Should You Pop Vitamins Or Should You Not?

Since 50 percent of Americans take multivitamins, and the $20 billion dollar supplement industry is unregulated by the FDA deciding if these little pills are of value is worth discussing. So last month, a federal panel assembled to review and discuss the efficacy of multivitamins in the American diet. The objective was to determine whether or not taking a multivitamin and mineral supplement was effective as well as safe. Experts from the Office of Dietary Supplements and the Office of Medical Applications of Research at the National Institutes of Health concluded that there’s no evidence either way that supports taking or not taking a multivitamin will help or hinder an individuals health. According to the NIH summary, ‘‘more rigorous scientific research is needed before strong recommendations could be made about using (multivitamins) to prevent chronic diseases.” The report recommends a healthy diet as the best way to stay healthy, and cautions us to take only the recommended daily allowances (RDA) of vitamins, no more.

In fact healthy eating is the best place to start, after all we were designed to eat good food. that Some 40,000 years ago cavemen ate fruit, nuts, berries, vegetation, lean meats and healthy fats, explains paleontologist Loren Cordain in his book, ‘‘The Paleo Diet.” And surprisingly even thousands of years later nutritional needs haven’t changed much. The fact is our genes have only changed .02 percent since then and this is important because genes determine our nutritional needs. But let’s be honest, how many of us actually eat five servings of fruits and vegetables daily? And is spinach, kale and mustard greens on your plate three times a day? We do the best we can, but temptations occur at every other grocery aisle and the pizza guy is just a phone call away. Convenience and over-stimulated taste buds often win over healthy choices.

So with this knowledge and even with the ongoing studies, as a dietitian I am not ready to give up on a vitamin supplement.

Enter the Multivitamin

We take the multivitamin to make up for losses, to supplement what we may have missed while we were eating our third piece of pepperoni with extra cheese. I believe a good multivitamin can supplement what may be lacking in our diets, and at a level high enough to counteract some of the onslaughts of modern day living. Keep in mind that the RDA levels listed on vitamin bottles were developed in the early 1940s – during the depression – and were rough guidelines developed as the minimum amounts needed daily to maintain health. But our environment and our culture is 65 years older, with more pesticides, more plastics and more pollution. There are more toxins in our environment than our bodies can adequately handle. More toxins create more free radicals, and our bodies manage them with antioxidants. But the levels of antioxidants that we get in our food are lower than the level of toxins that we take in. So taking a multi with higher amounts of popular antioxidants like vitamin C and E will help neutralize the constant cascade of free radical production.

The benefits of both of these vitamins have been studied extensively. There is research suggesting that Vitamin C may protect against colds, cataracts, macular degeneration and some cancers. Linus Pauling was an advocate of using 6,000 milligrams of vitamin C (not 60 milligrams, the RDA guideline) to improve health and protect against cancers and colds. Scientific research also shows that the optimal level for antioxidants like vitamin C and E, beta carotene and selenium may be much higher than the current RDA level. They are all necessary, in adequate amounts, and in amounts that you won’t get from eating food that comes from soil deficient in minerals and a diet that often thrives on empty calories.

The perfect pill

When you look for a good multivitamin, keep in mind that they are not created equally, as was demonstrated in a January article in Business Week Magazine (How Safe are Diet Supplements?). ConsumerLab.com, which tests dietary supplements, found that 25 percent of supplements did not contain the amount that was claimed on the label, and some even contained lead. Unfortunately, as long as the industry is unregulated you may not be getting what you think you’re getting when buying a supplement. It’s important to work with a healthcare professional who works with reputable supplement companies. These supplement companies provide doctors, nutritionists and other qualified providers with certification to verify the quality and quantity of the amounts in their formulas.

Finally, there’s the issue of absorption. We are not what we eat, as we are what we absorb. Every one of us is unique and our digestive tracts reflect this. Hydrochloric acid in the stomach is necessary for proper breakdown and absorption of the foods we eat, including vitamins. To see how well your vitamin is dissolving in your stomach, try this test: put the vitamin in a dish of vinegar; the vitamin should dissolve completely in 20 minutes. If it doesn’t, your gastric juices may not be breaking it down, or – more likely – the vitamin you’ve purchased has so many stabilizers in it that it is shelf stable enough to last in a store — and your stomach — for a couple of years.

The good news is that the popularity of supplements has caused doctors and professionals to research and study supplements to gain more insight into their appropriate use. In 2002 the New England Journal of Medicine published a review article recommending which supplements may be useful. In the same year two Harvard doctors published a report in the Journal of American Medical Association recommending that adults take a multivitamin every day. The recommendation was based on research, which demonstrated that taking a vitamin supplement can help prevent some chronic diseases including heart disease, some cancers and osteoporosis.

While the experts continue to debate whether or not a multivitamin is necessary, you can bet I’ll be taking mine every day. Some conclusions take years, and that amounts to a whole lot of free radicals. I’d rather take my multi than roll the dice.