It is absolutely wild to me how many of my patients at the clinic when I ask them what supplements they're taking, they mention one that's actively damaging their blood vessels. And it's not just this one. There are four other incredibly popular supplements that the human research shows does more harm than good.
And I advise my patients to stop taking them immediately. And if you want weekly health research summaries and health strategies that I share with my patients, sign up using the link in the pinned comment. The first supplement I'm talking about is one of the most abundant minerals in the human body.
It's required for our muscles, including the heart, to function properly. It's vital for the signals that travel through our nerves, and we can't have healthy bones without it. I am, of course, talking about calcium, and that's just one of five popular supplements that I warn my patients about.
And if you're like most of my patients, you've probably never heard about the potential dangers of calcium supplements. So, let me explain this. We've understood for a long time how important calcium is for healthy bones.
And we've known that there are groups of people at higher risk of problems. This is particularly true for older people since we lose bone mass as we age. Our bones become weaker and we're at greater risk of fractures and osteoporosis.
This risk is especially pronounced for post-menopausal women because of hormone changes in their bodies. They experience accelerated bone loss at a rate of 3 to 5% per year for several years. Why does this happen?
Well, our bones are constantly in a process of change. Cellular processes break down old bones and then reconstruct new bones. It's like a road that's constantly having sections torn up and repaired.
As we age, the repair process slows. At some point, the balance tips and we start to lose more than we rebuild. So, calcium is a key building material and for several reasons, including decreased absorption.
It's harder for our bodies to get enough as we get older. So, many people think that we should start supplementing with calcium to help to rebuild our bone strength. Health is complex, however.
What seems logical doesn't always work out the way that we'd expect. For one thing, the research on calcium supplements has turned up surprising results. We were expecting to see a clear benefit in terms of reduced problems like bone fractures.
Yet, the results are mixed. One meta analysis, for example, found several studies that reported reduced fracture risks with calcium supplements, which sounds good on the surface, but when you dig deeper, many of those individual studies had significant risks of bias. And when we isolate just randomized control trials with lower risk of bias, the story is different.
calcium supplements didn't seem to help at all. So, the benefit is unclear. At the same time, though, we've got accumulating evidence of the potential harm.
Several studies have yielded alarming results. One early meta analysis in 2010 pulled the results of trials of calcium supplements. They found that those who took calcium supplements had about a 30% increase in the rate of heart attacks.
Numbers from a much more recent cohort study were even worse. This one involved people with osteoporosis in South Korea. Researchers noticed that those who took calcium supplements without vitamin D skyrocketed their risks of a heart attack by almost 90%.
And you might be wondering why vitamin D is relevant here. Well, it plays a critical role in regulating calcium in the body if we don't have adequate amounts. It seems to make the problems associated with calcium supplements worse.
So, let's have a look at one more study. This one investigated an association between calcium intake and deaths in a large cohort of women in Sweden. In alignment with what we've already seen, they found that high calcium intakes were associated with high risks of death from all causes and from heart disease.
So, what's going on here? Why are calcium supplements linked to heart disease? Well, scientists suspect it's because they spike levels of calcium in the blood, and higher blood levels of calcium can make calcium buildup in the walls of our arteries more likely.
So, does all of this mean that we should stay away from calcium? Well, it's an essential nutrient. So, no.
We want to make sure we're reaching the recommended daily intake for calcium, which is roughly about 1,000 milligs per day for adults. But how we get our calcium makes all of the difference. Basically, we've got two options.
We can get calcium from supplements, or we can get it from our diet. And for most people, getting calcium from our diet is definitely the way to go. And here's why.
Just as we saw, the current theory is that the negative health impacts from calcium supplements may result from the way that they spike the levels of calcium in the blood. And critically, calcium that we get from our diet doesn't do this. And if this indeed is the mechanism for the problem with calcium supplements, we should see evidence of increased heart risks with calcium supplements, but not from calcium from natural sources.
