I’ve gone back and forth on taking a multivitamin since I know my diet isn’t all that great. Ideally I should be working to improve that diet but let’s say due to certain circumstances that’s a bit difficult at the moment.
Would it be worth taking a 1 a day multivitamin to at least correct some possible deficiency or is it very unlikely that it would have any effect?
Not asking for professional medical advice or anything, mostly looking to see if anyone else is taking a multivitamin and if so why?
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Currently I’m in the process of figuring out if I actually need extra vitamins. I’m using a food tracking app that also includes vitamins and minerals, not just fats and carbs like most apps do. It’s a lot of work, but I’m not planning to do this forever.
So far, I’ve found out that vitamin A and D might come in handy, but everything else seems fine.
I made my own app, and tracked calories, carbs, fiber, and potassium. I used data from USDA. What I found was that it was almost impossible to get the recommended amount of potassium unless you ate nothing but green leafy vegetables, or massively over-eat.
Just took a look at my 7 day average, and it seems that potassium isn’t really a problem in my case. I’m getting plenty from mushrooms, barley, prunes and peanuts.
I also looked up what I would need to eat in order to get the missing vitamins. The answer is carrots for A and some margarine for D.
For those of us without an account with the atlantic, what’s the deal?
I’m pretty sure multivitamins help me in one way - to help prevent me from catching colds and flus easily. I noticed this years ago when my kids were young. I would take one of the chewable kids vitamins daily through autumn and winter. Several winters I did not get sick. I’ve not done it since - every day, one kids vitamin. I switched to adult multis but I think they’re an expensive overload and didn’t seem to help. But chewable kids were too sugary for my teeth. Now they have the xylitol ones. I may try again this season.
Basically, it could prevent vitamin deficiency. But in developed countries, vitamin deficiency is pretty rare, and many forms take years of constant deficiency to really show up.
Basically, it probably won’t hurt. The research is very vague about it because we generally don’t wait until someone actually gets a vitamin deficiency disease before correcting it. Nor can we deliberately starve someone of a vitamin for years and watch the effects. Any subtle effect is often masked by larger issues like genetics, diet, exercise, etc.
But in developed countries, vitamin deficiency is pretty rare, and many forms take years of constant deficiency to really show up.
Depends. Some people (myself included) simply don’t absorb vitamin D as easily as others. I had my vit D tested and it was so low that they couldn’t accurately give a result. Had to take a supplement once a week for 8 weeks which contained about 300 times the amount which is in a normal daily supplement, which I now take daily.
Posted this above, but reposting here since it’s relevant to your comment:
Vitamin D deficiency was also shown to be a co-morbidity with COVID. So to answer the question “do multivitamins do anything?” I’d say they could potentially have saved your life and you might not have noticed.
Before COVID, my wife nagged me into establishing a primary care physician since I hadn’t gone in a while. So I did, they did a blood test, and showed that I was vitamin D deficient. I took some prescription vitamin D for like a week then my doctor told me to start taking a multivitamin. When they later announced it being a co-morbidity, I felt like I dodged a bullet.
My sister, who did her master’s in nutrition or some related field, says multivitamins are a waste of money. She suggests getting bloodwork and seeing if you’re deficient in anything. And if you’re deficient, it’s better to change your diet than buy multivitamins (if possible).
With that being said, I still take a multivitamin…
Just watch your mood when you do this. My work up said that I’m deficient in Vitamin D. I added that as a supplement and it made me moody as crap (I’m male and this is not normal for me). Just decided to stop and continue exercise, which was making me feel better anyway.
They say you just piss away what you don’t need but I’m lazy. I’m pretty sure my gut doesn’t even get around to absorbing it. Stupid gut.
Vitamin D super dose works really well, as food high in vitamin D is already a big part of most people’s diets (fish, milk, cheese, eggs, beef livers).
Depends on how significant the deficiency is. If it’s pretty bad, you would probably be better off taking supplements of just that thing along with the daily multi. Or even changing your diet if it’s really extreme or caused by how you eat (like a vitamin d deficiency from not eating greens, going outside or drinking milk).
My neurologist has me take L-methylfolate because of one of my meds. Besides that, all I take is fish oil and D3. Everything I’ve seen has said they’re some of the only ones that actually do anything.
The water soluble ones like Vitamin C you just piss out. The fat soluble ones like A can build up and cause problems. NTM my grocery store generic oil and D together cost way less that the multivitamins.
I take it when i have some symptoms of vitamin deficiency like if you’re sitting in one place and get up and you feel some weird sensation in the legs or hands. Like hundreds of ants running inside the veins. Or when I forget to drink water and get dehydrated and the body loses vitamins. I usually don’t take such meds.
