Atop the heap of scams within the medical field sits a thirty-seven-billion-dollar industry known as dietary supplements: specifically, vitamins. This business is built upon superstitions and half lies that date back to the 1970s. Winston Churchill once said that “truth does not matter so long as there is reiteration”. This is exactly what has happened over the past few centuries, a constant compiling of white-lies to create this monster of a scam. With its reach so far that even one’s neighbor could swear by their morning pills.
This widespread falsehood that supplements were needed to maintain a healthy life can be traced back directly to the hands of well-known scientist Linus Pauling. Linus Pauling was considered one of the smartest men in America in the 1970s: being the only person ever to win two unshared Nobel Peace Prizes (Linus Pauling – Facts). One of the two prizes he won was in the field of chemistry, this helped him fool a lot of people when he claimed, “that to maintain good health, many people need amounts of nutrients much greater than the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs)” (The Dark Side of Linus Pauling’s Legacy).
This makes no sense because these RDAs were made to designate the maximum amount of a nutrient that a person’s body will need. So, as a result of overdosing, the human body reacts in one of two ways: the excess nutrient is passed through as waste, or the excess nutrient will cause a harmful reaction. For instance: Vitamin E is good for us. It’s great for our skin and is an antioxidant, so it works to protect the cells in our bodies from damaging free radicals. But by taking too much vitamin E we prevent our body from absorbing iron properly, resulting in anemia and hair loss. What Is an RDA? )
These harmful reactions do not just pertain to vitamin E either, all supplements that are not water-soluble can pose a health threat. But, the supplement that Linus believed in most was for vitamin C. Vitamin C is water-soluble, meaning that any excess is passed through a person’s urine the next time they use the bathroom. This did not stop Linus though. In 1970, Pauling published Vitamin C and the Common Cold, urging the public to take 3,000 milligrams of vitamin C every day (about 50 times the recommended daily allowance).
Pauling believed that his findings would make the common cold a thing of the past. Three years later Linus published Vitamin C, the Common Cold and the Flu, this book promised vitamin C to be a defense against an upcoming swine flu pandemic. Sales of vitamin C “doubled, tripled, and quadrupled. Drugstores couldn’t keep up with demand. By the mid-1970s, 50 million Americans were following Pauling’s advice. Vitamin manufacturers called it “the Linus Pauling effect”” (The Vitamin Myth: Why We Think We Need Supplements).
The general public was hypnotized by Linus Pauling, and who could blame them. Linus once published a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society that could not be reviewed because the society could not find anyone qualified enough; even Albert Einstein shrugged his shoulders and said, “it was too complicated for me” (The Vitamin Myth: Why We Think We Need Supplements). It had seemed that whatever Pauling said, the American people followed without any outside research of his claims. Had they, people would have found that about thirty years ago:
On December 14, 1942, Donald Cowan, Harold Diehl, and Abe Baker, from the University of Minnesota, published a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association titled “Vitamins for the Prevention of Colds. ” The authors concluded, “Under the conditions of this controlled study, in which 980 colds were treated . . . there is no indication that vitamin C alone, an antihistamine alone, or vitamin C plus an antihistamine have any important effect on the duration or severity of infections of the upper respiratory tract. (The Vitamin Myth: Why We Think We Need Supplements)
Also, in more recent research conducted by Goran Paulsen, it was found that vitamin C can hinder the effects of exercise. Mitochondrial proteins (COX4), which are important for improving muscular endurance, are slowed which forces muscle gain to occur at a much slower rate. Paulsen recommended to be cautious with vitamin C pills to avoid this problem. After releasing these books encouraging a higher vitamin C intake, Linus lost some respect from scientists.
However, to the public he was still the smartest man in America. Nevertheless, this loss of respect did not stop Pauling. In 1971, he declared that vitamin C would cause a 10 percent decrease in deaths from cancer. In 1977, he went even further. “My present estimate is that a decrease of 75 percent can be achieved with vitamin C alone” (The Vitamin Myth: Why We Think We Need Supplements). The American people were blinded, they bought into this as they did before. Asking doctors for their cancer ridden relatives to receive extremely large doses of vitamin C.
Doctors tried to explain what vitamin C really did at those high levels of dosage, nevertheless the people would respond with “Doctor, do you have a Nobel Prize? ” Like Linus Pauling’s first claim, his second was proven false. A man named Charles Moertel, of the Mayo Clinic, evaluated 150 cancer victims: half received ten grams of vitamin C a day and half didn’t. The vitamin C-treated group showed no difference in symptoms or mortality (The Dark Side of Linus Pauling’s Legacy). After all of this, Linus was not finished.
He then went on to make claims about mixing high doses of various vitamins and elements could cure nearly every disease known to man. Including: heart disease, mental illness, pneumonia, hepatitis, polio, tuberculosis, measles, mumps, chickenpox, meningitis, shingles, aging, allergies, AIDS, and many, many more. Hook, line, and sinker the general public had been baited into their vitamin C beliefs and they were buying a lot of vitamins. Some began to realize that vitamin C was not the answer to everything, but to most a vitamin of some sort could fix whatever they had: as a result, an industry had been born.
One of the reasons that so many people believed in the cure all belief was with the help of the television and the new providers on it. In a journal from Franklin D. Gilliam Jr. of the University of California and Shanto Iyengar of Stanford University, they explained that the public’s main source of information in the science world come from televisions. Another huge company to agree with Pauling’s ideas was TIME magazine. TIME prolonged the idea that vitamins can do wonders in an article written by Anastasia Toufexis.
This topic was also made the cover of TIME magazine in April of 1992, allowing a stronger level of influence than had it just been a piece written inside. The article spoke of how vitamins and megavitamins are the future to cures for all diseases, one of which, was cancer. This idea of megavitamins is still around, people across the country search the shelves for the perfect fix to their ailment. The business of vitamins has become a very lucrative one with an estimated worth of thirty-seven billion dollars (Dietary Supplements: A $37 Billion-a-Year Scam).
All thanks to one man, a majority of Americans are buying into these supplements. To be exact, 68% of all American citizens use supplements regularly (New Survey Reveals High Percentage of U. S. Population Take … ) and to quench this level of intake factories produce nearly fifteen million vitamins a day (NBTY Opens Texas Vitamin Factory). This means that enormous amounts of pills are produced for around 217 million. With some just spending their money on a placebo effect, a waste. However, there are times when supplements are not a waste, and provide benefits to the user.
Cases in which people may need to take dietary supplements because it can be difficult to get enough of certain vitamins and minerals through natural sources alone (Most Americans Take Supplements, But Few Benefits Found). One example of this would be for bodies that do not make any or not enough vitamin D from sunlight exposure. This also include people who live in places that do not receive enough sunlight, like Alaskans who, some, show side effects of a vitamin D deficiency (Sun-starved Alaskans may benefit from Vitamin D supplement).
Other situations where a vitamin could be beneficial include: a folic acid supplement to prevent anemia and birth defects in child birth, and a vitamin B12 (mainly found in meat) supplement to vegetarians that have trouble finding plants to replace that nutrient. Vitamins were built on lies. One man obsessing over longevity and refusing to die created a domino effect that was manipulated by big corporations to create an industry based upon scams. While vitamins do have a good affect when someone has a deficiency, they are marketed towards everyday people: which is wrong.
Most of all the nutrients an average person needs are absorbed from the food they eat. Vitamins are good but not at the scale present; as said before, they are only needed by those with a deficiency in a specific nutrient. The most important thing when thinking about purchasing vitamins is understanding what they do and if the body receiving the supplements needs them. Because without a deficiency, people are just spending money to have a darker color of pee.