Can antioxidant supplements cause cancer?

I was flipping through an edition of Elle France when I landed on an interesting article: The dangers of multi-vitamins (Trop de vitamins, danger!).

I used to take multi-vitamins for many years until one day I realized that my diet was very complete and that maybe I was doubling on vitamin dosage. Since I knew the body can only take so much dosage of vitamins per day, I realized that I was most likely eliminating a larger percentage of my multi-vitamin intake.

I switched to organic green power products that I added to my morning juice in the morning in order to ensure that I had sufficient greens and nixed my daily multi-vitamin consumption.

The decision was partial economics and partly because I was getting tired of taking a little army of multi-vitamins every day.

You can imagine how shocked I was to read that a new study conducted by “Journal of Nutrition” on over 12,000 French participants has concluded that long term intake of anti-oxidant supplements such as vitamin C, vitamin E, beta-carotene selenium and zinc might considerably increase your likelihood of developing skin cancer and it might quadruple women’s chances of developing melanoma cancer.

The study concludes that it’s preferable to adopt a balanced diet than relying on antioxidant supplements.

The whole vitamin debate is so incredibly confusing because some medical/health professionals say it’s essential because our soils are depleted from nutrients and other medical/health professionals say that a varied diet is the only way of maintaining optimal health. This might certainly be a good topic to bring up with your doctor or naturopath during your next doctor’s appointment!

Photo by Traci_Todd112