Complex Numbers

Vitamin?

Time once again to kill some cherished ideas.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20161208-why-vitamin-supplements-could-kill-y...

Why vitamin pills don't work, and may be bad for you
We dose up on antioxidants as if they are the elixir of life. At best, they are probably ineffective. At worse, they may just send you to an early grave.

"We," my ass. I haven't taken supplements in years. Yeah, there was a time I thought they might be helpful, but then I, you know, found out about science.

For Linus Pauling, it all started to go wrong when he changed his breakfast routine.

If nothing else, the article is worth clicking on for the photo of Pauling with a cat on his shoulders.

But it's also worth reading because, in relatively plain language, it goes into why people thought supplements were a good thing to begin with (hint: no, it's not entirely because supplement makers funded the studies).

Just seven studies reported that supplementation led to some sort of health benefit from antioxidant supplements, including reduced risk of coronary heart disease and pancreatic cancer. Ten studies didn’t see any benefit at all – it was as if all patients were given the sugar pill also (but, of course, they weren’t). That left another 10 studies that found many patients to be in a measurably worse state after being administered antioxidants than before, including an increased incidence of diseases such as lung and breast cancer.

True believers: "Well, just look at these seven studies!"

We now know that free radicals are often used as molecular messengers that send signals from one region of the cell to another. In this role, they have been shown to modulate when a cell grows, when it divides in two, and when it dies. At every stage of a cell’s life, free radicals are vital.

Without them, cells would continue to grow and divide uncontrollably. There’s a word for this: cancer.

So the things people take out of fear in order to prevent cancer might actually be causing it.

We would also be more prone to infections from outside. When under stress from an unwanted bacterium or virus, free radicals are naturally produced in higher numbers, acting as silent klaxons to our immune system. In response, those cells at the vanguard of our immune defense – macrophages and lymphocytes – start to divide and scout out the problem. If it is a bacterium, they will engulf it like Pac-Man eating a blue ghost.

It is trapped, but it is not yet dead. To change that, free radicals are once again called into action. Inside the immune cell, they are used for what they are infamous for: to damage and to kill. The intruder is torn apart.

Loving this imagery.

Put another way, freeing ourselves of free radicals with antioxidants is not a good idea. “You would leave the body helpless against some infections,” says Enriquez.

I mean, who ever thought "antioxidant" could be a good thing?

No one would deny that vitamin C is vital to a healthy lifestyle, as are all antioxidants, but unless you are following doctor's orders, these supplements are rarely going to be the answer for a longer life when a healthy diet is also an option. “Administration of antioxidants is justified only when it is evident that there is a real deficiency of a specific antioxidant,” says Villanueva. “The best option is to get antioxidants from food because it contains a mixture of antioxidants that work together.”

But then how can I sell my magic pilllllllls?

It doesn't matter anyway. People are so stuck in their beliefs, so emotionally attached to what they've been doing, that they're not going to change, any more than I'll quit drinking. At least with drinking I know the risks, but I'm willing to bet the pill-poppers think they're doing something to benefit themselves. And not even getting drunk in the process.