So, is this what we find? Well, one large cohort study set out to test that idea. They looked at measures of calcium buildup in the arteries and how these changed over a 10-year period.
Here's what happened. They found that the highest calcium intakes were associated with a 27% lower risk of developing calcification in the arteries. And at the same time, the risk was 22% higher for those who used supplements compared to those who didn't.
So sorting this data differently, they found that the highest risk group was the supplement users with low total calcium intake and the lowest risk group were the non-supplement users with the highest total intakes of calcium. Overall, that evidence supports the idea that the source of calcium matters. Supplements present a unique risk that don't seem to arise with calcium that we get from the diet.
Another study found the same pattern. Calcium supplements raise the risks of death from heart disease in men. But dietary calcium intake had no negative impact.
When we specifically look at blood vessel health, calcium supplements have been linked with an increased risk of progression of blood vessel calcification among people with existing coronary artery disease. So, in an analysis of data from nine previously conducted clinical trials involving over 5,000 people, researchers found that the odds of calcification progression were 15% higher for those who used calcium supplements compared to those who did not. But aren't there certain at risk populations that should use calcium supplements?
Well, not necessarily. One large study looked at how boosting calcium from the diet might help elderly patients in managed care facilities. They added high calcium foods like milk, yogurt, and cheese to help these people reach their calcium intakes.
The new diet reduced risks of bone fractures by 33%. Now, there are some people who may need calcium supplements. Vegan women, for instance, are at high risk of fractures without them.
This is because if they're not eating dairy, then their dietary intake of calcium is not enough for healthy bones. But the data suggests that for most people, boosting dietary calcium intake is a safe way to get what the body needs without increasing the risks of heart disease. But calcium isn't the only supplement linked to potential negative health impacts.
So, let's go through four additional ones that might be on your shelf. First up is iron. So, we need iron for transporting oxygen in the blood, producing energy, and for proper muscle function.
Deficiencies can cause fatigue, weakness, and brain fog. But with supplements, it can be easy to get too much. A mild surplus can reduce levels of zinc, for example, which is another essential mineral.
It can also upset our digestive system. Worse still, high doses of iron are dangerous and can lead to serious organ damage. So, as with calcium, the safest approach to iron for most people is to get adequate amounts from our diet.
Adult men need about 8 milligs a day and women need about 18 until they reach menopause. The easiest form of iron to digest and absorb is from he sources, so animal sources. Iron is found in plants too, but the form isn't particularly well absorbed.
So, it is found in leafy green vegetables, white beans, and lentils, but we might just need to raise our intakes a bit more to reach our iron targets. Now, of course, there is nuance to this, and some people do need to take iron supplements. And I do prescribe iron sometimes in my clinic, for example, pregnant women or for those who have heavy periods or for people with certain digestive problems.
they might need supplements, but it's always smart to use iron supplements at a doctor's recommendation and under supervision. Next, let's talk about a popular antioxidant. It's found naturally in vegetable oils, nuts, seeds, and leafy green vegetables like spinach.
It's claimed that it can increase lifespan. It's particularly active in protecting cell membranes. It's also been claimed to prevent cancer and heart disease.
And for all of these reasons, supplement manufacturers have been encouraging people to increase their intake of this vitamin. Of course, I'm talking about vitamin E, but this is a bad idea to start vitamin E supplements. And here's why.
Vitamin E deficiency is exceptionally rare, and it's only found in individuals with unusual health conditions. That's because it's found in a variety of foods. So, for most of us, we're getting plenty of this vitamin from our diet.
But the second reason is that vitamin E can interfere with the benefits from exercise if we're getting too much. This is a big problem since exercise is one of the most important contributors to overall health. Third, there's a disturbing possibility that supplementing with vitamin E could actually be shortening our lifespans instead of increasing it.
An in-depth Cochran analysis of clinical research looked at 78 trials with a total of almost 300,000 participants. They found no evidence to support antioxidant supplements to decrease mortality. And shockingly, the evidence that they looked at suggested that vitamin E might even increase mortality.
