Vitamins Do Not Cut Prostate Cancer Risk: Study
Seattle – There have been suggestions that some vitamins may help to cut down the risk of getting colon cancer, however a new study shows that the vitamins C and E do not help with this risk at all.
The research that was conducted involved men over the age of 50 and lasted for 8 years. Each volunteer had the researchers check on them throughout the eight year period while taking these vitamins and none showed signs that the vitamins were helping to reduce their risk.
The are many people today who have been taking these vitamins in hopes that it would help them to reduce their risk on getting this disease and with the new findings they are disheartened.
A program called SELECT, a trial run using vitamin E and selenium to prevent cancer, thought that it would help to reduce the risk of prostate cancer. However, over the course of the trial it has shown that there was no decrease in the risk. With prostate cancer being the second deadliest in the United States this is a disappointing find. The researchers of this trial and its volunteers of over 35,000 men took place over a 7 year period.
“Our results showed no evidence of benefit from selenium and vitamin E on prostate cancer and other cancers,” said the lead author of one of the studies, Dr. Scott Lippman, a professor of medicine in the division of cancer medicine at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston.
Researchers are still planning on running trials in links to vitamin and preventing cancer but doctors are saying that they will not be having their patients use the vitamin E or selenium to help with reducing this risk until more studies are done.
Dr. Mofatt who is a health specialist has said that taking vitamins is not the best way to get the benefits you need but that making sure your diet consists of the fruits and vegetables that these minerals come from. Supplementing these vitamins and minerals that you can get naturally by taking vitamin pills is not the way to go about being healthy.
Dr. Mason who is a scientific advisor has said that vitamin supplements are not meant to be used as if you were taking actual drugs. However, it is also being said these studies and its findings do not in any way undermine the benefits that taking vitamin supplements do provide. It is recommended to always get the daily value of vitamins and minerals your body needs even if it is through supplements, but the correlation between these supplements and the risk of cancer being lower has been cut short.
“Supplements don’t substitute for a healthy diet and some studies have shown that they may actually increase the risk of cancer,” said Dr Jodie Moffat, of the charity Cancer Research UK.
Similar studies were done back in the 1990′s that did show a link between vitamins and cancer risk but researchers now say that the studies were not done properly and the findings were by chance.