Multi Vitamin Study

A recent women’s health study showed that taking a daily Multi-vitamin did not reduce the incidence of Cancer or Heart Disease. In its critique, the Alliance for Natural Health argues that given that chronic diseases like cancer and heart disease have long development times and are often triggered by events in earlier life, evaluating the effects of low dose supplements in older women is a futile exercise. Many of the women would likely have been in a pre-clinical disease phase, so evaluating the effects of low dose supplements in later life while knowing virtually nothing about their lifestyle and nutrient intakes during their younger years is a classic case of “too little, too late.” http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/138722.php

While the study used low dose vitamins, I will go a step further. Cancer, Heart Disease, and other chronic disease prevention is not about the strength of the vitamins. They are supplements, meaning supplemental or in addition to eating healthy foods. They are not replacements for food at any dose. Carrots are a lot more than just beta carotene and tomatoes are not lycopene with seeds.

Prevention of disease is more than just diet (the food we eat) and exercise, because health is a balance of career, fun, love/romance, family/friends, environment, spirituality, money, diet, and exercise.   Adequate amounts of these items can not be obtained in pill or capsule form.  Any imbalance of these can lead to chronic disease over time.

The ANH is correct that chronic diseases begin in childhood, even though symptoms do not usually appear until much later in life.  This is due to the body’s ability to adapt to keep us going.  The body’s physiological wisdom is not concerned with decades.  It’s focus is on making it through today.  Left unbalanced, decades of this adaptive physiology leads to signs and symptoms of chronic disease.  Cancer is not the tumor.  Heart disease is not the arterial plaque.  Cutting them out does not solve the problem.  Cancer, Heart Disease, and other chronic diseases are the process of adaptive physiology over prolonged periods.  To cure and prevent them the WHY the body is forced to adapt physiologically for decades needs to be addressed.  Trying to block the physiology is not the answer.  It is not simply a Chemo, Statin drug, or Multivitamin deficiency.

To truly cure and prevent chronic diseases people will need to actively pursue balance in each of the areas of health previously mentioned.  It will also require revisiting and resolving emotional traumas of their past.  No drug, prescription or over the counter, or vitamin at any dose can lead to the quality of life that balancing each aspect of health will provide.