Multivitamin supplements in general appear to be associated with:

      (1) The prevention of birth defects in pregnant women

      (2) Marked improvement in non-verbal intelligence levels

      (3) General health maintenance in the elderly, despite lowered caloric intake

      A study by Dr. Ranjit Kumar Chandra, a research professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland/St. John's, Canada, that appeared in the 11/7/92 issue of the Lancet, indicated that vitamin supplements taken by older people may increase their ability to fight infections and cut their number of sick days in half.
      Ninety-six healthy, elderly Canadians took either vitamin pills or inactive placebos. Those taking vitamins had greater T-cell and natural killer cell activity resulting in lower infection rates.

      Dr. James Cooper, geriatrician, National Institute on Aging, Bethesda, Md.:
      "It's extremely interesting and needs to be duplicated in Americans. If it holds up, taking a multi-vitamin a day would be a reasonable recommendation."

      Dr. Richard Berkowitz, chairman of the Dept. of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Health at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York:
      "We know of no downside to taking multivitamin supplements."

      Dr. Ishwarial Jialal, of the U. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, reported at a 01/92 meeting of the American Heart Association and in the Physicians Health Study that preliminary evidence in favor of antioxidant supplementation is building:
      "It is still a bit early to recommend taking supplements, but a significant number of people have done so for years with no adverse effects."

    Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, takes a multi-vitamin, and 1 vitamin E cap daily: "With E, you can't get high levels from diet."

     Dr. Joel Schwartz, researcher at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine:
    "The bottom line is that in general there is an anti-tumor effect with agents like beta-carotene and E."

    In 1990 Dr. Schwartz stated that he had been taking daily beta-carotene and vitamin E supplements for four years.

    Dr. Jeffery Blumberg, chief of the antioxidants research laboratory at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, takes a daily multivitamin/mineral supplement plus 400 IU of vitamin E but cautions that "what I take might not apply to anyone else".

      "We're undergoing a paradigm shift. Current medical thinking is based on treating disease, not promoting health. But chronic diseases don't just appear out of nowhere; they all actually begin in youth and progress at a subclinical level, until they reach a threshold...although no miracle drug, supplements can be a powerful new tool in the armamentarium, a proactive way to prolong your health span.
        We do need the kinds of clinical trials that prove the cause and effect before making public health recommendations...(but)...concern about safety (re: C, E and beta carotene) has been overstated.
  The difficulty has always been not in (introducing) new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.
        We're at an admittedly frustrating stage, where I think one well- informed, rational person could decide to take a supplement, and another could decide not to.
        Nobody is saying you don't need a healthy diet --- fluids, fiber (etc.), all those things are important and beneficial. But now there's something else you can do. It's but one of many things and it doesn't necessarily compensate for eating a high-fat diet, breathing polluted air or smoking...but unlike some of the other things, it's relatively easy to do."

    Rutgers University nutrition researcher Paul Lachance takes 250-500 mg. of vitamin C/day, plus 5000-10000 IU of beta-carotene and 200-400 IU of vitamin E.

   Dr. Claude Lenfant, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Md.:
      "The evidence is accumulating that people who are taking an antioxidant of some sort seem to have a high degree of protection from coronary disease."

   Dr. Scott Grundy, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the U. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas:
      "It's an extremely important theory...this oxidation research pushes intervention right into the actual sites of plaque formation. I think we can say at this point that vitamins C, E and beta-carotene have the ability to block the oxidation of LDL. If the oxidation theory is valid totally or in part, this represents another nutritional approach to preventing atherosclerosis."

    Dr. Simin N. Meydani of the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston:
      "We used to think about vitamins strictly in terms of what you needed to prevent short-term deficiencies. Now we're starting to think about what is the optimal level of vitamins for lifelong health and to prevent age-associated diseases."

   Dr. Walter Willett, Harvard School of Public Health:
      "I think we need to keep our minds open. It was only a loony fringe that was even thinking of studying these things (supplements) 10 years ago --- now everybody's researching it. I think it's highly likely there's something important going on. Clearly, there's a need to pursue it rapidly and carefully."

   Dr. James Enstrom, author of the 10-year UCLA vitamin C study, and co- authors Linda E. Kanim and Morton A. Klein:
      "The large drop in cardiovascular death rates since the late 1960's added validity to our findings. The decline in deaths from heart disease and heart attacks, a trend that has been particularly pronounced among men, coincided with large population-wide increases in the consumption of vitamin supplements containing vitamin C."

   Dr. Kenneth J. Rothman, an epidemiologist at Boston University, in an editorial accompanying Dr. Enstrom's article in "Epidemiology":
      "While earlier studies were inconclusive about the value of supplements, the new data indicate those who take supplements containing vitamin C do better than those who simply have a reasonable dietary intake of the nutrient.
      It is unlikely that only vitamin C is protective, but rather, it is probably that a variety of antioxidants and other nutrients act in concert against a variety of different insults."

   Dr. Irwin Rosenberg, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University:
      "What is exciting is that we are starting to get observations that say we should be able to delay or reverse many problems and symptoms associated with the aging process by increasing our intake of nutrients that are protective.
       In the past we didn't have good studies showing that improving the diet plus adding vitamin supplements would have a clear health benefit. These studies are now coming along."

   The United States Pharmacopeia has established voluntary criteria for the dissolution and disintegration of supplements in light of the discovery several years ago that many supplements never dissolved in the intestines and were therefore not absorbed by the body.

   The dangers associated with possible abuse of vitamin supplements must be weighed against their pronounced, documented positive effects, and the insidious dangers from the effects of environmental toxins.