The only food supplement I take is fish oil. I don't even take multivitamins. There have been a host of reports about the benefits of fish oil: reduces heart disease, improves brain power, etc. Great, right? Oh yeah, fish oil nearly doubles your risk for serious prostate cancer. (And there's zero evidence that it protects your heart or brain.)
Experts found that omega-3 fatty acids may raise the risk of the most lethal form of the disease by more than 70 per cent.Researchers warned against omega-3 pills, and recommended eating just one or two meals of oily fish per week. ...
However, scientists found that those with the highest levels of omega-3 in their blood were 71 per cent more likely to develop fast-growing, hard-to-treat prostate tumours.
They were also more likely to contract the slower, less deadly form of the disease, with the overall prostate cancer risk raised by 43 per cent.
The team from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle warned: 'There is really no evidence that taking dietary supplements is beneficial to health, and there is increasing evidence that taking high doses is harmful.'
Should you even be taking supplements? I won't be. All the evidence seems to show that at best they're a way to get very expensive urine, and at worst they are harmful.
The finding came amid a wider research project of more than 2,000 men, examining whether supplements of vitamin E and the mineral selenium can help prevent prostate cancer - the most common cancer in British men, killing more than 10,000. Selenium provided no benefit, and vitamin E increased the odds of contracting the disease.Dr Kristal said: 'As we do more and more of these studies - and I have been involved in them most of my career - we find high doses of supplements have no effect or increase the risk of the disease you are trying to prevent.
'There is not really a single example of where taking a supplement lowers chronic disease risk.'
It seems like the whole supplement industry is a modern-day version of the witch-doctor. People feel good about doing something to improve their health and enjoy the appearance of control.
