Can you trust yourself under the influence of multivitamins?

Hog wild

Public health does not “seem” to be improving, according to researchers in Taiwan. And they wonder: How that can be? After all, dietary supplement use is on the rise. In fact, about half the population now uses dietary supplements.

So could supplements somehow make people less healthy?

Could supplement use even carry a hidden “curse”?

There aren’t enough hogs in the world to accommodate all the hogwash in this new study. So why are prominent journals like Psychological Science and Scientific American (and dozens of smaller media outlets) taking it seriously?

Your license to indulge

Lead author of the Taiwan study, Wen-Ben Chiou, had an “ah-ha!” moment when he observed a friend pass on an organic meal and instead choose an unhealthy meal simply because this friend had taken a multivitamin that day.

Chiou asked himself: “Could this be a common pattern among supplement users?”

He and his colleagues recruited a group of subjects. Those who said they were supplement users were asked to stop taking them. Then they were all randomly assigned to Group A or Group B.

Subjects in both groups were given a single dose of an inert placebo pill. Subjects in Group A were told it was a multivitamin, while subjects in Group B were told it was a placebo. Then questionnaires were used to assess each subject’s sense of “invulnerability.”

Umm…Invulnerability? Who in the world gets a sense of invulnerability after taking a single multivitamin?

Answer: Many of the subjects in Group A of this study, apparently.

Chiou and colleagues report that a false sense of invulnerability may prompt supplement users to exercise poor judgment, including less desire for exercise, a desire to eat buffet-meals, and “hedonic activities” which include “casual sex, sunbathing, wild parties, excessive drinking, etc.”

In a press release, Chiou said, “People who rely on dietary supplement use for health protection may pay a hidden price, the curse of licensed self-indulgence.”

A “curse of licensed self-indulgence?” Really? Could this mess of a study get any more absurd?

The huge and obvious problems start with the fact that some of the subjects in Group A weren’t supplement users at all. How can they possibly represent typical supplement users after taking just one pill they’ve been told is a multivitamin? It’s ridiculous!

Also, some of the subjects in both groups were as young as 18, which probably accounts, at least in part, for the interest in casual sex, wild parties, etc. I’ve never heard a middle-age person say, “I’ve really got to stop using multivitamins. The casual sex is getting out of hand.”

And then there’s the excessive drinking. Funny how THAT item doesn’t get any of the blame for the wild parties, but a single placebo pill does.

Obviously, this is a deeply flawed study. And it would be easy to dismiss if not for the fact that SO MANY media outlets treated it as respectable research. It’s a little bit shocking to see all these “reporters” accept a press release at face value, reword it, and then feed their readers rehashed misinformation that can actually have a negative impact on their health.

But here’s the most laughable thing about this study: Whenever well-designed research shows supplement benefits, you can always count on some mainstream guru to point out that any perceived benefits are the result of the healthy habits of the type of person who takes supplements.

After all this insanity, if you’d like some evidence-based reality about multivitamins, you can read all about it here.

Sources:
“Are Dietary Supplements Working Against You?” Association for Psychological Science, Press release, 4/21/11, psychologicalscience.org
“Supplement users slighted by silly science study” Judy Blatman, Council for Responsible Nutrition, 5/16/11, newhope360.com