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Hägglöf M. Superstition in supplementation [culture]! Rondel 2002; 11. URL:
http://www.rondellen.net
Superstition in supplementation
At 13, my youngest son came home one day from soccer training and asked me to buy vitamins and minerals as supplementation by pills. All players had been urged by the coach to supplement their food with such pills. "Sportsmen must supplement their ordinary diet," was the message. Pill addiction was kindled at once. The start was vitamins and minerals, followed by protein pills – fish-meal and/or soy.
We are all bodybuilders. However, active sportsmen provide a crack unit from several points of view. It is reasonable to assume that sportsmen are healthier than non-sportsmen. Nevertheless, they are prone to misuse supplementation due to a zeal for speed and strength. Such an inclination is not reserved for an adult élite. "The kids squeaked like ski stars about miswaxing and stomach-ache."
There is a common concept that vitamins and minerals are wholesome, the more the better. This belief rules most sportsmen and sportswomen. So it is, and so it was, as long as I remember (1). My witnesses are a quick browse through journals for sportsfolk, bodybuilders, and seekers after health. The bragging advertisements show that there is much money in supplementation with vitamins, minerals, and protein. Sale statistics support this conclusion.
Vitamins, minerals, and proteins provide big business for wholesalers, retailers, and "nutrition therapists". The cost of the active substances amounts to next to nothing. The pill is profit. This is the background of the dirty lobbying against EU politicians, officials and journalists, when the Codex Alimentarius from FN was passed through EU and the member states during the last months. The campaign contained suggestion of status, celebrities, and overstatements – "deathblow against public health", "paranoid fight against the will of the people". The last word of abuse was directed towards a Swedish member of the EU parliament, Marit Paulsen, a solid motherly person who had defended the right of the consumers to get correct information about preparations of supplementation.
The sale increase of micronutrient supplements is not a spontaneous phenomenon. It is the result of a calculated long-term marketing in the outskirts of the law. The mentioned campaign against politicians, officials and journalists was expensive, although electronic uproars are cheaper than tumults in real life. Furthermore, some celebrities may have contributed for nothing but a fair faith.
The arguments of the micronutrient industry for free trade – no specification, no standardization, no toxic limits, no regulations – deserve analysis. The toxicity of vitamins and minerals with slow excretion was certainly underrated by the manufacturers. In the period 1997-99, 19 persons died from chronic iron intoxication (hemochromatosis) in Sweden. Another peculiar argument was that spirits and tobacco are sold more or less free in Europe. Evidently, it did not occur to the manufacturers that micronutrients may be more dangerous than spirits and tobacco.
Sportsmen provide an obvious target group for micronutrient marketing, the heros of the people. From advertisements in health journals, I conclude that vitamin C, vitamin E and several proteins are subject to intense marketing among sportsmen at present. Vitamin E is said to strengthen muscles, retard aging, improve recovery after effort, reduce oxygen need, improve blood circulation, and preserve red blood cells.
The documentation of vitamin E is threadbare. It improves the function of musculus levator ani from rats with experimental deficiency of vitamin E. My hypothesis is that every individual rat in the experiment group would have fared better by a complete and varied diet than by experimental deficiency with subsequent supplementation.
It is necessary to have vitamin deficiency in order to benefit from supplementation pills. Vitamins act usually as coenzymes or hormones in human metabolism. You cannot get better than full from food, drink and vitamins. However, most sportsmen avoid having a heavy meal just before performance. Overloading is often associated with toxicity, especially concerning vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, and iron (cf 2). Even excess pyridoxine (vitamin B6) may produce polyneuropathy due to loss of monocarbon units essential for nerve cells (3).
I concretize my fears of vitamin intoxication and mineral intoxication by pointing at the fact that many supplements in the Swedish market contain 10 times the recommended daily dose of vitamin E.
Mats Hägglöf, author, Bro, Sweden
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