More than half of all Americans ages 65 years and older took a multivitamin, an extra dose of calcium or a more exotic substance like ginkgo biloba or shark cartilage last year, hoping to maintain or improve their health. But these users "tend to be the people who need supplements the least," according to nutrition experts.
Speaking at a conference on dietary supplement use among older Americans at the National Institutes of Health, researchers said that older people who take dietary supplements are typically lean, physically active individuals who do not smoke or drink excessive amounts of alcohol. And they eat their fruits and vegetables, too.
"It's almost never the case that supplement users are the people with the poorest diets," said Suzanne Murphy, Ph.D., R.D., a nutrition researcher at the University of Hawaii.
The conference speakers described the average elderly supplement user as female, white, highly educated and more apt to live in a Western state. Slightly lower percentages of black and Hispanic women and men use dietary supplements, according to studies that surveyed elderly populations in Massachusetts and North Carolina, among other states.
There are a number of studies, including the ongoing National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, that track dietary supplement use by older Americans, but most of these studies focus on vitamin and mineral use, said Katherine Tucker, Ph.D., of the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University.
"We still have quite limited information on all this, especially on non-vitamin, herbal supplement use," Tucker said.
One of the few available insights on elderly herbal supplement use is a 1998-1999 survey of adults 65 years and older, which reported 11 percent of men and 14 percent of women had used an herbal supplement in the week before the survey.
Information on ethnic or cultural differences in supplement use is even more scarce, although Murphy said that the ethnic group designated as "other" on the latest National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which might include American Indians and Pacific Islanders, were the largest group of herbal supplement users.
The reasons why the elderly use dietary supplements are still being studied, said Pamela Haines, Dr.Ph.D., R.D., of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who suggested that a "right-to-know" movement might encourage supplement use.
"Consumers are demanding to know more about what they can purchase and what they can put into their body, and one of the emerging trends that we're seeing is for people to take more control over their health," Haines said.
Haines said that many older people do not tell their doctors that they are taking dietary supplements, which can lead to harmful interactions with prescribed medications in some cases.
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