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The Man Who Convinced Us We Needed Vitamin Supplements
An anonymous reader writes "The Atlantic has an interesting piece on the life and work of the scientist most responsible for moms around the world giving their kids Vitamin C tablets to fight off colds, Linus Pauling. From the article: 'On October 10, 2011, researchers from the University of Minnesota found that women who took supplemental multivitamins died at rates higher than those who didn't. Two days later, researchers from the Cleveland Clinic found that men who took vitamin E had an increased risk of prostate cancer. "It's been a tough week for vitamins," said Carrie Gann of ABC News. These findings weren't new. Seven previous studies had already shown that vitamins increased the risk of cancer and heart disease and shortened lives. Still, in 2012, more than half of all Americans took some form of vitamin supplements. What few people realize, however, is that their fascination with vitamins can be traced back to one man. A man who was so spectacularly right that he won two Nobel Prizes and so spectacularly wrong that he was arguably the world's greatest quack.'"
In very rare cases does someone need to take any supplements at all. If one pays attention to having a proper diet one can get all the vitamins needed naturally. Part of the whole vitamin craze is how lazy people are. It can take some thought and effort to eat a healthy diet containing all the nutrients a body needs to thrive. It's quite worth doing so though.
Doesn't dosing on 2000 IU of D per day stave off cancer according to 100's of studies?
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Genius that strikes out and proves how stupid the person is. e.g. Shockley, Pauling, Chomsky...
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I mean, Obama and Kissinger have Nobel prizes in peace.
At any rate, Linus Torvalds was actually baptized in honor of Pauling.
Thank your lucky stars that yogurt enemas and radium therapy never caught on.
Let's take the 10s of thousands of studies done on nutritional supplements, ignore them and determine if supplements are placebos or worse based on our ad hominem attack on a single person.
A man who was so spectacularly right that he won two Nobel Prizes and so spectacularly wrong that he was arguably the world's greatest quack.
Being wrong doesn't make you a quack, slashdot. You can follow the scientific method perfectly and arrive at the wrong result. In fact, you can be fairly certain that most of what we think we know today will later be proven wrong. Even Einstein said he hoped people would one day prove him wrong -- being proven wrong means progress. It means a better understanding of the universe. Scientists, real ones, don't mind being wrong, or mistaken. Sure, there's pride in one's work, and yes, that can make it hard for people to accept a new truth. But by and far, scientists do get around to doing it.
A quack is someone who doesn't use the right process, who avoids peer review, who insists they can't be wrong. They aren't true scientists. This man won two nobel prizes because he followed the scientific process. And, today, that process is still being followed, and that man's original assertions are now wrong. Taking vitamins is something tens of thousands of doctors and medical professionals have advised. Researchers the world over have endorsed it. That doesn't happen with, say, magnetically vortexed water that some people believe has a "higher energy level" and is thus more beneficial to drink, or that crystals or magnets will somehow improve our health.
It's wrong to put him in the same category as those people. Slashdot, you fail, and you should be ashamed. You should issue a retraction immediately -- you're using words and making accusations that you don't really understand. Your editors are stating opinions that are overall harmful to the scientific and medical community.
People who search for the truth should never be called names, or subjected to ridicule. That is the ultimate goal of all science. The fact that people get it wrong is inconsequential, as long as they did their best to get it right. Shame, slashdot. Shame on you.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
It seems that the scientist keep saying different contradictory things at different times. Smoking was good for you a few decades ago. When religious people make contradictory and false allegations they are called quacks and derided by the scientific community.
The same standard do no hold for the scientific community.
What I wan't to know ,since all religion is full of superstitious BS, is to what scientist / scientific institution I can give my blind faith. What scientist truly speaks ex cathedra.
I am on Atkins diet. Basically I am eating only meat. (Almost) No vegetable, no fruits, no bread, no rice, no sweets. YES YES I know this diet will horrify some people and yes I know it is not very healthy. But it is effective and I will come off it slowly and start eating vegetables and fruits. But so long as I am on such a diet, I think I need to take Vitamin (and Fiber) supplements.
All I know about longevity I learned at nursing homes and from my parents. First, it's almost all women which confirms the gender difference. Next, there are always a handful women SMOKING outside around back. Genetics probably dominate more than anything else. Are you a woman whose granny smoked into her 90s? You're golden.
Next, my father and his brothers. My father lived longer. Why? Because he quit smoking in his 40s and he got away from New Jersey. The pollution doesn't kill you in Jersey. The going out with your buddies to drink until 2 AM does. That was the lifestyle up there. On week nights!
Finally, try not to get killed in a war. That one got one of my uncles. So. I got good genes from my father and I don't drink like crazy. I'll probably live to be 80 or 85... unless there's a war or I get hit by a bus.
Supplements? Fuggedaboutit. I don't think my Dad took anything except Vitamin Beer until his 60s. By then, what's the point? Money blown on that shit is money that could have been spent on healthy fun.
that almost everything you know about nutrition is wrong, often started up by one person or a group of people who failed to prove even loose correlation, yet people take up their suggestions and after a while they become 'common knowledge'.
Most multivitamins contain ingredients that pass through your digestive tract without even being absorbed. What does get absorbed is excessive and the system is unfamiliar with these huge doses of bioavailable vitamins and your system works overtime to eliminate it. Puts a real beating on the kidneys.
To extend the ridiculousness, nobody has ever proved that fat or meat are bad for you, yet people avoid them both and suffer nutritionally. In the 50's, Ancel Keys wrote a paper on his lipid theory where he 'proved' that fat was bad for you by eliminating the data from 17 of 23 countries he studied. The 17 he threw out were large consumers of fats with no problems with heart disease or cancer, such as the Innuit and Masai. He also noted in his study that there was no connection between dietary cholesterol and cholesterol levels in blood, but everyone seems to have skipped that part.
50 years of studies showed that salt was also not at all harmful to the average person, but doctors couldn't shake the idea of salt raising blood pressure temporarily so they gamed a study called Intersalt, where...you guessed it...they deleted around 40% of the data that included people who ate plenty of salt and led perfectly healthy lives. The excuse? "We already know that salt is bad for you, so if people say they ate it and were healthy, then they were lying". Hmm. It should be interesting to note at this point that all these studies do go on what people say they did and didn't eat and did or didn't do. Faulty data in the first place.
No study has ever proven that MSG is bad for you, in fact its approved by each and every equivalent of the FDA worldwide with zero dissenters, and its been eaten by billions of people for a century with no ill health effects. All it does is make healthy food taste better so you're more likely to eat it. In fact, the studies that were run showed more false positives as a placebo effect than actual reactions. Fun part is the whole thing goes back to one doctor who wasn't a nutritional expert writing a letter noting a possible 'chinese food syndrome' that he suggested at random might be MSG related. Its an amino acid derived from boiling kombu seaweed.