I’ve been taking them since my accident. My hip, foot and ribs got broken last year. I also take a bone and joint collagen supplement as well. The doctor didn’t advise me to take these but my thinking was that my body could use the extra resources during my recovery.
Not sure how big of a role it played but my bones are all healed up and I’m walking, albeit with a cane these days.
One thing a doc told me is that your body can only absorb so much. Some people go so crazy on certain supplements that they end up blocking the body’s ability to absorb other essential nutrients.
If you want to supplement, a single multi each day isn’t going to be a massive game changer, unless you’re already missing something.
It’s like when you have a Berocca and your wee is a luminous yellow for your next few trips because your body can’t absorb all of the extra vitamins isn’t it?
That’s part of it, ig. But there was this one study where they gave people shit tons of one vitamin and they just started dying because they weren’t getting anything else they needed. Sounded intense.
I’m sceptical. That would be an extremely unethical test. And it would only prove that too much of something can kill you. Did you know that people can even die from drinking too much water?
This was a study of a specific disease that caused a specific deficit in one vitamin. They tried hyper-dosing people to treat it and had to stop the study because they died.
Can’t remember which disease it was
If your diet lacks certain vitamins, a vitamin supplement may help. If not, it won’t. Excess vitamins are eliminated by a healthy body.
Some vitamines can be had too much too, so “overdosing” is a real possibility. A and D for example.
It’s pretty hard to overdose on D though, you have to drink fish oil or supplement heavily.
It’s pretty hard to overdose on D though
Heh
For real. i never can’t get enough D
Also taking too much vitamin C can lead to kidney stones.
Calcium as well.
You can do it, but you need to try really hard to overdose on C or D.
Iron although you won’t overdose on that from a men’s multivitamin since it shouldn’t contain any and a women’s vitamin has like 18 mg or something. But if a child gets ahold of a bottle of iron they can do serious damage or die.
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They taste good, sometimes.
flinstones?
Depends. Many minerals in the multivitamin are not bioavailable and some block absorption of others. Since there are so many together you can’t tell if it will have the desired effect and in which quantity.
There are some vitamins that definitely have a positive effect such as A, C, E, K and B12 but a 100% RDA of zinc with zincoxide does fuck all.
So it’ll most likely have a positive effect. That being said the cliche is true: It’s not a replacement for a healthy nutrient rich diet and balanced diet.
Eat:
- Whey protein (great amino acid profile)
- Fish oil (D and Omega3)
Limit:
- Sugar
- Alcohol
- Vegetable oil
- Processed food
Agree with everything except the vegestable oil, it’s high in good fats
There’s new studies that disagree, they are easily oxidized fats and there’s evidence that they heavily contribute to heart disease. Saturated fats from animal sources seems to be the way to go.
Then again if you don’t exercise and aren’t metabolically healthy you’ll probably still have issues regardless of what you do.
That’s the one. :)
To add to that there seems to be a link between vegetable oil and weight gain when calories are kept equal between two groups of rodents.
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Can you post those studies? Pretty much all the studies I’ve seen show that unsaturated fats are what you want.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29174025/
Conclusions: Reducing saturated fat and replacing it with carbohydrate will not lower CHD events or CVD mortality although it will reduce total mortality. Replacing saturated fat with PUFA, MUFA or high-quality carbohydrate will lower CHD events.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0939475317302375
Most meta-analyses, except the Nurses Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow up Study combined, that have examined replacement of total saturated fat with total carbohydrate in cohort studies have found no effect on CHD events or deaths. Only when replacement of saturated fat with polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fat or high quality carbohydrate is examined is benefit shown.
There is some recent evidence that some unsaturated fats are unhealthy from another perspective, like soybean oil, but that isn’t all of them (e.g. olive oil is still healthy for you).
Personally I have always taken a multivitamin/mineral and my labs have been good except for occasional low iron because periods. Now that I’m old (and yeeted the uterus) my iron was fine until I had bad hemorrhoid bleeding. So I got that taken care of, and my ass doc prescribed daily Metamucil to keep it from recurring.
I like the OneaDay Petites because it’s easier to swallow 2 of those (that’s the dose, because petites) than one of the regular horse pills. Gummy vitamins do not have iron or other minerals, btw.
I don’t think it’s necessary to take any super-supplement, just enough to keep me at the RDA once I add in my food. If your diet is bad, fiber might be missing as well, so consider Metamucil for both your ass and your heart.
Fibre is important. You can get many high fibre foods these days, but they aren’t necessarily what you’d think is high in dietary fibre. Pears are awesome.
I think multi-vitamins are more important as you get older. Your body simply doesn’t absorb as much of the vitamins in food as it does when you’re younger. So all that advice “Just eat a healthy diet” isn’t quite as true.
