If you pay attention to vitamin advertisements on TV, magazines and newspapers, you will find that vitamins are really "omnipotent". Whether it's preventing colds or cancer, beautifying and freckle removing, strengthening bones, or even delaying aging and treating Alzheimer's disease, vitamin seems to be a magic medicine that can cure all diseases.
In the United States, nearly 40% of adults often take vitamin preparations. The whole vitamin industry is growing at a rate of US $12 billion a year, accounting for about 40% of the whole health care market. China's vitamin market is also growing. So, are all the advertisements true? What are the facts, superstitions and even scams about vitamins?
For most healthy people, as long as they don't overeat, their daily diet can basically ensure the intake of vitamins, and they don't need additional vitamin preparations. Only a few cases require special supplementation.
For example, when you can't eat enough food for various reasons, you need to supplement vitamins. The elderly's teeth degenerate, their chewing ability decreases, and they prefer soft food, resulting in an unbalanced diet. At the same time, the digestive tract function of the elderly decreases, further reducing the body's absorption of nutrients. Therefore, the elderly with eating disorders need to supplement an appropriate amount of vitamins and other nutrients.
Individual vitamins
Pregnant women need extra Folic Acid (vitamin B9). Folic acid is an important raw material for human body to produce new cells. After pregnancy, a large amount of folic acid is used for the development of fetal nervous system. It may be difficult to meet this consumption only through food. Therefore, pregnant women need additional supplements with oral folic acid preparations. If there is a lack of folic acid, the fetus may develop a fatal disease called neural tube defect, resulting in spinal and nervous system malformations, intellectual impairment and even premature death.
Animal foods are rich in cholesterol, which is the raw material for vitamin D synthesis, so vegetarians are also prone to vitamin D deficiency. In addition, vegetarians may also lack vitamin B12.
Children and adolescents whose bodies are in the stage of growth and development should have a balanced diet, which requires not only sufficient vegetables and fruits, but also enough meat. Because children not only need a variety of vitamins and inorganic salts in vegetables and fruits, but also need a lot of high-quality animal protein, as well as vitamin A and vitamin D in animal food.
The vitamin of "good intentions do bad things"
When taking vitamin preparations outside the normal diet, you need to pay attention to the dose. However, manufacturers almost never emphasize this point in publicity, giving people the illusion that "the more you eat, the better". For example, manufacturers of infant food and supplements often emphasize that their products are rich in vitamin A, vitamin D and calcium, which can promote the healthy development of children's bones. But they will not say that infants and young children are the most vulnerable to vitamin poisoning. The reason is that parents mistakenly believe that the more calcium and vitamins added to food, the better for their children's health. Inadvertently, the child has taken a lot of vitamins. It has been reported that parents use milk powder added with vitamin D to feed their children, and let their children take nutritional supplements rich in vitamin D such as cod liver oil. After a period of time, the child appeared nausea, vomiting, abnormal teeth and other poisoning manifestations.
This is because vitamin D is easy to accumulate in the body, and long-term high-dose supplementation is easy to cause poisoning symptoms. Among fat soluble vitamins, vitamin D poisoning is the most harmful to human body. Excessive intake of vitamin D will force the human body to absorb too much calcium, raising the calcium in the blood to a very dangerous level. At the same time, calcitonin, another hormone regulating calcium level in the body, secretes a large amount of calcium and deposits too much calcium into organs such as heart and kidney, which may lead to dysfunction of important organs and even sudden death. Therefore, before purchasing vitamin fortified food or health care products, we must carefully read the commodity label, estimate the content of vitamins, and avoid inadvertently taking too much vitamin D or other fat soluble vitamins.
Identify vitamin Scams
Many manufacturers claim that their vitamin preparations can prevent a variety of diseases, whiten and freckle, and delay aging. However, there is no reliable scientific basis for the magical effects in the advertisements of vitamin supplements and health products. How can consumers identify scams in vitamin supplements? It may be helpful for us to remember the following points:
1. The safety of vitamins depends on the dose. Taking vitamin supplements while taking enough food every day may lead to excessive intake and fat soluble vitamin poisoning.
2. Most vitamin supplements that emphasize "organic" and "natural" are expensive, and the actual effect is no different from that of synthetic vitamins.
3. There is no clear scientific evidence that vitamin supplements with vegetables, fruits, algae and plant seed extracts as their selling points are superior to synthetic vitamin preparations.
4. The so-called vitamin B17, vitamin B15 and vitamin P are not vitamins. Most of the newly discovered vitamins are just exaggerated in commercial advertisements.
5. There is no evidence that vitamin supplements can alleviate fatigue, enhance immunity or delay aging. Many so-called effects are only due to psychological factors. Interestingly, experiments show that the more expensive the product, the stronger the psychological "effect". Even if the user swallows only starch tablets, they will feel "effective" after being told that the tablets are expensive.