Multivitamins: what's all the fuss?

The Washington Post reports that several recently high profile and (apparently) credible studies into the benefits of multivitamin supplements have concluded that taking supplements won’t hurt you, but won’t help you either.

Doubtless this will raise the ire of supplement hawking network marketers who are convinced (or at least for financial reasons, pretend to be) that their brand of supplements will cure anything from cancer to bellybutton lint. However it is has been observed that many vitamin tablets pass through our body partially or fully undigested. It appears to be a not so well kept secret that some brands of multivitamins (especially budget priced) do not dissolve properly.

Swallowing anything that is intended to provide your body with vital nutrients, and yet isn’t digested is a waste of time and money. However, the real question here is bioavailability. I’ve seen articles which claim that the body cannot distinguish between natural vitamins and chemical identical vitamins. Maybe not, but have you ever come across a Vitamin B tree? The fact is that our bodies are complex biological systems which require around 100 or so specific nutrients on a daily basis. I’ve yet to see vitamin supplement which contains more than say 20 or 30 nutrients. We get the broad spectrum of nutrients from whole foods.

“But,” protest some, “the soils are depleted of minerals, and so we need to ensure we give our bodies what is missing in our food.” Here’s a challenge for you: find a person who takes supplements instead of whole foods and see how many health problems they have. Don’t get me wrong; I like many healthy lifestyle proponents believe we cannot maintain optimum health for very long without supplementation. However, the attitude of many people taking supplements is that this gives them licence to drop their guard on the food they eat.

Recognise also that minerals come in two forms, organic and inorganic. One can be assimilated by the body and the other can’t. Most mineral supplements use inorganic minerals simply because they’re cheaper and the market prefers cheap supplements. Our body cannot properly utilise inorganic minerals. Pick up a rock from the ground and try to chew on it. Smarter supplement manufacturers try to trick the body into utilizing inorganic minerals by powdering them and chelating them (coating them with an enzyme or sugar that the body will utilize). However even in chelated form, the body is not able to utilize everything.

In nature, plants convert inorganic minerals into organic form, typically referred to as ‘colloidal’ minerals. Animals (including humans) are designed to source their nutrients from plants, or in turn from other animals which source their nutrients from plants. It makes sense then to eat real whole foods wherever possible. Supplementing with multivitamins and minerals in colloidal or organic form makes sense and stories abound of the positive health benefits of doing so.

Another great incentive for eating whole foods is to minimize the amount of synthetic chemicals we ingest, most of which cannot be metabolised by our body and can lead to endocrine breakdown, which in turn causes a whole range of disorders including Obesity Syndrome.