Relying on vitamins to keep you healthy?

...Then you're believing too much of the supplement's advertising.

The 4/10 edition of the Readers' Digest reports that recent research suggests you're not getting any value for your money.

If you think a multivitamin can make up for a bad diet, press the reset button. From the Women's Health Initiative, the long-term study of more than 160,000 midlife women, the study shows women who take a multivitamin are no more healthier than those who don't when it comes to cancer, heart disease, stroke. Women with poor diets weren't helped by taking a multivitamin.

Vitamins made their successful entry into the market around the early 1900's when it hard to find fresh fruits and vegetables year-round. Vitamin deficiency was a problem. Vitamin D deficiency could cause bowed legs, rickets. A lack of the B vitamin niacin could cause skin problems and the mental confusion of pellagra. Nowadays with all the 'fortified' and vitamin-enriched processed foods out there, it would be difficult to be that deficient in a vitamin to have the above problems.

However, we could all stand to benefit from eating more produce. A supplement's not going to help us there. Multivitamins have plus or minus two dozen ingredients - but plants have hundreds of useful compounds. Plus plants have these compounds in natural combinations and proportions that make their usefulness easily ingested by our bodies.

The exception to the above is women of reproductive ages. Just call it insurance for a possible pregnancy. A woman who gets adequate amounts of the B vitamin folate is much less likely to have a baby with birth defects affecting the spinal cord. With the spinal cord forming early, perhaps so early that the woman doesn't know she's pregnant, it pays for her to take400 micrograms of folic acid (the synthetic form of folate) daily. Multivitamins usually have folic acid in them.

Unless you are a marathoner, skier or soldier on subarctic exercises, vitamin C isn't going to fight off getting a cold. The 2007 study was of 11,000 subjects. The study did show that taking the vitamin on a daily basis throughout the year can cut the length of colds (with a gotcha). So for the average adult, taking vitamin C can shorten the days they have cold symptoms from 12 to 11 a year. The gotcha? You can't start taking vitamin C when you feel a cold coming on to have the same effect. So is one less day a year with cold symptoms worth taking vitamin C pill year-round?

Some researchers observed that people who take vitamin supplements seem to avoid developing heart disease. At the time, researchers wrote cautiously about this phenomenon wondering if these observations reflected the 'healthy use effect' - meaning people who take vitamins are more likely to exercise, eat right and not smoke or drink a lot.

B vitamins seemed promising because folate, B6 and B12 help break down the amino acid homocysteine, high levels of which have been linked to heart disease. So does taking B vitamins help? Not according to recent studies.

What about beta-carotene? Studies determined that rather than prevent heart disease, those supplements produced a slight increase in the risk of death!

The American Heart Association says rather than take those supplements eat a varied diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

We know that unstable molecules called free radicals can damage the DNA of cells which increases the risk of cancer. Antioxidants can stabilize free radicals making them much less dangerous (in theory). However, no study has shown that taking supplements that provide antioxidants will protect you against cancer. Over several studies, taking a vitamin B combo, C, E or beta-carotene supplements did not help reducing your risk of cancer.

Are you still thinking hey, taking vitamins can't hurt? Studies have shown that taking antioxidant pills could actually promote cancer. Taking high doses of folic acid could rise the risk of colon cancer. Some studies suggest a connection between high doses of some vitamins and heart disease.

"Vitamins are safe when you get them in food, but in pill form, they can act more like a drug with the potential for unexpected and sometimes dangerous effects," says Demetrius Albanes, MD a nutritional epidemiologist at the National Cancer Institute.

Vitamin D - looking good. Vitamin D protects against:

• For men, getting enough vitamin D have about half the risk of heart attack as men who are deficient.
• Overall, getting enough D appears to lower the risk of at least six cancers such as colorectal.

Vitamin D is the sunshine vitamin. Sunlight makes it with your skin. With our sedimentary habits and sunscreen, we don't get enough vitamin D. Experts recommend you take 1,000 IU per day.