1y ago

Do Multivitamins actually do anything?

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?

134 comments

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??
  
  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.
  
  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
- And if I don't own a doctor?
- Best guide I've seen. saved!

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.
  
  Also taking too much vitamin C can lead to kidney stones.
  
  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.

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
- https://www.the-nutrivore.com/post/a-comprehensive-rebuttal-to-seed-oil-sophistry
- 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.

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.

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
- One liver a day, got it!
  
  Make sure it's a polar bear liver (don't do this).
  
  With some fava beans and a nice bottle of Chianti
  
  Blended
- 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

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.

Yes, they do. They improve the profits of some companies.

I find they take the edge off my food cravings. But if you have a balanced diet with no natural deficiencies then you're probably fine.
- Yeah I find that a couple of things about my mood, metabolism, and energy level are slightly better on a week when I am taking my vitamins than on a week where I didn’t. It could all be about one specific nutrient that my diet is poor at delivering to me, but I am not aware of because I’m lazy, not very educated and focused on other things. As long as they don’t harm me, I’m content to piss 99% of them out as long as the other 1% is valuable. Anyway all my urine goes into my compost pile so it’s just micronutrients for my garden.

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.

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.

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?

A previous doctor told me that a large longitudinal study showed no benefit from multivitamins. This was 10+ years ago so there may be more recent studies.
- Studies done on people under 45, almost certainly.

The ones I take make my pee yellow. So it’s definitely doing something.
- Those are excess vitamins that your body is eliminating.
  
  so, it is doing something
  
  Or the food colouring they put in the pills to make it look like it’s doing something
- For me it's green.
  
  Green/florescent green pee that looks like Mountain Dew can be a sign of diabetes, or consuming more sugar than your body can handle.
  Check with your doctor.

A multivitamin is not bad, but different vitamins need different other substances to be available for the body. Eg. some are soluble in water (like the B group) some, like vitamin D need fat to be solved in (and it's good to acompany it with vitamin K to make D work as intended). Be careful with vitamin A - people in developed countries usually have too much and it can cause serious problems. It's generally good to know what you're taking and why. But if you just need a quick fix, a multivitamin is usually ok.
- I think this is the best take. OP, multivitamins do work. Of course you need to fix your diet, of course it’s better to ingest the vitamin with the food so it can be absorbed better. Of course you should talk to a doctor. But if you have a deficiency of an important vitamin such as C or D, you will notice the difference.
  Regarding overdoses, it is almost impossible to hurt yourself by taking a typical OTC multivitamin pill.
  Consider some specific foods which give you a boost of the vitamin, such as canned tuna for Omega-3, Brazil nuts for selenium, etc.
  But, at the end of the day, the general recommendation is that multivitamins are safe and pretty decent. I wouldn’t recommend any drug to a random person on the internet but multivitamins are fine.
  Source: my wife is a nutritionist and we do talk about this a lot. I have a great diet but do take vitamins regularly as a complement or when I’m sick.

If you eat a truly balanced diet you’ll have little reason to take a multivitamin. However, many people do not eat well. In those cases a multivitamin can help fill in the gaps. Arguably it would be better to improve your diet but something is better than nothing.

For me, they do seem to have an effect. I sleep better, my nails become strong and generally I feel more enegized. The latter is of course very subjective.
- Yeah I knew someone who was a real wtf in so many ways …. They gave up on multi-vitamins because their nails grew faster. Wtf, one of the few people with proof of a deficiency being helped by a multivitamin and they give up? Because inconvenient to be healthier?
- If you're deficient and the form of the vitamin/mineral is something your body can absorb, supplements can be helpful. If you aren't deficient, some supplements have little effect (water soluble ones just get peed out, though can cause wear and tear on your kidneys and/or liver in the meantime), while others can cause overloads which can be as bad as or worse than deficiencies.
  Personally, I try to meet my micronutritional needs with foods but I occasionally take supplements to "top up", either a multivitamin if there's no specific signs of deficiency, or specific supplements if there's signs I might be low in that one (each has a set of symptoms that are associated with deficiency).
  
  Yeah I respect that and I’m not suggesting anyone to take supplement - it works for my lifestyle, but it might not work for others. For me it’s easier to take a pill than eat all the foods I should.

Our Pharmacology prof at med school always told us, as long as you live in the western hemisphere and don’t just eat pizza you only produce expensive urine with those vitamins. Ymmv though

It's easy to find out if you take blood tests. You shouldn't be taking vitamins just for fun.

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.

Recommend these two things
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/07/the-vitamin-myth-why-we-think-we-need-supplements/277947/
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/supplements-and-safety/
- For those of us without an account with the atlantic, what’s the deal?
  
  https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2Fhealth%2Farchive%2F2013%2F07%2Fthe-vitamin-myth-why-we-think-we-need-supplements%2F277947%2F

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.

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.

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.

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).

Is "moving money" = "doing a thing"? :-)

They taste good, sometimes.
- flinstones?

Multivitamins are pretty much like the train to Hogwarts. They only work if you believe they work!

I look at them the way Voltaire looked at going to church. To paraphrase (going from memory here), "If heaven exists then by going to church every Sunday I've saved my soul, if it doesn't then I've only lost a few hours every Sunday." Multivitamins are cheap enough that I can take them on a "just in case" condition.
- This is not a good way to deal with anything.
  
  Think of them like a seatbelt then. I have no intentions of benefitting from a seatbelt and over several decades of driving, I haven’t had any use for one. I’m still going to wear it “just in case”
  
  This is simple (opportunity) cost/benefit analysis and is an excellent way of dealing with most things.

Do you live in the God Forsaken northern lands? If so, vitamins can be beneficial during your Hellish Winters that humans are not supposed to inhabit. Migrate to sunnier climes.
- I prefer defying whatever gods exist by living in darkness and cold. Sunlight causes skin damage, I'd prefer getting by with vitamin D supplements.

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