If you are banking on a vitamin supplement daily to make up for any deficiencies
in your diet, you may be getting a whole lot more, or actually less, than you
bargained for.

Researchers in
Europe have carried out a study and found that people who rely on vitamin pills,
instead of eating a healthy diet of fresh fruits and vegetables, are doing more
harm than good.

According to
them, three supplements — Vitamin A, Vitamin E and beta carotene — can
increase mortality rates among those taking them. However, Vitamin C and
selenium pills have no effect as such.

"Our findings contradict the
findings of observational studies claiming that antioxidants (commonly found in
Vitamin supplements) improve health," the British media quoted lead researcher
Goran Bjelakovic of Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark as saying.

The researchers combined
results of a number of clinical trials to judge the overall effects of vitamin
pills. They analysed 47 low-bias trials, involving 180,938 people and found that
vitamin supplements as a whole increased their death rate by five per
cent.



When the supplements were taken
separately, beta carotene increased death rates by seven per cent, Vitamin A by
16 per cent, and Vitamin E by four per cent.

Vitamin C gave contradictory
results, but when given singly or in combination with other vitamins in
good-quality trials, increased the death rate by six per cent, the researchers
found.

They, however, noticed
that selenium was the only supplement to emerge with any credit — it can cut
death rates by ten per cent when given on its own or as supplements, but "the
result is not statistically significant".

Via Times of India