Meat is bad? The studies that say so point out that most of the people who eat meat, bacon and so forth also smoke, drink, don't exercise and live a lousy lifestyle. Of course they do, we've been telling people that meat is bad for them for 60 years, so anyone that eats it doesn't care about their health. Yet there is no study whatsoever that ever tested perfectly healthy people with a good lifestyle whose health suffered when they ate meat.
What IS bad for you are most pills, supplements, things in cans, fake 'diet' brownies and cookies, sugar, processed foods, vegetable oils except for olive, processed starches, and high energy/low nutrition foods that make up the bulk of the 'western diet'. Eat meat, quality fats, whole fruits and veg and steer clear of the high profit, easy to produce items made from grains and processed starches.
If that seems hard to believe, recall that we were told for decades that cigarettes were good for us, with doctors recommending particular brands. We were also moved from relatively healthy animal fats/butter to transfats, partially hydrogenated fats and so forth. That recommendation probably killed millions. Eggs are bad/good/bad/good/bad/good. By the way, they're just fine and a great source of B vitamins and protein.
At a time when living past 90 wasn't as common as it is today.
I'm not saying that proves anything about Pauling's claims about vitamins, but the last line of TFA conveniently omits Pauling's age when it mentions that he died of prostrate cancer. To me, that makes the article suspect... the author is only presenting facts on one side of the story.
Seven previous studies had already shown that vitamins increased the risk of cancer and heart disease and shortened lives.
It shouldn't take a microbiologist or an organic chemist to figure out that vitamins aren't the problem; saturating ourselves with vitamins in a form we're not adapted to utilize are obviously the issue. Translation: stay away from the pills and and supplments section of that so-called "healthfood store" and go to the farmers' market, dumbasses!
Some proponents of vitamins predicted the outcome of this study. For en explanation of this flawed study see: http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2012/mar2012_Synthetic-Alpha-Tocopherol-Shown-Increase_01.htm
Coincidence?
Unless you grow your own food. Vitamins and minerals are added to some of the following: flour, bread products, breakfast cereal, table salt (iodine), milk, fruit juices, etc. etc. During WWII the US Military drafted large numbers of men who suffered nutritional deficiencies, most commonly pellegra, Vitamin B-3 deficiency. After the war, the Federal Government started to promote and at times require the additional of vitamins and minerals in basic foods. The quantities were amounts variously described on the legally required labels as: "Minimum Daily Requirement, "Recommended Daily Allowance" (Libertarian Alert!), "Recommended Daily Value" (Political Compromise Alert!).
A general tenet of the effects of drugs is that with higher doses you often get different and more toxic effects. Applying this logic to vitamins, the "minimum daily requirement" was set at amounts that were adequate to prevent frank nutritional diseases: beri-beri, rickets, scurvy, pellegra, goiter. The program has been an amazing success. The diseases listed in the prior sentence occur with much much less frequency than they did before circa 1950. (Increased use of refrigeration and wider availability of different foods also are a factor). It is also amazing how 'under the radar' this has all been. Those conditions still occur, but in identifiable risk groups such as those in nursing homes, alcoholics, homeless, etc. Compare this to the risk group for getting pellegra in the 1930's was living in the corn belt.
I have fond memories around 1960 when I would have been years old, reading the vitamin content of breakfast cereals. I announced to my brother that I was healthier and would live longer than he would. See? My Cocoa Crispies has more vitamins than your Sugar Pops!
Bringing us up to the modern era, the old 'fortification' of some foods continues, but in addition vitamins and minerals are added to all sorts of food as part of marketing.
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Unknown to me: do the studies the OP are concerned about consider if the people taking more vitamins are doing so to treat (or self treat) pre-existing condition? Do vitamin takers have the same, better, or worse basic health to begin with compared to non-vitamin takers?
all of this seems to be true only for people who take vitamin pills. People who get their vitamins by eating lots of fruits and vegetables STILL live longer and are healthier. May have other reasons than vitamins though.
I've decided quite a while ago that eating meat, fish, vegetables and fruit is fine. I also add as much salt as I like and have no fear of fat and oils. What I try to avoid is sugar and basically anything ready-made. Which often means I can walk right through a supermarket and out at the other end without finding anything I would want to eat. The shelves are full of "products" and very empty of foods.
The nice thing about a diet of meat, fish, vegetables and fruit is that it's almost impossible to get obese.
Almost all the studies in the article suffer from various statistical biases - selection bias, survivor bias, etc. I could find only 2 that may have been A-B blind studies over extended periods. One of those 2 is suspect because it was cut short and the article is talking about long term effects. This article was written to sell magazines, not to document biological effects. I take no stand whether vitamins are good or bad, but it is very clear that the article is poor science writing.
Mainstream and accepted view is that vitamin supplements in proper dosage are a good insurance for health. AMA, AAP, etc.
There are always studies supporting an opposing view of anything and everything.
Lots of people on this site are stating, quite authoritatively but without citation, that vitamins are good/bad for you.
Here's a quick test to tell which side is right.
Go to a good supplements store and pick up some vitamin D. It's got to be a good store, a high-end store that values reputation over profit. GNC is good, as are many others, while your supermarket is not-so-good.
In the dead of winter, take a handful of vitamin D - anywhere over 10,000 IU or so, and see if you get better. It's nigh impossible to overdose on vitamin D, but use common sense (many people take 50,000 IU vitamin D with no problem).
See if you feel better. Use this to determine whether the people posting here without citation are correct or talking through their hat.
Between the two of them they've caused the biggest changes in Western health and diet, and yet were both so wrong. They honestly both thought what they were doing was the Right Thing, but by cherry picking evidence that supported their theories (especially in Keys' case) and ignoring data that pointed otherwise, they committed the cardinal sin of science: Don't make your data fit your hypothesis.
They can prove anything that they want, amazing. Every day a new theory that 'solves' the same problem.
Vitamin D is made through the action of sunlight on cholesterol in the blood.
Here's a question for the medical folks: is "high cholesterol" the body's response to low levels of vitamin D?
IOW, if the body is low on vitamin D, does it raise the level of cholesterol in the blood in an attempt to scavenge more sunlight?
This should be testable - determine whether taking vitamin D has any effect on people with high cholesterol.
They can prove anything, everyday a new theory that 'solves' the same problem.
