On February 28, a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) likened vitamins A and beta carotene to death pills that can expedite your funeral date by as much as five percent. While this JAMA study may scare consumers away from the vitamin aisle, Harvard Medical School has issued a guide called “Vitamins and Minerals: What you Need to Know” to help take the danger and mystery out of supplement shopping.
Meier J. Stampfer, MD, PhD, a professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, edited the report. Highlights of the guide included the following tips:
Make sure supplements are USP verified
When shopping, choose supplements bearing the U.S. Pharmacopeia Dietary Supplement Verification Program (USP-DSVP) mark. The USP establishes public standards for good quality medicines, dietary supplements and related products used to maintain health and treat disease.
Don’t pay for marketing fluff:
According to the Harvard report, it doesn’t matter whether vitamin C is derived from organic rose hips or synthesized in large batches in a laboratory. Your body will use the resulting vitamin similarly.
Plus, if you’re not allergic to wheat, rice or lactose you don’t need to pay extra for allergen-free vitamins.
Watch out for medical dangerous interactions:
Inform your physician and pharmacists of all of the supplements you take to ensure that there are no potentially hazardous interactions between your medicines and the vitamins.
Verify vitamin benefits:
Before you spend $30 on a bottle of herbs or coenzyme Q10, make sure that rigorous, large scale studies validate the costs 먹튀 and effectiveness of the product.
Vitamins Proven to Benefit the Skin
Now that you know how to shop for vitamins, how do you know which vitamins and minerals are actually beneficial to the skin? Dermatologist Karen E. Burke, MD, observes that at least three antioxidants; selenium, vitamin E and vitamin C, are proven to decrease the effect of the sun on the skin and prevent further skin damage.
Selenium supports skin elasticity
According to the American Academy of Dermatology, selenium preserves tissue elasticity, and slows down the aging and hardening of tissues caused by oxidation. Also, oral supplements of 50 to 200 micrograms of selenium can protect the skin from damaging rays of the sun.
Moreover, a report in the February edition of Cancer Causes and Control reaffirmed the antioxidant properties of selenium and its ability to reduce certain incidences of cancer.
Vitamin E protects against skin damage
Like selenium, vitamin E also possesses cancer preventing properties. For example, a study released in Carcinogenesis demonstrated that vitamin E supplements could help protect against tumors caused by ultraviolet radiation exposure.
In the study, researchers provoked tumors in mice by exposing them to ultraviolet radiation. Investigators then gave the mice control meals or meals containing 62.5 international units of vitamin E per kilogram of body weight. Compared to the mice fed chow without vitamin E supplementation, the food with vitamin E reduced the tumor count in the mice by 30%.