That's the opposite of what we want. But on the other hand, it also appears that the form matters. So vitamin E comes in eight forms.
So four tocaperols and four tootrienols. And it's the tocotrienol that appear to offer a greater antioxidant effect. So I've seen other creators on this platform ignore the safety concerns of vitamin E because they say that those studies didn't specifically look at tootryenols.
Now that's an interesting hypothesis, but it needs to be tested. We don't have any long-term safety data on tootryenols. And besides the tocapererals and the tocotrienols, they both act in roughly the same way.
They're both antioxidants. So in the trials that we've looked at so far, there's not even a hint that vitamin E can extend lifespan. Instead, we're left with a concern that it might increase mortality rates.
And too much of it has even been linked with an increased risk of prostate cancer. So before even considering supplementing with tootryenols, we have to make sure that it's safe. And the same analysis that we just looked at concerning longevity and vitamin E also highlighted another popular antioxidant, vitamin A.
at higher supplement doses. It also seems to be associated with increased mortality. And a separate study notes that too much vitamin A can weaken our bones, damage the liver, and cause birth defects.
Like vitamin E, vitamin A deficiency is exceptionally rare. For most people, we can get vitamin E and vitamin A from a healthy diet without supplements. This is why I've not included either in microvitamin.
Now, finally, let's look at another popular supplement that's marketed for extending lifespan, rveratrol. So how is it supposed to work? Well, scientists discovered an enzyme called cert one which acts like a control switch for many important cell processes.
It helps to regulate the stress response, inflammation and repair of damaged DNA. So for these reasons, it's linked to the aging process. Now researchers initially thought that when one levels are increased in various organisms, they live longer.
So they searched for something that could boost cert one levels hoping that this might extend lifespan in humans too. One early study identified rveratrol as a possible match. The study claimed that it extended the lifespan of yeast by 70%.
That caused a tremendous amount of excitement for rveratrol, but it turned out later that those initial results were nothing more than a lab error. And I go through the full study in the video linked in the pinned comment. Now, all of this should have been a serious blow to the early hype about rveratrol, but researchers kept looking for beneficial effects.
So far, though, the results have been disappointing. In particular, when the interventions testing program trial rveratrol, there was no effect seen. Now, that program first confirmed that rveratrol is indeed absorbed into the bloodstream.
So, it's not an absorption issue. It's just that rveratrol does not work. Results have been disappointing for the other claims benefits of rveratrol too.
So, for example, some have suggested that it can improve type 2 diabetes, but a Cochran analysis found that the current research does not support any claims. So, does rveratrol have any effect whatsoever? Well, yes, but not the effects that we want.
A recent study returned to the question of whether it can stimulate cert 1. Researchers used the latest crisper technology to see exactly what was going on. And backing up the study that we looked at earlier, they found that rveratrol does not directly activate cert one.
Instead, resverrol stressed the cells. It interfered with a process of copying DNA during cell division, which of course is not good. But there might be a silver lining, and it has to do with exercise.
So, here's the logic. When we exercise, we stress our cells and that works to our benefit. It signals to them that they need to become stronger and more efficient.
So the thought was this, if we could combine resveratrol with exercise to ramp up the cellular stress, maybe this would also increase the benefits that we get from exercise. But it turns out that the opposite happens. One study looked at 27 men who performed high-intensity exercise training.
Resveratrol supplementation reduced the positive effects of exercise training on blood pressure, blood cholesterol, and how efficiently their bodies used oxygen. There's also some clinical evidence that rveratrol can lower testosterone levels. So, at this point, we don't have good evidence for the beneficial effects of rveratrol, but we do have evidence of harm.
So, taking rveratrol supplements is not a good strategy. But the rveratrol saga does not stop there. So, make sure to check out this next video here where I explain the full story of Resveratrol that involved a payment of $720 million.
