previously diagnosed with any nutritional deficiencies.1
Insufficient nutrition in children is even less likely to be diagnosed. Deficiencies in protein, iron, zinc and B vitamins (essential nutrients for proper function and growth of the brain) from as early as three years of age may not appear as behavior problems until the child is seven to ten years old.2
In adult men, undiagnosed signs of deficiencies can include heart attacks, cancer, prostate enlargement, sexual dysfunction, and generalized energy loss.
So unless you are a very rare exception, you’re probably not getting even the minimum requirement of all your important vitamins and minerals. And that’s just part of the story. There is also evidence that vitamins can have other health benefits beyond preventing deficiency.
Nobel laureate Linus Pauling was right when he said, “recommended daily allowances only give levels of vitamins and minerals that will prevent death or serious illness from vitamin deficiency. To get real health benefits from vitamins, you need to get more than just the minimal recommended amounts.”
In 1997, the Western Journal of Medicine published a study showing that $20 billion in hospital charges could have been prevented simply by taking vitamins and minerals.
Vitamin E, for instance, is beneficial in treatment of coronary heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease. These health benefits only come at antioxidant doses of at least 200 IU.
Antioxidant doses of vitamin E are virtually impossible to get in the diet. You would have to eat 2 pounds of sunflower seeds every day.
In larger doses, niacin is very effective in lowering cholesterol. I use it in doses of 500 to 2000 mg. You can’t get that much from your diet. And I have seen many cases of high blood pressure completely resolve with CoQ10 eliminating the need for medications.
Unless you have iron deficiency, choose a multivitamin without iron. Iron can interfere with absorption of minerals, give you constipation and leave a foul taste in your mouth.
It will be easier on your gut if you take your multivitamin with a meal. Store your multivitamin in the refrigerator. It will stay fresh longer and remind you to take it.
I have taken a multivitamin nearly every day for 30 years. Choose a multivitamin that also has 100% of the required minerals. If you are beyond the age of 35, you should take doses larger than the RDA for antioxidants.
My antioxidant recommendations are: mixed carotenes 25,000 IU, vitamin C 1000 mg, vitamin E 400 IU, selenium 200 mcg and CoQ10 100 mg. It is possible to find all the required vitamins and minerals at antioxidant levels in a single supplement.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
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1 Dairy, fruit, and vegetable intakes and functional limitations and disability in a biracial cohort: the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study.Denise K Houston1, June Stevens1, Jianwen Cai1 and Pamela S Haines. From the Departments of Nutrition (DKH, JS, and PSH), Epidemiology (JS) and Biostatistics (JC), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
2 Poor Nutrition Makes Kids Angry. ABC News. December 1, 2002.