This is a revolutionary conclusion!
"Oh my god, have I been taking the wrong medicine?" Ms. Long, who has been taking vitamins for years, was shocked by the findings of a new study.
This large-scale study, published in an authoritative international medical journal, showed that taking vitamin E increased mortality by 4%, taking beta-carotene increased mortality by 7%, and taking vitamin A increased mortality by 16%. There was no evidence that vitamin C could prolong life...
In North America and Europe, about 80 to 160 million people currently regularly take vitamins and other health supplements rich in antioxidants. In China, there is also a considerable group of people like Ms. Long who have long-term habits of taking supplements. Perhaps it's a fashion, or perhaps more and more Chinese people are becoming aware of the importance of health. The number of people in this group is still growing.
In cities, especially among white-collar workers, many people who often eat fast food feel that taking multivitamin tablets is more convenient than eating fruits and vegetables. Office women have become popular as "vitamin women," eating very small lunches like sparrows and taking a high-end multivitamin in the afternoon, which is said to help maintain their figure. More importantly, they subconsciously believe that vitamins not only have the function of maintaining life and metabolism, but can also delay aging, lower cholesterol, help with weight loss, expel toxins from the body, prevent chronic diseases, and even prevent cancer. Thus, supplementing vitamins has become the mainstream of health tonics, and a large number of vitamin advertisements flood the media.
Vitamins, as the name implies, are the basic elements for maintaining the normal functions of living organisms, and are substances that people cannot do without for a moment. Some vitamins belong to a category of antioxidants. However, the results of a newly published large-scale study have made an almost revolutionary conclusion about the effects of taking vitamins. For a time, this news, which contradicts common sense, became one of the hot topics of concern in major media outlets around the world.
On February 28, 2007, the authoritative international medical journal *The Journal of the American Medical Association* (JAMA) published a study completed by researchers from multiple countries. A team from Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark—the Cochrane Hepatobiliary Group—was the main institution for this study. The Cochrane Hepatobiliary Group is one of the specialized groups under the Cochrane Collaboration, an authoritative international organization for evidence-based medicine, so it has considerable authority in itself. The study reviewed and comprehensively analyzed 68 studies on antioxidants worldwide.
Goran Bjelakovic and others divided 68 studies published internationally between 1990 and October 2005 into two categories: low-bias and high-bias. If the two types of studies were not distinguished, the analysis showed that the intake of antioxidants, mainly vitamins A, E, C, beta-carotene, and selenium, had no beneficial or harmful effects on people.
But surprisingly, after excluding high-bias studies and analyzing only the more reliable 47 studies, the authors concluded that "the use of beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E for treatment may increase mortality, while the potential effects of vitamin C and selenium on mortality require further research."
Overall, the mortality rate of people taking antioxidants increased by 5%; separately, the mortality rate of people taking vitamin E increased by 4%, the mortality rate of people taking beta-carotene increased by 7%, and the mortality rate of people taking vitamin A increased by 16%.
These 47 high-quality studies involved 180,938 people. These people were randomly divided into an antioxidant group and a placebo group. Some people in the antioxidant group took doses far exceeding the daily recommended amount of antioxidants, while others took normal doses.
The authors said, "The administration of beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E alone or in combination with other antioxidants significantly increased mortality. There was no evidence that vitamin C could prolong life... Selenium may reduce mortality, but we need more research on this issue." Perhaps the conclusion about selenium is the only positive affirmation of antioxidants in the study. The authors reported that selenium reduced mortality by about 9%.
Some people questioned it, while others were half-believing.
The study by Bjelakovic and others is called a meta-analysis, which is a systematic quantitative analysis of previous research results, and the conclusions drawn have considerable reliability. Before this, another meta-analysis on vitamin E in 2005 also reached a similar conclusion, that people's daily intake of 400 international units of vitamin E could increase mortality by 10% (from all causes of death).