Are Supplements and Vitamins a waste of money?

A recent article titled "Enough is enough: stop wasting money on vitamin and mineral supplements" was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine with a conclusion that “supplementing the diet of well-nourished adults with (most) mineral or vitamin supplements has no clear benefit and might even be harmful.”The good news is that this editorial used selective and biased research and thus does not give an accurate picture of the health effects of nutritional supplements.

As reported by Dr. Alan Gaby, M.D, “multivitamin-mineral preparations have been shown in published research to have a wide range of benefits, including increasing energy and stress tolerance, improving pregnancy outcomes, decreasing infection rates, slowing bone loss, and improving cognitive function in schoolchildren” Furthermore, various individual nutrients or combinations of nutrients have been used successfully for the prevention and treatment of many other health conditions, including migraines, congestive heart failure, rheumatoid arthritis, kidney stones, diabetes, and depression. (13)

With the right product, the right dose, and appropriate use, supplements and vitamins are not a waste of money. Ideally we could obtain the full spectrum of nutrients from what we eat, however this is made difficult by the quality of our food and increased demand of nutrients by our bodies when we are unhealthy. My goal as your local Naturopath is to bring you back to good health, and if that means using essential supplements and vitamins in the early stages, so be it!

13 Gaby AR, Nutritional Medicine. 2011; Concord, NH. www.doctorgaby.com.

---