Do we Need the Traditional Multivitamin?
Daily multivitamins are taken widely across the country by many different demographics of patients, but a few recent studies have shown that these multivitamins are making a very big difference.
Traditional multivitamins have drawn a lot of criticism over the years, including poor real life significance, and having poor absorption and stomach upset issues due to their large tablet form. An editorial written by Johns Hopkins researchers reviewed three recent studies that all found that there is no significant difference between taking and not taking a daily multivitamin when it comes to cancer, heart disease, or overall mortality. It is also noted that multivitamins often have a small dose of most of the nutrients, but if you’re actually deficient in one of them, you’re better off taking the specific vitamin over a daily multivitamin.
Many modern vitamin/supplement companies have popped up in the last decade that have a very different marketing approach compared to traditional multivitamins. Companies like Ritual and Tespo are geared towards the younger generations, who aren’t the most common demographic for taking a daily multivitamin. These are both subscription based custom vitamin formulation services, where Ritual ships you a monthly bottle of instagramable capsules, Tespo sends pods for use with their Tespo dispenser to make a shot of vitamin juice in a Keurig-like fashion. These two have noticed the disparities in traditional multivitamins and are trying to make a version that actually helps, and appeals to a wider audience.
While these companies are not far off from what is sold on the shelves at our local pharmacies, they do recognize there is a need that isn’t being met by what is available on the market today.
While looking into the company Ritual, I happened upon an article on their twitter which was written by their science team. This article reflected on the necessity of multivitamins if we were all to be getting our nutrients from our diets alone. They recognize that genetic variations and dietary restrictions can inhibit some patients from getting certain nutrients through their diet, and in many of those cases a vitamin or supplement is required to replete that nutrient. However if there are no restrictions, there is nothing stopping you from getting all of your nutrients through diet alone. So if a patient is looking for a multivitamin, recommending lifestyle changes to their diet (as tolerated) should be the first line of therapy.
The takeaway message from all of this is that we don’t need multivitamins considering we keep a healthy diet. The best recommendations to get all of your vitamins and minerals are plenty of produce, low-fat dairy, and whole grains.
Thank you for reading!
