An Article in the NY Times this AM discusses how too many Vitamins may not be a good thing. Made me think of the Purification RUndown and Narconon

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/29/health/nutrition/29VITA.html?th=&pagewanted=all&position=

Excerpts:
Vitamins: More May Be Too Many
By GINA KOLATA

Agrowing number of medical experts are concerned that Americans are overdoing their vitamin consumption. As many as 70 percent of the population is taking supplements, mostly vitamins, convinced that the pills will make them healthier.

No longer, the experts say, are they concerned about vitamin deficits.

Those are almost unheard of today, even with the population eating less than ideal diets and skimping on fruits and vegetables. Instead, the concern is with the dangers of vitamin excess.

Dr. Caballero said that for some supplements, including vitamin A, the difference between the recommended dose and a dose that could lead to bad outcomes like osteoporosis was not large. Popular multivitamins, he added, often contain what could be risky doses.

"Certainly," he said, "by consuming supplements, people can reach that level."

With vitamin A in particular, it is easy to step over the edge into a danger zone, said Dr. Joan McGowan, chief of the musculoskeletal diseases branch at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases.

Of particular concern, researchers say, is vitamin A. It is found in liver, and small amounts are added to milk. But for most people who are reaching worrisome levels, the main source is supplements, multivitamins, nutrition bars, health drinks and cereals.

Several recent large studies indicate that people with high levels of vitamin A in their blood have a greater risk for osteoporosis. People can easily reach a potentially dangerous level, about five times the recommended dose, by taking vitamins and supplements, nutrition researchers say. Some popular multivitamins run 1,500 micrograms a pill, twice the recommended daily amount and a level that, in one recent study, doubled the risk of bone fractures. Some supplements provide as much as 4,500 micrograms a day, well above the level that the National Academy of Sciences calls an upper limit for safety.

But a European study, reported recently at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology, found that folic acid supplements actually made matters worse for heart disease patients. The study, the Folate After Coronary Intervention Trial, involved 626 patients who were having stents inserted into blocked arteries to keep them open. Half were randomly assigned to take folic acid, and the rest took a placebo. Six months later, the arteries of those taking folic acid were significantly narrower than the arteries of those taking a placebo, exactly the opposite of what the investigators had expected.

"It is virtually impossible to find an adult multivitamin and mineral supplement that is only 100 percent of the R.D.A.," Ms. Miller-Kovach said. "All are 150 percent or so. I worry about getting too much and I worry about imbalances. They put in more of the things that are inexpensive, like B vitamins and things with consumer appeal like vitamin C. The formulas are based on market forces, not nutritional needs."

Dr. Caballero also notes that large, rigorous studies that were supposed to show that individual vitamins prevented disease ended up showing the opposite. Those who took the vitamins actually had more of the disease it was meant to prevent.

Two large randomized trials of vitamin A and beta carotene that researchers hoped would show a protective value against cancer found no benefit, and one found that participants who took the supplements had more cancer.

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