DOES A MULTI A DAY KEEP THE DOCTOR AWAY…. OR GIVE YOU BREAST CANCER
It’s been an interesting week in the world of woman’s health… and in my clinic. Most of my woman patients take a high quality multivitamin/mineral and antioxidant formula every day, as part of their nutritional wellness regime. Just like me, they swallow their tablet alongside their porridge and fruit, secure in the knowledge that this daily ritual is an investment in good health.
Imagine the questions I have fielded this week, with the internet and newspapers abuzz with the news that their daily multivitamin actually INCREASES their likelihood of developing breast cancer. I’ve read the reports… and have I stopped taking my multi? No! Here’s why….
The research causing all the fuss hails from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. Back in 1997 they recruited just over 35,000 women, between the ages of 49 and 83, to fill in a self assessment questionnaire. Included, were questions relating to some (but not ALL) known risk factors for breast cancer, as well as questions relating to the use of a daily multivitamin. Recently, the women were followed up to see how many of them had developed breast cancer in the intervening 10 years. 9,000 women claimed they were taking a multi, and of them 293 developed breast cancer, leaving 96.7% of the multi users not having developed breast cancer. In the group of 26,000 non multi users, 681 women developed breast cancer.
Ok, so at first glance it all looks a bit of a worry doesn’t it? Someone who actually understands the intricacies and fallibilities of experimental design is Professor of Epidemiology, Rod Jackson from the University of Auckland. His take on the research? “The study is non-randomised, so I wouldn’t take too much from it. Cohort studies like this trial are just too prone to biases to be very helpful”.
Remember that the latest study found only an association between women using multi’s and breast cancer, not a CAUSE and EFFECT. Of the women who eventually developed breast cancer, one common denominator was that they took multi’s, but from that, one can’t claim that the multis CAUSED the cancer. All of the women taking a multi were lumped into one entity, and nowhere did the study look at the data of each woman individually. Consequently it is impossible to surmise how taking a multivitamin may increase breast cancer risk in any individual woman.
As a prescriber of clinical nutritional therapy for almost 25 years, I’m also concerned about use of the generic term “multivitamins” in this study. What the heck does that mean? I know from clinical experience that not all multi’s are born equal. Quite frankly, some of them are nothing more than a synthetic, poorly balanced recipe for expensive and smelly urine. I would have been much more interested in the outcome of this study if individual women were examined in terms of the type of multivitamins they were taking. Did these multi’s contain only vitamins? Were there minerals in some, any or all of them? Were they synthetic or organic forms? Did they contain added antioxidants? Did they contain selenium? Were they iron free or containing iron? Did they contain vitamin E and was it synthetic, or a complex of different tocopherols?… Blah, blah, blah, I could go on and on, but you get the gist of what I’m saying don’t you? We have no idea what these women were taking as a “multi” each day, and whether a study in which they each took the same standardized high quality formula daily, would have produced the same results, or would have actually demonstrated a protective effect against breast cancer.
It’s worth noting that this latest warning about the dangers of multi’s flies in the face of some very well respected, large and well designed studies showing no increased risk of disease with multivitamin use in women. One of the biggest and most respected of these, was the Woman’s Health Initiative study involving over 161,000 women, and running for 8 years. Robustly constructed, this study failed to show any harm to women taking a multivitamin daily, over an 8 year period.
Media hysteria aside, I will happily continue to take my multi with breakfast each day, and will prescribe the same high quality nutritional product to my patients, without concern. I’ll wait for some more reliable research to come along before I’m convinced that my daily multi is a risk to my breast health.
If you are interested in finding out proactive ways of optimizing your breast health, read “Wellbeing”, by Lynda Wharton, published by Harper Collins. Available in book stores, and online at www.lyndawharton.com