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This time of year, we’re all indoors more often, meaning we often don’t get enough of the sunshine vitamin (D). A recent study found that low AND high vitamin D levels were associated with an increased likelihood of frailty in older women. Women with vitamin D levels in the normal range were at the lowest risk. And different races react physically in different ways. For instance, low levels of vitamin D, the essential nutrient obtained from milk, fortified cereals and exposure to sunlight, doubles the risk of stroke in whites, but not in blacks. And stroke is the nation’s third leading cause of death, killing more than 140,000 Americans annually and temporarily or permanently disabling over half a million when there is a loss of blood flow to the brain.
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If you exercise strenuously, then go home and take some vitamins, those supplements may undo some of the benefits of your workout.

Some researchers recommend taking vitamin C and E to help protect the body from the by-products of sweat, but scientists now think that these “free radicals” may actually be good for us, because exercise increases the body’s sensitivity to insulin, and thus helps protect against Type II diabetes.

BBC News quotes researcher Sarah Aldred as saying, “It doesn’t mean that antioxidants like vitamin C and vitamin E are bad for us, it just means that sometimes we need to consider whether taking supplements is actually beneficial. As this study shows it is not actually always the case.”
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Baseball players, and even rap singers, have been suspected of taking illegal drugs to strengthen their bodies. Now researchers have discovered that some perfectly legal and easily available over-the-counter body-building dietary supplements may lead to prostate cancer.
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We recently reported on a surprising way that men can help protect themselves from prostate cancer. Now something else they may be doing? taking vitamins?could turn out to be BAD for this disease.

About a third of American adults take some type of multivitamin on a regular basis. In nearly every case, the goal is better health, even though there is no firm evidence to support this hope. The absence of benefit is one thing, but the presence of harm is another: A 2007 report in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute concluded that there was an increased prostate cancer risk among men using multivitamins.
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