Vitamin Pills Could Increase Cancer Risk

People pop dietary supplements under the pretense that they should improve health, right? While that may be the widely held belief among many, there is an increasing amount of evidence to suggest that they don’t really do anything positive in individuals who don’t need them, and could actually be detrimental to our health. And worryingly, a new analysis of years of research into the subject has found that, rather than reducing our risk of developing cancer, many supplements could actually be raising it.

“We are not sure why this is happening at the molecular level,” explains researcher Tim Byers, “but evidence shows that people who take more dietary supplements than needed tend to have a higher risk of developing cancer.”

Research into this subject was sparked some 20 years ago when scientists began observing that those who consumed more fruit and veg tended to have a lower incidence of cancer. Since dietary supplements are packed full of the beneficial vitamins and compounds found in these foods, scientists wondered whether taking them could further reduce the risk of developing cancer, so they began designing experiments to investigate this.

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