Today

Bad news for pill poppers this week as new research claims that taking vitamin supplements to boost our health may actually be doing us more harm than good.

One in three women and one in four men in the UK are estimated to take vitamin pills to ward off disease. Hectic lifestyles and poor diet are the main drivers behind those who reach for the vitamin bottle. Despite several previous studies warning of potential dangers, it seems we want to believe what the vitamin companies tell us, that popping pills will make up for whatever is missing from our dinner plates.

Now news from The Cochrane Collaboration - an international healthcare review body - confirms that we're wasting our money. More worryingly, we could be shortening our lives.

A review of 67 studies found "no convincing evidence" that antioxidant supplements beta-carotene, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E and selenium cut the risk of dying prematurely and some of them could even increase the risk of an early death.

Goran Bjelakovich, the visiting researcher who led the sytematic review at Copenhagen University said: "We could find no evidence to support taking antioxidant supplements to reduce the risk of dying earlier in healthy people or patients with various diseases.

"The findings of our review show that if anything, people in trial groups given the antioxidants beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E showed increased rates of mortality.

"There was no indication that vitamin C and selenium may have positive or negative effects. So regarding these antioxidants we need more data from randomised trials."

When the different antioxidants were assessed separately, vitamin A was linked to a 16 per cent increased risk of dying, beta-carotene to a 7 per cent increased risk and vitamin E to a 4 per cent increased risk.

Dr Bjelakovic said: "The bottom line is that current evidence does not support the use of antioxidant supplements in the general healthy population or in patients with certain diseases."

The researcher's were unable to explain their findings but said that "excessive antioxidants can adversely affect key physiological processes".