I've always wondered if multivitamins worked. When you look at the labeling, you'll see a cocktail of vitamins jammed packed into a single pill. Really? All those nutrients inside a single pill?
Well, of course it's too good to be true.
After doing a lot of research, the consensus seem to be that multivitamins are useless. That's not to discount vitamins and minerals in general, it's just the multivitamins themselves are useless.
Why?
Well first of all, the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) metric isn't very good. All the RDA is meant to do is give you an idea of what you're supposed to have, at a minimum, so you don't die. Ok, well it's not that dramatic, but it's meant to be the minimum level of nutrients you should be getting daily. It's not meant as an indicator for optimal health.
Next, there are already many micronutrients that you're probably already getting enough of through your diet. You don't need to add more of it and risk overdosing from these pills. For example Selenium and Beta-Carotene are ample in many foods.
Finally, it's just not feasible to fit everything you need to optimize yourself into a single pill. It's convenient and it sounds great to be able to get 40 different nutrients into your body, but of course if it sounds too good to be true.. it probably is. Instead, it's much better to research and purchase individual Vitamins and Minerals that are actually shown to improve your wellbeing. An example of this is Vitamin D and Vitamin K, which you are most likely not getting enough of daily.
TL;DR
Multivitamins feel like they are a miracle pill. The idea that you can supplement your health with a single daily pill is alluring, however the execution sucks. They're more marketing-based than science, and they try to squeeze as many useless dosage of supplements in the pills as they can just so they can say they're included. It's more prudent to understand what the important individual vitamins and minerals that you need are, and purchase those instead.
I'll be a doing a series supplement highlighting posts in the future so stay tuned if you're interested in this sort of thing.
