Could taking vitamins in huge doses produce a health miracle after all?

For decades, some people have embraced the idea that there might be major health benefits from taking vitamins in quantities well beyond the recommended daily requirement. The concept was very popular for a while in the media, but research findings to the contrary gradually made it virtually untouchable for scientists.

Yet it is now making a sort of comeback, thanks partly to new findings demonstrating that high doses of vitamin C can treat cancer. As we shall see, however, there are some important caveats here – as well as obstacles to unlocking different potential health benefits from other vitamin treatments. This is a cautionary tale of the dangers of black and white thinking, and how things are rarely as simple as they can be made to appear.