Dietary Supplements

Beta Carotine = bad
Vitamin E = bad
Vitamin C = no effect
Echinacea = no effect

What good is any supplement? A slew of recent good data is supporting taking vitamin D. Recent studies have shown vitamin D supplementation might reduce breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer by as much as 50%.

What dose to take. It seems that the USRDA of 400 IU of vitamin D per day is too low. It is just enough vitamin D to prevents rickets. It is early to say but it appears that we should be getting 1000 IU per day to get sufficient anticancer effect.

Is this just another premarin or vitamin E that doctors are pushing today and will be pulling tomorrow? I cannot say for 100% certainty, but I believe that vitamin D will likely emerge as one of the few supplements you can take that is likely to make you live longer.

The medical establishment has done another about face. Well it never officially endorsed vitamin E, but your "early adopters" certainly did (with some reason: there was reasonably optimistic test tube data suggesting vitamin E might prevent cancer or heart disease).

A recent large study looking at all data thus far collected on vitamin E supplementation showed that people who took "high dose" vitamin E (i.e., the standard 400 IU vitamin E tablet) had a statistically significantly higher risk of ... *death*.

OK, so "death" - how bad could that be? Well you'd be surprised how FEW medical studies show an effect on overall death rate. Even in areas where we consider the data to be quite strong, like anti-cholerterol or anti-high-blood pressure medicines, seldom is the endpoint of death addressed. Reason: it requires a very large study and a large effect.