How Legitimate is the Vitamin Nutrition Supplement industry? Is there

How Legitimate is the Vitamin Nutrition Supplement industry? Is there a Real Benefit?

Whoever it was that said that the economic recession has been uniformly bad news across the board for the country, hasn't been paying attention to what life is like at the companies that live on the fringe of the medical industry - the ones that make vitamin nutrition supplement products - those expensive and extravagantly advertised little bottles of pills that we get over the counter in the hope that they'll somehow sprinkle pixie dust on our lives. Ever since the recession started and people begin to lose their jobs and the health cover that came with the jobs, these unproven products have begun to seem especially attractive as a way to stave off the possibility of any illness that could financially wipe them out.

Millions fall for the charms of the colorful claims on all the advertising that the makers of supplements put out on TV, on magazines, and of course on spam. They promise herbs for the heart, minerals for the memory, vitamins and supplements for cancer and everything in between, to help oil the joints, make people stronger, and perhaps help people lose weight while they veg out in front of the TV. Not that there's anything really wrong with the very idea; we all want to find something that will help make the aging process less painful. But the makers of vitamin nutrition supplement products look forward to building an entire industry on these exaggerated hopes.

In developed countries around the world, more than half of all children born now can expect to live to be a hundred. That hope can rightfully fill us with great anticipation and gladness for what it has done to make our dreams of immotality that much closer to being reality. But there is no real virtue in just living a long time if you are crippled with arthritis and are covered in skin breakouts because you don't get enough of some important vitamin. The next goal for medicine should be to make all those years it has gained us as pleasurable to live and as productive, as any of our younger years. Modern medicine certainly has made a lot of progress in this direction; we do know a lot more about what goes into bringing better health to our later years. But most Americans would rather rely on quack over-the-counter vitamin nutrition supplement products than take advantage of the real science and medicine that exists for this. Colorful bottles on drug store shelves, fish oils, minerals, herbs and antioxidant punches surely seem somewhat more promising than expensive medical investigations into making your old age a better experience.

Perhaps all of this is the fault of science to begin with. As recently as 20 years ago, scientists believed that vitamin nutrition supplement products could help with everything from cancer to arthritis. The advice that they drummed in back then may simply have sunk in today, and it could take just as long to help people become familiar with all the new scientific understanding that has come about since then. The chemistry of the human body is apparently more complicated than anyone ever thought before. Scientists are discovering now that the best way to keep out high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes and whatnot is far more accessible with a simple change of the diet than it is with cartloads of supplements. Diet control, is the new scientific mantra.

The diet that scientists now advocate is not vegetarian or anything drastic. It's just a lot closer to where the food chain starts - closer to the bottom that the top. When the supplement makers claim all those benefits for their products, it isn't as if they've actually tested those pills for those effects. They just test natural foods that have those vitamins and nutrients. When a supplement maker tells you that three pills a day are going to do you world of good, what they actually mean is this: that they know that taking enough natural food that could contain as much natural vitamin as those three pills each day would do you world of good. For instance, there are lots of fruits that contain natural antioxidants that have blood purifying properties. Time and time again, it's been proven that picking supplements with those same antioxidants does no good. Similar findings exist for vitamin supplements too. No matter which way you look at it, the vitamin nutrition supplement is a questionable product to trust your luck to.