If you are interested in this, here's a very interesting podcast interview on the good and bad of the pills we take and the suppliments industry by an epidemiologist:
http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/sat/sat-20120421-0908-david_b_agus_the_end_of_illness-00.ogg
It's well worth the listen. (no, he's not a quack with a silver bullet solution)
book form + reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Illness-M-D-David-Agus/dp/145161019X
It would be curious to research vitamin manufacturers and see if they are owned by major drug companies. You know... sell you something to make you sick so they can sell you what makes you better. Like in Canada a few years back when they banned the sale of cigarettes in drug stores some of which were majority owned by tobacco companies.
The proper way to determine if your body need extra vitamins is to take a blood test looking at your vitamin levels. If you are then deficient in any particular vitamin then consult a nutritionist on the best way to handle the issue. The only vitamin that some people usually need is vitamin D. We are usually ok with the rest.
"From that day forward, people would remember Linus Pauling for one thing: vitamin C. "
So, maybe it's just that I've done a lot of biochemistry, but seriously? I'd heard of the vitamin C bit, but it's so far from the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Pauling that it's almost not on the same list. In fact, putting it in the same category as Newton's occult ramblings is a pretty good analogy for me. I mean, how many scientists kind of go off the deep end at some point(s) in their life? Especially after they get tenure - or more, after they go emeritus?
(Actually, probably the first thing that comes to mind for me is some of his predictions about alpha sheet formation - but that has to do with the a particular lab I worked in, and I wouldn't expect it to be anything like general knowledge.)
My great uncle Gene and Pauling were classmates at Oregon Agricultural College (which later became Oregon State University), they graduated the same year with degrees in Chemical Engineering. When he began classes Gene couldn't hack the math at all, he hadn't taken the requisite courses or something; coming from a small farm town in eastern Oregon perhaps they weren't on the curriculum. Then, after breaking his leg and being laid up in a cast for a while, he devised his own approach to problem solving, a more roundabout method to things like long division that obtained the same answer as the conventional approach, but not as streamlined as what was usually taught. Armed with these methods he obtained his degree and went on to a respectable engineering career, overseeing projects like renovating the Mission at San Juan Capistrano and devising various formulas for asphalt used in road building.
I always wondered if Gene's crackerjack approach to problem solving didn't rub off on Pauling in some fashion.
Forget vitamins, let's hear it for Kool-aid. It's the natural drink of Norway (served hot with tons of sugar) and helps in overall digestion.
First of all, a lot of modern vegetables are grown as fast as possible, so they contain less fibre and "nutrients" and more water than when we were satisfied with one harvest per year.
Second of all, it's not just about vegetables. We need to get some "rare" vitamins from nuts, meat and such. With the current diet as we have it, meat is grown way faster too, containing arguably less of these rare vitamins than before. We eat a lot less unprocessed food than we used to, especially nuts tend to be roasted and such. A lot of processed food contains arguably less vitamins and nutrients than it used to when we ate more fresh and only slightly cooked food.
Maybe some cultivates are more nutrient than others, but a lot of cultivates are cells with water in them these days. We eat way more processed food than we used to, also diminishing the nutrient value of our food. It may be that we can grow bigger, faster and healthier crops, but once they enter our mouth, they are probably less nutrient than they were on average 50 years ago.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
"See if you feel better" is kinda vague. You forgot some important control groups:
sugar pill labeled Vitamin D,
Vitamin D labeled as sugar pill,
antidepressant pill labeled correctly,
sugar pill labeled as antidepressant,
antidepressant pill labeled as sugar pill,
pain pill labeled correctly,
sugar pill labeled pain pill,
pain pill labeled as sugar pill,
weed pill labeled correctly,
sugar pill labeled as weed,
weed pill labeled as sugar pill,
and several groups that are required to go outside in the sun for X minutes/day.
Not convinved that there is a cause and effect here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-cause_fallacy On the Vitamin E prostate cancer link that is easily resolved. First assume that there is no correlation then assume that people have read articles saying that it is helpful (this link implies that such information was around http://www.nih.gov/researchmatters/october2011/10172011supplements.htm). So people with prostate cancer or at high risk took vitamin E and eventually had a higher death rate. Does the article take such things into account?
Here is a great book on this subject, it's called "Supplements Exposed":
http://www.amazon.com/Supplements-Exposed-Vitamins-Minerals-ebook/dp/B002SG6FBM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374444134&sr=8-1&keywords=supplements+exposed
Do these studies take into account the fact that people who are having health issues are a lot more likely to start taking vitamins?
Isn't it more likely these people were already sick? I'd love to see similar studies on statins and other shit these doctors hand out like candy.
Take a look at some of the actual studies that are being cited here. The big one admits that it's only EXCESS supplementation that causes problems. In fact, a recent study published in JAMA found the following in males -- keep in mind BS studies don't make it to the JAMA:
"Multivitamins cut the chance of developing cancer by 8%"
They looked at all forms of cancer, not just prostate.
I take a multivitamin daily. I will continue to do so.
One of the biggest problems with vitamin supplements is that neither the takers nor the manufacturers (nor doctors prescribing supplements) pay any attention to absorption pathways. They also tend to ignore variants, which is a problem with a broader category of nutrients than just vitamins. There is a pretty decent scientific basis for the idea that good levels of vitamins are healthy, but supplements are usually taken in ways that are likely to make things worse rather than better through crowding out other essential vitamins and minerals that get absorbed through the same pathway.
Take zinc. It was found that zinc can denature viruses, so a viral sore throat can have its symptoms somewhat alleviated by zinc lozenges. But zinc is absorbed through the same pathway as copper, and the sort of large doses of zinc that people are taking for cold remedies is probably crowding out reasonable levels of copper absorption. And guess what copper's critical for? White blood cells and your immune system, the functions that can really do something about colds. Usually there's some bit of news, that the media gets wrong, then the general public gets even more wrong, and what the average consumer does in respect to a new scientific development ends up being completely counter-productive. Thus the news that zinc can denature viruses on contact turned into people taking zinc supplement pills with ads on the side of the bottle about taking them for colds. But pillsâ"as opposed to lozengesâ"do not result in significant concentrations of zinc where the virus is, and then they end up weakening the immune system by crowding out copper absorption.
Vitamin E is another excellent example. "Vitamin E" is 8 different vitamins that serve very different roles in the body. But they are absorbed through the same pathway and are highly subject to crowding-out. Basically, due to a terminology problem that the 8 distinct vitamins got lumped together as "Vitamin E," people who take vitamin E supplements end up deficient in 7 essential vitamins, unless they're taking reasonable doses of multitocopherol supplements, which isn't what much of anybody takes.
