Health scare of the week: The downside of multivitamins

Taking over-the-counter nutritional supplements may do more harm than good. A new study shows that many common supplements—including multivitamins, folic acid, magnesium, iron, and zinc—do nothing to lengthen the lives of those who take them, and may actually be shortening them.

After following nearly 39,000 women aged 55 and older for almost 20 years, researchers found that those who regularly took multivitamins—something many doctors recommend to their patients—were 2.4 percent more likely to die of any cause over that period than those who didn’t. Iron appeared to be especially dangerous: The more of it women took, the more lethal its effects. Only calcium supplements were found to actually reduce death rates slightly.

University of Minnesota researcher Jaakko Mursu tells Reuters that while the study didn’t explain why vitamins might be having a negative health impact, it did lead him to a simple piece of dietary advice: Eat “as many vegetables and as much fruit as you can.’’ Natural foods provide all the vitamins people need, Mursu says, with no negative impact on longevity.

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