Vitamins and genomes

Science and the skeptical community have realised for a long time that vitamins and dietary supplements often have little or no affect, and when they do the affects can be seriously detrimental to health.

What is a vitamin?

Basically, they are things we (and all other organism) cannot live without. These are organic chemicals which cannot be synthesised by us (or the organism) and so must be consumed as part of our diet. (Wikipedia article here).

In some studies 62% of people asked were taking at least one daily dietary supplement per day, and 48%  were taking THREE OR MORE supplements per day.

In 2009 an article in The Guardian quoted the supplement industry in the UK as being worth an estimated £13.5bn. Clearly somebody is making a huge profit.

But is it worth taking vitamins? Do they have any effect?

In some cases, yes. We do need this as part of a healthy and balanced diet, and if for some reason we are not getting these from our diet then yes we should supplement them.

They jury is still out on whether the majority of us need to take vitamins, and the answer is likely to be no. If you eat a reasonable diet, that doesn’t consist of mostly pork scratchings and living in a cellar then no, you will have no need to take vitamins unless you are told to for a specific medical reason BY YOUR DOCTOR.

For some areas vitamins simply have no impact what so ever (e.g. for fighting prostate cancer), and vitamins as a miracle cure for HIV/AIDS is simply ridiculous. There is no evidence for the worth of it as a treatment, and many thousands of lives are being lost with the shit being circulated in areas (e.g. South Africa) where it simply cannot afford to be is an abomination against humanity.

The other side of this is that vitamins can have a seriously harmful impact on your body and health. These are chemicals we need it VERY VERY low doses, and overdoing vitamins can cause some pretty horrific things to happen.

Take Hypervitaminosis A (that’s an overdose of vitamin A to you plebs).

With this you get the normal unpleasentrys (nausea, vomiting, headaches, dizziness) but too much vitamin A can cause:

birth defects

liver disease

reduction in bone mineral density (brittle or coarse bones)

bald patches or acute hair loss

idiopathic intracranial hypertension (pressure or swelling around the brain)

painful swelling on the long bones of the body

anorexia

bleeding

DEATH

Oh and also you skin to slough off in nice big pieces. Sweet.

No but seriously, DEATH. YOU CAN DIE. These are not things to be popping like sweeties because we need them in our diets. These are to be taken very occasionally if we are not getting them, and never, ever to be taking over the recommended dose unless your doctor prescribes it.

Some things just shouldn’t be taken at all, like iron supplements for men. We don’t need them. We also can get rid of it very well.

“Iron poisoning, caused by acute ingestion of large quantities of iron-containing supplements, causes nausea, vomiting, damage to the lining of the intestinal tract, shock, and liver failure”

Lovely.

(see here).

Bottom line. Probably not worth taking, unless there is a really good reason.

So… this blog was called vitamins and genomes so I’ll do a bit on the genome thingy.

A paper in Nature has shown that potentially 27% of the major gene families seen on earth today arose during the Archaean eon.

(have a look at the earths geological history here (NOTE: the little line where we appear at the top...) 

That is 3.8 to 2.5 billion years ago. Very early in the history of our planet (earth being a little over 4.5 billion years old). The fact that this early explosion of life produced such genetic diversity is incredible. There are also facets of this that show us a little about the conditions of life on our early planet, because the early organisms had selective pressures to be adapted to this early environment.

For example early genes that originate AFTER this early Archaean age are increasingly involved with the use of molecular oxygen, and compounds which are formed from reactions with oxygen. Suggesting these arose in a world where oxygen was, if not plentiful, at least present. The earliest genes, however, arose in an anoxic (no oxygen) world and do not show these characteristics.

The fact that some of these very earliest genes are still present in organisms today blow my mind. And stomps on creationism’s grave a little more, of which I am all in favour.

Chris