This tendancy to lump things together has lead to another super popular modern marketing disaster, Omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 is not a type of fatty acid, it's a class of fatty acids encompassing many different molecules. It turns out that only the fish-derived versions demonstrate any of the health benefits, but basically every food in the grocery store touting "Omega 3" all over the label is using plant sources, where they might as well be adding a gram of canola oil or corn oil for all the health benefits you'll be getting. Everything touting the helath benefits of flax seeds have no scientific basis, the the science is quite clear that the Omega 3 fatty acids in flax do not exhibit any of the hormone-like beneficial properties such as reducing inflammation that the fish Omega 3 fatty acids have.
I strongly suspect that in the long-term it will turn out that taking appropriate supplements is a very good idea for health, but right now, the science hasn't explored the area thoroughly enough to make solid recommendations given the complexity of the subject, and what little we do know has very little effect on what manufactures make and advertise and what consumers actually take. Which probably leads to the negative outcomes.
If you want to try to figure out, based on what we know, what the best guesses might be about what supplements to actually take, try reading up on the work of Bruce Ames and Andrew Weil. They don't have easy answers, but Bruce Ames did brilliant research, and Andrew Weil makes practical best-guess recommendations based upon the current state of the science.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
You couldn't make this s**t up. However, this is how the bad guys always end up revealing the true nature of their 'play'. Sheeple should NEVER consider a single issue in isolation, but notice all the other issues being pushed by the same side.
Here's a clue. No-one in power close to the government gives a damn about fractional issues of sheeple health. Vitamin supplements are the very definition of an issue so very minor (no matter which way the science plays out), that one knows for sure that mainstream coverage of the issue is about something very different indeed. The obvious suspicion is a hatred by the elite of ANYTHING that makes the sheeple think they are empowering themselves. The elites LOVE centralised mock-empowerment like that offered by organised religion. Individual empowerment (even if it is a placebo or the like) is highly threatening to them.
And for those of you that don't get the concept of something 'obvious' being, in reality, about something else altogether, here's a little story. In that mob film where DeNiro is just an ordinary working stiff, his son witnesses a shooting as two men fight over a parking space. The kid is friendly with the local mob boss. The kid isn't as stupid as the common sheeple, so he says to the boss "it wasn't really about a parking space?" and the boss replies "No."
No-one is trying to save the sheeple from the negative consequences of vitamin overdoses. The sheeple are, instead, being trained to be compliant to the official orders of the drug industry. "Shut your mouth, shut your mind, roll up your sleeve, and take this needle in your arm." Even the lowest and most pathetic users of 'illegal' drugs' have a more intelligent attitude to the products peddled by their pushers.
In the UK, the filth from the 'Coalition' state that GM food must be forced down the throats of the British people (a population that more than any other, rejected GM food). Meanwhile, all GM food is banned from the highly subsidised restaurants of the House of Commons. Meanwhile the House of Commons has used tax laws to eliminate almost all 'subsidised' cafeterias in ordinary UK workplaces. Meanwhile, some filthy shill will respond to this saying "where's the problem".
Not being a health food crank myself, I've observed those who are, and they are certainly more healthy than the average person. Not surprising when their hobby is looking after themselves. So, who would attack such people, or try to eliminate their options?
Meanwhile, in the UK, the same filthy 'Coalition' is trying to return to the bad old days in UK schools, where teachers forced kids to clear their plates of the s**t forced upon them in the compulsory lunchtime dining areas. We saw the consequences of such training a few days back in that school in India where 20+ kids were killed by their school meals. The food in this case was clearly contaminated, and was immediately making the kids ill, but the teachers forced each child to clear their plates.
When I was a child at school in the UK decades back, the teachers did the same thing. Children who couldn't eat the slop served were subject to severe punishment. Today, the filthy shills are out in force telling the sheeple that parents do NOT have the right to choose what their kids eat, and neither do the children themselves. This argument comes from the same place as the article I'm responding to.
Exercising personal power makes you a dangerous sheeple, and maybe elevates you above the level of sheeple. This CANNOT be allowed.
I get the impression that Pauling was simultaneously very smart and very full of himself. He glibly dismissed evidence simply because it didn't agree with his world-view, which is actually a hallmark of a bad scientist.
From URL http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/nobel-chemistry-idUSL5E7L51U620111005 :
Pauling's story shows us that the self-marketing which stemmed from his enormous ego had quite a bit to do with the overall good scientist legacy which still surrounds him (and ditto for some others from his era, like Watson and Crick). I'm not sure what we are supposed to learn from that, though. I get the impression that the really best scientists, when approached by the media about their new breakthrough, would actually say something like "I'm really excited, but let's not forget that this still has to be replicated, and I'm sure that future work will show that I'm not 100% correct, and I couldn't have done this without the work of generations of previous scientists" --- which isn't exactly something which makes for sexy news.
If all you eat are carrots you will get sick
If all you eat are apples you will get sick
If all you eat are bananas you will get sick
If all you eat are .... I think you get the pattern.
As said in summary, there have been many studies showing vitamin toxicity. As far as I have been following the thing, we have some ideas of what vitamin can do harm. Anyone that has deeper knowledge of the field is welcome to correct me:
As far as I know, vitamin C still has no known toxicity. Taken in excess it just causes diarrhea. Am I missing something?
This shows the gullibility of the Slashdot crowd. Using The Atlantic and ABC News as their thinking sources, corporate shills for their largest accounts, the pharmaceuticals. The real science literature shows which molecules are the correct vitamins and how they can be used therapeutically to extend life.
Enjoy what you have folks, tomorrow is coming in the USSA.
Too much is bad, too little is bad.
Personal experience: When I first started working, my diet went to crap, eating candy bars for lunch and such. I remember being tired, really tired all the time. A friend suggested a vitamin regimen. And the difference was night and day. I guess I know what meth is like. The night I started, I only slept a few hours. And managed to do so for an entire week, getting up early and jogging, something I never do.
However, there were side effects too. I'd been taking a megadose of B complex and a large dose of vitamin E plus a daily multi-vitamin/mineral. When I went off the B-complex, all of my joints hurt. Anyway, fast forward to today, I take a multi-mineral/vitamin pill a couple-three times a week. I feel like that's probably the top of the cost/benefit function, at the top of the bell curve.
There are two times that I *feel* like multi-vitamins help me (yay for the Placebo effect if that is what it is):
1. When I drink too much, if I take a vitamin before going to bed, it really helps stem the hangover the next morning;
2. I have a tendency to have restless leg syndrome. Taking a vitamin a bit before bed seems to help, and the medical literature seems to support this.
The article in question attacks very particular statements about Vitamins to cure disease, then uses this to state that they are rarely useful to take. The reality is much more murky, and for many people, general multivitamins may help.
So it's a good thing that Pfizer doesn't produce Centrum?
