There was not even one death caused by a dietary supplement in 2008, according to the most recent information collected by the U.S. National Poison Data System. The new 174-page annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers, published in the journal Clinical Toxicology, shows zero deaths from multiple vitamins; zero deaths from any of the B vitamins; zero deaths from vitamins A, C, D, or E; and zero deaths from any other vitamin.

Additionally, there were no deaths whatsoever from any amino acid or herbal product. This means no deaths at all from blue cohosh, echinacea, ginkgo biloba, ginseng, kava kava, St. John’s wort, valerian, yohimbe, Asian medicines, ayurvedic medicines, or any other botanical. There were zero deaths from creatine, blue-green algae, glucosamine, chondroitin, melatonin, or any homeopathic remedies.

Furthermore, there were zero deaths in 2008 from any dietary mineral supplement. This means there were no fatalities from calcium, magnesium, chromium, zinc, colloidal silver, selenium, iron, or multimineral supplements. Two children died as a result of medical use of the antacid sodium bicarbonate. The other “Electrolyte and Mineral” category death was due to a man accidentally drinking sodium hydroxide, a highly toxic degreaser and drain-opener.

No man, woman or child died from nutritional supplements. Period.

61 poison centers provide coast-to-coast data for the U.S. National Poison Data System, which is then reviewed by 29 medical and clinical toxicologists. NPDS, the authors write, is “one of the few real-time national surveillance systems in existence, providing a model public health surveillance system for all types of exposures, public health event identification, resilience response and situational awareness tracking.”
Over half of the U.S. population takes daily nutritional supplements. Even if each of those people took only one single tablet daily, that makes 154,000,000 individual doses per day, for a total of over 56 billion doses annually. Since many persons take more than just one vitamin or mineral tablet, actual consumption is considerably higher, and the safety of nutritional supplements is all the more remarkable.
If nutritional supplements are allegedly so “dangerous,” as the FDA and news media so often claim, then where are the bodies?

Those who wonder if the media are biased against vitamins may consider this: how many television stations, newspapers, magazines, and medical journals have reported that no one dies from nutritional supplements?

Reference:
Bronstein AC, Spyker DA, Cantilena LR Jr, Green JL, Rumack BH, Giffin SL. 2008 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers’ National Poison Data System (NPDS): 26th Annual Report. Clinical Toxicology (2009). 47, 911-1084. The full text article is available for free download at http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/Portals/0/2008annualreport.pdf . Vitamins statistics are found in Table 22B, journal pages 1052-3. Minerals, herbs, amino acids and other supplements are in the same table, pages 1047-8.

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A German study published in the August issue of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease has linked high intake of fruit and vegetables to better plasma antioxidant status and better cognitive performance.

The study of 193 healthy people aged 45 to 102 shows that individuals who had higher daily intake of fruits and vegetables had higher cognitive performance and higher levels of antioxidants in their blood.

The study was conducted by Dr. M. Cristina Polidori, at the Department of Geriatrics, Marienhospital Herne, Ruhr-University of Bochum, Germany along with colleagues at with the Department of Pharmacology at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the Department of Geriatrics at Perugia University, Italy.

“It is known that there is a strong association between fruit and vegetable intake and the natural antioxidant defenses of the body against free radicals, and It is also known that bad nutritional habits increase the risk of developing cognitive impairment with and without dementia,” Polidori said.

Cognitive impairment is found in people was Alzheimer’s disease, which affects four million Americans. There is no cure for the disease.

Another early study published in the Sept. 2009 issue of Journal of Nutrition suggests that greater intake of high antioxidant foods such as berries, Concord grapes, and walnuts may increase health span and enhance cognitive and motor function in aging.

The study was conducted by J.A. Joseph and colleagues from the USDA-Agriculture Research Service at Tufts University in Boston Massachusetts.

Numerous studies have indicated that people eating a diet containi high amounts of fruits and vegetables exhibit fewer age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, according to the authors.

Joseph and colleagues also found that blueberry or Concord grape juice supplementation in humans with mild cognitive impairment could increase verbal memory performance.

They explained that dietary supplementation with fruit and vegetable extracts high in antioxidants can lower the oxidative stress in aging and also enhance neuronal communication via increases in neuronal signaling and decreases in stress signals induced by oxidative/inflammatory stressors.

Another similar study published in the Sept 2006 issue of American Journal of Medicine suggests that many polyphenols in fruit and vegetables possess stronger neuroprotection against hydrogen peroxide than antioxidant vitamins.

In the study of 1836 Japanese Americans in King County Washington, Dai Q and colleagues from Vanderbilt School of Medicine found those who drank fruit and vegetable juices at least 3 times per week cuts their risk for Alzheimer’s disease by 76 percent and those who drank juices once or twice a week lowered their risk by 16 percent.

The inverse association was more significant among those carried an apolipoprotein Eepsilon-4 allele and those who were not physically active.

On the other hand, they did not find any association between dietary intake of vitamin E, C or beta-carotene or tea consumption and risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Source: Foodconsumer.org

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