Taking dietary supplements? It may be too much

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n">(Reuters) - People who take dietary supplements to boost their intake of minerals may actually be getting too much of a good thing -- and even risk serious problems.

According to astudy published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, people who take dietary supplements also tend to get more nutrients from their food than those who don't take supplements -- suggesting that vitamins may be taken by the people who need them least.

In some cases, supplement users may actually be overloading on minerals, such as iron, that can cause potentially serious health problems, researchers said.

"People need to choose supplements to help meet, but not exceed, the recommended daily intake levels," said Regan Bailey, a nutrition research at the National Institutes of Health, who led the study.

Bailey and her colleagues used dietary surveys to assess mineral intake among 8,860 men and women who participated in a major government health survey between 2003 and 2006.

Men and women who reported using dietary supplements containing eight important minerals -- calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc, phosphorus, copper, potassium and selenium -- were much less likely to be getting inadequate amounts of those minerals from the foods they ate than were people who said they didn't take supplements, the study found.

The link was strongest for women, who are more likely than men to take supplements.

Supplement users, in turn, tended to eat better and live healthier lifestyles than non-users, Bailey noted.

The NIH team also found that calcium intake often fell below recommended levels, even among professed supplement users.

Roughly a quarter of supplement users, and 71 percent of nonusers, did not receive the recommended daily amount of calcium -- 800 to 1,000 milligrams a day for men over age 51 and 1,000 to 1,200 mg per day for women of the same age. Calcium is necessary for the healthy formation of bone.

Older people were much more likely to fall short of their daily calcium requirements -- but also to exceed them.

That's because people tend to use more supplements as they age, which helps explain why nearly 16 percent of women between the ages of 51 and 70 reported daily calcium intakes that exceeded the recommended upper limit. Too much supplemental calcium has been linked to kidney stones.

Supplement users were also more likely to boost their intake of magnesium and zinc above recommended upper limits, although the health consequences, if any, of consuming too much of those minerals are unknown.

"We always would hope that the people who are taking dietary supplements are the ones who need it the most, but it doesn't seem to be true," said Cheryl Rock, a nutrition researcher at the University of California, San Diego, adding that the results were not surprising.

When it comes to over consumption, Rock added: "We have been telling people clinically for years that the daily value cut point is not your minimum requirement. Having a dietary assessment is definitely a good idea." Source: bit.ly/nAkGAU

(Reporting from New York by Adam Marcus at Reuters Health; editing by Elaine Lies)

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Could Taking Birth Control Pills Make Women's Memory More Like Men's?

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A new study shows that taking birth control pills can affect women's memory.

Shawn Nielsen, a graduate student in neurobiology and behavior at the University of California, Irvine, conducted a study with 66 female students, half of whom were taking oral contraception and half who were not.

The participants were given a unique memory test. Some women were randomly assigned to view an emotionally charged video about a young boy who was hit by a car while walking with his mother and then rushed to the hospital, where doctors reattach his severed feet. Other women watched a more neutral narrative in which the mother and son observe a minor accident and then go to the hospital to practice a disaster drill.

Nielsen, who is working toward her doctorate in the lab of Larry Cahill, a well-known hormone researcher, was interested in teasing apart how differences in estrogen and progesterone levels may affect memory. Previous research has hinted that estrogen may enhance verbal memory; in one study, for example, women taking oral contraception showed better recall of words on the active hormone days of their pill cycle than on days when they either weren't supposed to take active pills or took non-hormonal substitutes.

In the current study, when women who viewed the emotional video were tested a week later about what they saw, those who were taking the pill were able to recall the general thread of the story better than its specific details. This is similar to how men remember emotional events, says Nielsen.

"If we reduce women's sex hormone levels, the change in the type of information they recall is more like what a male participant might remember," she says. The pill works by flattening out natural spikes in estrogen and progesterone — which is what triggers ovulation — and signals the body not to make additional hormones, keeping levels low throughout the cycle.

The results were the exact opposite for the women who weren't on the pill: they were better at remembering details, such as what color shirt the boy had on, whether the mother wore glasses, or whether there was a fire hydrant at the intersection. The naturally cycling women couldn't recall the general narrative of the story as well as they could these details.

This doesn't mean that the pill squelches memory or that it robs women of their ability to recall salient things. It's just a matter of what type of information they remember. Since the pill keeps hormone levels steady throughout the cycle, women who take it tend to react differently to emotionally charged experiences, compared with women undergoing the natural monthly ebb and flow of hormones. And that's important since many of the mental illnesses that affect women — such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder — are extremely emotional in nature.

"What is important about these findings is that sex hormones affect the type of information recalled from an emotional event," says Nielsen. "What that says to us is that these changes are a powerful tool for future studies investigating the underlying neurobiology of these disorders.

"Simply taking the pill and suppressing natural sex hormone levels can affect what type of information you remember from an emotional event. That speaks to the role that estrogen and progesterone play in memory — they affect how a woman remembers an emotional event in her life," says Nielsen.

A better understanding of this connection could lead to more effective therapies that may target such hormonal drivers. Nielsen is already trying to figure out exactly what levels of hormones are associated with changes in recall. She is about to launch additional studies to correlate fluctuating levels of estrogen and progesterone in naturally cycling women with changes in the type of information they recall from emotional events.

The current study was published in the journal Neurobiology of Learning and Memory.

Alice Park is a writer at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @aliceparkny. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

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HEALTH MANAGEMENT.Teen accused of taking $17,000 in donations for cancer hoax

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas teenager faces theft charges after police said she duped her community into giving her $17,000 because they erroneously believed she was dying of cancer.
Ruth Angelica Gomez, 18, of Horizon City, Texas, created the Achieve the Dream foundation, under which she held fund-raising events and solicited donations to help cure her leukemia, which she had said would claim her life before the year ended, Horizon City police Detective Liliana Medina said.
Yet there was no indication that Gomez ever had cancer, police said.
She is being charged with felony theft by deception, punishable by up to two years in jail and a $10,000 fine.
"Ms. Gomez stated that she had been diagnosed with a terminal illness (Leukemia) and was under treatment for the disease, although Ms. Gomez does not have any form of cancer," Medina said.
"She did hold many fund-raisers in the area of Horizon City and El Paso. People began to suspect that she may not be sick, so an investigation ensued."
There are no other suspects in the case, Medina said.
News reports from earlier this year touted the Achieve the Dream Foundation's creation and publicized some of its fund-raisers. On one website, members of a girls' fast-pitch softball team challenged other teams to donate to the foundation, saying they were "proud to be a part of Angie's life."
The foundation's website has been taken down, but an archive of the page shows teens and children wearing the group's green ribbon logo and a message from Gomez.
"Blessed by God's will, every child was brought to this world for a reason," the message on the home page reads. "So being every child should have the right to fight for their life, Achieve the Dream is dedicated to helping children with Leukemia have the chance to beat their cancer and live a normal life."
Donations to the "Achieve the Dream" Foundation came in the form of cash and checks directly deposited to her foundation, as well as gift cards, and in-kind donations to sell for fund-raising, Medina said.
Horizon City is about 20 miles southeast of El Paso.

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