Oops . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrum_(multivitamin)
TFA makes it sound like vitamins are bad in general. This could not be further from the truth. Everything in the right quantity. There are known diseases caused by specific vitamin deficiencies. Some friends (and myself) swear that after over exertion, vitamin C will reduce soreness.
I found a friend (older guy) using a walker and asked "what's up with that? He said he was prescribed Cipro and it caused some tendon damage and he could hardly walk. He Googled it and yep - common problem. Something about reduced blood flow to the tendons. I said "take magnesium, it may increase blood flow". I saw him 2 weeks later and he was walking much better and said he'd been taking Mg - I also Googled it in the mean time and found not only that magnesium deficiency can cause tendon problems, but that people who were damaged by Cipro recovered quickly on magnesium.
Anyway, it's probably bad to just take a bunch of stuff without cause just like it's bad to try to blanket discredit something which in some cases are very helpful.
Why did I know Magnesium increases blood flow? I started taking it because it allegedly helps asthma and started having effects similar to viagra.... Looked it up and yep, it's a vaso-dialator.
the unwashed ignorant. You might look up the role of cellular degradation products released following injury causing shock. These are what high dose vitamin C ameliorate, and can be life saving.
Maybe he was wrong, I'm not as convinced as you are. There are problems with the studies that are quoted in the article. It's not very scientific to pick a few studies that say vitamins are bad and then jump to that conclusion, and the conclusion that all alternative medicine is nonsense and that therefore, Pauling was wrong. The article is one of those catching articles that sells magazines to the masses but that actualy has no evidence of what it's trying to actually prove. It's a troll.
I didn't bother to buy any multivitamins when I moved out of my parents to my apartment. Then about a month later, after a somewhat healthy but not heavily varied or vitamin rich diet, I started to feel just generally awful. I was tired, couldn't concentrated, and was always hungry. I automatically thought of my diet so I got some multivitamins (generic centrum). I took one and the next day I felt absolutely amazingly flawless. Here's the problem. It took my body over a month to feel ill effects from stopping taking multivitamins. Enter, elephant theory.
There are some elephants in Africa that make a once a year trip to a salt cave and eat like 40 pounds of salt. Then they're good all year. Some monkeys do a similar thing where once every couple weeks they eat some disgusting plant to get a particular nutrient. So nowhere in nature would a human get a mix of like 100 vitamins and nutrients every single day at that high of a concentration. So honestly, I would strongly recommend that people take a daily multivitamin once a week. That's A LOT more realistic to nature and it's probably all you need.
Shortened lives? Correlation v causation strikes again. It is entirely possible that the people who took vitamins lived long enough to develop cancer (and didn't die from other organ failures caused by shortage of vitamins). This is almost like arguing that nursing homes cause deaths because people in nursing homes die at higher rates than residents of other homes.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I hate to buy into the conspiracy / big pharma message but there are plenty of studies that suggest mega doses of certain vitamins can suppress or reverse certain auto immune diseases. But, since you can't patent a supplement, why would you cannibalize your other patented products with supplement research? This is not my only source, but I am too lazy to find my original research: http://www.sciencedaily.com/news/health_medicine/vitamin_d/
If I need a quick fix or have had a vegetable-free day or just because I feel like it I will eat an orange, thanks. I get them in a string bag of 1.5kg or 2kg for about 2 euros (price varies slightly) and are probably not of very high quality but decent enough to be eaten, most times.
Bananas are great though they don't serve the exact same purpose (they can make you feel good if you haven't eaten anything at all)
I have canned vegetables and dehydrated soup, too. That's all a bit "junk food", at least in terms of industrial agriculture, low cost and availability. With more money I would buy better fruit and vegetable. There's also tomato juice and others. Why pills then?
Article is an excerpt from a book written by a guy that sold vaccines for big pharma. I'm not against vaccines, they're a good thing (although there is still plenty of room to be nervous without believing in autism/mercury).
But you have to keep in mind the vaccine industry has been at war with Pauling since he showed a IV drop of C will cure Polio. If you actually look it up you can find where he did that, and unlike everybody else here will have verified something in the article.
Because every claim made by the author in that article is probably wrong.
Shame on The Atlantic for this puff piece. They usually have good science.
Need Mercedes parts ?
My doctor told me I was low on vitamin D, which surprised me a little. I bike to work daily. It isn't a long ride, 4 miles, but I am still out in the sun every week day. I live in the desert too so plenty of sun.
However, apparently I didn't have enough D. Some supplements cleared that up.
The multi-vitamins I've seen generally have 100% (or less in the case of some things) of the FDA recommended daily value. That doesn't seem to be a mega dose, at least not according to the people who research such things, it appears to be, well, the recommended amount.
researchers from the University of Minnesota found that women who took supplemental multivitamins died at rates higher than those who didn't.
Unless there is something we're missing, I do believe there is a 100% death rate among humans.
Shit, and I'm not even a scientist. At least I didn't start the sentence with "actually."
It is now known that sunlight exposure leads to the production of nitric oxide, which is important in blood pressure regulation. The health benefits of nitric oxide are independent of Vitamin D, and in fact may outweigh the risk of skin cancer.
I've had bariatric surgery. I take a regimin of special vitamin supplements because I don't absorb food as well. Still, I'm not as regular on my vitamins as my doctor would like and I'm not having problems. I just make sure to eat a variety of types of foods that meet my strict dietary guidelines. I'm still losing a ridiculous amount of weight weekly.
Because of an increased emphasis over "factory farms" and quantity/appearance over quality.
Look at today's tomatoes. Big, bright red, and basically a tasteless ball of water as it's been engineered to look ripe without actually going through the proper ripening process.
Beef, chicken, pork. Hello antibiotics and super-bugs.
And don't worry, while we're also busy killing off the rest of the ecosystem with neonicotinoid pesticides that will decimate the pollinators in North America, we can still import food from China where they're happily polluting the land with heavy metals and other fun chemicals.
The recommended daily allowance (RDA) for vitamins and minerals were originally set by analyzing an average diet and assuming those quantities were adequate and optimum, modified a bit with the limited knowledge of the day about deficiency diseases. Subsequently, the values have been adjusted a little to take into account advances in scientific knowledge.
Note that individual variations mean that what's enough for one person is not necessarily enough for another.
