If you thought that popping vitamin pills would make you stronger, think again.
Researchers led by Dr Goran Bjelakovic of the University of Nis in Serbia-Montenegro have revealed that these pills only take you closer to death.
Published in The Lancet, the study reveals that the careless intake of Vitamin supplements enhances cancer risks and increases the overall risk of death, rather than saving lives.
The researchers studied 170,000 patients suffering from cancers of the gullet, stomach and intestine, bowel, pancreas and liver and found that consumption of supplements of beta-carotene, Vitamins A, C and E, and selenium, alone or in combination had no protective effect on them.
In fact the risk of death was found to be 30 percent higher in people taking beta-carotene and vitamin A than for those not taking the combination.
"Our results for the detrimental effect of antioxidant supplements on mortality were unexpected," the researchers write.
However researchers have cautioned that the findings are preliminary, and the negative effects of vitamins might be due to people taking vitamin doses above the medically recommended levels