Dear Health Enthusiast,

Any person who eats a balanced and reasonably varied diet would normally not need vitamin supplements. The role of vitamins in our system is to help promote and regulate various chemical processes. Deficiency diseases arise when our bodies are deprived of a vitamin for a prolonged time. Supplemental vitamins, like those you buy in a store, would be useful in this case.

Here's a conservative look at some myths and facts about vitamins, mostly designed to keep people from falling prey to false advertisements.

• Many people believe that vitamins give you energy -- vitamins actually yield no kilocalories. They provide no extra pep or vitality beyond normal expectations, nor do they provide unusual levels of well-being.
• People believe that some individuals need very high intakes of vitamins to be healthy. The fact is that a multitude of studies have shown that it is rare for anyone to need amounts higher than the RDA.
• A common myth is that vitamin supplements are necessary because our soil is so depleted these days. In reality, crops can't grow in depleted soil. If a nutrient is low in the soil, the yield will be low, but the vitamin content will be normal.
• Taking excess vitamins is a waste, as the water-soluble vitamins are just eliminated in our urine. Excess amounts of the fat-soluble vitamins (A, E, D, and K) are actually harmful to your body.
• It is a myth that you can't get enough vitamins from the foods you eat. Anyone eating a reasonably varied diet should not need supplements.
• Some folks believe that vitamin supplements are needed to protect against harmful chemicals and pollution. Unfortunately, vitamins have no special abilities to ward off harmful environmental agents.

Now, there is a catch here about reasonably varied diets. Many college students are not eating "reasonably varied diets", and certainly not enough fruit and vegetables. In this case, there is nothing wrong with a daily multi-vitamin supplement, which contains enough of each of the vitamins to meet your RDA.

You should also know that there are many scientists who would dispute some of these more conservative recommendations. The pharmaceutical industry has many reasons to underexplore vitamin research (and they do alot of the research funding). Much of the research that has been done has been on people who otherwise lead healthy lifestyles -- low fat diets, exercise, don't smoke, live in unpolluted cities, etc. This holistic perspective of looking at people's lifestyle makes it hard to sort out any one factor that contributes to overall health. In other words, it makes sense that the vitamins don't necessarily show any appreciable effect on health in the common research and literature. In contrast, there are many underfunded scientists who have proven that vitamins boost the immune system, are effective as an antihistamine for colds and allergies, and are cancer-fighting agents. Alice leaves it to you to find out further information and make informed decisions for yourself. Try reading Linus Pauling, Carlton Fredericks, Gary Null, and Prevention magazine to get other points of view. Stay healthy!

Alice

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