Importantly, consider that the RDA is a guideline for the minimum needed to avoid obvious problems. It is not the optimum, which is a larger amount. Many nutrients have multiple uses, and the less essential uses (which nonetheless are beneficial) are only engaged when there are nutrients left over after the most important stuff is done.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
I'm sure that all the "facts" are correct, but my skepticism about this article comes from the fact that it raises more questions than it seems to answer. It doesn't actually mention anything that happens to the patients health, but instead mentions conclusions of those conducting the studies(maybe that's normal and I just had too much free time at work to look into it). This article only mentions 1 water soluble vitamin making it the only interesting conclusion, and only mentions 3 vitamins total(lets all realize that the title implies a conclusion about vitamin supplementation in general) without giving any information on the duration of the study or the dosages(or did I miss that?) which seems like an important detail because we've known about vitamin toxicity for a long time and there's no other way to compare or contrast the study to what we think of as normal vitamin supplementation or more like the example of the guy that was taking like 15 grams of vitamin A. So there are really only 3 ways that you could interpret this article. Either A. The vitamins had a different and detrimental effect because they were supplemented rather than obtained through diet, or B.a larger amount of the vitamin was causing detrimental effects or C. They're not actually saying anything new about vitamins but simply telling a story about how people were tricked a long time ago into taking toxic levels of vitamins. In situation A that would be somewhat new, but very strange that they just completely forgot to mention it, and in situation B if they were following those recommendations of taking 15g of vitamin A every day, they wouldn't actually be arguing anything contrary to what has already been the general consensus about Hyper-vitaminosis for a very long time(except for the vitamin C part). Situation C is even more misleading because the title of the article clearly makes it sound like you will incur detrimental effects from consuming within the RDA of vitamins if you're supplementing vitamins. Assuming the asserted facts of the article are true, there's still no way to interpret it without it being misleading.
Here is the ending to the article:
" In May 1980, during an interview at Oregon State University, Linus Pauling was asked, "Does vitamin C have any side effects on long-term use of, let's say, gram quantities?" Pauling's answer was quick and decisive. "No," he replied.
Seven months later, his wife was dead of stomach cancer. In 1994, Linus Pauling died of prostate cancer. "
It implies Linus died a premature death from the side effect(cancer) he denied. Which is just as bad, or worse than his own assumptions about the benefits. There was no such evidence that Vitamin C increased his chances of prostate cancer. I also don't believe there are any studies that have ever suggested such a link.
It also neglects to mention he was 93 years old when he died, so he wasn't exactly cut down in his prime by his mega-dosing.
Huge daily doses of this are still being recommended for preventing migraines, and for some people - myself included - it works.
No it is NOT true that you can always get all your nutrients fron the average diet. Yes, uninformed vitamin usage does little good, but vitamin therapy has really shown it's highest benefits in treatment of subclinical pellagra and other "modern diseases" caused by a diet high in processed food. The modern epedemics of ADD, autismn, schizophrenia, clinical depressionand a whole host of other ailments have been shown in study after study to be as effective, if not even more effective, than the pharmacalogical treatmenrts of choice. Every year another drug company funded "study" comes out "debunking" vitamin therapy, by cherry opicking the worst of the lot. Linus pauling is hardly the first , or only one to research in that direction.. . A simple google search will turn up the real facts for anyone who cares to know.
If you dig down into the studies, you find faulty stats. US school system has created a bunch of idiot "scientists" that don't no the difference between Causation and Correlation.
They are called supplements not replacements for a reason. They are meant to supplement a good diet (top up, make sure you aren't missing things) not as a "I can eat junk and take a pill and be fine" type nonsense. Combine that with garbage supplements from China being cheap and you have a bunch of clueless people eating junk and taking poisoned supplements and you wonder why they get these results.
Add to that the fact that a lot of these studies are horribly flawed and misrepresented by the media and you get nonsense.
Then you have the real kicker. We've known that most vitamins in isolation will not work or even do damage for a long time. This is not new. Vitamin C must be taken with other antioxidants like vitamin E, or the vitamin C will react with iron and copper to produce DNA-damaging free radicals.
http://www.lef.org/magazine/articles/vitc_damage.htm?source=search&key=rebuttal
Here are some examples. Some rebuttals to "journalism" and "science". In reality the media are mindlessly engaged in scaremongering and not even reading the studies while the scientists are engaged in "science for sale" pandering to their funding sources and/or trolling for more research funding.
http://www.lef.org/featured-articles/Fish-and-Prostate-Cancer-Risk-Fact-or-Fiction.htm
"The insufficient levels of plasma omega-3s in all the study subjects were overlooked by the media. Had these very low plasma levels of omega-3s been recognized, it would have been apparent that this report had no meaning for those who boost their omega-3 consumption through diet and supplements."
http://www.lef.org/featured-articles/Rebuttal-to-Allegation-That-Certain-Vitamins-May-Shorten-Lifespan.htm?source=eNewsLetter2008Wk16-2&key=Article+Exclusive
http://www.lef.org/featured-articles/Vitamin-D-Prostate-Cancer-Risk-Study.htm?source=search&key=rebuttal
http://www.lef.org/featured-articles/Flawed-Analysis-Misleads-Public-About-Calcium-Heart-Attack-Risk.htm?source=search&key=rebuttal
http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2008/jun2008_Rebuttal-to-Attack-Against-Bioidentical-Hormones_01.htm?source=search&key=rebuttal
This still has legs? It was extensively debunked within 3 days of appearing.
doesn't that make him evil enough?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_mobility != https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility
Casteism
i've been reading all this blog people have written in hope that somewhere someone would mention the context and reasoning of Pauling. I had found one or two mentions of his book on the nature of the chemical bond, but nothing on the research he was involved with on the biosynthesis of vitC and the inability to perform one step due to mutation within humans. For those not already familiar with the mans accomplishments he was personally involved with identifying the metabolic pathway for the biosynthesis of vitC, which broke in humans but not other primates and mammals (i think the guneapig may also require dietary vitC). It was known that in animals, that can biosynthesise vitC, they produce 100's of times the basal amounts under conditions of stress. The theories as to why this may be and what the advantage and disadvantages might be are many.
Its quite obvious that from this observation you might then draw the hypothesis that under similar conditions humans might benefit from 100's times the normal levels too! Of course taking something everyday indiscriminately would ignore that in animals that perform biosynthesis there would be regulatory mechanisms that evolved to help ensure that the increase is appropriate.
So do these studies of people taking indiscriminate amounts for 10years or more and then finding detrimental effects show that appropriate increases of vitC are not beneficial ??? NO. Pauling may have even been wrong on this point, but there is an expression 'to throw the baby out with the bathwater' that applies. Even if indiscriminate IV usage of 10+grams or whatever amounts, _even if_ this caused his wifes' death, this doesnot invalidate the simple argument that it appears that for the vast vast bulk of our evolution we had the capacity to massively ramp up biosynthesis of vitC on demand, and that emulating this capability by appropriately supplementing might restore the function of systems that were optimised over long eons to work better with ample vitC under appropriate conditions.
