7 replies to this topic

[Exception]

I take a multivitamin everyday, along with extra D, fish oil, and green tea with lemon.

The piece of my regimen that I trust least is the multi. I've seen studies that support the idea that they're good for you, and studies that support the idea that they're useless.

Does anyone have any strong feelings about whether the benefits of multivitamins are significant? If so, why?

[Mind]

Your regimen is about the same as mine. Green (and white) Tea, coffee, extra D3, fish oil, and most recently low dose aspirin (because of its extremely long safety record and increasingly well-proven health benefits). In my most recent podcast with Justin Rebo of ImmunePath he also said D3 and Fish oil are the most well-proven supplements, and the rest "mostly don't work". I take Vimmortal as my multi-vitamin because it is a lower-dosage formula. Most people around here would probably tell you that a lot of mass-marketed multis are not great because they have 100% (or more) RDA of many vitamins and minerals. If you have a good diet, then you probably do not need 100% RDA. I usually only take half the dosage of Vimmortal spread throughout the day. If I dropped Vimmortal (which contains lithium), I would probably start taking lithium as an additional supplement. The data behind lithium is pretty solid.

[Exception]

High doses equals harmful eh?

That would certainly explain why the evidence is so divided on them. So the healthiness of vitamin consumption is an n-curve?

[hyper_ventriloquism]

Vimmortal is on sale in a big way right now...

[niner]

High doses equals harmful eh?

That would certainly explain why the evidence is so divided on them. So the healthiness of vitamin consumption is an n-curve?

That's actually true for anything that you put in your body. The usual description of the healthiness curve is an "inverted U". The only question, and it's a pretty big one, is what exactly is the dose that corresponds to maximum health, as well as the degree to which the curve is sloped.

Another problem with multis involves the form of the vitamin or mineral. Folic acid, for example, has a polyglutamate chain as we get it from nature, but the synthetic forms leave that off. Cheaper multis tend to have poorer forms, while high-end multis like Vimmortal, Ortho Core or AOR Multi Basics have better forms.

I'm not so sure that the evidence on multis is all that divided. There have been some large observational studies showing positive results with long term use of multis. Offhand, I can't think of any obvious "multis are bad" studies.

[Exception]

Interesting. Do such high end vitamins have all eight compounds of vitamin E, rather than the simple a-Tocopherol contained in most multis?

Edited by Earth Citizen, 21 April 2012 - 03:16 AM.

[hivemind]

Yes they have.

But I noticed that my AOR Multi Basics 3 had lost one E-vitamin compound. Now it only has 7. :(

[Mind]

As far as high dosages go, the general public almost always falls into the trap of more=better. The reality is that most substances we ingest have a U-shaped dose-response curve. Through decades of research, many nutritional scientists have come up with very general guidelines on what the average person needs to remain healthy. These are RDA and DRI guidelines. The key thing to know is that this is for the average human. Everyone is unique and everyone has different nutritional needs to remain in optimum health. I have a good diet by most standards so I don't take many supplemental vitamins and minerals. I take Vimmortal as an insurance of sorts, to make sure my body doesn't miss out on anything important on a daily basis, because of the random nature of life, I don't eat optimially every day (in fact, that would be kind-of boring).