Question: Do Multivitamins Reduce the Risk for Cancer and Heart Disease?
Cancer and heart disease are the two biggest killers in the U.S. Surely taking a daily multivitamin would do something to lower the risk of heart disease and/or cancer, right? I mean vitamins are filled with antioxidants and other substances that make us healthy. Researchers looked into this question in a group of post menopausal women. Here's what they found:
Answer: Researchers took a group of 161,800 post menopausal women and followed them for 15 years. Over the course of that time, 42% reported taking multivitamins. Researchers looked to see if, over a 15-year period, multivitamins made any difference in cancer or heart disease risk.
Cancer and Multivitamins
There was no difference in cancer risk between the women who reported taking multivitamins and the women who didn't. Even after considering factors such as race, weight, physical activity levels, alcohol use, etc, a protective effect of vitamins on cancer could not be found.Heart Disease and Multivitamins
The same was true for heart disease risk -- the multivitamins just didn't make any difference. Women who reported taking multivitamins and who reported not taking them had the same risk for developing heart disease over a 15-year period.Should I Give Up On Multivitamins?
Hard to say. For this group of people (post-menopausal women) there certainly was no clear benefit to taking multivitamins, but this study was poorly designed to monitor multivitamin intake. Personally, if someone asked me if I take a multivitamin, I would say, "Yes." But the reality is that I take a vitamin sometimes, when I remember. I go through good vitamin months and bad ones. This study did not seem to have a very sophisticated way of asking about multivitamin behaviors -- it could be that some of the women who said they take a multivitamin really did not take one regularly. The study also did not distinguish between the types of multivitamins taken. Even more, the study only looked at women if a certain age -- it could be that multivitamins help prevent disease in men, younger women, people with certain health conditions or in other groups that were not studied. That said, we don't have any strong evidence that any of these "weaknesses" of this study are true. It really could be that the daily multivitamin does not really help people who have adequate nutrition from food.Source: Neuhouser, M. Archives of Internal Medicine, Feb. 9, 2009; vol 169: pp 294-304.
