Do multi-vitamin pills work?

[Hanna]

Thanks Ultrafilter and Sampiro (Re: online vendors of whey protien). I was hoping to stay away from online vendors because once you add shipping costs, I might as well buy at GNC.

[CurtC]

I tend to find sources of information that I trust, and for me, QuackWatch is one. At that site you can find the article The Dark Side of Linus Pauling’s Legacy, and the more in-depth Vitamin C: Do High Doses Prevent Colds? which summarizes:

In 1986, Professor A. Stewart Truswell of the University of Sydney, Australia concisely summarized the results of 27 trials conducted since 1970. [8] Of these, five were treatment trials with vitamin C or a placebo given only at the onset of a cold and for only several days and all of which found no benefit. The other 22 were double-blind controlled trials giving daily vitamin C or placebo before and during colds. Of these, 12 trials showed no prevention and no reduction in duration or severity, five trials showed no prevention and only slight, statistically nonsignificant lessening of severity, and the other five trials reported no prevention and a small but significant in reduction of duration of the colds.

and:

As far as I can tell, no subsequent studies have contradicted Dr. Marshall’s conclusions. In fact, I believe that the question about whether large doses of vitamin C can prevent colds is sufficiently settled that further tests of this hypothesis are unlikely. Thus I was not surprised that a Medline search in October 1999 uncovered no further clinical trials of the type described in this article.

[ultrafilter]

Everyone who’s interested in vitamins and other supplements should check out supplementwatch.com. Although you need to join ($25/year) to get reviews of specific products, you can find information on types of supplements for free, and it’s a pretty comprehensive site.

[Fear_Itself]

Americans have the most expensive urine in history.

[Walloon]

Fear Itself, your choice of link title is misleading: the article itself concludes:

For those wondering whether supplement users are flushing away money that might better be directed elsewhere, the jury is not only still out, it has yet to be really convened. A gathering volume of research is pointing toward positive results, and clinical studies done under federal sponsorship will also bear careful analysis.

[barbitu8]

Very true, **Walloon. Recent evidence has been validating some of the supplement “hype.” Curt, that article is almost two years old. More recent studies have shown that vitamin C helps reduce the severity and length of colds in some people. C was statistically and significantly better than a placebo in those studies. Pauling never really said that it would absolutely prevent a cold, but said what these studies are establishing.

Berkeley U. puts out a newsletter, (the Wellness Letter, and in a recent issue recommended that people ingest 250-500 mg of C a day. It said, and other similar newsletters have stated, that studies have disclosed that it takes that much to saturate the cells. These newsletters previously went along with the RDA requirement of 60mg a day, but even that may soon be increased in light of these studies.

Moreover, when you are sick or have a cold, your body needs more C. C is used up in combatting the viruses and in other bodily functions.

This adage that megadoses of C provide expensive urine is faulty. Even if some of it is pissed away, the mere passage of it through the urinal tract provides benefits to that tract, as it can be absorbed through it. In any event, I’d rather err on the side of too much than too little as no bad side effects have been documented, other than temporary diarrhea.

Further, I stated before, it really has helped me. Anecdotal, yes. I’m not going on a soapbox and implore everyone to do likewise. Works for me. These are the facts. You decide. (Apologies to Foxnews for stealing their line.)