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?
You must log in or register to comment.
I have created a handy chart to follow
Did your doctor recommend you take supplements?
If yes
Take those specific supplements
If no
You do not need to take supplements
To add to this, you really need a blood test to show what you need. Some docs will talk out their ass about dieting (this is rare, but it happens). Always get bloodwork to confirm.
Also, some vitamins are water soluble, others need to be taken with food. Your doc should know though
I’m a vegetarian and people assume I need B12, but my bloodwork shows I’m fine. I did need some D though, since apparently hiding inside for 3 years during a pandemic can impact your body… who would’ve guessed??
Vitamin D deficiency is incredibly common. I think it’s something like 1/3 or 1/4 depending on the season or where you live.
Of course, if you’re a member of the red haired master race, your body produces it for you so it’s less likely.
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.
A woman at work gave us all big bottles of vit D during the pandemic. I think it should last me until 2045.
deleted by creator
I did need some D though, since apparently hiding inside for 3 years during a pandemic can impact your body… who would’ve guessed??
I’m always happy to share some D with those in need.
Heavily relatable ngl
D3 you smartass
I set myself up for that one though, huh?
Yes you did 😏
I’m a vegetarian, have gained weight but not to the point that it would explain why I feel like ass all the time recently. I should get blood work, I was thinking I had low testosterone or something but it could be anything really
Low iron is a common one iirc.
This is why I take a multivitamin. I deal with low iron and it helps a bit. Gotta be careful thought if you do have an iron deficiency since many multivitamins don’t have iron. I could just take iron supplements but my doctor agreed that it was a good idea to just go with a multivitamin.
Weight gain and low testosterone display similar symptoms but may not be related. (Fatigue and such) Check with a doc for sure.
And if I don’t own a doctor?
Best guide I’ve seen. saved!
If you are Australian all ‘medications’ have a code on them whether they have been scientifically proven to do what the label says. Aust R - right on they’ll do what they say, Aust - L - loser no scientific proof. So yes some iron supplements work really well, others less so for example
Legendary info, cheers cobra
Cobber
How about “U” – “Unstudied” If there’s no money to study a supplement, it doesn’t get studied. Or maybe “unmonied”, because the particular studies the governments want cost $$$.
Most doctors today will tell you NOT to take iron, especially if you are a man. Apparently iron has been associated with various health concerns.
Some random thoughts:
-
For vegans it’s adviced to take certain extra vitamins, for instance B12
-
Also, when you are talking about health, i would not underestimate exercise, even a brisk daily walk. I don’t know for sure, but i suspect this will have more impact on our health, than taking multivitamins.
-
As someone else commented here, i think fibre is also very important. And drinking enough healthy fluids.
-
As a personal aside; i did notice a difference when i started supplementing vitamin D. I was surprised to notice that my energy level seemed to go slightly up.
-
Also, never mix iron (not a vitamin btw) with dairy or tea. And take it with some vitamin C
-
Finally, be careful and don’t randomly start to mix and match certain vitamins. For instance, magnesium and calcium have a certain balance, where too much of one will have a negative effect on the other.
Also, never mix iron (not a vitamin btw) with dairy or tea. And take it with some vitamin C
Aside from it not being kosher (milk and meat) what’s wrong with mixing the two?
Calcium and iron inhibit each others’ uptake. You won’t get the full dose of them if you take them together.
Unsure if this is OP’s angle, but I have pretty chronically bad anemia/ferritin levels. In my layman’s research, I found that both dairy (calcium) and tea (oxalates) inhibit the body’s ability to absorb iron when consumed alongside one-another. My list also included peas, coffee, eggs, and just about every other damn thing I like to eat, so that was a fun discovery. 😅 Link to kickstart research for anyone curious.
Dairy and tea (though i don’t know if herbal teas count) inhibit iron absorption, so it has nothing to do with human values, so to speak :-) If you want to increase absorption, combine it with vitamin C.
Small caveat on the iron. The body doesn’t have an efficient mechanism of getting rid of iron so that one is easy to over supplement.
At least for men. I’m very certain this is one of the cases where science is done upon men. Men don’t have good mechanism of getting rid of iron, but women do. 👍
Yes, and so do for instance vitamin A, D, E, and K because those can heap up in fatty tissues. Also, always check your personal circumstances. Dealing with periods for instance can sometimes (not always) make one anemic, so then you might need some supplementation.
-
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…
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).
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.
A nutritionist friend of mine was big on diet but she wasn’t necessarily anti-vitamin pills. She said they can be an “insurance policy” against gross deficiencies in your diet that you’re not aware of or which happen because you’re not getting your diet right for whatever reason.
