Vitamin supplementation
Supplementary questions The use of dietary supplements in the US has increased strongly over the past two decades. The latest industry data (5) states that 68 percent of all US adults reported taking dietary supplements. Figures show, as they have done consistently in the past that usage rates are slightly higher in women, in older adults, in the better off and the better qualified. Ursula Arens Writer; Nutrition & Dietetics
Ursula has spent most of her career in industry as a company nutritionist for a food retailer and a pharmaceutical company. She was also a nutrition scientist at the British Nutrition Foundation for seven years. Ursula helps guide the NHD features agenda as well as contributing features and reviews.
Nearly twice as many supplement takers trust doctors (56 percent) rather than nutritionists as a reliable source of information, and supplement takers all score higher for other healthy habits (better diets/less smoking/ more exercise). One very interesting observation is that supplement taking is especially high amongst health professionals. So it seems that most American doctors and nurses are not confident that they either 1) have wellbalanced healthy diets and/or 2) that such diets contain adequate amounts of particular nutrients. In any case, the data on the use of micronutrient supplements demonstrates that most American health professionals view their use as an essential tool to support their own good health (whatever they tell their patients). Analysis by Hyun Ja Kim and colleagues (3), from the prolific gift-thatkeeps-on-giving, the long-term prospective Harvard cohort studies of Health Professionals, documents the use of dietary supplements over the 20 year period 1986 to 2006. The headline statement is that more than 88 percent of the women and 80 percent of the men reported some use of dietary supplements. But, within the massive swell of increased usage, there are some astonishing sub-plots. A specific contrast figure for the prevalence of use of at least one supplement in the general US population (National Health Interview Survey 2000 and NHANES 2003-2006), is 50 to 65 percent.
The average age of the subjects in the 75,000 strong female-only Nurses’ Health Study was 53 years; for the 50,000 strong male-only Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, it was slightly higher, at 55 years. In the 20-year period from 1986, the use of micronutrient supplements, i.e. excluding herbs or botanicals, blossomed by 17 percent in women and by an even greater amount of 25 percent in men. The hardy minority of health experts not taking any supplements crashed by more than 40 percent to the year 2006, to only 20 percent of the health professionals and 12 percent of the nurses. When comparing the trend data, there are clear winners and losers. Out-of-favour in 2006 is the antioxidant triad of beta-carotene, vitamins C and E and also down are vitamin A and iron. Considerable disappointment in some of the intervention trials looking at the use of antioxidant nutrients to reduce the risk of heart disease and some cancers is a clear explanation for these shifts. It is probable that health professionals would be the first to know of trial outcomes, and would be more sensitive to the fine-tuning of information of the effects of individual micronutrients compared to the general population. In contrast, there are strong gains in the use of other vitamins. Folic acid supplement use is up more than 13fold in women and more than 12-fold in men. Darling of the moment, vitamin D, is up more than14-fold in womNHDmag.com March 2015 - Issue 102
21
