Vitamin Supplements and improved Health
Vita means "life" in Latin, and vitamins are essential for life. The World Health Organization calls them the "magic wands" used by the body to synthesize enzymes, hormones and other chemical necessities. Unable to create vitamins from scratch, the body must fetch them from outside sources typically food. Humans need 13 vitamins to survive. Vitamins, also called "micronutrients" because they are required in minute quantities, can be grouped in two categories. There are those that dissolve in fat—A, D, E and K—and can accumulate in the body when consumed in excess. And there are those that are water soluble—C and B—which are easily excreted, as anyone who takes large quantities of vitamin C and riboflavin (B2) can testify. (Their urine is bright yellow or orange.)
The best way to get vitamins is through food, not vitamin pills, according to Susan Taylor Mayne, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health's Division of Chronic Disease Epidemiology. A major problem with supplements is that they deliver vitamins out of context, she says. The vitamins found in fruit, vegetables and other foods come with thousands of other phytochemicals, or plant nutrients that are not essential for life but may protect against cancer, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease and other chronic ailments. Carotenoids in carrots and tomatoes, isothiocyanates in broccoli and cabbage, and flavonoids in soy, cocoa and red wine are just a few examples.
The combined effect of all these vitamins and phytochemicals seems to have much greater power than one nutrient taken alone, Mayne explains. For example, lycopene—the carotenoid that gives tomatoes their red hue—has been associated with a lower risk for prostate cancer, causing many supplement makers to rush to market pills bearing this healthy stuff. But research suggests that taking it in