They’re not a substitute for eating right but they can be a good alternative to nutrient deficiencies.
That’s how I view them. It’s a supplement, to ya know, supplement your diet in case you missed any vital nutrients.
You just pee out the excess anyways just don’t go overboard. Looking at you B vitamins…
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.
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).
deleted by creator
It couldn’t hurt. But most medical professionals I know don’t recommend it.
If you want to get a multivitamin that’s more bioavailable, consider eating an egg a day, or liver. These are some of the most available multivitamin sources in nature
yeah but I know my diet is shit and I’m definitely not going to eat those things daily, so I think a multivitamin helps me at that point lol
You definitely can’t eat a single egg daily? It takes 5 minutes maybe to cook and eat a single egg, unless you have an allergy to eggs it’s pretty hard to say you can’t do it
Just wanna scoot in here and mention that yes, it can be very difficult for some people to do very mundane tasks, such as cooking an egg. Trust me, I know how depression fucks with your system and it indeed sometimes makes you incapable of spending five minutes on boiling an egg :(
You don’t have to boil it and wait for that, put a pan over heat and crack an egg into it. If depression stops you from doing that then your depression will starve you
Yes, depression can starve you. When I was depressed I couldn’t keep pans clean, never mind crack an egg and stand by the stove whilst it cooked.
People who haven’t been through it don’t seem to understand it. When my depression was really bad I lost 60 lbs in a few months and couldn’t gain any back for 2 years. Even grabbing a premade salad out of the fridge or putting a microwave meal in the microwave was too much work.
Yeah it’s maybe hard to imagine what it feels like if you don’t know. I couldn’t brush my hair for weeks at a time, it was so much effort.
As a side note, it feels weird to reflect on that time now, like looking at a different person. If anyone suffering with depression is reading this now, just know that it can pass.
You can hard boil a bunch of eggs at once, then keep them in the fridge for a daily pick me up
Yea it takes maybe half an hour to do a half dozen hard boiled eggs on your day off.
An egg a day instead of a multi-vitamin? And then you get high cholesterol.
You’re not going to have a cholesterol problem from a single egg per day, the rest of your diet being shite will cause that
Considering I don’t like eggs, no I can’t. Eggs are gross. I continue to take a prenatal vitamin because something about it prevents my headaches. My doctor theorized it’s the calcium and magnesium, but taking those separately doesn’t help. Maybe it’s the dosage in the prenatal or something else in deficienct in, but it really helps me.
I’d be lying if I said I put that much effort in daily
My dude you heat a pan and crack an egg, it’s the easiest way to feed yourself there is. Even getting fast food is more effort unless you doordash every single meal, I fear for your wallet if so
I always take Vitamin D in November/ December because I don’t get enough sunlight.
If I don’t I get very tired and depressed.
Just don’t take a lot or you can royally fuck up your blood calcium levels.
You’re supposed to take vitamin D and K together for this reason. They make combo pills.
I take a multivitamin every day, because my diet can sometimes be poor, and I don’t get much sunlight. However you should understand that they’re a ‘bonus’ and not a substitute for a good diet, I always have fruit & veg in the house and make sure I eat some everyday.
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.
It’s generally not micronutrients like vitamins that are problematic for people with bad diets, it’s macronutrients that cause problems, and those can’t be fixed with supplements.
It’s pretty unlikely you’re going to notice much of anything from taking multivitamins, most likely you’re going to be paying a bunch to be pissing it right back out, but if you can trivially afford it then just buy a small pack and see if taking it makes you feel better.
Do buy the cheapest most generic one though, no reason to pay extra for fancy packaging.
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.
Yes, they do. They improve the profits of some companies.
I’ve wondered the same.
I have a poor diet. There are times where I don’t eat enough, and when I do eat it’s often very… not varied.
I know people always say you don’t need vitamins if you just eat better, or that you can just ask your doctor - but my answer to those are “I don’t want to” and “I can’t afford to”, respectively.
Are vitamins a better-safe-than-sorry option if your diet is probably insufficiently varied to give you everything you need, and you have no strong desire to change that, but you have no way of actually figuring out what’s low or not? Or even then are they probably a waste of money?
Ideally you’d want to get tested for deficiencies and/or plug your meals into something like MacroFactor or Chronometer for a few weeks to see if you’re over/under in anything. Then just take those vitamins individually (OR, even better, adjust your diet).
I get taking a multi as an insurance policy, but there some vitamins or minerals that you can get in excess or that don’t really help.
If you’re wondering if they might help you live longer, the answer seems to be no:
https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165(23)05424-2/fulltext
Conclusion: Multivitamin-multimineral treatment has no effect on mortality risk.
