A Multi For Preventing Cancer.

Dr. Michael F. Roizen

Co-Author of 4 #1 NY Times Bestsellers including: YOU Staying Young.

The Owner’s Manual For Extending Your Warranty (Free Press)

Our basic premise is that your body is amazing.  You get a do over. It doesn’t take that long, and it isn’t that hard if you know what to do.  In these notes, we give you a short course in what to do so it becomes easy for you, and for you to teach others. We want you to know how much control you have over your quality and length of life.

In these articles, we’ve repeatedly recommended a multivitamin (“multi”) as an insurance policy against deficiency from an imperfect diet.  Now, there is an even more important reason.  But first, let’s deal with our premise that a multi is an insurance policy against an imperfect diet. Since only 190,000 of the over 26 million people who have taken the full nutrition program at RealAge (it’s free at RealAge.com) get the right amount of vitamins and minerals from diet alone, we believe that taking half a multi twice a day is exactly that, an insurance policy against a less than perfect diet.

But, it is more than that.  A headline randomized controlled study (the gold standard of studies) from this October’s Journal of the American Medical Association indicates a daily multi prevents cancer.  That’s big! A daily multi (actually half a multi twice a day) decreased non-prostate cancer by 12%. Prostate cancer was equal in the placebo and multi group. (The data came from the Physicians’ Health Study-II, a long-term study of the health of male Physicians over the age of 50.)

50 to 87% of Americans are short of vitamin D in published studies and you need it to help fight cancer (see below), to keep arteries young, and to aid brain function. So, make sure you get it measured and take what is needed to keep its level normal. Also, vitamin D3 is essential for calcium absorption and incorporation into bone.  Why ½ of a multivitamin in the morning and half in the evening?  You pee out the water soluble vitamins in 8 to 16 hours so you need it twice a day.

When you think about it, much of what we do and use for our health really boils down to protection. For example, we wear helmets to protect us from an accidental brain smoosh and running shoes to protect us from shards of glass. Perhaps the greatest protector of all is the one that you can’t buy in any store or order from any online discount warehouse (though there’s an idea). It’s the p53 tumor suppressor gene, which has the job of recognizing when your cells are at risk of developing into cancer and doing what it can to put a stop to it. Its job (that of biological guard dog and computer spell-checker rolled into one mean gene) is to protect your body. Do you know what is essential to turn on your p 53 gene? It seems it is something in that multi.  In that randomized study of a multi or placebo, the individuals less likely than usual to get cancer were those physicians with 1/5th the smoking rate of the general population, exercised more than usual, took a daily aspirin more than the population as a whole, and were thinner.  Thus, a 12% reduction in all non-prostate cancers (what the multi had) was a very big deal.  A big enough deal for me to take the multi for that reason alone.  Even though I eat 9 servings of fruits and veggies a day on average, I also need a multi as an insurance policy against an imperfect diet.

Thanks for reading.

Young Dr Mike

NOTE: You should NOT take this as medical advice. 

This article is of the opinion of its author.

Before you do anything, please consult with your doctor.

You can follow Dr Roizen  (and get updates on the latest and most important medical stories  of the week) on twitter @YoungDrMike. 

Feel free to continue to send questions to youdocs@gmail.com. You can follow Dr Roizen on twitter @YoungDrMike (and get updates on the latest and most important medical stories of the week).  The YOU docs have a new web site: YOUBeauty.com  and its companion BeautySage.com the only site we know of where you can find skin products proven to meet the claims (opened for business on June 1st, 2012), and a new book: YOU: The Owner’s Manual for Teens.

Michael F. Roizen, M.D., is chief wellness officer and chair of the Wellness Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. His radio show streams live on http://www.healthradio.net  Saturdays from 5-7 p.m . E-mail him questions at YouDocs@gmail.com.   He is the co-author of 4 #1 NY Times Best Sellers including : YOU Staying Young and YOU: The Owner’s Manual. He is Chief Medical Consultant to the two year running Emmy award winning Dr Oz show– The Dr Oz show is #2 nationally in daytime TV.  See what all the fun is about, and what he, The Enforcer, is up to. Check local listings or log onto DoctorOz.com for channel and time. And for more health info, log onto youbeauty.com anytime.