One out of three people in the US take a multivitamin supplement.
I mean, who doesn't want to be able to every day eat a chewy gummy of your favorite cartoon
character?
Right, but the question is, are they wasting their money?
Do you really need to be taking a multivitamin every single day?
I'm going to cover that and a little bit more in this video.
My name is Dustin Williams and for the best nutrition, health and fitness advice, make
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every time I post a new video every Wednesday, can supplementing with vitamins and minerals
in general be beneficial?
Yes, 100% there's a lot of research out there to support that, but the question is, can
you take a multivitamin that is supposedly going to cover all of your nutritional basic
needs all at once and get the same benefits?
Will it be as beneficial as taking individual vitamins and minerals as needed and when you
need them?
In this video, I'm going to explain why taking a multivitamin may not be the best option
for you to get your vitamin and mineral intake, so let's go ahead and dive right into it.
The first thing is that just because you put something in your body doesn't mean that your
body absorbs it and utilizes it.
It doesn't have to utilize everything that you eat or you ingest.
Some things just get excreted or part of things just get excreted.
And whenever we take a multivitamin that has a lot of vitamins and minerals that we are
all taking in, once typically, they're usually in a little bit more higher doses as well
as an example, calcium, iron, magnesium, and zinc all compete for absorption.
Whenever you take these together in these larger quantities, you typically don't get
as good of an absorption rate.
These specifically are usually done best and absorbed the best whenever they are taken
away from the other minerals.
Same thing for vitamin K and vitamin E. they also will affect each other’s absorption
rates and are typically best not taken together.
So this is one of the ways that taking a multivitamin may not have the effect that you want because
you are less likely to actually absorb and utilize all the vitamins and minerals that
they contain because multiple of these actually compete for absorption.
Typically, multivitamins contain lower grade forms of several of the vitamins and minerals
that they put in it.
This can make things be less bioavailable, less bioavailable, which essentially means
that you are less likely to be able to absorb and utilize it and just kind of a cheaper
form.
Typically, multivitamins will also contain a cheaper and less bioavailable form of certain
vitamins and minerals.
So as an example, we'll look at magnesium.
Typically, magnesium oxide is one of the more common forms of magnesium that is put into
a multivitamin.
If you look at magnesium oxide, which is a cheaper form as compared to some other ones
like a magnesium glycinate, what we find is that the bioavailability or the amount that's
actually absorbed is a lot lower.
Plus magnesium oxide also typically causes stomach distress, but these are cheaper forms,
easier to use, so they're typically more common in multivitamins.
Let's also look into some of the research on multivitamins.
One of the biggest reasons that most people take a multivitamin is for longevity, longevity
of life.
So a lot of times people believe by taking a multivitamin, it's gonna help cover all
their basic nutritional needs to make sure that they don't have any micronutrient or
vitamin and mineral deficiencies.
Therefore, they should be in theory less likely to get certain diseases because they don't
have these deficiencies on the whole.
When looking at trials that are evaluating multivitamins, they have found that they don't
really increase any incidents of cancer or cardiovascular disease or really any other
life threatening disease in general.
So based on the research, looking at multivitamins, you're finding that it doesn't really increase
the longevity of life against life threatening disease.
From there, the question becomes, okay, so if there aren't any potential benefits, are
there any actual downsides to taking a multivitamin?
Well, maybe here's potentially the biggest issue that I have found that when most people,
not everyone, but when a lot of people are taking a multivitamin, they believe that they
are already covering their nutritional basic needs.
Therefore they don't worry as much about eating a balanced diet.
The balanced diet is going to be the biggest key because we have to remember that everything
else that we take as a supplement multivitamins, whether they work or not, are designed to
supplement a good quality balanced diet.
And it's not uncommon for people that are taking multivitamins to not pay as much attention
to their balanced diet or whether or not they're getting one because they believe that they're
already getting their nutritional needs covered.
And also, as I mentioned earlier, whenever you're taking a multivitamin, because several
of these compete for absorption because they typically have cheaper forms of the vitamins
and minerals inside them, you're looking at being way less likely to be able to cover
all of your basic needs, not including the fact that the majority of vitamins and minerals
out there don't have every single vitamin and mineral within them.
So if we are looking at these expecting the cover, all of our basics, they are more than
likely not going to do so.
So I get asked the question, what do I do?
The best thing for you to do in my opinion is to track your food and use the apps that
will tell you your vitamin and mineral content.
We have apps out there that whenever you track what food you're eating, it will tell you
what vitamins and minerals you're getting and in total so that you can start to see
on the average what vitamin and mineral intake you're actually getting from your food.
Doing this doesn't require any more work than just tracking your food.
It's just using the right apps that will tell you your vitamin and mineral intake that you're
getting.
And then whenever you start to pay attention to this and you see over a period of weeks
or months and you start to look at averages, you'll find specific in vitamins, specific
vitamin and minerals that you're not getting enough of from your diet.
From there.
You can actually go in and supplement with those couple of individual vitamins and minerals
that you know that you need.
Therefore you know that you're getting a better rate of absorption because you're potentially
going to get a better quality, uh, type of that vitamin.
You're not going to have it competing for absorption because it's not fighting against
all these other vitamins and minerals.
You're getting more along the lines of what you need, not including the fact that I didn't
even mention that you may be getting too much of certain vitamins and minerals because you
may be getting a lot of it from your food and then adding it from a multivitamin.
I've actually got a video and I will put the link in the description.
You can go to that video and it will walk you through what app to use, how to use it,
all the basics on how to utilize this.
Best to know your total vitamin and mineral intake that you're getting from your food.
On average, I'll use myself as an example.
Most of us are creatures of habit.
We eat a lot of the same foods over and over again, so it makes it a lot easier when we
eat a lot of the same foods to see where our deficiencies are.
For me specifically based on the current diet regimen that I have right now, I find that
I usually don't get enough magnesium and there's a couple of B vitamins that I typically am
lacking in at least to hit my RDAs, my minimums.
So for me, I will supplement with magnesium and those couple of B vitamins that I need
and at the time being without, you know, going in and getting more blood tests to verify
stuff.
I don't worry about the other vitamins and minerals because I know that I should be getting
enough from my food.
Wrapping up.
Vitamin and mineral intake and supplementation can definitely be beneficial, but you're going
to be a lot better off if you can verify and validate what vitamins and minerals you need
based on your current nutrition routine and then supplement with the ones that you find
that you need instead of taking a multivitamin and hoping that it's just going to cover all
of your basic needs.
I hope you enjoyed this video and if you did, I would appreciate it if you would smash that
like button and I will see you guys in the next video.