BeanDiet

First dear blog readers, I want to thank you for writing reviews of my book, Free to Eat, on Amazon! A number of you wrote about how you enjoyed hearing me speak in person, and that was encouraging for me to read.

Now that we live in Oakland, I need to find new venues to speak at. If you happen to know of places in the Bay Area where nutrition speakers are needed, feel free to send me your recommendations!

Now, for the "meat" of this blog, if you will...

In case you haven't heard my many blog-rants about the hazards of taking dietary supplements (vitamins), here's one more for you. This one is in the "shocking" category, since it's about vitamin C, which has long been touted as a beneficial and even necessary supplement which is completely innocuous.

Well, here you go, straight from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (November 18, 2009).

Over 24,000 women aged 49-83 years old were tracked for over eight years to see if vitamin C supplements and or multivitamins containing vitamin C helped prevent age-related cataract formation.

In the study, women who took vitamin C supplements were at greater risk for developing cataracts than those who did not take them. For women aged 65 years or more, vitamin C supplement use was correlated with a 38% greater likelihood of cataract formation.

For women taking hormone replacement therapy, vitamin C supplements put them at a 56% greater risk of cataracts vs. women taking neither. Women using corticosteriod drugs who also took vitamin C supplements had 97% higher risk of developing cataracts vs. women taking neither.

In the author's own words: "Our results indicate that the use of vitamin C supplements may be associated with higher risk of age-related cataract among women".

So please, even if you are not a post-menopausal women taking vitamin C supplements, spread the news to your friends and loved ones - and help prevent unnecessary detrimental aging.