Vitamins under attack by distorted research: attempts to discredit nutritional supplements continue

The mainstream press is awash in headlines claiming that vitamins are now suddenly bad for your heart. It's hogwash, of course. Their evidence? Certain vitamins were found to inhibit the liver's ability to break down so-called "bad cholesterol." Now here's the real story on this study. First, look at the motivation and funding: it's part of the ongoing effort to discredit vitamins and push people towards using prescription drugs to manage their health -- a strategy that pays off handsomely for pharmaceutical companies. Secondly, this study used artificial, chemical forms of the vitamins, not the compounds found in nature. It's an old trick from the research community: any time you want to show that Vitamin E is bad, just use dl-tocopherol instead of d-tocopheral, and the results will almost universally be negative. That's because the dl-tocopherol is synthetic and derived from chemical factories, not natural sources like nuts and seeds.

The next sleight of hand in this study comes from the idea that all cholesterol is bad for you in the first place. Cholesterol is essential for life. If you had no cholesterol in your body, you'd die within a matter of hours. Everyone needs cholesterol, and the proper balance of good to bad cholesterol comes from eating a healthy diet (rich in plant-based vitamins and phytochemicals) in the first place. So it is, in fact, natural sources of these vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals that promote healthy cholesterol. Yet this study manages to convey precisely the opposite image: that vitamins are bad for you!

Finally, there are thousands of studies linking the consumption of natural vitamins with positive, well established health effects like improved mental function, enhanced immune system function, reduced risk of heart disease, a reduction in cancer, and so on. This one study simply doesn't compare with the thousands of other studies that reached a different conclusion.

Make no mistake: this study is just the pharmaceutical industry groups hard at work attempting to discredit all nutritional supplements. The FDA is smiling, no doubt, and will probably use this study as "proof" that vitamins should be outlawed.