Vitamins, Kill or Cure?

In my bid to become a healthier person, I have been looking at the key ways of improving health.  Looking at the various health and fitness magazines it seems as though alongside diet, exercise and sleep there is another area that I can embrace in the quest for better health - Vitamins.

However after some additional reading including Ben Goldacre's Bad Science and Dr Agus's End of Illness I have been challenged to think again about the way I view vitamin supplements. It has occurred to me that the Western diet should be more than capable of providing all the vitamins, minerals and other nutrients that our bodies need unless they are malfunctioning. 

If our bodies malfunction in other ways we seek out medical assistance, for example if we have a fit then we would visit the doctor to see why this had occurred we wouldn't simply assume that we have epilepsy and start self medicating.

So should we not treat a vitamin deficiency as we would an illness and actually get diagnosed with the deficiency first before treating a problem that we might not even have! I am certainly giving up all the vitamins I take, with the exception of my B vitamins (I have had blood tests that show I am deficient in these vitamins).  If my body doesn't need them then why would I waste money on taking them? 

I also think it is important to take into consideration some of the bad press that some supplements have had, where it has been discovered that taking large quantities of antioxidants can actually increase your chance of cancer.  For example the US National Cancer Institute discovered that the antioxidant supplement beta-carotene actually appeared to increase the risk of lung cancer in those predisposed to the disease.

Also the other benefit of taking antioxidants is not unclear.  It was thought that we should banish free radicals at all costs and would therefore take antioxidants to fight off these free radicals, it is now understood that these molecules actually play a vital role in our immune systems by killing tumour cells and invading pathogens.  According to an article in The Telegraph, researchers at Nijmegen University in the Netherlands have suggested that giving antioxidants to people with cancer might actually be counterproductive, given that patients will need free radicals to dispose of proliferating tumour cells.

So for now at least it is probably better to eat a better diet than pin your hopes on the "miracle benefits" that vitamin manufacturers are touting and only take vitamins if you have been recommended them by your doctor.  Most of all though is the reminder to not believe everything you read in papers and on the internet but to go and do some research yourself so you can make your own informed decision.