THE HYPOTHESIS, THAT EMULATING THE LOST CAPABILITY TO BIOSYNTHESIZE VITC ON DEMAND WOULD BE BENEFICIAL, HAS NOT BEEN FALSIFIED BY THESE STUDIES. (yes, 100's of times the basal amounts is common in mammals)
Now there are many interesting theories as to how the loss of vitC biosynthesis may have been a local advantage, for instance, vitC is required for the conversion of dopamine into norephinephrine, the different constraints that follow from loss of biosynthesis may relate to differently evolved brain architecture, for just one of many ideas. It may also relate to stress responses, behaviour, social dependance for food, and eating habits that were reinforced at the population level. Perhaps it contributed to the formation of socially dependent groups, by linking nutritional dependence with our stress response.
Pauling understood mathematics and quantum physics at the fronter of both physics and chemistry where he was a pioneer in the modern understanding of the delocalised clouds of electrons now taught in high school chem as s/p/d/f orbitals. He was personally involved in the research to trace the metabolic pathway involved in the production of vitC to discover why it was broken in humans. This is a fascinating subject and leads to all kinds of speculation and hypotheses as mentioned briefly.
It seems that many otherwise rational people see red when presented with the word vitamin, the word has become too charged with unmeaning and the situation has become double plus ungood. If the word vitamin switches off your ability to think I suggest replacing it with the term "biologically significant molecule".
With the benefit of an understanding that can be found on wiki with a quick google today, it appears that the problem is not as simple as the claim that vitC may contribute to the diseases that people are taking it to solve. It may be that the dynamic system that is the human body is just a little more complex.
Firstly, ascorbate in isolation will exist in a chemical equilibriu
i've been reading all this blog people have written in hope that somewhere someone would mention the context and reasoning of Pauling. I had found one or two mentions of his book on the nature of the chemical bond, but nothing on the research he was involved with on the biosynthesis of vitC and the inability to perform one step due to mutation within humans. For those not already familiar with the mans accomplishments he was personally involved with identifying the metabolic pathway for the biosynthesis of vitC, which broke in humans but not other primates and mammals (i think the guneapig may also require dietary vitC). It was known that in animals, that can biosynthesise vitC, they produce 100's of times the basal amounts under conditions of stress. The theories as to why this may be and what the advantage and disadvantages might be are many.
Its quite obvious that from this observation you might then draw the hypothesis that under similar conditions humans might benefit from 100's times the normal levels too! Of course taking something everyday indiscriminately would ignore that in animals that perform biosynthesis there would be regulatory mechanisms that evolved to help ensure that the increase is appropriate.
So do these studies of people taking indiscriminate amounts for 10years or more and then finding detrimental effects show that appropriate increases of vitC are not beneficial ??? NO. Pauling may have even been wrong on this point, but there is an expression 'to throw the baby out with the bathwater' that applies. Even if indiscriminate IV usage of 10+grams or whatever amounts, _even if_ this caused his wifes' death, this doesnot invalidate the simple argument that it appears that for the vast vast bulk of our evolution we had the capacity to massively ramp up biosynthesis of vitC on demand, and that emulating this capability by appropriately supplementing might restore the function of systems that were optimised over long eons to work better with ample vitC under appropriate conditions.
THE HYPOTHESIS, THAT EMULATING THE LOST CAPABILITY TO BIOSYNTHESIZE VITC ON DEMAND WOULD BE BENEFICIAL, HAS NOT BEEN FALSIFIED BY THESE STUDIES. (yes, 100's of times the basal amounts is common in mammals)
Now there are many interesting theories as to how the loss of vitC biosynthesis may have been a local advantage, for instance, vitC is required for the conversion of dopamine into norephinephrine, the different constraints that follow from loss of biosynthesis may relate to differently evolved brain architecture, for just one of many ideas. It may also relate to stress responses, behaviour, social dependance for food, and eating habits that were reinforced at the population level. Perhaps it contributed to the formation of socially dependent groups, by linking nutritional dependence with our stress response.
Pauling understood mathematics and quantum physics at the fronter of both physics and chemistry where he was a pioneer in the modern understanding of the delocalised clouds of electrons now taught in high school chem as s/p/d/f orbitals. He was personally involved in the research to trace the metabolic pathway involved in the production of vitC to discover why it was broken in humans. This is a fascinating subject and leads to all kinds of speculation and hypotheses as mentioned briefly.
It seems that many otherwise rational people see red when presented with the word vitamin, the word has become too charged with unmeaning and the situation has become double plus ungood. If the word vitamin switches off your ability to think I suggest replacing it with the term "biologically significant molecule".
With the benefit of an understanding that can be found on wiki with a quick google today, it appears that the problem is not as simple as the claim that vitC may contribute to the diseases that people are taking it to solve. It may be that the dynamic system that is the human body is just a little more complex.
Firstly, ascorbate in isolation will exist in a chemical equilibriu
i've been reading all this blog people have written in hope that somewhere someone would mention the context and reasoning of Pauling. I had found one or two mentions of his book on the nature of the chemical bond, but nothing on the research he was involved with on the biosynthesis of vitC and the inability to perform one step due to mutation within humans. For those not already familiar with the mans accomplishments he was personally involved with identifying the metabolic pathway for the biosynthesis of vitC, which broke in humans but not other primates and mammals (i think the guneapig may also require dietary vitC). It was known that in animals, that can biosynthesise vitC, they produce 100's of times the basal amounts under conditions of stress. The theories as to why this may be and what the advantage and disadvantages might be are many.
Its quite obvious that from this observation you might then draw the hypothesis that under similar conditions humans might benefit from 100's times the normal levels too! Of course taking something everyday indiscriminately would ignore that in animals that perform biosynthesis there would be regulatory mechanisms that evolved to help ensure that the increase is appropriate.
So do these studies of people taking indiscriminate amounts for 10years or more and then finding detrimental effects show that appropriate increases of vitC are not beneficial ??? NO. Pauling may have even been wrong on this point, but there is an expression 'to throw the baby out with the bathwater' that applies. Even if indiscriminate IV usage of 10+grams or whatever amounts, _even if_ this caused his wifes' death, this doesnot invalidate the simple argument that it appears that for the vast vast bulk of our evolution we had the capacity to massively ramp up biosynthesis of vitC on demand, and that emulating this capability by appropriately supplementing might restore the function of systems that were optimised over long eons to work better with ample vitC under appropriate conditions.
