8473
STRESS DOES NOT INCREASE NEED FOR VITAMINS
Do you believe advertisements that claim you need vitamin pills to maintain energy when you are under stress? There is no evidence that stress increases your needs for vitamins or that taking vitamins will help you to handle stress.
Most vitamins are parts of chemicals called enzymes that cause reactions to proceed in your body. When chemical A is converted to chemical B and releases energy, a vitamin starts the reaction. Since enzymes only start chemical reactions and are not used up by them, they can be used over and over again and only minuscule amounts are needed from your diet.
Several years ago, Squibb claimed that their vitamin pills called Theregran Stress Formula, helped relieve stress from the "complications of everyday life." They further claimed that taking the recommended daily allowance of vitamins would reduce the effects of psychological stress. The New York Attorney General forced them to stop making such claims.
Why do so many people think that vitamins prevent stress? In the 1930's, Hans Selye of McGill University in Montreal, reported that the adrenal glands contain the highest concentration in the body of vitamin C. The adrenal glands make cortisol from vitamin C. When a person is under stress, the adrenal glands make tremendous amounts of cortisol and the concentration of vitamin C in them drops. However, scientists have known for more than forty years that the levels of vitamin C in the adrenal glands are still high enough to continue to produce cortisol and that giving extra vitamin C will not increase production of cortisol.
Consumer Reports, March, 1986; Hornig World Review Nutr. Diet 23:225-258,1975; Contemporary Nutrition 9(7):July, 1984
Checked 5/3/07