Health Effects
Provided that proper precautions are taken (such as adjusting the vitamin amounts to what is believed to be appropriate for children, pregnant women or people with certain medical conditions), multivitamin intake is generally safe, but research is still ongoing in regard to what health effects multivitamins have.
Evidence of health effects of multivitamins comes largely from prospective cohort studies which evaluate differences in health parameters between cohorts that take multivitamins versus cohorts that do not. Associations derived from such studies may not result from multivitamins themselves, but may reflect underlying characteristics of multivitamin-takers. For example, it has been suggested that multivitamin-takers may, overall, have more underlying diseases (making multivitamins appear as less beneficial in prospective cohort studies). On the other hand, it has also been suggested that multivitamin users may, overall, be more health-conscious (making multivitamins appear as more beneficial in prospective cohort studies). Randomized controlled studies have been encouraged to compensate for such confounders.
Read more about this topic: Multivitamin
Famous quotes containing the words health and/or effects:
“The first year was critical to my assessment of myself as a person. It forced me to realize that, like being married, having children is not an end in itself. You don’t at last arrive at being a parent and suddenly feel satisfied and joyful. It is a constantly reopening adventure.”
—Anonymous Mother. From the Boston Women’s Health Book Collection. Quoted in The Joys of Having a Child, by Bill and Gloria Adler (1993)
“The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion, than had originally been employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. The first systems, in the same manner, are always the most complex.”
—Adam Smith (1723–1790)