THE HYPOTHESIS, THAT EMULATING THE LOST CAPABILITY TO BIOSYNTHESIZE VITC ON DEMAND WOULD BE BENEFICIAL, HAS NOT BEEN FALSIFIED BY THESE STUDIES. (yes, 100's of times the basal amounts is common in mammals)
Now there are many interesting theories as to how the loss of vitC biosynthesis may have been a local advantage, for instance, vitC is required for the conversion of dopamine into norephinephrine, the different constraints that follow from loss of biosynthesis may relate to differently evolved brain architecture, for just one of many ideas. It may also relate to stress responses, behaviour, social dependance for food, and eating habits that were reinforced at the population level. Perhaps it contributed to the formation of socially dependent groups, by linking nutritional dependence with our stress response.
Pauling understood mathematics and quantum physics at the fronter of both physics and chemistry where he was a pioneer in the modern understanding of the delocalised clouds of electrons now taught in high school chem as s/p/d/f orbitals. He was personally involved in the research to trace the metabolic pathway involved in the production of vitC to discover why it was broken in humans. This is a fascinating subject and leads to all kinds of speculation and hypotheses as mentioned briefly.
It seems that many otherwise rational people see red when presented with the word vitamin, the word has become too charged with unmeaning and the situation has become double plus ungood. If the word vitamin switches off your ability to think I suggest replacing it with the term "biologically significant molecule".
With the benefit of an understanding that can be found on wiki with a quick google today, it appears that the problem is not as simple as the claim that vitC may contribute to the diseases that people are taking it to solve. It may be that the dynamic system that is the human body is just a little more complex.
Firstly, ascorbate in isolation will exist in a chemical equilibriu
His sterling work on atomic orbital theory notwithstanding, he never convinced me that consuming megadoses of vitamins are good for anything other than selling megadoses of vitamins.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Turn 6 bounds of Kale a day into something a human can actually consume.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
This statement that Pauling was "arguably the world's greatest quack" was made by a doctor who recently published some anti-supplement works. Much of his allegations, such that Pauling's supplement claims were wrong or that high dose supplements increase cancer and mortality, have been convincingly refuted (see http://www.supplements-and-health.com/vitamin-benefits.html ). A CLOSER look by anyone at the data shows that the real quacks are always the people who accuse Pauling of that. It's nothing but politics, meant to mislead the gullible and ignorant.
Well there can't possibly be any other explanation can there? I mean, it's not like there'd be any propaganda value in it. Or that he might be ashamed of his son for being captured rather than dying as a hero. And when you consider how well he got on with his daughter It's ludicrous to suggest that he might not have liked his son much to start with.
Elementary, my dear Watson.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Good points. To take it further, as Dr. Joel Fuhrman says, the many correlation studies on nutrients like beta carotene mostly show, when you think about them, a "marker" effect. That is, having a high level of beta carotene or vitamin C is a marker for eating a lot of fruits, vegetables, and/or legumes. These plant foods have lots of phytonutrients (thousands of different things, many yet unclassified), that our bodies (or gut bacteria) use in different ways. That is why when people through diet have high beta carotine levels, they may be very healthy. But when they take beta carotine supplements, it may cause things to get out of balance, including for reasons you mention, and then they might get cancer or other illnesses. They have raised their level of the marker substance, without having all the other nutrients that would normally go along with it.
As another analogy, high blood pressure often indicated clogging arteries, but lowering your blood pressure with pills doesn't stop the artery clogging process, it just makes the marker go away. That is why much of drug-based mainstream medicine that focuses on symptomatic relief is somewhat like if an auto mechanic disconnected out the "check oil" light in your car rather than fix an oil leak that the dashboard light might indicate. Somehow most doctors get away with that when most auto mechanics don't -- perhaps because cars with service manuals are way easier to understand than thousands of undocumented biochemical pathways in a human body. Most people in the USA seem to take better care of their cars than their bodies, too.
I'm not sure of any specific drawbacks of high vitamin C supplements, beyond diarrhea from excess and the fact most vitamin C in the US is manufactured in China and so may be contaminated with who knows what. But certainly Vitamin C may be a marker for a healthier diet. So, if you get daily "chemotherapy" from relatively cheap phytonutrients in fruits and vegetables and legumes all your life, you may avoid oncologists trying to give you expensive chemotherapy later in life. Thus Linus Pauling was right that we should be living in such a way as to have higher vitamin C levels -- but he was wrong in not seeing Vitamin C as a marker for a health diet of whole foods (and mostly plant-based) and then advocating you could fix this complex situation by adding just one isolated nutrient.
Another issue, as Dr. Joel Fuhrman talks about in his book "Eat to Live", is that the US RDA for Vitamin C is way too low by several times. However, the US RDA for Vitamin C can't be greatly raised without flagging the fact that the average US resident is getting way too few fruits and vegetables and legumes (the normal source of most vitamin C). And that would be in contradiction to US farm policy and profits which are directed to subsidies for the meat, dairy, and grain industries:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html
"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has posted an easy-to-understand visual on its site that shows which foods U.S. tax dollars go to support under the nation's farm bill. It's titled "Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?" and depicts two pyramidsâ"subsidized foods and the old recommended food pyramid. It's interesting to note that the two are almost inversely proportional to each other."
I have suggested that we create better health sensemaking tools to try to figure this all out collectively in an open source way:
https://www.changemakers.com/morehealth/entries/health-sensemaking
By the way, periodic "fasting" is another part of the health equation. One advocate of many:
http://www.drbass.com/
The Flexner Report from a century ago is where modern medicine in the USA took a problematical turn, when MDs focusing on procedures and drugs legally crowded out
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
About the Omega supplement, I would suggest you take Omega-3 only supplement, with no Omega 3 and 9. Almost all Omega-3 fatty acids are essential, which means that our body cannot synthetize them, and we depends on our diet to fulfill our needs. Typical North American diet is low in fish and fish oils - an excellent source of essential Omega-3 like EPA and DHA - so many people will benefit from taking Omega-3/fish oils supplements, in particular supplements which has standardized concentration of EPA and DHA. Those cold water fish-based supplements help mainly for the nervous system, and the cardio-vascular system, on potentially for other aspect of human health ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3 ) . On the other hand, Omega-6 fatty acids are also essential but come easily from typical Western diet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-6#Dietary_sources ) and Omega-9 fatty acids are not essential, which means our body can synthetize them when needed ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-9 ).
Another good reason to take Omega-3 only supplement is to keep a better Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio. Some findings show that Omega-3 metabolites cause less inlfammatory response than Omega-6 metabolite, and there are benefits to keep this ratio lower. (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3#The_omega.E2.88.926_to_omega.E2.88.923_ratio ). Considering that our diet already contains enough Omega-6, usually to a hgher than desired ratio to Omega-3, taking supplements with no Omega-6 is usually better.
As in anything, avoid high dosage. Too much Omega-3 is no better than too few, and, for exemple, can interfere with normal blood coagualtion process. Ask a health care professionnal in case you have doubt about the dosage you hsould take.