William Atkins
Tuesday, 17 February 2009 19:25
Science -
Health
Page 1 of 3
It is commonly thought in the United States and around the world that multivitamins help to improve health and minimize the risk of such diseases as cancer and cardiovascular disease. A U.S. study asked if this belief is medically true in postmenopausal women.
Multivitamins, available in tablets, powders, liquids, and other forms, are intended to supplement a diet with vitamins, dietary minerals, and other nutritional elements.
They generally contain ten to 30 different types of vitamins and minerals. Many multivitamin products contain many of the following ingredients: A, B
1, B
2, B
3, B
5 (pantothenate), B
6, betacarotene, borate(s), C, calcium, chromium, folic acid (B
9), B
12, D
3, E, H (biotin), iron, K
1, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, potassium iodide, selenomethionine, and zinc.
In the United States, multivitamins are the most popular dietary supplement sold to the public.
Consequently, a group of U.S. researchers decided to see if there was a direct correlation (tha tis, the use of multivitamins reduces the risk to certain cancers and diseases) between multivitamin use and the risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and mortality (death) in one group of people: postmenopausal women.
A wide range of ethnic backgrounds were studied within the women studied, including American Indian, Asian, black, Hispanic, and white.
The authors of the U.S. study, whose results “
Multivitamin Use and Risk of Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease in the Women's Health Initiative Cohorts” were published in the
Archives of Internal Medicine (2009;169(3):294-304), studied 161,808 women between the years of 1993 and 1998.
Page two contains the results of the study involving multivitams and the health of postmenopausal women (women living after the end of menstruation, usually after the ages of 45 to 50 years).
